Sunday, February 17
Happy 60th Birthday to brother Ernie in Artesia!!!
Barbara: Since we knew we weren't going to regular church service today, we got up at 6 to watch Hour of Power. It didn't take us long to recognize the fact that this was what we were supposed to do.
First, the guest was Wintley Phipps, who sang for the Billy Graham crusades for 26 years. His story was quite amazing. It went something like this: He was on a flight on Eastern Airlines when he noticed that one of the stewardesses seemed quite down. He called her over and told her he felt God was telling him to share one of his tapes with her since she seemed to be going through a difficult time.
What he didn't know was that a couple of weeks later, this same stewardess on a different flight saw Cliff Barrow, the music director for the Billy Graham Crusades. She shared the tape with him and within a week, Wintley received a call asking that he join this organization.
Then, young Robert Schuler, preached on "When you're down to nothing, God is up to something." He based this sermon on Levitius 15...The Law
His points were:
1. She heard...faith brings hope into reality...never heard it wasn't possible
2. She believed...when you believe you will see it...We live by fiath not by sight
3. She acted...God send you blessings, but sometimes you don't have faith to open!
4. She received...Your faith will make you well...Come before God in prayer...
It was certainly a wonderful way to start the morning!
Jim: It was a beautiful morning for the activities we had planned to get ready for Ernie’s birthday dinner. The temperature was fairly warm, the sun was shining, and there was no wind to speak of…all in all, a perfect morning for firing up the charcoal grill and barbecuing a bunch of pork chops and sausages. Since this was the first time in a long time tha
t I’d had a chance to fire up the grill, I even got to use the high-fashion cooking outfit that Leah and Ryan gave me for Christmas - a padded apron, cook’s hat, heavy duty mitt, and new grilling tools. One of the things I asked for at Christmas was a cooking apron. John, Carol, and Randi sent me a really nice one that I use inside and the one from Leah and Ryan if for barbecuing. Boy…am I set up or what!
When we told Mother what we wanted to do for Ernie’s birthday and, at the same time, asked her if we could have the dinner at her house, she said she would pay for the food if we’d fix it…couldn’t ask for a better deal than that. So, while I tended the fire outside, Barbara went to work in Big V’s kitchen baking potatoes and fixing green beans. We also had a loaf of fresh bread going in the bread-maker. It sure did “stink purty” around here!
By 11:30 we had everything cooked and put together to take over to Mother’s house, but before we could get there, we had to make a stop at Wal-Mart to pick up the birthday cake that Barbara had ordered. We had gotten a cake there for Mother’s birthday last week and it as so good that we decided to give them another try.
Once at Mother’s house, we set the table and then the feasting began. We had a great time
enjoying the food and visiting with each other…just another of the benefits of retirement – time to share special events with family members without scheduling around vacation days, ballgames, concerts, etc.
t I’d had a chance to fire up the grill, I even got to use the high-fashion cooking outfit that Leah and Ryan gave me for Christmas - a padded apron, cook’s hat, heavy duty mitt, and new grilling tools. One of the things I asked for at Christmas was a cooking apron. John, Carol, and Randi sent me a really nice one that I use inside and the one from Leah and Ryan if for barbecuing. Boy…am I set up or what!When we told Mother what we wanted to do for Ernie’s birthday and, at the same time, asked her if we could have the dinner at her house, she said she would pay for the food if we’d fix it…couldn’t ask for a better deal than that. So, while I tended the fire outside, Barbara went to work in Big V’s kitchen baking potatoes and fixing green beans. We also had a loaf of fresh bread going in the bread-maker. It sure did “stink purty” around here!
By 11:30 we had everything cooked and put together to take over to Mother’s house, but before we could get there, we had to make a stop at Wal-Mart to pick up the birthday cake that Barbara had ordered. We had gotten a cake there for Mother’s birthday last week and it as so good that we decided to give them another try.
Once at Mother’s house, we set the table and then the feasting began. We had a great time
enjoying the food and visiting with each other…just another of the benefits of retirement – time to share special events with family members without scheduling around vacation days, ballgames, concerts, etc.Of course, we had the camera along and we got this shots of Ernie and Billee with his birthday cake (it says, “Ernie’s older than dirt.”)
With dinner out of the way and the dishes in the dishwasher, we all decided that we’d adjourn to our respective homes for a classic Sunday nap.
With dinner out of the way and the dishes in the dishwasher, we all decided that we’d adjourn to our respective homes for a classic Sunday nap.
Since it was such a beautiful afternoon, Nancy decided she’d take Benji for a ride on her four-
wheeler. We had told her my comment from last week’s journal about the two of them looking like a modern-day Dorothy and Toto, so Barbara took the opportunity this afternoon to take a picture of them as they stopped by the house for a short visit. It's amazing how little Benji has taken to the ride on the red machine! He just loves the air blowing though his ears and never seems to tire of riding with Nancy. They are quite a sight!
wheeler. We had told her my comment from last week’s journal about the two of them looking like a modern-day Dorothy and Toto, so Barbara took the opportunity this afternoon to take a picture of them as they stopped by the house for a short visit. It's amazing how little Benji has taken to the ride on the red machine! He just loves the air blowing though his ears and never seems to tire of riding with Nancy. They are quite a sight!While Barbara was outside visiting with Nancy, she noticed that Jerry was taking advantage of a light breeze to get in his first kite-flying session of the season. His kite just loo
ked like a large bird in the clear, blue skies.
When I finally got up and around, I decided to fire up the motorcycle and take a little ride around the town…it was a little cool, but still a very good day for a ride. During this ride I even found the old farm house that we had lived in when I was in the third and fourth grades and we were out in the country. The house is still standing, but is now used as a storage shed. The old alfalfa fields and the surrounding farm houses have all been plowed under and turned into pecan groves.
Still, the sight of the place brought back great memories. I guess we were dirt-poor, but we didn’t know it because we had green fields to roam, fresh well water to drink, chickens of our own (all the fresh eggs and fried chicken we could eat), and new shirts to wear after every visit to town to buy chicken feed (that is, as soon as the bags were emptied and Mother got busy at the sewing machine).
Anyway, it was a great day all around for us. We finished it off by going over to Jerry and Nancy’s house to play a couple of rousing games of Apples to Apples with Jerry, Nancy, Jean, and Becky.
We did get the following email and picture from grandson Little Jimmy Farnham this evening:
Dear Grams and Gramps,
Thank you for the very cool outfit. I especially love the antelope. Thank you for thinking of me on your trip. See you soon, Jimmy.
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How about that kid…not even a year old yet and in addition to being very photogenic, he already has great language and keyboarding skills…should be a cinch to ace his Kansas Assessments when he finally starts to school!
Monday, February 18
Happy Presidents Day to everyone!
After our late night last night, we just slept in and then lazed around the house for most of the morning. With no mail to pick up today, there wasn’t any point in getting out early…besides, it was cool and windy…guess we were just very lucky that we had such god weather yesterday.
Around noon I did ride into town to copy and mail a final (I hope) piece of documentation for our tax preparer in Liberal. Then, it was over to Mother’s house to see how things were going there and to pick up some laundry that we had started yesterday.
During the afternoon I went out and gathered up some of the tumbleweeds that had gathered in our south fence line. It was probably more of an exercise in futility than anything, but at least it was some exercise.
We made a late trip over to see Mother and the puppies and then returned to Big V where we just whiled away the evening.
Tuesday, February 19
It was a beautiful morning out, so while Barbara worked inside Big V, I grabbed a rake and started raking Jean’s south lawn. She has six of her pecan trees between her house and the south fence, and since the folks who are gathering the pecans this season are nearly done in that area, I thought I’d rake up all the loose grass, pecan hulls, and other assorted goodies that seem to gather out there and get everything hauled off to one of the trash piles. Well, we call them trash piles because that’s where we put all the limbs, sticks, leaves, grass clippings, etc., but the piles are also refuges for the many birds, (particularly quail) and assorted other critters that share the land with us.
The job turned out to be much larger than I thought it would be, and I was only half done when it was time to come inside, clean up, and get dressed to take Mother to Roswell for her last follow-up visit with Dr. Osmani, who did her back surgery in December.
We picked Mother up at 2:00 and headed north to Roswell for her 3:00 o’clock appointment. The office had called us earlier to say that they were in a new location and on the second floor. We asked about accessibility, since Mother would need a wheelchair once we got there and they said that would be no problem…just call when we got to the parking lot and they would send someone down.
That all sounded great, but when we got there and called, they said that they had her scheduled for 8:30 Wednesday morning. In the process of moving, they had rescheduled some of their patients, but evidently hadn’t notified all of them. When Barbara explained that Mother was 85 years old and couldn’t go back to Artesia tonight and then be back in Roswell at 8:30 tomorrow morning, they agreed to work her into the schedule today.
Barbara had called her sister Carol to let her know that we were going to be there, so she came out to meet us. However, with all the confusion about scheduling, Barbara decided she should just stay at the doctor’s office and she and Carol could visit later.
As usual, once we were inside and registered, the staff was wonderful to work with…it just took us a long time to get everything done. While we were waiting, I called Jerry and Jane to see if they wanted to come up to the office to visit. It was obvious by now that we wouldn’t get through in time to go to there house on this trip. Jerry was just waking up and getting ready to go to his night job at New Mexico Military Institute, so they allowed that they probably wouldn’t be able to get up to see us.
It all took awhile, but Dr. Osmani is very thorough and is willing to answer all questions. By 6:00 p.m. Mother had a clean bill of health and we were back in the Vibe and headed toward Artesia.
Along the way, Barbara decided that since it was going to be so late when we got home, we might just as well go to La Fonda and have some Mexican food. Mother just wanted to get home and go to bed, so we called Jean to see if she was up to a culinary adventure tonight. She said that was great, so we agreed that we’d call her when we got to Mother’s house and then he could meet us at the restaurant. We also called Jerry and Nancy and Becky, but they were already fixing their suppers, so they took rain checks.
Once we got Mother in place, we headed downtown to La Fonda. As we turned onto Main Street, we saw a Lubbock ISD activity bus parked across the street. Since it was Tuesday night, I figured that one of the Lubbock basketball teams was playing in Artesia and the bus driver had taken off to grab a meal during the games. Since we didn’t see any school-aged kids when we got inside, we more or less forgot about it.
When Jean got there we ordered our meals and visited for a while. After the meals came and we were eating, Barbara noticed some boys wearing Monterey HS sweat suits coming out of one of the dining areas. She asked one of them if they had played here tonight and the young man said yes, but that they had lost and were on their way home.
We continued our meal and a few minutes later one of the coaches, also wearing a sweat suit, came out from the door beside us. I happened to look up as he came past and he gave us a glance and then took a couple more steps before doing a classic double take and spinning around; it was Ryan Bobo, one of our former teachers at Liberal High School, and now a teacher and coach at MHS in Lubbock…what a wonderful surprise! We had just a few minutes to visit and then he had to join the other on the bus and get back to Lubbock.
Now I ask you…what are the odds that we would have been late coming back from Roswell, that the Monterey HS basketball team would be playing a game against an El Paso team at a neutral site in Artesia, and that we would all decide that La Fonda would be a good place to eat tonight?
After that there was nothing else to do but finish our meal, get in our cars and head back home to call it a day.
Wednesday, February 20
Since we are going to be in Puerto Rico on March 4 (Texas Primary Election Day), we made arrangements with Jimmy and Cathey to come to Lubbock and spend the night with them so we could go cast our ballots during the early voting on Thursday. We figured we could visit with Jaycie (and her parents), and do some shopping as part of the package. So, we spent this morning getting everything ready for the trip and an overnight stay at Jaycie’s Boarding House.
Deciding to forego our regular Wednesday Chaos luncheon with the clan, we got away from Artesia around 11:30 after first checking in with Mother and letting her know of our plans.
We arrived in Lubbock around 3:30 their time and went straight to the house. Jaycie had just arrived from school, so we got to visit with her for a while before she had to get ready to go to her cheer practice. Normally we would go out and watch her practice for a bit, but the gym was having a closed session today, so Jimmy took her out there while we went out to take care of some chores (have oil changed and wash the car) and do some shop-looking for a new printer-copier.
After our shopping trip, we returned to the house to visit with Jimmy and Cathey for a bit before Jimmy went to pick Jaycie up. While he was doing that, we took everyone’s meal orders and went to Burger King to buy tonight’s supper.
When everyone was back at the house we sat around the living room, ate, watched TV, got caught up on all the latest news.
Since they all had to get up early tomorrow morning for work or school, we all turned in early. Jaycie offered us her bed and decided to “camp out” on the living room couch. We both did a little reading once we were in bed, but it didn’t take long until the lights were out and everyone was fast asleep.
Thursday, February 21
Sometime around 1:00 a.m. we heard (and felt) a rustling in our room and woke up enough to find that Jaycie had crawled into bed with us. We guess she woke up on the couch, forgot that we were there, and came back to her own bed. After a few minutes of trying to get comfortable, I decided I’d leave the bed to Barbara and Jaycie and went to the living room to sleep on one of the couches.
Around 4:00 a.m. I woke up with some severe abdominal cramps…didn’t know what was going on, but I sure did know I was hurting. I toughed it out on the couch until Cathey woke Jaycie up and then I crawled back into the bed and rested for another hour or so.
While I was asleep, Barbara visited with Jaycie, Cathey, and Jimmy. They had just a little bit of time to take these latest pictures of Jaycie…just can’t figure out how she can get her body to bend this way…makes us hurt to watch!
ked like a large bird in the clear, blue skies.When I finally got up and around, I decided to fire up the motorcycle and take a little ride around the town…it was a little cool, but still a very good day for a ride. During this ride I even found the old farm house that we had lived in when I was in the third and fourth grades and we were out in the country. The house is still standing, but is now used as a storage shed. The old alfalfa fields and the surrounding farm houses have all been plowed under and turned into pecan groves.
Still, the sight of the place brought back great memories. I guess we were dirt-poor, but we didn’t know it because we had green fields to roam, fresh well water to drink, chickens of our own (all the fresh eggs and fried chicken we could eat), and new shirts to wear after every visit to town to buy chicken feed (that is, as soon as the bags were emptied and Mother got busy at the sewing machine).
Anyway, it was a great day all around for us. We finished it off by going over to Jerry and Nancy’s house to play a couple of rousing games of Apples to Apples with Jerry, Nancy, Jean, and Becky.
We did get the following email and picture from grandson Little Jimmy Farnham this evening:
Dear Grams and Gramps,
Thank you for the very cool outfit. I especially love the antelope. Thank you for thinking of me on your trip. See you soon, Jimmy.
.jpg)
How about that kid…not even a year old yet and in addition to being very photogenic, he already has great language and keyboarding skills…should be a cinch to ace his Kansas Assessments when he finally starts to school!
Monday, February 18
Happy Presidents Day to everyone!
After our late night last night, we just slept in and then lazed around the house for most of the morning. With no mail to pick up today, there wasn’t any point in getting out early…besides, it was cool and windy…guess we were just very lucky that we had such god weather yesterday.
Around noon I did ride into town to copy and mail a final (I hope) piece of documentation for our tax preparer in Liberal. Then, it was over to Mother’s house to see how things were going there and to pick up some laundry that we had started yesterday.
During the afternoon I went out and gathered up some of the tumbleweeds that had gathered in our south fence line. It was probably more of an exercise in futility than anything, but at least it was some exercise.
We made a late trip over to see Mother and the puppies and then returned to Big V where we just whiled away the evening.
Tuesday, February 19
It was a beautiful morning out, so while Barbara worked inside Big V, I grabbed a rake and started raking Jean’s south lawn. She has six of her pecan trees between her house and the south fence, and since the folks who are gathering the pecans this season are nearly done in that area, I thought I’d rake up all the loose grass, pecan hulls, and other assorted goodies that seem to gather out there and get everything hauled off to one of the trash piles. Well, we call them trash piles because that’s where we put all the limbs, sticks, leaves, grass clippings, etc., but the piles are also refuges for the many birds, (particularly quail) and assorted other critters that share the land with us.
The job turned out to be much larger than I thought it would be, and I was only half done when it was time to come inside, clean up, and get dressed to take Mother to Roswell for her last follow-up visit with Dr. Osmani, who did her back surgery in December.
We picked Mother up at 2:00 and headed north to Roswell for her 3:00 o’clock appointment. The office had called us earlier to say that they were in a new location and on the second floor. We asked about accessibility, since Mother would need a wheelchair once we got there and they said that would be no problem…just call when we got to the parking lot and they would send someone down.
That all sounded great, but when we got there and called, they said that they had her scheduled for 8:30 Wednesday morning. In the process of moving, they had rescheduled some of their patients, but evidently hadn’t notified all of them. When Barbara explained that Mother was 85 years old and couldn’t go back to Artesia tonight and then be back in Roswell at 8:30 tomorrow morning, they agreed to work her into the schedule today.
Barbara had called her sister Carol to let her know that we were going to be there, so she came out to meet us. However, with all the confusion about scheduling, Barbara decided she should just stay at the doctor’s office and she and Carol could visit later.
As usual, once we were inside and registered, the staff was wonderful to work with…it just took us a long time to get everything done. While we were waiting, I called Jerry and Jane to see if they wanted to come up to the office to visit. It was obvious by now that we wouldn’t get through in time to go to there house on this trip. Jerry was just waking up and getting ready to go to his night job at New Mexico Military Institute, so they allowed that they probably wouldn’t be able to get up to see us.
It all took awhile, but Dr. Osmani is very thorough and is willing to answer all questions. By 6:00 p.m. Mother had a clean bill of health and we were back in the Vibe and headed toward Artesia.
Along the way, Barbara decided that since it was going to be so late when we got home, we might just as well go to La Fonda and have some Mexican food. Mother just wanted to get home and go to bed, so we called Jean to see if she was up to a culinary adventure tonight. She said that was great, so we agreed that we’d call her when we got to Mother’s house and then he could meet us at the restaurant. We also called Jerry and Nancy and Becky, but they were already fixing their suppers, so they took rain checks.
Once we got Mother in place, we headed downtown to La Fonda. As we turned onto Main Street, we saw a Lubbock ISD activity bus parked across the street. Since it was Tuesday night, I figured that one of the Lubbock basketball teams was playing in Artesia and the bus driver had taken off to grab a meal during the games. Since we didn’t see any school-aged kids when we got inside, we more or less forgot about it.
When Jean got there we ordered our meals and visited for a while. After the meals came and we were eating, Barbara noticed some boys wearing Monterey HS sweat suits coming out of one of the dining areas. She asked one of them if they had played here tonight and the young man said yes, but that they had lost and were on their way home.
We continued our meal and a few minutes later one of the coaches, also wearing a sweat suit, came out from the door beside us. I happened to look up as he came past and he gave us a glance and then took a couple more steps before doing a classic double take and spinning around; it was Ryan Bobo, one of our former teachers at Liberal High School, and now a teacher and coach at MHS in Lubbock…what a wonderful surprise! We had just a few minutes to visit and then he had to join the other on the bus and get back to Lubbock.
Now I ask you…what are the odds that we would have been late coming back from Roswell, that the Monterey HS basketball team would be playing a game against an El Paso team at a neutral site in Artesia, and that we would all decide that La Fonda would be a good place to eat tonight?
After that there was nothing else to do but finish our meal, get in our cars and head back home to call it a day.
Wednesday, February 20
Since we are going to be in Puerto Rico on March 4 (Texas Primary Election Day), we made arrangements with Jimmy and Cathey to come to Lubbock and spend the night with them so we could go cast our ballots during the early voting on Thursday. We figured we could visit with Jaycie (and her parents), and do some shopping as part of the package. So, we spent this morning getting everything ready for the trip and an overnight stay at Jaycie’s Boarding House.
Deciding to forego our regular Wednesday Chaos luncheon with the clan, we got away from Artesia around 11:30 after first checking in with Mother and letting her know of our plans.
We arrived in Lubbock around 3:30 their time and went straight to the house. Jaycie had just arrived from school, so we got to visit with her for a while before she had to get ready to go to her cheer practice. Normally we would go out and watch her practice for a bit, but the gym was having a closed session today, so Jimmy took her out there while we went out to take care of some chores (have oil changed and wash the car) and do some shop-looking for a new printer-copier.
After our shopping trip, we returned to the house to visit with Jimmy and Cathey for a bit before Jimmy went to pick Jaycie up. While he was doing that, we took everyone’s meal orders and went to Burger King to buy tonight’s supper.
When everyone was back at the house we sat around the living room, ate, watched TV, got caught up on all the latest news.
Since they all had to get up early tomorrow morning for work or school, we all turned in early. Jaycie offered us her bed and decided to “camp out” on the living room couch. We both did a little reading once we were in bed, but it didn’t take long until the lights were out and everyone was fast asleep.
Thursday, February 21
Sometime around 1:00 a.m. we heard (and felt) a rustling in our room and woke up enough to find that Jaycie had crawled into bed with us. We guess she woke up on the couch, forgot that we were there, and came back to her own bed. After a few minutes of trying to get comfortable, I decided I’d leave the bed to Barbara and Jaycie and went to the living room to sleep on one of the couches.
Around 4:00 a.m. I woke up with some severe abdominal cramps…didn’t know what was going on, but I sure did know I was hurting. I toughed it out on the couch until Cathey woke Jaycie up and then I crawled back into the bed and rested for another hour or so.
While I was asleep, Barbara visited with Jaycie, Cathey, and Jimmy. They had just a little bit of time to take these latest pictures of Jaycie…just can’t figure out how she can get her body to bend this way…makes us hurt to watch!
After Jaycie got off to school and Cathey headed to her workplace, Barbara and I got cleaned up and dressed and said goodbye to Jimmy (he works out of his office in the house) and went to a United Supermarket to buy some Pedro’s tamales, do some banking, and vote. We got there just a couple of minutes before 10:00, so we were able to avoid the lines that quickly gathered.After taking care of business at United, we hopped back into the Vibe and headed out of town. We hadn’t gotten very far when I was feeling so bad that I asked Barbara to drive so I could lean back and get some sleep. I was feeling pretty sure by then that I had gotten a bad fish sandwich last night at Burger King and was now paying the price.
We spent the drive waiting to hear some important news from Leah and Ryan. Today was the day they were to go have a sonogram and learn the gender of Baby McQuitty. When we hadn’t heard anything by nearly 11:00, Barbara called and left a message to get back to us as soon as possible.
Within a few minutes Leah called and said they had just finished and that we would be welcoming a new boy, Jameson Dudley McQuitty, to the world sometime around June 22.
Later in the evening we received an email with copies of the sonograms. They were interesting, but we have to admit that we are from the old school and don’t really understand what it is we are looking at. However...we were able to see his precious face in one of them! Still, it’s good to know and gives us better information about what to look for in future shopping expeditions.
We had earlier in the month gotten word that my former mother-in-law had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital in Hobbs, so our plans for the day included driving back to Artesia through Hobbs so I could have a chance to see her. Since I figured I only had a touch of food poisoning and wasn’t contagious, we went ahead with that plan.
When we got to Hobbs, we first went by the Black Gold Casino where Barbara waited while I went to the hospital. I got there just in time, as Marie was to be transferred back to her nursing home right after lunch. I also got to visit with Linda and Larry, my former sister-in-law and brother-in-law while I was there and get caught up on what was going on in their lives.
After about an hour, I went back to the Black Gold and played for a bit before we headed off on the final leg of our trip back to Artesia.
Once back at Big V, we opened her up and then unloaded the car and started putting things away. We called Mother to let her know that we were back in town, but that we wouldn’t be coming over to see her tonight. All I wanted to do was lie down and try to get comfortable.
Barbara did go across to visit Jean for a bit and let her know what was going on. After that, we just settled in for the evening so I could start my recuperation and begin (on a very regular basis) the expulsion of whatever was wrong with me.
Friday, February 22
All I can say for myself about today is that it was a day that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I spent the entire day attempting to eat something (heated flour tortillas or some Jell-o that Barbara made for me), drinking some watered-down Gatorade, and paying homage to the porcelain goddess…’nuff said!
Around noon we got a call from Barbara’s sister Carol in Roswell. She was letting us know that her husband, Cal, had been taken to the hospital and was in ICU at Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. He had collapsed and was having trouble breathing. The initial diagnosis, once they got him to the hospital, was that he had a collapsed lung.
We decided that Barbara should go on to Roswell, since I could stay here and take care of myself, so she got herself ready…packed for overnight, just in case, and drove up to see Carol, Cal, and any of the kids who might have arrived.
After visiting with them for a couple of hours and finding that Cal was more or less stabilized, Barbara decided to return to Artesia for the night. We decided that there was quite a crowd there and we would wait and go up there Sunday evening when all the kids took off to return to their homes and jobs.
The evening was relatively uneventful. My “bouts” with Montezuma became a little less frequent, and we spent most of the time just watching Friday night TV…finally got to bed around 11:00 p.m.
Saturday, February 23
Wow…We both got a full night’s sleep…something that’s an unusual occurrence around here.
I felt a lot better this morning…could even see the gates to the land of the living.
We spent the morning and afternoon doing not much of anything – alternately reading email, playing computer games, reading books, or taking naps (the naps were mostly my thing). It was so windy and dusty out that we didn’t make any attempts to go anywhere, although Barbara did make the run to the highway to check our mail for the day.
We heard from Carol a couple of time today. The first was to let us know that Cal was stabilized and doing as well as could be expected. One of his lungs had a “blowout” and collapsed. Since he is on oxygen all the time anyway, this was a major problem.
Later, Carol called again to say that he had waked up and was asking for his cup of coffee. He didn’t remember anything about collapsing or being taken to the hospital yesterday morning, but he did know it was coffee time, and for us that was a huge step. Believe us, folks…the power of prayer should never be underestimated!
Tonight…Join Jerry, Nancy, Becky, and Jean for the Artesia Arts Council presentation of The Madcap Variety Company, a trio of a saxophonist/one man band, a juggler, and a rope trick specialist…some really fun entertainment.
And that’s it for this week,
Jim & Barbara
“Making a living is not the same as making a life” – Church Signs
We had earlier in the month gotten word that my former mother-in-law had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital in Hobbs, so our plans for the day included driving back to Artesia through Hobbs so I could have a chance to see her. Since I figured I only had a touch of food poisoning and wasn’t contagious, we went ahead with that plan.
When we got to Hobbs, we first went by the Black Gold Casino where Barbara waited while I went to the hospital. I got there just in time, as Marie was to be transferred back to her nursing home right after lunch. I also got to visit with Linda and Larry, my former sister-in-law and brother-in-law while I was there and get caught up on what was going on in their lives.
After about an hour, I went back to the Black Gold and played for a bit before we headed off on the final leg of our trip back to Artesia.
Once back at Big V, we opened her up and then unloaded the car and started putting things away. We called Mother to let her know that we were back in town, but that we wouldn’t be coming over to see her tonight. All I wanted to do was lie down and try to get comfortable.
Barbara did go across to visit Jean for a bit and let her know what was going on. After that, we just settled in for the evening so I could start my recuperation and begin (on a very regular basis) the expulsion of whatever was wrong with me.
Friday, February 22
All I can say for myself about today is that it was a day that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I spent the entire day attempting to eat something (heated flour tortillas or some Jell-o that Barbara made for me), drinking some watered-down Gatorade, and paying homage to the porcelain goddess…’nuff said!
Around noon we got a call from Barbara’s sister Carol in Roswell. She was letting us know that her husband, Cal, had been taken to the hospital and was in ICU at Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. He had collapsed and was having trouble breathing. The initial diagnosis, once they got him to the hospital, was that he had a collapsed lung.
We decided that Barbara should go on to Roswell, since I could stay here and take care of myself, so she got herself ready…packed for overnight, just in case, and drove up to see Carol, Cal, and any of the kids who might have arrived.
After visiting with them for a couple of hours and finding that Cal was more or less stabilized, Barbara decided to return to Artesia for the night. We decided that there was quite a crowd there and we would wait and go up there Sunday evening when all the kids took off to return to their homes and jobs.
The evening was relatively uneventful. My “bouts” with Montezuma became a little less frequent, and we spent most of the time just watching Friday night TV…finally got to bed around 11:00 p.m.
Saturday, February 23
Wow…We both got a full night’s sleep…something that’s an unusual occurrence around here.
I felt a lot better this morning…could even see the gates to the land of the living.
We spent the morning and afternoon doing not much of anything – alternately reading email, playing computer games, reading books, or taking naps (the naps were mostly my thing). It was so windy and dusty out that we didn’t make any attempts to go anywhere, although Barbara did make the run to the highway to check our mail for the day.
We heard from Carol a couple of time today. The first was to let us know that Cal was stabilized and doing as well as could be expected. One of his lungs had a “blowout” and collapsed. Since he is on oxygen all the time anyway, this was a major problem.
Later, Carol called again to say that he had waked up and was asking for his cup of coffee. He didn’t remember anything about collapsing or being taken to the hospital yesterday morning, but he did know it was coffee time, and for us that was a huge step. Believe us, folks…the power of prayer should never be underestimated!
Tonight…Join Jerry, Nancy, Becky, and Jean for the Artesia Arts Council presentation of The Madcap Variety Company, a trio of a saxophonist/one man band, a juggler, and a rope trick specialist…some really fun entertainment.
And that’s it for this week,
Jim & Barbara
“Making a living is not the same as making a life” – Church Signs
