Sunday, November 28
Happy Birthday today to Barbara Colwell Little!!! Question: What do Barbara Little and the Mother Road (that famous east-west highway) have in common? Answer: They’re both 66!
Barbara: Carol and I were up and stirring fairly early since Connie Sue was to come over at 8:00 to get her mother packed up and ready to head back to New Mexico. Carol went down to bring some breakfast back to the room as I continued to play the part of a lady of leisure! I knew Jim and I would eat an early lunch so I had decided to forego the morning meal. After checking that Carol hadn’t forgotten anything, we sat down to await her ride. Only problem was…Connie forgot to wake up! However, after a little prompting through the phone, she made it over to the hotel only about 30 minutes later than expected. Since they (Carol, Connie, Tonya, and Tamara) were headed back to Gary’s to say their good-byes to them and get the rest of their passengers, I took a couple of quick photos and waved my farewell.
Jim: I was up fairly early this morning to make sure everything in the house was ready for Sophie to come and spend time with Mother.
Sophie arrived at 8:30 and by 9:00 I had the car packed and was on the way to Shreveport and Bossier City for a birthday edition of Date Day with Barbara. After a couple of stops here in town, I hit the road, taking U.S. 80 east to Gladewater and then cutting down to I-20 for the rest of the trip, and finally arriving at the SpringHill Suites at Louisiana Downs.
I met up with Barbara and we went over to Harrah’s to play for a bit before taking in a great buffet, one in which I was able to eat all the “peel and eat” shrimp I could handle…I also sampled some great Cajun gumbo and prime rib, but the shrimp definitely made the meal!
After eating, we decided we’d go to downtown Shreveport for a while. We tried to call Gary, Carol’s son, to see about dropping by for a short visit, but no one answered the phone, so we went down to the Horseshoe to enjoy the entertainment there for a couple of hours before returning to Harrah’s and then the SpringHill Suites for the evening.
Monday, November 29
We took our time getting up and around this morning. While Barbara was going through her morning routine, I took advantage of the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet to get my morning nourishment. I always enjoy eating there…lots of good food and no reason to rush through it.
Once we checked out, we drove back down to the Horseshoe to play some more. Our enjoyment was greatly enhanced when Barbara hit for a nearly $800 jackpot on a penny machine, allowing us a little more time to play, but leaving us with enough of our senses to get the heck out of there while we were far ahead.
We got away from Shreveport around 12:30, stopped for gas and lunch along the way, and then drove through a stretch of bad rain for a bit before hitting clear skies and dry pavement for the rest of the trip back to Mineola. We arrived at the house just a few minutes before 3:00, visited with Sophie for a few minutes before she went home, and then began unpacking and putting things away.
Barbara: One of the first things I noticed when we walked into Edith’s was that there was a chocolate pie sitting on the kitchen bar…I had told TJ that I’d love to have a chocolate pie for my birthday since her pies taste exactly like I remember my mother making! They are sooooooo yummy! Boy, we could sure drag out this birthday thing! While Jim was taking a pic of me and my pie, he also took another one of me in my Emergency Numbers shirt from Carol. What an awesome 66th I had!
Tuesday, November 30
I got up early this morning to go to prayer meeting out at Yantis. Mother woke up about the same time I did, so I helped her get set up for the morning…propped in bed with coffee, newspaper, and the TV remote.
I was hoping to work around Big V for two or three hours after prayer meeting, but it was 39 degrees out and the wind was blowing, so I decided I’d just have to wait until another day to work outside. I took time to do some measurements for my next project and then returned to Mineola, where I found Barbara moving Christmas decorations into the house.
We spent several hours combing through all the decorations and deciding what we could use and where we could use it. By the time we got through, we had the living room and dining room tastefully decorated…nothing that was in-your-face Christmas, but enough set out and arranged that we were very comfortable with our efforts.
We debated whether to go ahead and buy a set tonight. After all, there were quite a few of that model on the racks, and we could surely come back next week and get one. We walked around for a bit and looked at other items before I said that we might ought to go ahead and get the TV we wanted for Mother instead of taking any chances. So, I got another cart, loaded the TV into it, and we finished our looking and shopping and headed home.
Once we got back to the house, we decided that it was foolish to hide the TV in the garage for the next 25 days when Mother could be enjoying it, so we called TJ and invited her to a special Christmas brunch for Mother tomorrow morning. That would give us tonight to unpack the set and figure out how it worked.
When we got Mother settled in for the evening, we disconnected the little TV in the living room, moved it to the garage, moved the new set into the living room, unpacked it, and then started the hookup process. Even following the directions, it took longer than I thought it would to figure out how to get the CD/DVD player hooked up, and all the different functions figured out. Once we did, though, we were just blown away by the quality of the picture and sound…there was no doubt in our minds that Mother was going to love this thing!
We spent the rest of the evening working at our computers and watching the new TV (and trying to figure out how we were going to hide it from Mother and TJ tomorrow morning.
Wednesday, December 1
Today was the First Day of Christmas, at least at Mother’s house. We got up fairly early and started to work on the day’s agenda.
While Barbara started gathering the ingredients for her sausage quiche, I made a quick Walmart run to get a few things we needed for groceries and a set of component cables to finish the hookup of the new TV.
Once back at the house, I hid the new TV behind one of the couches and put the old one back in place and then went to the kitchen to help Barbara get breakfast ready.
TJ came over around 9:30 and we sat down to a delightful brunch of Italian sweet sausage quiche, fresh grapes, and toasted homemade Russian rye bread…you can believe us when we say that no one waddled away hungry!
When the meal was finished and the table cleared, we walked Mother and TJ into the living room and had them sit down. Then, we told them to close their eyes until we told them to open them. While Barbara watched to make sure no one cheated, I went behind the couch, took the little TV down from the table, and replaced it with the new TV. Barbara then read a little poem we had written earlier in the morning and told Mother and TJ to open their eyes and picture the new TV in Mother’s room…to say that Mother and TJ were surprised would be an understatement.
We ran through some of the channels to see what a great picture Mother would be receiving, and then TJ had to leave to go to a doctor appointment. We had already told Mother that we would be watching Forrest Gump this morning…just didn’t tell her that we would be watching it on a new TV.
Mother told us she had never seen Forrest Gump, (we were lucky enough to borrow a copy of it from Becky when we were in New Mexico) so this morning we just sat in the living room, closed the blinds to keep out the glare of the bright sun, and enjoyed ourselves as we watched the show. Mother enjoyed the movie and Barbara and I were amazed at how much of the movie we had forgotten.
After the movie, we got Mother back to the recliner in her room and we set about removing the old TV (which seemed to weigh about 900 pounds today) and replacing it with her new TV. Since I had already hooked all the components together (and because the new TV weighs only 20 pounds), it didn’t take long until we had Mother’s entertainment center up and running for her viewing pleasure.
Kendra, Mother’s nurse from At-Home Healthcare, came to the house a little after 1:00 and spent about an hour visiting with Mother while we tried to clean up and straighten all the little messes we made throughout the day.
Later in the afternoon I went to the vet’s office to get pet meds for the puppies and a case of canned dog food for Spike. Since moving in with Mother last January, we’ve learned that a lot of what we do revolves around fixed routines…for example, Spike and Bonita each take a pill and have a flea and tick medication rubbed into their necks once a month…those days are marked on the calendar and we follow them about as religiously as possible. To add to the routine, I change out the furnace/air conditioner filter once a month, so we’ve established the 1st of each month as the day to do all that.
To top it all off, since today is Wednesday and the garbage man will come tomorrow, we went through our regular Wednesday routine of gathering and bagging all the trash and setting it out on the front sidewalk for pickup early tomorrow morning. Whew…doctor the puppies, change the filter, bag and take out the trash…how much more fulfilling could our lives be?!!!
Jim: I had an appointment with the dermatologist this morning. Luckily, I was able to get this appointment in Quitman, saving the hassle of driving to and through Tyler. In case our constant readers haven’t figured it out, we do not like going to Tyler or driving through it and will avoid those activities whenever possible. So, instead of a half day of misery, I had only to drive ten minutes to the office in Quitman where Mr. Gautier, the PA for Dermatology Associates of Tyler, examined my face and scalp, picked up his magic freezing machine, and hit me with about 15 shots of liquid nitrogen (or whatever he is now using to inflict great pain on a small area). After that treatment, Mr. Gautier declared me good to go and said he’d see me in another six months.
When I was finished at the clinic, I drove to Yantis to get the MP3 player and Lisa’s presentation from yesterday’s Bible study, visited with Pastor David and Missy, our church secretary, for a few minutes, went across the street and bought another large box of sweet potatoes to carry us through the next month or so, swung by Holiday Villages to get some things that Barbara needed from Big V, and then returned to the house in Mineola to “start” the day.
I got home to find that Barbara had already tackled the morning chores…getting Mother up and around, fixing breakfast, starting the laundry, straightening the kitchen, etc. There’s always something that needs doing around here, especially in the mornings, and fortunately for me, Barbara had nearly all of it handled by the time I arrived.
After we had a chance to talk a bit and I filled Barbara in on what Mr. Gautier had done and said, we went to Walmart to see what we could find in the way of outdoor Christmas decorations. We’d been told by the neighbors that our neighborhood really dresses itself up for Christmas and we didn’t want to be the only Grinch House on the block.
We had already decided that outdoor lights on the house were out of the question for this year, but we did find some things to add color and Christmas decoration to the front porch and took them back to the house to see what we could do with them. Barbara, who has a much finer eye for decorations than I do, worked her magic with some odds and ends she found in the old boxes of decorations, and soon we had the porch looking a lot like Christmas…new flower arrangements in the hanging pots, and the new decorations placed just the way we wanted. As with the inside, we wanted sense of the season without a full-blown, in-your-face shout-out.
We spent the afternoon and evening doing not much of anything significant…just reading, watching a little TV, and listening to seasonal background music…just a nice, quiet time at home with the three of us.
Friday, December 3
Today was another quiet day around the place. We got the usual morning chores and activities out of the way and then Barbara started “building” a pot of sweet potato soup for lunch. It’s a recipe that takes several hours, but is worth every minute of the time it takes.
While Barbara was slaving in the kitchen, I went to Walmart to find one more outdoor decoration to balance the display on the porch. On the way back to the house, I stopped at the pharmacy to visit with an insurance representative to see if there might be a better prescription plan for Mother for next year. Mother is now in that infamous “Donut Hole” in her prescription plan and with the number of high-dollar meds she takes for Parkinsonism, the last two months have added some interesting expenses.
I visited with Dennis, the representative, for a few minutes, explained Mother’s situation and gave him a list of her meds, and then set an appointment for 11:00 tomorrow morning to come back and see if, like Ford Motor Company, he had a better idea.
Back at the house we waited for the sweet potato soup to finish cooking while Barbara tackled the monthly bills and I did some odd jobs around the place. TJ came over and joined us for a late lunch…soup and grilled cheese sandwiches made with my homemade Russian rye bread.
We had another quiet evening. Since the sun goes down so early now, we seem to be settled down by 6:00, watching TV, playing or working at the computers, or tackling the odd chores that we missed during the day.
Saturday, December 4
Happy Birthday to Susie Francis in Hobbs, New Mexico!!!
As Saturdays go, this was a fairly quiet one for us. Mother woke up at 5:00 this morning, but went back to sleep, so we were a little slower than usual getting the morning activities accomplished.
While Barbara took care of the laundry chores, I went back to the pharmacy to visit with the prescription insurance representative. Unfortunately for Mother, Barbara’s work was much more successful than mine. The rep told me that he had checked everything as carefully as he could and decided that as much as he’d like to sell us a plan, he couldn’t do any better than what Mother already has…so, we’ll just continue with the plan and hope that drug costs will somehow decrease next year.
During lunch we listened to part of the webcast of Artesia’s football game with Aztec. When we finished eating and I got Mother up from the table to go back to her room, she surprised us by going to the living room and saying that she wanted to sit and listen to the game. So, we just sat here with the computer feeding us the audio (because it was a championship game there wasn’t a video feed) and cheering on our hometown Bulldogs.
Artesia held a narrow 23 – 21 lead at halftime and the game remained nip and tuck until Aztec made a couple of mistakes, turning the ball over to the Bulldogs, but still fighting hard to the end. When the game was finished, Artesia had outscored the Tigers and earned their 27th New Mexico High School Activities Association state football championship…what a game…what a victory…and what a record!
I was an eighth grader at Artesia Junior High when the Bulldogs won their first ever football state championship in 1957 and after that, it became a local tradition to spend most Thanksgiving days at a championship game. Times have changed and the playoffs have extended past the Thanksgiving holidays, but the tradition of excellence has continued since one of the sons of our high school football coach took over the reins years ago.
This afternoon Barbara started another large pot of sweet potato soup for us to take to the church Christmas dinner tomorrow. While that was going, we finished labeling and packaging this week’s Bible study lesson on Psalm 23. We’ll take the discs to church tomorrow morning for distribution.
This evening we had Sophie come over and watch Mother for a couple of hours while we went to Holiday Villages for the monthly bingo night. Tonight we sat at a table with our neighbors, Bubba and Margaret, Preacher Elton and his wife Wanda (Elton conducts the non-denominational worship service in the clubhouse each Sunday morning), and Joan, another neighbor. This was the first time for all of us to sit together as a group, and we found that we kept each other in stitches all night. Sandy, the caller, wondered what was so funny at our table that we weren’t focusing on the games. I even got so caught up in what we were laughing about that I almost missed seeing that I won a game, and barely had time to yell, “Bingo!” before Sandy called the next number. It was a fun way to finish out the week, and we even got a $10.00 Walmart card out of the deal because of my win. (Bubba & Margaret in bottom 2 photos while Elton and Wanda are on the bottom right) Somehow we missed Joan’s pic…that will be a must for next time!
"If you can put yourself in other people's shoes and wish other people the shoes that you like best yourself, we have a recipe for better relationships with each other." - Zlata Filipovic’, author of Stolen Voices: Young Peoples’ War Diaries from WWI to Iraq
From Mineola with love,
Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
