Sunday, April 4
Happy Easter!!!
We got up early, early this morning so we could go up to Lake Fork for our church’s sunrise service. It was gray and overcast as we got to the lake, but we found about 50-60 of our fellow church members turning out for a short message by Pastor David and music led by Danette Lovelady, our choir director. The service was very moving and the setting was as beautiful as any we’ve ever seen.
Since the service was over around 7:30, we went to Holiday Village to get breakfast at the clubhouse and then get some sleep in Big V until time to get dressed and go to Yantis for Sunday school and church. As many meals as we’ve had at the clubhouse, it never fails to amaze us at how much good food we get for such a low price, and this morning was no exception…two complete breakfasts cooked to order for under $5.00…just can’t beat it.
We had a good Sunday school lesson and then I went to the choir room for our final preparations before we presented our Easter cantata. Now, I may be a little prejudiced, but I felt that the choir really outdid itself this morning with a program of very moving selections presenting the theme, “Because He Lives.”
We had Communion following the cantata. David said that he had asked the deacons to prepare 200 servings of the wafers and juice, but the crowd was so large that they ran out before two-thirds of the choir was served. What a blessing it was to see nearly every pew completely filled and people seated in the foyer!
With choir practice and the evening service canceled for this evening, we booked it back to Mineola and TJ’s house for our second big get-together of the weekend. Rob and his family left yesterday, but today we were joined by Ladd, Angela, and Madelyn, as well as TJ’s friend Marge, as we gathered around the table to feast on baked ham, Puerto Rican potato salad, and a wide variety of other succulent dishes.
Conversations on a multitude of topics were flying all around the table, but we all stopped to listen as Madelyn, who had volunteered to work at the recent Home Makeover project just a couple of blocks from TJ’s house, talked about the house, the work, and her impressions (and some not good ones at that) of various cast members.
Around 4:30 Donnie, Lynette, and Caitlin came over and we led them out to Holiday Village to see our place. As luck would have it, this is also the spring cleaning week at the village and a huge roll-off dumpster was in the parking lot at the clubhouse, providing us with a convenient place to dump all the cardboard and packing foam from the four cabinet kits.Tonight we tackled the last of the three cabinets, hoping that our previous experience would pay off and we would finish the building in time to start emptying boxes and filling the cabinets. But, like the kids we worked with for 36+ years, we found that each cabinet kit was different in its own way…no two were formed exactly alike, and it took different techniques and strategies to form them so they would reach their full potential and usefulness.
Finally, the third cabinet was finished and standing. The next challenge was to get them in exactly the right alignment against the wall, a challenge that was compounded by the fixed placement of an electrical outlet, the hardware that was already in place for the automatic sprinkler system, and the placement of the main breaker box. We were literally moving cabinets (remember the 200+ pounds for each of them) an inch at a time to get them in the right positions.
When we finally had each cabinet in place, it was time to secure them to the wall studs so they wouldn’t fall over. Again, what should have been fairly simple quickly became very complicated. The first stud was easy to find since it ran just above the electrical outlet. I then used 16, 18, and 24 inch measurements from that spot, but never could locate the next stud (and now the wall a couple of inches above the tops of the cabinets looks like Swiss cheese), so I decided to go to Walmart and get a stud sensor.
Once back at the house I opened the sensor package, only to find that it required a 9-volt battery to make it work (honestly, there was nothing on the package to tell me that…I even looked again). We have a whole package of 9-volt batteries at Big V, but that didn’t help much tonight.
As I was preparing to go back to Walmart to get batteries, Barbara said that maybe Mother had some. I didn’t think so, but when Mother told me to check a certain drawer in her bathroom cabinets, I found that she did have a couple of 9-volts, saving me another trip.
With the stud sensor operational, it didn’t take long to locate a stud behind each cabinet, get the cabinet lined up and mostly level and plumb, and secure it to the wall.
All that was left was to attach the doors; again, a chore that should have been easy, but quickly became as complicated as the other parts…same story-ach was different and had to be treated a little differently for both appearance and efficiency.
Finally, the cabinets were ready for occupancy by Mother’s “treasures,” but the time and energy to get to that point had taken its toll on our nerves and energy, so we just closed the garage, turned off the lights, and declared that we would take the next steps tomorrow.
Monday, April 5
Happy 70th Birthday to Aunt TJ in Mineola!!!
Congratulations to step-grandson Khris Johnson and Taryn on their wedding today in San Antonio!
Today was just a huge garage cleaning day. With the cabinets in place, we started going through all the boxes that had been stacked against the wall, trying to organize the contents so we could utilize the new storage space. It took all day and a lot of placing, moving, and placing again, but at the end of the day we had all the shelves where we need them and all the items in a place that made sense (at least to us), and Mother was happy with the results.
The only problem we had left was that there were stacks of empty boxes filled with throwaways, and several boxes of “giveaways,” so even with the cabinets in place and filled almost to capacity the garage still looked a mess. Since the garbage collection won’t be until Thursday, we’ll just have to live with it.
We did find during the day that we had several large storage containers of ours in the garage, so when we had done all else that we could do, we took some of our containers inside and began packing away our winter clothes to take out to the lot for storage.
Tonight we tried to watch the NCAA basketball championship game between Duke and Butler, but we were so tired from working in the garage all day that we just couldn’t get into it, so we turned the TV off at halftime, went to bed, and immediately dropped into a deep sleep.
Tuesday, April 6
Happy Birthday to cousin Lynette Sandley in Irondale, Alabama.
We started the day as usual…check for email and read some on-line journals, breakfast, and then get dressed for the morning’s work.
Job one was to get our income taxes finished and on the way. We had found a CPA from a Tyler firm who comes to Mineola on Tuesdays to work out of an office here. We took all of our files to her a couple of weeks ago, and today we just had to sign off on some authorizations and wait for her to file for the year.
With that big step out of the way, we went by the post office to pick up the mail, and then drove to a nursery just north of town on the Quitman highway to look for geraniums. When we were sitting outside on the porch last Saturday, Mother said that she thought red geraniums would be a good addition to the English primroses that we had planted under the tree a couple of weeks ago. TJ said she had bought some geraniums at the nursery and since we had checked at Walmart and didn’t find anything satisfactory, we decided we’d try Gray’s also.
Sure enough, they had exactly what we wanted, so we bought seven pots of bright red geraniums and returned to the house to plant them. Of course, nothing is never easy (I had forgotten about all the root problems when we planted the primroses), but some toil and sweat, I managed to dig out the grass clumps and Barbara followed behind me to set the geraniums in.
By now it was almost lunch time, so Barbara went inside to fix our noon meal while I fired up the lawnmower and proceeded to mow the front yard…finally, everything looked great except that the flower bed really needed some mulch in it, but I didn’t have any, so that would just have to wait for another day; besides, we had worked and sweated all morning and naptime was looming on the other side of lunch.
Mother came in and we had lunch. When she headed back to her room afterward, Barbara and I opened our computers to see if we had received any mail since breakfast. I was just closing my computer and getting ready to go take a nap when I saw John, our neighbor from across the street, coming up the driveway.
I went out to meet John and ask if he needed anything, but before I could speak, he asked if I could give him a hand getting something out of his car. I said I’d be happy to and walked across the street with him to find the trunk lid of his car open and an electric jackhammer on the trunk floor. With two of us lifting, it didn’t take much to lift the jackhammer out and set it up on the pavement.
A few days ago John and I had talked about the problem of all the rocks at the end of the pavement on our street. John’s and Mother’s houses are at the end of the street and at the lowest point of the Heritage Square development. When it rains, all water drains to the front of these two houses. What the developers didn’t do was to provide drainage to the adjacent undeveloped property, which is even lower than the end of the street. Instead, they dumped about a ton of granite and other rocks to shore up the end of the pavement, and then overlaid them with dirt.
That was all well and good, but the rocks protruded several inches above the end of the pavement, effectively forming a rough curb that trapped the water and backed it up, forming what we call Lake Borsberry on our side of the street and Lake John on the other side.
Ernie, when he and Billee were living with Mother, had dug the dirt away in an attempt to channel some of the water into the field, as had John on his side of the street, but none of us had overcome the rock problem…I tried using a pick to dig the rocks out, but they were so large and piled in such a way that I soon found that wasn’t the answer.
John decided that the only way to break out the rocks would be to get a jackhammer and go to work on them, so he went to the local rental store today and got a jackhammer and an assortment of bits to tackle the job.
So, here I was, looking at the business end of a jackhammer instead of taking my much dreamed of afternoon nap. Not to worry though, as heavy as this thing was, we should be through with a few rocks in an hour or so and still have time to get a little rest before going out to the lake this evening.
Have I mentioned this week that nothing is ever as easy as it looks? After taking turns pounding away at the rocks next to the pavement, John suggested that we move several feet down the lot to find where the rocks ended and work backward from there.
About that time, I went to the house and told Barbara where I was and what we were doing and she grabbed the camera to come document this new adventure. Of course, the very first picture she took was of John and me sitting in lawn chairs that John brought out for our “union breaks”…timing is everything!
John and I did have a good time talking during our breaks and he told me a lot of stories from his career of working for the highway department as a bridge inspector. But, as much fun as it was (and there were fun moments) I was glad to help him put that jackhammer back in his car and declare the job done. Now all we need is a good rain to see if our work did any good.
Barbara was scheduled to go to Yantis for her Bridge meeting tonight, but when I said I would go mow and trim our lot while she was at her meeting, she said she’d just come along with me. So, after a few minutes of rest, we loaded the lawnmower, trimmer, and an assortment of other lawn tools in the Vibe and drove up to Holiday Village to work on our long-neglected lot.
Barbara started the mowing and I did the trimming with our electric weed eater (after stringing out 75 feet of extension cord) and we got busy making the place look loved once more.
While we were working at the front of the lot our friends Bob and Mary, who just returned from spending the winter months in Pharr, down in the Rio Grande Valley, stopped by on their bicycles to see what we were up to. We’ve kept up with Bob and Mary through emails and telephone calls, but it was really good to see them again, even if it was for just a few minutes.
When Bob and Mary left, we went back to work and by dark we had most of the place mowed and trimmed. At least the front of the lot and the areas on either side of Big V looked like someone lived there and cared about the place.
We put the equipment away in the storage shed and under the canopy, locked everything down, and headed back toward Mineola, hot showers, and a clean and comfortable bed, worn out from another day of “retirement ease.” After today, we are considering getting full-time jobs so we can at least get scheduled time off!
Wednesday, April 7
We awoke this morning with much moaning and groaning from yesterday’s exertions, but after popping some Aleve and having breakfast, we were soon ready to meet the new day.
I took Barbara to the church in Yantis for her Bible study group and then went back to the lake to continue work on the lot. Although we got a bunch of mowing and trimming done last night, there was still much to do and I spent the first hour knocking down grass from the lot behind us (don’t want to have breeding grounds for things like mosquitoes, chiggers, or other critters).
When I had finished the mowing and trimming, I went to the gully with two large containers of grasses that we had dug out from under Mother’s tree in the front yard. We thought if we could transplant the clumps they might take root and help stop some of the erosion when it rains and the water drains down through the gully on its way to the lake.
After an hour or so of digging and planting the grass clumps, I didn’t need the clock to tell me it was time to quit…every muscle and joint in my body was screaming out that it was time to get out of there and head home.
First though, I had to load all the equipment back into the Vibe, close Big V for a few days, and then drive back to Yantis to get Barbara, who was, more or less, patiently waiting for me.
We got back to Mineola as quickly as possible and, instead of taking the nap we had planned, decided that the backyard and some of the adjoining lot needed to be mowed. Ernie kept about 20 yards of the adjoining undeveloped property mowed for the same reason that I mow the lot behind Big V; namely, to keep the critters (chiggers, ticks, snakes, etc.) away from Mother’s house. Now, it’s our job to do the same, so Barbara started mowing the lot while I trimmed the backyard.
When Barbara went inside to fix a late lunch, I took over the mowing. All went fairly well until the mower seized up and wouldn’t start again. I pulled the spark plug and found that it was filthy and past the point of sparking, but managed to get it cleaned off enough to fire up the mower and finish off the backyard after we finished lunch.
By the time that lunch and the yard work were finished, it was too late to take a nap, so we just rested a bit and then Barbara started working on a new dessert recipe-oatmeal butterscotch bars to take to the firefighter's luncheon on Saturday.
Tomorrow is the trash pickup day for our neighborhood, so tonight we gathered up all the trash sacks and the boxes left over from Monday’s garage clean-up. Finally, we could see what our efforts in the garage had brought about, and what a transformation it was! We even made a collage to commemorate our efforts and to remind us of just how much we did accomplish.
Happy 70th birthday today to our good friend Jimmy Payne in Cairo, Georgia!!!
We both woke up early this morning, refreshed after a good night’s sleep. Barbara took a short prayer walk around the neighborhood…she had planned to go out for an hour, but the early morning was unusually cold and windy, so she shortened the time.
After breakfast we tackled some serious house cleaning. It’s been a couple of weeks since we did that, and we just couldn’t put it off any longer. By noon and lunchtime, the house was clean and fresh and the floors were shining from sweeping and mopping. Like Big V, Mother’s house isn’t really hard to clean, but it does take time and persistence, and we’ve been spending most of those two things outside lately.
We spent the afternoon and evening trying to get caught up on the journal/blog for the past two weeks. Luckily, Barbara has kept a good record of our activities on a calendar, but we’ve been too tired at night to do anything other than just think about writing.
While I reconstructed the notes into anecdotes, Barbara waded through picture after picture after picture to create the 19 collages that formed the pictorial record of our work and play. Now all we have to do is fit pictures and text together and get the whole thing posted on the blog…maybe tomorrow?
Friday, April 9
Hallelujah!!! Two weeks of the journal/blog are completed, proofed, edited, and are now ready to be posted on the blog site. Because of all the pictures, the latest edition was way too large to attach and send in print form, so we just told everyone on our list to check out the blog site to see what we had been up to.
With that project out of the way, we went into full-scale chef mode in the kitchen to prepare dishes for a special meal tomorrow.
Several weeks ago they announced in church that the annual fire fighters appreciation luncheon would be held April 10 and asked for church members to provide food for the meal. We decided that we’d prepare some Puerto Rican dishes (something unusual around this neck of the woods), so I went to work preparing a double recipe of black beans while Barbara started on the potato salad. Within a couple of hours we had everything put together, but no space for the two containers in Mother’s refrigerator, so we set them aside and decided we’d take them to Big V later and store them overnight in the refrigerator there.
After lunch we finally got to take our first real nap of the week…yah-hoo! What had become part of our daily routine (which includes getting up around 6:00 am and going to bed around 10:30 or 11:00) took a backseat to all the chores and activities of the past week.
When we got up from our nap, we put the food in the car and drove out to Big V to get the beans and potato salad stored safely in the refrigerator. We enjoyed a few minutes at “Our LITTLE Lot” before getting back in the Vibe and returning to Mineola, stopping first at Walmart to get ice cream and a frozen pizza for tonight’s meal…real healthy stuff.
For only the second time since becoming regular Walmart customers in Mineola we ran into someone we know. As we were preparing to check out, Cousin Ladd was grabbing a shopping cart right beside us, so we blocked traffic and talked for a few minutes (finally getting out of the way in case anyone else wanted to come through the line).
Tonight was a night to kick back and relax, eating pizza, watching TV, starting on this week’s issue of the journal/blog, and then finishing the night with a milkshake before going to bed and reading until we fell asleep.
Saturday, April 10
We were on a mission this morning, so as soon as we got Mother coffeed and fed, we started getting ourselves cleaned up and dressed to go to Yantis and assist with the annual Firefighters Appreciation Luncheon sponsored by First Baptist Church. Call us crazy, but when David started asking for volunteers at the business meeting a couple of weeks ago, we got in the spirit and volunteered for just about everything, including food (our Sunday school class had already committed to bringing desserts, but we added the Puerto Rican dishes just for good measure) and cleaning up when it was all over.
Our first stop after leaving the house (TJ came over later to take Mother to lunch, so we weren’t really leaving her alone all day) was to go straight to Big V to get the food for the luncheon. On the way out of the park, we stopped at the sales office to pick up a couple of tickets for tonight’s POA dinner at the clubhouse and ask Josh if we were among the first ten to come in and inquire about this quarter’s Property Owners Association gifts. As luck would have it, we were number ten, and walked out with a new SkyTek Notepad and a Blu-Ray CD/DVD player, items with a combined retail value of over $500. For our POA dues of $18 per month for the last year, we’ve already received well over $1,500 worth of merchandise…not a bad deal at all!
We’ve never gotten a picture of Brittney, who is part of the sales staff, so Barbara jumped out a got a shot of her.
About the same time, our friends Bob and Mary Royar came rolling in on their golf cart, so we talked to them for a couple of minutes and Barbara got their picture, too.
Then, it was on to Yantis to take our food in and help with whatever needed to be done to have the luncheon ready by 11:00.
During the next hour a large number of church members showed up with food…some stayed and helped and others returned to their Saturday chores. By the time the firefighter force arrived, we had right at 50 people, including church members, ready to go through the line and feast on brisket and all the trimmings…at least four kinds of beans, three or four kinds of potato salad, and various other dishes (and two tables full of luscious desserts…what a spread!
There was also lots of visiting going on, with firefighters expressing their appreciation to the church for their efforts and church members thanking the firefighters for their service and efforts.
All good things must come to an end, so shortly after noon the firefighters left and the rest of us started the cleanup. Many hands make short work, or so they say, and that was proved today as we had everything washed and put away before 12:30…plenty of time to go back to Mineola and get a nap.
Tonight we returned to the clubhouse for the monthly POA dinner, a meal that requires only that we go to the clubhouse before noon and pick up all the tickets we need for property owners and guests. The menu tonight was pork chops, au gratin potatoes, cornbread, red beans, peach cobbler, and a drink.
We all had a good laugh about that and then started talking about places we have been. Ken and Donna are preparing to leave in another week or so to spend 5 months in Idaho serving as park attendants. Ken then said that one of the places they had worked was in New Mexico. When we asked where, he said it was down around Carlsbad.
Our faces lit up and we told him that we were from Artesia, at which point he went on to say that they stayed at the Escapee’s campground resort between Carlsbad and Artesia (a place we had looked at before Jean invited us to move to her place after retirement) and that they attended First Baptist Church in Artesia when they were there.
With that, we launched into a whole new conversation about Artesia, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, and other places in southeastern New Mexico we had all been to.
Ken and Donna also ride a motorcycle and he said that Josh had told them they needed to come visit us, but they just hadn’t gotten around to it.
Ken was a professional photographer…worked for the Associated Press for 17 years…and has his photographs hanging in several museums. In fact, some of his signed photography even hangs in the halls of Artesia First Baptist Church…what a small world it really is!
When the food was all gone and everyone started leaving, we decided it was time for us to hit the road and get back to Mother and the puppies. Mary had suggested that they might drive us to the site of Gene and Michelle Young’s new house, where the slab had been poured today. Since we were inside and couldn’t tell much about the weather, we declined for now, but when we got in the car and drove to the gate, we could see that the sun was still pretty high in the western sky.
We changed our minds and drove across Lake Fork to the West Fork Addition close to Alba and took a quick view (and a couple of pictures) of the new cement slab. We’ve already forgotten what the floor plans showed, but when the Youngs return from Kansas in another day or so they will be able to explain it all to us.
With our sightseeing and visiting done for the week, we drove back to Mineola and Mother’s house to settle in for the evening, get Mother, Spike, and Bonita prepped for bed, and then go for a short walk around Heritage Square before coming back to the house to finish writing the journal and sort through all the pictures we took this week.
“Don’t audit life; show up and make the most of it now.” – Unknown
From Mineola, Texas,
Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
