Thursday, July 22
With no one but the three of us to plan or do for, we almost felt lost this morning as we took our time checking email, feeding the birds, and then fixing breakfast. But, we soon got back in the swing of things and managed to fill a day.
The first thing on the agenda was a trip to Mother’s bank to get some paperwork cleared up. When that was done, Mother and I returned home to wait for Natalie, the client service rep for At Home Healthcare. Natalie came out a couple of weeks ago and installed Mothers personal emergency response system, but somehow missed Mother’s signature on one of the lines. Since the company would like to get paid for their service, but couldn’t without all the signatures in place, Natalie made a special trip to Mineola just to get Mother’s autograph…how special!
Since we were running low on some supplies at the house, we stopped our literary efforts for a while to make a Walmart run (how else could it be an official day?).
This evening we received an email from daughter-in-law Carol letting us know what was going on with their family. In part of the email Carol mentioned that in the college course she had told us about during their visit (she is returning to school to get a degree in education and become a teacher after all these years as a nurse…a move with which we strongly agree…she has lots of qualities of outstanding teachers) that she received a score of 100% on her first assignment. Way to go Carol…keep up the good work!!!
Friday, July 23
Mother had a rehab session this morning from 11:00 until noon. Meanwhile, Barbara and I tackled yard work during the morning hours when it was only miserably hot and humid, instead of waiting until it got really bad.
It took about three hours to do a complete job of mowing, edging, and hedge-trimming to get the place looking great again, but it was well worth the effort to see it looking so good after a couple of weeks of benevolent neglect.
The afternoon and evening were given over to working in the air-conditioned house as we continued putting journals and blogs together, stopping only for short “breaks” to visit the washer and dryer as we also attempted to catch up with our laundry.
Saturday, July 24
We had a lively breakfast this morning as, after eating we broke out our computers and shared email jokes and cartoons with Mother. She has gotten to where she enjoys reading some of the things that our friends have shared with us. We were really on a roll this morning and spent much longer than usual laughing at the silliness that comes through the ‘net.
This morning’s main project was for Barbara to build a new recipe, Blueberry Betty, to take to Yantis as our donation to the volunteer fire department’s annual fish fry. The dessert was based on a recipe (Apple Betty), that we have enjoyed before and that Barbara once served to Mike and Kelly’s Sunday school class in Richmond, Virginia. Some of the folks in the class wanted to know what it was called and when Barbara told them, “Apple Betty,” one of them remarked that we could forget about Betty and call it Apple Barbara.
While Barbara was working on the dessert, I did some more work in the yard and flower beds (the yard work here could almost be a fulltime job in itself).
TJ came over for lunch and we had to share some of the things we laughed at this morning…there was really not much seriosity going on around the place!
At 2:00 we took the dessert to the Yantis school cafeteria and then stopped at Holiday Village to check on Big V and do some minor chores there. While I was pickling around with Big V, Barbara quickly mowed our front yard (the side that the main door opens to). The reason she was able to do it quickly is that we are in the midst of an intense drought and hot spell, so the grass isn’t growing as fast as it normally does.
We had planned to spend a couple of hours at Big V, but the heat was unbearable and the work was no fun at all, so we shut the place down and returned to Mineola to spend the rest of the day plugging away at the Journal and blog.
Sunday, July 25
We went through our Sunday routine today…get everyone up and going, leave Mother here so TJ could pick her up for their church service, go to Yantis for the fellowship breakfast, Sunday school, and the church service, drive back to Big V to spend the afternoon, and then return to Yantis for choir practice and the evening service…and there you have the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the day.
To expand on the day a little, we have to say that the breakfast was fantastic as usual. We’ve grown beyond breakfast casseroles and fruit (although they are still there and are as delicious as ever) to made-to-order omelets that are better than anything a person could buy in a restaurant. Add in juices, milk, coffee, biscuits, gravy, and some homemade jellies and jams, and you’ll see one reason why our church has not suffered a “summer slump.”
The downside of the morning was that this was the last scheduled fellowship breakfast. We originally set it up to run through June and July. However, there were some rumblings around the tables that some mention of a continuation of this ministry might be brought up at the business meeting tonight.
David’s sermon this morning was fantastic. He has been preaching a series on what Baptists believe. This morning he was preaching on baptism and he delivered a teaching and preaching lesson such as I’ve never heard in all my years…and I was born a Baptist!
Barbara: I have to interject some of my thoughts this morning about David’s lesson on baptism. The first thing that socked me through to the core of my being was that immersion was not, as I thought, a Baptist “thing”…rather it’s scriptural in the symbolism of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The more David spoke and explained the more I realized that I was immersed for all the wrong reasons and with the wrong attitude when I joined the church in Liberal. In fact, to be quite honest, I only agreed to be baptized again (after all, my Dad was a Methodist pastor and I had been dedicated when I was a baby, and baptized when I was in the 6th grade by my own choice) was because of Jim and I resented “them” (the Baptists) for saying the way I was baptized didn’t count. (See the attitude I had?) I recognize now that no one, not Sid the pastor or anyone else explained the reason for immersion; they just assumed I knew…therefore, I, until this day, considered it a Baptist thing. (When I got home, I did research on the net and found that the Methodists will also immerse if it is requested…interesting I never realized that) Anyway, at the end of the service, I went to David and asked that I be re-baptized by MY choice and for the right reason.
Jim: We went to Big V for lunch and some rest after the service, but even with the air conditioner blowing full-blast and Big V under the shed cover, the intense heat from outside kept us only on the edge of comfort. We are fortunate that we are surrounded by trees, but when the outside temperature is 100+, it’s very difficult to get cool.
Tonight we had our monthly business meeting at church. One big order of business was the discussion of our church organ, which had crashed a couple of months ago. We had it checked out by a repairman in Greenville and he said it was a goner. The repairman took it away to his shop to see what he could do with it, leaving the church to decide whether to do without an organ, get another organ, or find an alternate instrument.
After much discussion among the members present, I moved to form a temporary committee to study the feasibility of finding either another organ or a replacement instrument. I should have known what would happen next…the motion was seconded and passed, and then Barbara spoke to further discussion and recommended that I serve on the committee. There was a lot more discussion around the room and when the smoke cleared, I did indeed become one of five committee members who would tackle this business…can’t seem to steer clear of politics.
When the business meeting was over, I checked with David to see how the committee would be set up and he said he’d have to find out and let me know. That said, we left the church and returned to Mineola to get Mother settled in bed and then do the same for ourselves.
Monday, July 26
Happy Birthday to our favorite school media specialist (that’s librarian to folks of our mature age), Charlene Plett in Liberal, Kansas!!!
Some days are not very noteworthy, and today was a sterling example. Except for Mother’s rehab session at the Olympic Center at 11:00 this morning, the entire day was the same old, same old of taking care of business, minor housecleaning, and working like crazy to get caught up on the journal/blog.
Tuesday, July 27
After getting everyone up and squared away this morning, Barbara and I got ready for my appointment at the dermatology clinic in Tyler. When I went for a check-up a couple of weeks ago the doctor found two cancerous spots…a basal cell on the back of my right shoulder and a squamous cell in the middle of my chest. We then made an appointment for today to discuss options for treatment.
The first thing we did when we left the house was to stop at the post office to see what surprises the USPS had for us today. I opened the box and found a couple of flyers and what was obviously a card of some kind from Mike and Kelly in Richmond.
I took it to the car to open it with Barbara, wondering along the way what was going on that they would be sending a card now. I was just voicing that to Barbara when it struck me what it must be; and sure enough, when we opened it we saw the writing on the front of the card, “Your family tree…is growing…more beautiful.” Enclosed were a couple of sonogram shots that we could actually read and a note from the kids saying that we would be grandparents again with a due date of February 19, 2011.
The next thing we did was pick up the phone and call Mike. He answered with, “Did you get your mail?”
We had a long talk with both Barbara and me expressing how happy we were for them and letting Mike know that we would be finding a way to get back to Richmond as soon as possible. (While I visited with Mike, Barbara called Kelly and left a voice message expressing our thoughts. Mike said Kelly was in a workshop in Oregon, but we still wanted her to know how happy we were for them.)
Mike had to get back to work and we needed to get down the road to Tyler, so we said our goodbyes, drove to Tyler and stopped at the motorcycle repair shop to authorize the purchase of parts to fix the Voyager (new front fork seals, new clutch, and two new tires) and then drove to the dermatology clinic.
We met with Mr. Gautier, a P.A. in the clinic who explained our treatment options. I could use some kind of ointment for a couple of months and hope it would work its way through the lesion, I could have surgery at a later date, or he could burn and scrape the lesions this morning. I opted for the burn and scrape and the result for the day was two very ugly (but not too painful) holes that should heal over in a month or so.
While Mr. Gautier was burning and scraping, he accidently brushed against another sore place on my chest. It looked like a small pimple and felt like it must be sitting right on a nerve. He went ahead and did a slice for another biopsy…guess we’ll find out in a few days if there is anything to it.
While we were returning to Mineola Barbara got a call from David Bagwell letting me know that the Organ Committee would have its organizational meeting tonight at 7:00. Since we had nothing on the calendar for this evening, I made my way out to Yantis to meet with David and two of the other four committee members to exchange ideas and information and plot a course for the committee to take.
After an hour or so of committee work and another hour or so of just visiting among three of us men (nothing decided and nothing really accomplished, but it was good for the three of us to have some “guy” time together), I decided I’d better head back down the dark highway and find my way home for the night. The road from Yantis to Mineola, except for passing through Quitman, is black as pitch and lined with trees, so it isn’t that much fun to drive at night.
Wednesday, July 28
I got a call from David Bagwell early this morning letting me know that we could pick up the church organ in Greenville. The repairman who declared it to be dead said we could have it back if we wanted it. One of the committee members had talked to a man at Tyler Piano and Organ and he said he works on Baldwin organs all the time and has access to parts, so David made arrangements for us to take the organ to Tyler today.
Since Barbara needed our car to take Mother to rehab this morning, David and Dwayne drove to Mineola in Dwayne’s pickup to get me and then we drove to Greenville, about 55 miles northwest of here, loaded the organ on the pickup bed (I now know that I do NOT want to be a piano or organ mover as either a part-time or fulltime job) and drove back through Mineola to Tyler. To give credit where credit is due, David lifted one end of the organ while Dwayne and I lifted the other; but, I told Dwayne that I was pretty sure all the heavy electronic stuff was in our end of the instrument.
We spent a chunk of the afternoon unloading the organ in Tyler and talking to the owner of the store about instrument options in the event the organ cannot be repaired…it was almost like a 3-hour in-service or seminar for us.
When we left the music store, we went across the street to eat a Cheddar’s (a new dining experience for me) and then returned to Mineola where David and Dwayne dropped me off at the house and then made their way back to Yantis.
Barbara: While Edith was at rehab, I did the usual post office run and then stopped by the used book store to see if they had any one dollar books I couldn’t live without. Then I did a quick run through Brookshire’s to pick up some items that are not available at Wal-Mart. By the time I finished all that, it was time to walk back around the corner and get Edith from rehab.
Returning home, I got Edith settled in her chair for her post-exercise nap while I prepared lunch for TJ, Edith, and me. We girls definitely enjoyed a “hen party” discussing and laughing over the silliest things. I guess we were leaving the intellectual subjects to discuss in front of Jim…
After getting Edith settled for her afternoon nap and cleaning the kitchen mess, I, too, adjourned to the bedroom to read a little before taking a nap myself.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on the usual chores…walking Spike to the mailbox, feeding the dogs, and working on journal collages.
Jim: Tonight was just more work on the journal and blog as we wrote and edited text and Barbara did the photo compilations; surely, we’ll get caught up one of these days!.
Thursday, July 29
Birthday Greetings go out today to Warren Yehl in Victoria, Texas!!!
Wow!!! What a mixed bag of a day this turned out to be!
The only thing we had on our social calendar today was to attend a retirement luncheon for Cousin Ladd at Paredes Family Restaurant here in Mineola. Ladd has spent his entire career working for TXDOT as an engineer and became eligible for retirement this month. He decided that when the job became more work than fun, it was time to quit. With that in mind, he and his co-workers decided to celebrate by having a Dutch treat luncheon to formalize the goodbyes.
Before we got very far into the morning I got a call from David letting me know that he had heard from the organ repairman in Tyler and the repairs to the church organ will be minimal. He wanted my opinion as a committee member on what we should do. We were pretty much in agreement on everything, so it appears that my tenure on the organ committee will be very short.
Barbara was busy going through photos and building collages for the journals and blog, so I decided that before it got too hot, I’d go out and do the edging in the front yard. When I was finished with that, I moved to the back yard to clean out and mulch the flower beds and Barbara started mowing the front yard. I mowed the back yard after Barbara was through out front and she moved inside to dust, sweep, and mop…just all kinds of activities going on around here this morning.
I took Barbara to the restaurant around 11:10 so she could reserve a table for us and then I returned to the house to get Mother. TJ had told us the luncheon wasn’t supposed to start until noon, but Barbara called even before I got back to the house to say that people were already arriving, so I helped Mother get in the car and we returned to the restaurant to join in the festivities.
As extended family members of Angela and Ladd, we got to sit at the “head” table with Ladd, Angela, Madelyn, TJ, and two very special friends of the Thompson family, Joe and Linda Dodson, Madelyn’s riding teacher.
We did a segment on Joe Dodson a couple of years ago. He is one of the best-known horse trainers and riding teachers in East Texas. In his earlier years, he was the stunt double for Chuck Norris on the Walker, Texas Ranger show. Joe is very personable and easy to talk to and today we enjoyed meeting his wife, Linda.
It was a delight to see Ladd with his big smile enjoying himself as he visited with co-workers, reps, friends, etc. The photo above shows just how happy he is with the thought of the new life ahead of him. We, also, enjoyed ourselves immensely as we joined in the day’s celebration.
It seems we spent an inordinate amount of time on the telephone throughout the day as we were dealing with our bank about an overpayment issue with another company. Since the whole issue was related to computer glitches, nothing about it was easy.
We also got a call from our friend Mary Royar telling us that Bob was going to have to have back surgery after all. He needs it right away, but will have to go to at least two other doctors for tests before the surgery can be scheduled. Mary also told us that our next door (or is that next lot) neighbor, at Holiday Village has been put in ICU in Texarkana with spinal meningitis…not good news at all. So, our prayer list continues to grow.
Sometime during the afternoon as Barbara was working at the dining room table and I was putting something on the calendar on the kitchen bar, we heard what we thought was a car alarm going off outside…we didn’t think much of it until we suddenly heard a booming voice resounding through the house saying, “Edith, are you okay?”
We realized that we were hearing the voice of an operator from the health care service that monitors Mother’s emergency button. I bolted out of the kitchen and back to Mother’s room to see what in the world was going on and found a very befuddled Mother who was also wondering what was going on. As soon as I knew she was okay, I told the operator that things were just fine and the alarm had been accidentally activated. The voice then asked who I was and when I told her, she said that was fine and for us to have a good day.
Mother and I realized about the same time that Bonita had been in her lap and had stood up against Mother’s chest, pushing on the activation button. We laughed about it then and decided that not only did the device work, it was loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the house, AND I could still run a pretty good dash.
Later in the day we were surprised and pleased to see our friend Carolyn drive up. Her husband Gene has just gone through hip replacement surgery so he was at home recuperating and Carolyn was out doing errands when she decided to drop by. This was great with us since we hadn’t seen them since before they went to Arizona for the birth of a grandchild. We had corresponded by email with her, but it’s still not the same as a good old fashioned visit.
We were all surprised when we looked up and saw Mother coming into the living room. She decided she’d just come to the front of the house and see what was going on which meant that she joined us for the rest of Carolyn’s visit. What a good time we all had!
What happened after Carolyn left was even more amazing since the three of us (and Spike and Bonita) continued sitting in the living room and started watching the TVLand channel, catching up on episodes of shows we haven’t seen in years.
About 8:15 we heard a loud knock at the garage door to the kitchen. We looked out and saw a strange car in the driveway and figured it was someone who had come to the wrong house. To our great surprise and pleasure, it was Johnny Banister, our next door neighbor from my childhood days in Artesia. We wrote about Johnny and his family back in March when he was passing through Mineola to his Mother’s funeral.
Friday, July 30
After all the different forms of excitement yesterday, today seemed pretty calm.
When Carolyn came to visit the other day Barbara asked her about the little freezer that she and Gene had purchased for their house. We’ve been thinking about one and it seemed like we could use something like that. This morning we went over to Sears to see what they had and we found a 5 cubic foot chest type freezer that looked like it would be perfect for the house. We went back to the house and asked Mother what she thought of the idea and when we explained that we have passed up meat and frozen food specials in the past because of the limited space in the refrigerator-freezer, she agreed that we could go ahead and buy the freezer we liked and put it in the garage. So, we immediately started clearing and cleaning in the garage to make room for a new appliance.
I took Mother to her rehab session at 11:00 and then picked Barbara up and we went to Sears to buy the freezer, put it in the Vibe (you can tell right away that it isn’t a big unit) and take it home to set it up and plug it in.
By the time I brought Mother home from rehab, the freezer was already cooling and one wall of the garage was looking much more orderly than it had been.
The afternoon was taken up with just the basic chores of living, but this evening we had a visit from Gene Young and Bob Royar. It seems that the Youngs and Royars came to town to eat at Paredes Restaurant and Michelle and Mary decided they needed to go shopping at Walmart. With Bob’s back giving him fits, they called to see if it was okay for the guys to come visit and the girls go shopping. They invited Barbara to go, but we had already made our Walmart run for the day, so she stayed home while we guys got caught up on the latest poop.
An hour or so later Michelle came back to pick the guys up…Mary was still shopping, and we said our goodbyes and goodnights to everyone and went back inside to end the day and head for bed.
Saturday, July 31
Can you believe it…the last day of July already…my how this year is moving right along!
The only items on our dance card for the day were to take Mother to the beauty shop at 12:15 and go to the potluck dinner at the Holiday Village clubhouse at 5:00 tonight.
Never ones to let a short dance card get in our way, Barbara started on a marathon baking session to use the zucchini squash that Gene and Michelle brought us from Kansas, and I tackled the cleaning and reorganization of the garage. Setting up the new freezer just lead to other things that we knew needed to be done, but that we had put off for too long.
By the time I took Mother to the beauty shop, I had all the yard tools hanging neatly on one wall, all the mops and brooms lined up and hanging on another wall, the floor swept, and an application of insecticide in place. And, Barbara had 13 loaves of zucchini bread and a chocolate-zucchini cake baked. (and that was just from one zucchini from Gene and Michelle’s garden in Kansas!) Don’t tell us we don’t know how to have a good time!
With the topsoil in place, I started seeding and watering all the places I’ve been filling in. There’s still several hours of work to do to finish putting in soil and seed, but the places along the fence that have been eroding are now looking much better. Of course, this probably should have been done when the temperature was UNDER 100 degrees, but sometimes it just is what it is.
Barbara spent much of her time getting all of the breads and cakes packaged and ready for either the freezer or delivery. She also fixed up two batches of cucumber and onions to deliver. Mother’s neighbors John and Wanda (across the street) and Addie (next door) are very special folks and every now and then we like to share our bounty with them. So…once everything was in the freezer, we walked over to deliver some treats. (I stopped long enough to help with the home deliveries). Then it was back to the kitchen to clean up for Barbara and outside for me.
I finished my work in time to get cleaned up and leave the house at 4:00 to go with Barbara and deliver some of her fresh-baked zucchini bread, chocolate-zucchini bread, and chocolate-zucchini cake to Gene and Carolyn over at Lake Holbrook. Gene had hip surgery a couple of weeks ago and we haven’t seen him, so this was a good opportunity to visit a bit and see what they have been doing with their house and lot (and they have been doing a lot!). We even got to see Gene’s awesome surgery scar!
We left Gene and Carolyn’s place and drove out to the clubhouse to join friends and neighbors at a really nice potluck supper…boy, do those folks know how to cook! We sat with new friends Mary and Larry and later Bob came over to talk a bit.
When dinner was over and people were picking up their dishes and leaving, we said our goodbyes around the room, went across the street to check on Big V, and then headed back to Mineola to shut down after a busy day and week.
"Teach us to give and not to count the cost." – St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits
From Mineola,
