Interruptions

Interruptions are the story of my life at the moment. I (Louise) am the receptionist for the mission (among other things) so no matter what I am doing, the phone will ring within a minute or two. The “other things” frequently require concentration so I have learned to scrawl a little note on a bit of paper to remind me what I was doing before the interruption. A couple of days ago I had 6 bits of paper stacked up with things I had to get back to, as soon as I had dealt with the interruption to the interruption…and then, when I finally unrolled the stack back to a particular piece of paper, I couldn’t make out what the scrawl on it meant. Fortunately the phone rang while I was wondering, and my subconscious kicked into gear while I was dealing with what the caller needed, and I realized I had already managed to deal with the scrawled note's issue while I was on the phone doing something else.

And speaking of scrawls, I am so grateful now for years and years of Indexing experience, including a few years as an arbitrator. They did not fully prepare me for the amazing handwriting on various baptismal and other forms, the information on which I get to enter into the church record-keeping system. One imagines an excited missionary filling in the form, with a borrowed pencil, (or a crayon) leaning on her companion's back, because there is no table, and filling in all the information, while talking to the excited newly baptised member, and to their companion and telling the ward member they will lock the chapel when they are finished. The resulting form is challenging to read, but record accuracy is important I still struggle, but all that deciphering experience plus a trusty magnifying glass really help!

And speaking of magnifying glasses, everyone in the world seems to be trying to save on both paper and ink these days, and is thus printing stuff way too small. I first noticed this last year when I was preparing tax returns. The print on everybody's W-2 seemed to have shrunk! Strangely enough the paper has not shrunk, just the print.

I have always been able to read even the tiniest print easily, though the past few years I have had to remove my glasses to do so, but that no longer works for me. I remember in my youth threading needles for all the elderly ladies in my life. I did it cheerfully and with (I hope) only a faint air of superiority. All that is gone now and I truly understand how frustrating it is to struggle with threading needles, taking out splinters, and, of course, reading small print wherever it may be found. I am going to obtain my very own personal magnifying glass (the one I referred to earlier lives at the office) and carry it with me at all times. I can still thread a needle, btw, after five or six attempts, but not with my earlier grace, flair and pride. Do you think getting older is mortality's way of teaching us a spot of humility?

We bought a couple of recipe books yesterday. I have a system for buying (or rejecting) a recipe book in a book store. I open it at random five or six times and look at the five or six recipes I find. If more than three of the recipes are for things that I would not ever make - loaded with alcohol, shellfish or snails or something similar, I put it down again. If two or more of the recipes make me want to go home and make those items right now, I buy it. In between I put it down and seriously consider coming back to buy it later. Mostly I don't come back.  Yesterday we bought "The Jewelled Kitchen" which features Moroccan, Lebanese and Persian cooking, and Paul Hollywood's "100 great Breads". I initially picked up the latter because I like Paul Hollywood (of Great British Baking TV fame), but when every recipe I opened to was a "Yes!" I think I might have bought it even if it had not been ridiculously cheap. Anyway, I now have two recipe books.