Sunday, January 10 – Saturday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 10
Brrrrr! It was another sub-freezing morning as we once again awoke to find frozen water pipes. We thought we had found the cure to the problem by letting the faucet drip through the night, but I opened the cold water faucet in the bathroom instead of the hot water faucet. As a result, we had all the cold water we could ever hope to have (and at 17 degrees outside, it was plenty cold), but the line leading to the water heater froze.
After spending our usual morning hour or so at our computers, reading emails and news articles, we grabbed our bathroom kits and drove down to the shower rooms in the RV section and helped ourselves to all the hot water we could stand for our morning showers.
When we returned to Big V, we got dressed and eventually made our way up the road to Yantis for the morning service at First Baptist Church. We had really planned to attend one of the Sunday school classes today, but the frigid weather and the water problems stopped that.
I sang with the choir this morning and enjoyed the experience very much. We think it is remarkable that a church in transition (no pastor since September), particularly a small church like this, is maintaining a good choir and a steady attendance at services. There is a very sweet spirit about this church!
The fill-in pastor for the month, Kent Pate, continued in the series of lessons/sermons from the Old Testament book of Numbers with another enlightening and inspiring message about moving forward. Aimed directly at the church in transition, the message hit us where we are in our own lives and gave us much to think about and discuss later.
Kent did remember to offer the invitation to make public decisions this morning and we stepped forward at the first notes of the hymn to join the church and move our membership letter from First Baptist of Artesia. We’ve looked at several churches since we moved Mother down here a year and a half ago, but none made us feel as welcome and as “at home” as this one.
After lunch at Big V we took a short nap and then I trudged down to the end of the gully to continue clearing out weeds and brush for about an hour while Barbara stayed inside and tried to get caught up on some letter writing.
At 5:00 we returned to the church so I could go to choir practice; Barbara made what we now call the weekly tour of the Dollar General store, and then we attended the evening service where Kent continued his series of messages on relationships as they apply to individuals and the church congregation. Again, we were provided with much food for thought for our current situations.
When we returned to Big V for the night we made a few phone calls, watched a little TV, worked at the computers, and generally accomplished not much of anything before we went to bed.
Monday, January 11
Neither of us slept well during the night so, it was nearly 8:30 before we finally got up and moving around. On the good side, we did have hot and cold running water this morning.
We were pretty lethargic and quiet for most of the morning, but eventually got cleaned up and dressed to go to Mineola to fix lunch for T.J. and Mother at T.J.’s house. Barbara found a new casserole recipe to use up some leftover ham, and since Mother likes casserole and ham, we thought she’d be interested.
We had a good time at lunch and when we were through eating and visiting, we took Mother back to her house, went to the post office, and then headed back to the lake.
After we had checked email and sent out a couple of letters, I decided to take advantage of a comfortable, sunny day and go tackle the brush in the gully for a few hours. We could have easily taken a nap, but decided that we’d only be awake again during the night, so we ditched that idea.
Barbara came out later and started burning the piles of weeds and brush that have accumulated in the gully. There’s no one central place where I can haul everything after it has been cut and piled, so I just leave it in the area of the cut and then haul it to the burn spot when were ready for a new batch. That worked well for a couple of hours; then it started getting dark, so Barbara went back inside and I finished burning a stack before raking it all out to cool. We burned off around half of what has been cut or pulled so far…maybe we can finish the job tomorrow.
Tonight we just kicked back and relaxed…watched another episode of Golden Girls while we ate dinner and then chilled out until time to go to bed.
Tuesday, January 12
This morning was a major house cleaning time for us. It seems like forever since our last deep cleaning of Big V. We tackled the job with gusto and in about four hours had the inside spic and span; and, Barbara got caught up on the laundry as well.
Aside from the fact that we really did need to do the cleaning anyway, we were expecting guests around two o’clock. We made arrangements with old friends Gene and Carolyn and new friends Gene and Michelle to come to Big V for an afternoon visit and pie. We all hit it off so well Saturday that we wanted to get together again; especially since Gene Neyer promised to bring his accordion and serenade us.
But, as they often do, plans got changed even before noon. Gene and Michelle got word this morning that their house in Kansas had been sold and they have thirty days to be out of it. So, they dropped by to let us know that although they had just arrived back at Holiday Village last week, they would have to return to Kansas to take care of business.
We’ve had a lot of irons in the fire between Lubbock and Mineola and had to call the Neyers that we had to change our plans and beg off for today. It was disappointing because we thought they were leaving this weekend to take a lengthy trip, but found out they won’t leave until next week, so we’re going to try to reschedule.
We did end up spending a few hours in the late afternoon and evening working on the gully and getting it ready (we hope) for a predicted four days of rain. I continued the cutting and pulling of weeds and vines while Barbara kept the fire roaring and consuming all the piles of brush that I’ve cut out over the last couple of weeks. We’re still a long way from being the centerfold spread in Country Weekly, but the place is really looking nice, even if we do say so ourselves.
Tonight we sat back and watched a couple of episodes of Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader (we aren’t) and Deal or No Deal, just to relax and do something totally meaningless.
Wednesday, January 13
Jim: Barbara stayed at Big V today while I drove to Mineola to pick up Mother and T.J. to take them to a doctor appointment in Tyler. This was one of those rare occasions when they both went to the same doctor, a rheumatologist. While they had appointments that were relatively early in the morning, Murphy’s Law took over and we were in the office until 12:30.
As we began our return to Mineola, Mother said she’d buy lunch, so we decided we’d stop somewhere in Lindale to eat. As it turned out, that “somewhere” was Long John Silver’s, where we each had a delicious fish dinner.
The Vibe also needed some nutrition, so we stopped at the Walmart gas station and filled the tank before driving back to Mineola. I made the comment that, “This will be an easy journal entry today…I’ll just write that after going to the doctor, Mother took us out to eat and we got gas.” Okay, it wasn’t the greatest line I’ve ever come up with, but it did get a laugh from both of them.
I delivered T.J. and Mother to their respective homes, went to the pharmacy to get a couple of prescriptions filled for Mother, made a stop at the post office, and then returned to the pharmacy to get Mother’s prescriptions and take them to the house. I went over the instructions with Ernie and then left to drive back to the lake and Big V.
I took a short nap and then once again hit the gully, trying to clear out the last section down by the road before it got dark. The weatherman was forecasting rain for the next few days and I wanted to get as much done as possible before it got too wet to work.
We both got out this evening to do laundry and watched the Texas/Iowa State basketball game when we weren’t driving to and from the laundry room.
Barbara: Jim was nice enough to leave this space for me but I can’t think of a thing I did while he was gone that would be interesting to anyone, including myself!
Thursday, January 14
We woke up to the sound of sprinkles (which sound very loud inside Big V) and the possibility of showers and rain all day, and decided that since Big V was clean and we couldn’t work outside, we’d just drive to Lindale (about 25 miles south on Highway 69) to get our hair cut and do some shopping at Walmart.
We stopped at the post office in Mineola and then at Sonic for breakfast before continuing to Lindale, where we managed to take care of most of the business for the day. Thank goodness, we’ve found a girl at the style shop in the Lindale Walmart who cuts and shapes our hair exactly the way we want it!
We stopped to visit T.J. at her house when we got back to Mineola and then headed over to Mother’s house to visit for a bit and repackage some things that we needed to mail out. While we were there, we reminded Ernie that we would be cooking at Mother’s house tomorrow and asked if they would be joining us. He said that they had to drive to Longview tomorrow for a 60,000-mile checkup on the car and wouldn’t be at the house, so we said we’d just cook for the three of us since T.J. also had something on her dance card for the noon hour.
After another trip to the post office and a stop at the bank in Quitman, we ordered up a couple of burgers at Sonic, took advantage of their Happy Hour special on drinks, and returned to Big V to eat and laze around a bit.
While Barbara took care of business inside (phone calls and emails), I went outside to start pulling vines out of another section of trees. It started sprinkling a little, but under the canopy of trees and vines, I hardly got wet at all. Barbara yelled out the window to ask if I had sense enough to come in out of the rain (she said she’d always wanted to ask that particular question) and I told her I didn’t and kept plowing through the vines and undergrowth until it was too dark to see what I was doing.
Tonight we had a light snack for supper (since we’d had a late lunch), watched TV, made a few phone calls (after 7:00 of course…got to save those minutes), worked at the computers, and generally accomplished not much of anything.
Friday, January 15
Happy Birthday today to Nancy Jean (Barbara’s younger sister) in Cleburne!!!
It was cool and damp as we got up and around this morning…definitely not an early morning made for working outside.
We gathered up some groceries and went into town around 10:30 so Barbara could start fixing lunch for Mother and us while I went to the post office and took care of some business.
When I returned to the house I helped Barbara a little with the food preparation and we let Mother continue reading her latest book selection until the meal was ready.
The lunch was a big hit…pork chops baked in mushroom soup and flavored with onions and peppers, green beans seasoned with bacon, stovetop stuffing, toasted homemade jalapeno bread, and lemon pie. To say that we feasted would be an understatement!
In the past, Mother has gotten up from the table, gone back to her room, and started her early-afternoon nap, but she broke from that pattern today as she got her coffee cup and, after taking a potty break, returned to the living room to sit down and join us in a conversation that lasted well over an hour. It really was a fun time!
We finally left around 2:30, stopped at the bank in Quitman, and then returned to Big V so we could take our afternoon nap.
I woke up around 3:30 and went outside to tackle more jungle clearing. We’ve made great progress in removing briar vines, but there is so much more to do.
It started sprinkling around 5:00, so I came back inside. Barbara gave me the rundown on a conversation she had just finished with Jimmy Clint and then we walked over to the clubhouse to join about a dozen other property owners for tonight’s special event, free ice cream cones. We made some new acquaintances and enjoyed talking with Linda and Gary, our nearest neighbors.
Tonight was just another “sit and do not much of anything night and we spent it by doing just that. We had bought a used DVD one day on a lark and decided that this was just the perfect time to watch Clint Eastwood protect and save the president in In the Line of Fire! Nothing like the old timers to know how to perform!
Saturday, January 16
Happy 63rd Birthday to Jerry Little (Jim’s younger brother in Roswell, New Mexico!!!
It was just another cool, cloudy, and wet day around Wood County…too wet to get out and work this morning, so when we finally got around to getting dressed (about 10 o’clock), we drove to Mineola to catch up on some work at Mother’s house.
When we were getting Mother’s room ready for Maria to clean it earlier in the week, we noticed great piles of miscellaneous papers on her desk. At that time, I tried to make little stacks of similar bills, bank statements, etc. but decided that we’d have to come back another time to build some files and make sense of everything.
Well, today was that other time! While I worked at the desk and sorted through all of Mother’s prescription records and started setting up file folders, Barbara moved everything else to the bed (Mother had gone to Tyler with T.J. this morning so they could pick up Joseph-Rob and Michelle’s son, for the weekend).
Before long, every square inch of Mother’s bed was covered with stacks of paper that Barbara was sorting into like categories. As she would get a stack mostly completed, I would go pick it up and take it back to the desk to place into a file folder and then into a hanging file in one of the desk drawers.
It took about three and a half hours, but we got the job done, just as Mother and T.J. arrived back at the house. To say that Mother was delighted to see the top of her desk again would be an understatement!
Since our job was done and Mother wanted to take her nap, we said our goodbyes to her and Ernie and left, stopping at the post office and then at T.J.’s house for a few minutes before pointing the car toward the lake.
Since we hadn’t had a real breakfast and the hungrys were working on us, we decided to get a couple of Mexican dinners to go from Peralta’s, a really nice Mexican restaurant in Quitman. The food smelled so good it was all we could do to not pull to the side of the road and dig in, but we held off until we got back to Big V to enjoy every morsel.
A busy morning and a late lunch just demanded an afternoon nap. I slept for a little over an hour and Barbara, who said she probably wouldn’t sleep at all because she wanted to sleep well tonight, fell deep asleep for a couple of hours.
I went outside to tackle the vine problem for about an hour…finally got chased inside by another rain shower, and we spent the rest of the evening watching TV, working at the computer, and finishing up this edition of the journal and blog.
“Old age is when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.” – A. Nonny Muss
From Our (soggy) Little Lot in Holiday Village at Lake Fork,
Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
