Amy Elizabeth

For a year and a half now, I've known and for just over a year I've been married to Amy and in a year roughly, we've had our share of trials. In the past 5 months I've had an overwhelming trial of being unemployed. It's been tough to say the least! We've had to cut our living to essentials only but we've have had tons of help from countless people. Family, friends and our LDS faith. We have been steadfast in prayer and our tithes to find an answer.

I have tried countless times to find work through the internet using a variety of websites, Yahoo, MSN, KSL, ldsjobs, etc.. with several interviews and always turned down. Even my recent interview which was very promising, but to no avail. I've had several very depressing days with today being the hardest one yet! Complete emotional overload!! The only way to describe what I was going through this morning. I had looked over at least 500 job listings and some very disturbing thoughts flooded my mind! I can't describe them, but they went from bad to worse, even suicide came to mind. The sadness that followed was overwhelming and I had a rush of anger, such anger I have never felt before! I just sat here wondering where it had come from and when it would end. I had to try hard to think straight and thought of Amy. Without much thought, I had gotten to my feet, walked into my room, knelt down and cried uncontrollably for about 20 minutes!! Through my sobs, I was able to plead for Mersey from the Lord for these feelings to leave my mind, which they did immediately!

Amy came home shortly thereafter and found me in such a delicate state and I was able to relay to her what had happened. She began to cry and went into the other room for a minute or so and when she returned, she told me that she arranged for some more time at home before work. It was the best afternoon I've ever known! To spend such valuable time with the love of my life and to feel of her compassion and love for me!

The utter hopelessness and shame (that I have felt) to not even land the simplest job to ease our tension would still not have brought me to such things as I thought today, as it would most undoubtedly have ruined more than just Amy and the rest of her life!

Rest assured that I have not and will not give up on my life nor Amy's life and I continue to search for a job that will at least give me comfort. But I will always have the comfort companionship and love with Amy.

This has been a hard trial and as it continues I hope that no one else has to suffer from it. But I know that there are countless others in the same place with the same thoughts and my prayers are with you!

I Love You Amy

Sacramento

Amy and I went to Sacramento a few weeks ago to visit her family. George and Amy and their 3 girls, Sara, Kate and Juliette. Gideon and Becky and of course Nathan ummm, I mean Tripp! I had never met George and his family and I hadn't met Gideon and his wife. Amy took me to see the Sacramento Temple which was dedicated in 2006. It is a very pretty Temple and I love the trees around it as well. Amy also took me and Sara and Kate to San Fransisco. I've never seen the Golden Gate Bridge and now I understand all of the commotion and that bridge. It's dang big!! We walked across it and got to see a really big ship pass under us. After that we rode the B.A.R.T. into S.F. It goes pretty fast and under the ocean between Oakland and S.F. When we got into S.F. Amy showed us a really big mall, about 8 stories and the escalators were curved like half moons. We went all the way to the top and back then we went and rode the famous San Fransisco Trolleys to Ghirardelli Square and back. That was totally worth it! On our last day in Roseville, we met up with my brother in law, Shane. He has a job with Cal Trans. We had a ton of fun and miss George and Amy, Gideon and the rest and of course we miss Sacramento, but we don't miss the drive. Here are some pics from our trip. (Click on pics to enlarge)



F-22 Rapter flying over the bridge.
Another F-22.
More F-22's.Don't Jump!!! There is hope!
Amy, Sara and KateAmy and Dave

Alcatraz.
Bay BridgeWe rode this Trolley to Ghirardelli Square.
We rode this one back.

The last few months!

The last few months have been quite an adventure to say the least. With little help from me in earning an income and little in the way of finding employment, however the stress is all but gone from the time when I was working with the expectation of not getting paid for several months. Amy and I have stress, but it's a different feeling. I have started to list my remaining clocks on a web site that Aunt Roberta told me about called etsy. I will have listed 4 by the end of the day and a fifth hopefully before I leave for a week to help in St George at the Dickens Festival. I only have 7 clocks left and Amy and I hope that they will sell, as well as a table or two!


This one was made from a pallet. I liked the knot and since we threw away the pallets, I cut out what I liked and made this desk clock. It's about 14" tall and 11" wide and about an 1 1/2 thick.

(click to enlarge)
I love Walnut and this is some really nice Old Walnut. You can tell that this tree was old by the deep, rich color of the wood. I didn't really want to cover it up by the clock face, but it looked good with it. It's only 10" X 7 1/2"
This one has Alder and Poplar. As you can see they alternate and I cut them as a mirror image. The number pieces are colored shells. This clock has a 10 7/8" diameter and almost an inch thick.
I saw the brown pieces on the table saw in this shape and in my mind I saw this clock!. I had this interesting piece of Maple. I cut it in half and set the brown pieces around it and poured the white around the rest to form this design (it starts as a liquid). It's 12 3/8" diameter X 1"

Finished

I finished 2 of my clocks. I only have 8 left and have decided to finish and sell them. One of these clocks was made to look like a Halloween Decoration and the other is just something else altogether, but they are very nice and are going up for sale on several web sites. Ebay, etsy.com and itallstartedwitharock.9f.com and here on my blog.



If interested let me know or if you know someone who is.

A new beginning!

Tomorrow I'm starting a new job and training. I start work at Deseret Industries while I'm trying to get into school. They have a program that allows you to work while train for a new career and the career I've chosen is Radiology Tech. I am excited to start this chapter in mine and Amy's life. I know that this will be a long hard road, but the payoff will be worth it. I will always miss Granite work and you never know if I will get the chance to do that again, I hope so, but not for the company that I've been working for ever again, that chapter of my life is over! Wish me luck!

The last day!

I quit my job today. I figured that it really wouldn't hurt us much since I'm not getting paid anyway! But I called my boss and left him a message telling him that I was going to quit and turn him in for not paying me. I received a call about 5 minutes later and he had found a few hundred to pay me. I took it, but I quit in the process of picking up a check. I feel like a weight has lifted off my shoulders and I was quite happy tonight and I really don't have any worries. I will certainly miss granite for a while, but new and exciting things are in mine and Amy's future. First thing is to get into some sort of college course and I may have found an answer to that through LDS Employment and there is training available through Deseret Industries. I'm going to go for some kind of Medical. I liked Radiology Tech and they have one for a CNA, so really any of what they offer will help. I'll find out Monday.

Spare time.

I've had a lot of spare time lately. Work has all but stopped and finding a job hasn't been any better. Applying online is just a hassle, either your bombarded by emails for school or ads! But not just any school, the one's that will cost you not only an arm and a leg, but maybe your whole life and anything else you might own. I guess if you want to get in and out of school in a year or less then this would be an option, but I've been told to go to a school that is accredited and I am currently preparing for the test to get into the MLATC which is in Orem by UVU.

So while I haven't been as busy with work, I've been trying to keep myself busy. I've sold just about everything I've had in storage on ebay and I listed a few of my tables just to see what would happen. Nothing happened, yet, but they did what was intended for the moment and that was for people to see them. About 50 people have looked and that is all I was looking for.

I dug out my clocks that I made several years ago and decided to finish and sell what I have left, but first I needed to test it and so I finished one. It's orange and black and looks like it belongs to Halloween, so I bought some stickers and used them for the numbers and if you read my wife's blog: auntieamyandcounting.blogspot.com you can see that Nya my neice was very helpful in helping me finish the look of this clock. And then you can read about next injury from the same night as well. Amy and I took it with us yesterday when we went to visit my Aunt Roberta and she put it in her booth at the Holy Cow in Pleasant Grove. So I hope it sells and these are the pictures of it.

The backside.