Absolutely terrific meetings at church today, even if I did have to teach in Gospel Doctrine class. Glad to get that over with. Rain today, but not near as much as they have been predicting. Nice nap, good dinner and we have been continuing on with our Harry Potter Fest, getting ready for the big Day, Nov 19th.

Up early and ready for church, realized that I didn't blog last night, so I thought I might catchup a little. I spent so much of the day writing, it didn't occur to me that I didn't write here. Really enjoying the Creative Writing Class, getting totally immersed into it.

Did break down and go grocery shopping in the afternoon. You know how much I love that. The upside is that we finally got some appropriate computer paper to do our "not Christmas letter"on. I really want to send this out by the 15th of November, so everyone will have our new address in time. Stating to realize that it's only 23 more days until I leave for Idaho. Hoping Rachel and Mavis can hold on that long. Rick seems to think that if the baby is born in the next week, I should try to change my flights and go early, we'll just have to wait and see what happens and keep praying.

Just got off of Facebook and was so disappointed in some of my "friends". It seems the ones who have so much to be grateful for, can't stop complaining. It certainly makes me more aware of the things that I post and my general attitude of gratitude.

Spent the morning dealing with my ongoing "dental crisis", spent the better part of last night laying awake stressing about said "dental crisis". Finally came to a conclusion that I can't figure this one out and the burden was getting to be too much to bear (in other words, I was stressed to the max), after a lot of prayer and wondering I decided (actually I think I was told, maybe in a dream) that I just needed to lay this burden at the Lord's feet. Once I did that I felt an amazing sense of calm, not that I didn't have to remind myself several times throughout the morning, not to go back and pick that burden up again. Incredibly things have started to work themselves out. I still can't see the end, but I'm not worried anymore, I know it will work out the way it should and I will be OK in the process.

After that morning crisis, I spent a good part of the afternoon writing. The assignment for my class this week is to post the first paragraph of our "final creative piece" and I haven't even come up with an idea for mine. Oh, oh, here comes the stress.... I started writing some disjointed paragraphs, good in their own, but I was scared to post any, because I didn't know where I was going to take them for the final piece. Rick was kind enough to take me out to dinner (I think he could see how stressed I was and how wrapped up in the whole thing I was getting and he had a fine sense of "no dinner tonight) we talked a lot about my anxiety about this assignment. With his help I came to the conclusion that even seven hundred page novels are written one paragraph at a time and not everyone has an outline of the entire work at the first second or even three hundredth paragraph. The real creative process is to just write and see what's in there (kind of like my blog, each night I just start writing and don't really know where I'm going). Anyway...I feel much better now and even think I have an opening paragraph for my "final piece", not quite ready to post it yet, need to sleep on it and make a few more revisions, of course, it has to be perfect.

Talked to Rachel today and learned that she is having contractions. She was at the doctors today and when they noticed the contractions they checked her to find out that she is dilated to 3 or 4. They kept her in the doctors office, under observation, for a few hours and when the contractions stopped, they sent her home. It does look like things "have begun". I sincerely hope she can keep that baby in for a few more weeks. She'll probably hate me for saying that (I do remember how "done" you are at about 8 months), I just want little Mavis to have every opportunity to have a good healthy start. I also want to be able to be there to be of some real help, not coming three weeks after the baby is born. Well, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Praying for them both to be healthy and things to go well.

Energy is back and I actually got quite a bit done today, mostly paperwork and writing at the computer, but hey, it's an improvement over yesterday. I'm enjoying the writing but not the paperwork, ugh, I hate that stuff (not as much as grocery shopping, which I have to do tomorrow) it just tends to bog me down.

Weather is still cool and really windy. Watching the weather channel today as Haiti prepares for Tomas. It's only a Tropical Storm now but expected to reach hurricane status by the time it gets there. I can't even imagine what will happen with all of those people still living in tents. An interesting fact that I just learned about Haiti, although it's a tropical island, there are no tress, the mountains are barren, because they have cut down all the tress for building and other reasons. I just have to ask myself, how could a country be so uninformed and have gotten in such a mess. Many people here on St. Croix don't have much sympathy and say that it's God's will or wrath, that these things are happening in Haiti. I just can't believe that, nor can I believe that the world really isn't helping much. Keep praying for them.

Today was an energy less day, a day in which I had no energy. I felt like maybe I was coming down with something, maybe I was just coming down with a bad case of laziness. I should have been writing, but it just wasn't there today. I even had trouble with my class assignments and usually those are able to generate some real excitement. I did read a lot today, maybe that will count for something. It was pretty overcast most of the day, maybe that's the reason, the clouds just drained the energy out of me.

Tried to look at the elections results, it was very confusing. I know who the governor is here in the VI and was able to pick out some of the other winners in the states, but it seems like there should be a web site that you could go to and just see who won, race by race. There probably is one, I just don't know how to find it. I did find some of the "losers" comments to be interesting. It must be very hard to be in such a public race that seems to basically be a popularity contest and then lose. It's too bad some of these people compound their embarrassment at losing by making ridiculous statements about the election in general. Oh well, at least the political ads will be over for a while. Now if they would just take the annoying signs down from along the road. I'm really tired of seeing some of these people staring out of their cardboard frames at every intersection. There outta be a law!

Election day, I wonder what it will bring. There certainly is room for change, but real change would seem to be important. I have to ashamedly admit that I did not vote. Rumor has it that if we register to vote in the VI, we will not be eligible to vote in the next Presidential election. In an effort to get to the bottom of this rumor, we waited too long and did not register in time. I sure do hope that the candidate that I'm pulling for in the Gubernatorial race here wins, or at least that he does not lose by two votes.

I have been very disappointed in my voting career. It seems the choice generally seems to be between the lesser of two evils. I can't remember the last time I was actually excited about a particular candidate.
Even when I have started out feeling really good about someone, they go on in their campaign to do something that I consider embarrassing (like engage in mud slinging) and I end up once again discouraged.

Today my daughter sent me an email titled Iron Jawed Angels, it was about women gaining the right to vote, it truly did make me ashamed of the times I did not vote (like today). It is an important right and it's up to us to exercise it. Unfortunately, I do believe that their are some elections where we really don't get to make the decision about who will represent us (like in the Presidential race) but it is still important to cast our vote and stand up for what we believe to be right. I will be sure that I am voting in the next elections and probably locally, no matter what the consequences may be, I live here now and I want to make a difference.

Well I haven't been here for a few days, Halloween was a little uneventful except for the weather. At 8:30PM, we had a major squall blow through here. The wind was howling and the rain crashing, it was kind of scary, only lasted about 45 minutes. Then again at 2:30AM there was another one, it woke us up and lasted long enough that, we figured that we better turn on the news or the computer or something and make sure there were no warnings or anything going on. This time it lasted about an hour. Once I knew all was well I went back to bed, it took Rick longer to fall asleep. Then this morning nobody wanted to get up, I slept until 8:40AM, very unusual for me.

I'm really enjoying my writing class, probably couldn't tell it by my blog. There are some exercises that we have to do that seem so hokey, but it's amazing the thought process they evoke and the things that they can pull out of you. I just have to keep writing and be sure to spend some time every day actually doing it. I suppose the blog counts, but it's not as creative as I like to be, after all I really only want to post the "truth" here.

Weather is still a little stormy like, nor really raining but pretty windy most of the day and the clouds keep rolling through. Supposedly still the outer bands and remnants of Tomas. The weather guys keep saying it will reorganize and head for Haiti but it doesn't look like it to me. At least it's beyond us, but I still hope Haiti can dodge this one too.

I do want to say that although Halloween was uneventful we had incredible meetings at church. There were quite a few people there and the Spirit was really strong. Our talks and lessons were great, it is amazing what this little band of saints can pull off.