Sunday, January 17
The key word for today was “church,” as we seemed to have spent the largest portion of the day getting ready for, driving to and from, or attending.
We went earlier than usual this morning and joined one of the Sunday school classes. Sunday school is something that we have really missed since leaving a very special class in Liberal. The group we joined today gave us a warm welcome and made us feel a very special part of the class.
As soon as the class was over, I high-tailed it to the choir room and got ready for the music portion of the service, while Barbara had a chance to visit with some of the other church members.
We had talked about driving up to Sulphur Springs after church to eat out and maybe make a Walmart run, but decided instead to go back to Big V, see what we could come up with for lunch, and take a nap.
I went outside and worked for about an hour and a half during the afternoon and then we got dressed up and returned to the church at 5:00 so I could go to choir practice while Barbara made that run to Walmart in Sulphur Springs.
For the evening service, Brother Pate continued with his series of sermons and lessons on building relationships. It has been a very interesting series and several times we have commented that we wish we could have had something like this for in-services when we were teaching. The material is scripture-based, but is certainly applicable to all organizational settings.
When the service was over, we returned to Big V and relaxed for a bit before turning in and calling it a night.
Monday, January 18
Because Mother and T.J. were taking Joseph, TJ's grandson, back to his Mother and sisters today, and the post office was closed because of the federal holiday, we voted to just stay around the lot all day.
I spent nearly all day pulling vines and cleaning out trees along the creek. By the end of the day, I had a dozen large piles of vines and assorted brush scattered across our lots.
One of our neighbors, Linda Fox, came over and visited with Barbara for about three hours. We’ve decided that if people are going to come visit us, we’d better start doing a better job of keeping the house straight…and just maybe we should consider changing from our pajamas/work clothes to regular clothes a little earlier in the morning…just a thought.
Tuesday is the new Monday, at least as far as this week is concerned. Since we didn’t go to Mineola yesterday, Barbara cooked lunch for the bunch today. She found a new recipe called Lazy Man’s Stuffed Cabbage which features all the ingredients of a stuffed cabbage, but is cooked up as a casserole.
When lunch was over and the dishes were done, Mother, Ernie, and I had a family business discussion and then Barbara and I said our goodbyes and returned to Holiday Village.
I spent a large part of the afternoon gathering up the stacks of weeds, vines, and other assorted brush and carrying it to the lot behind Big V for burning at the first opportunity. We’ve been doing the burning down in the gully, but have found that when we do that, the fire gets too close to some of the trees that we are trying to save. We’ve mowed a large portion of the lot behind us, so we’ll have plenty of room to burn when everything dries out enough.Barbara attended the bi-weekly Bridge Club at Yantis First Baptist tonight. The club has nothing to do with playing cards, you understand. It’s an organization designed for women of different age groups to learn from each other and “bridge” the generation gap.
While Barbara was gone, I fought with the computer and the telephone. I don’t know what was going on around here, but our usually reliable internet connection didn’t connect and our cellular phone service didn’t register a signal.
When she returned to Big V from the meeting, Barbara honked the Vibe’s horn, something that she almost never does when she gets back from somewhere. I went outside to see if she needed some help with something and she showed me a large dent in the driver side bumper and sidewall…seems that the church secretary was backing out of her parking place in the church parking lot and managed to accidentally slam into the Vibe. She has insurance and there shouldn’t be any problem getting the Vibe fixed (except for the time element). It just seemed to us to be a fitting end to the day.
Just before we went to bed, we got a phone call from Jimmy Clint letting us know that he was in the emergency room at the hospital. He could tell that his heart rate was dropping below normal and had a friend drive him to the hospital. When he called, he had been waiting in the ER for seven hours, but was in the process of being admitted to a room so they could evaluate his situation and get his heart rate stabilized.
Wednesday, January 20
It was back to the church this morning for Barbara as she wanted to attend the weekly women’s Bible study group.
When Barbara left, I went outside and torched the first stack of brush. The weather forecast for the day included thunderstorms and heavy rain, so if there was going to be any burning this week, this morning was the time.
It took 2 ½ hours of feeding stacks to the fire, but by 11:30 I had everything burned and reduced to a pile of ashes. After all the scratches and cuts I’ve received from the briar vines during the last three weeks, it was a pleasure to watch those things curl up and then blaze!
Today was a scheduled meal day for Mother. Early this morning Barbara put together a crock pot recipe called Creamy Swiss Steak. It cooked all the time that I was working outside and sure had the neighborhood smelling great.
We took the food to Mother’s house at noon and T.J. joined the three of us in trying out the new dish. Again, we had a keeper.
Mike called as we were finishing our meal to check in and see how we were all doing. He was out of his office for part of the afternoon and took the time to get us caught up on the latest news from Virginia.
T.J. left after helping with the dishes and Mother, Barbara, and I retired to the living room to visit until Mother decided it was time for her afternoon nap (we had already decided that it was time for our nap, but didn’t want to admit that Mother could outlast us).
We returned to Big V and rested for about an hour before getting up and tackling other chores around the place. Barbara stayed inside and I went out to try to clear the drainage ditch that runs beside the road at the front of our property.
Around 5:30 a series of thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across East Texas, causing us to divert all of our attention to the TV to see what was happening. Both Mineola and Lake Fork dodged the big bullets, but we got two heavy thunderstorms that really drenched us with a half inch of rain…sure was glad that I got that burning done this morning!
About 8:15 we received a call from Jimmy Clint to tell us that he has a pacemaker implant scheduled for 7:15 tomorrow morning at University Medical Center in Lubbock. His regular doctor, the one who argued against an implant last fall, is out of town until Monday, but a second doctor, who was recommended highly to Jimmy, said that the implant needed to be done immediately.
Barbara told Jimmy that there was no way we could be in Lubbock by 7:15 in the morning, but he said to not worry about it because he had three of his close friends who would be there with him and keep us posted on how things were going. God is good! We've all felt that something needed to be done as he's had so much trouble with his heart...now, with Dr. Perez out of town, he sees another doctor who says this must be done.
Thursday, January 21
It was a beautiful morning after those storms that hit us last night. We didn’t have any damage AND the sky was washed clean and clear.
Around 9:00, Chris, a friend of Jimmy’s called to let us know that Jimmy’s surgery went very well and he was now back in his room. Praise God!
Today is also a special day for a Georgia friend of ours, Pat. For the two years that we have known her, she has needed a kidney transplant. Her friend Pam was finally approved as a donor and the transplant is scheduled for today. Pat has been our inspiration in affirming that everything works in God’s time if we are patient.
T.J. had arranged for us to have a late birthday celebration because we weren’t here during our birthdays. She decided to take us to A Taste of Italy, a little restaurant located on the shore of Lake Hawkins, the lake where we spent the month of August in 2008.
We had seen the restaurant from both the road and the lake and our Liberal friends (now from Gilmer, Texas), Robby and Barbara Clingan had told us all about it. In fact, we had talked about getting together sometime and eating there, but that was just one of those things that hadn’t happened yet.
We drove to Mineola around 10:15, had a short visit with Mother at her house, went to the post office, and then drove over to T.J.’s house to change to her car and drive out to Lake Hawkins, where we were treated like Italian royalty. The food was superb and the service was magnificent. The view of the lake was also magnificent, but of course we forgot to bring the camera…got to start remembering t grab that thing before we leave Big V!
After returning to T.J.’s house to get the Vibe, we drove on home to Big V for an hour or so, stopping first at a hardware store and a farm supply store in Quitman to try to find a set of grass clippers; you know, the old-fashioned kind that is hand operated. We had no luck finding any clippers in Quitman, but made a later run to Lowe’s in Sulphur Springs and found a couple of different styles there.
While we were at Lowes, we checked out some storage buildings on the lot and found that one of their models had been picked up by the storm last night and thrown completely off the lot. That and a large uprooted oak tree let us know that we were very lucky to have had only rain and slight winds last night.
After doing our browsing at Lowes, we returned to Holiday Village, getting home too late to try out the new clippers (gosh darn it). Guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Friday, January 22
Happy Birthday today to daughter Leah McQuitty in Liberal, Kansas, and daughter-in-law Kelly Little in Midlothian, Virginia…greetings and felicitations to each on the anniversary of your natal occasion!!!
We were both up and ginning around by 7:00 this morning. Since it was sunny and not too cool, I went outside to try out the new grass clippers. We have an electric weed eater and have borrowed Ernie’s gas weed eater on occasion, but the trees and shrubs at the front of the lot are packed so closely together that a weed eater can’t get close enough to do the necessary cleaning; so, it was necessary to get the job done the old-fashioned way.
After a couple of hours, I had a couple of wheelbarrow loads of clipping and trash ready to throw on a new burn pile, and the front part of the lot was beginning to look like someone actually cared for it.
While I was playing the part of the happy farmer, Barbara was building a new recipe for chicken pot pie. This was our “cooking day” for Mother and Barbara had found a recipe that looked like something we might all enjoy. She was able to put all the ingredients together in Big V and then we could just carry the pan to town, pop it in the oven at Mother’s house, and we could have a meal 45 minutes later. Just for kicks, she also baked a pecan pie using Jean’s recipe…a sure-fire favorite!
We got to Mineola around 11:00, Barbara got the oven going and the main dish baking and then we ran to the post office and took care of a couple of other chores.
The meal was a tremendous success with everyone except Bonita, Mother’s Chihuahua. Bonita is a fussy eater, but at least nibbles at most of the table food she is given, but chicken pot pie evidently isn’t on her “to-do” list.
When the meal was over and the dishes were done, we visited with Mother for a bit and then left to find a body shop to get an estimate on getting the damage on the Vibe repaired. We checked with the local GM dealer and one of their people recommended a shop for us. The only problem was that the computer at the body shop had been fried by a lightning strike during the storm Wednesday night and the owner of the business couldn’t get to his data bank so he could write an estimate. Maybe by Monday we’ll find out more.
With the business taken care of, we stopped for a short visit with T.J. and then returned to Big V where I did some more clipping, raking, mowing, and pruning while Barbara started packing things that we would need to take to Mother’s house while Ernie and Billee are gone to see Billee’s sister in Arkansas for a couple of weeks.Saturday, January 23
Since we didn’t need to be in Mineola until noon, I tackled some more yard work while Barbara started putting things in the Vibe to take to town. The skies were getting pretty dark and looking like rain, so I quickly torched the burn pile to try to get rid of the accumulated brush before we got away.We got to Mother’s house at 12:00 to find that not only were Ernie and Billee gone, all of their personal things were out of the house and garage, leaving us to guess that they were probably going to be gone for longer than the two weeks we had talked about.
We ate a delicious meal of tacos (not Taco Bell…the real thing), visited a bit with Mother, and then rested for a while. I called Ernie later and he told me that they were going to Arkansas to look for a job and that we might as well call the church folks in Louisiana (where we are supposed to go in February to help build a new church) and let them know we wouldn’t be there.
With that bit of unexpected information, we started making some decisions on what we would need to bring in from Big V to start fulltime care-giving for Mother. Mother is far from needing around-the-clock care-giving; in fact, she is showing remarkable improvement in eating, visiting, and reading, and is quite independent, but we will need to be here every night in case of emergencies.
T.J. came over later in the afternoon and we all visited and mapped out some preliminary plans for all of us to move ahead from here.
“People who rely on God the most rely on themselves the least.” – Church sign at Mineola Northside Baptist Church
From Mother’s house in Mineola, Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
