Sunday, January 30
This was about as typical Sunday as we could have. Sophie came to the house at 8:30 and helped Mother get ready for church while Barbara and I left for Yantis and our usual schedule of activities…fellowship breakfast, Sunday school, and another wonderful sermon/lesson from David, still leading us through the Book of Nehemiah.
After church we stopped at Big V to unload some things from the car and put them away. We had originally thought of staying at Big V this afternoon, but the weather was turning wet and cold, so we decided to go on back to Mineola, have some lunch with Mother, and then take our Sunday nap while the rain showers came down all around us.
This evening we went back to Yantis for choir practice (Barbara went to the Dollar General to do some shopping while I was helping other make a joyful noise) and then we went to the evening service where David is teaching and preaching from Paul’s epistle to the Romans.
We returned to the house at 7:30 and settled in for a quiet evening of working at our computers and putting finishing touches on last week’s journal.
Barbara: During our computer time, I received an email that someone sent with all these props around their baby. I was so taken by the creativity that I knew I needed to share the idea! The Odyssey of the Mind coach must still be in me because I could visualize others tweaking and making their own ideas come alive; so I chose to share it to with Barbara, Jean’s granddaughter in Victoria, who is always doing something cool and interesting with her precious Henry. Sometime, later in the week, I received these photos which brightened our day!
This was a busy morning for both of us. We got up fairly early and hit the deck running. While Barbara stayed home to take care of all the early morning routines for Mother…get her up to the bathroom, get her back to bed, give morning meds, start TV (Fox News, of course), eye drops, nasal spray, newspaper, etc, I took the Vibe to Walmart for a long overdue service procedure and ended up buying a couple of new tires also.
By the time I finished my running around and taking care of errands, Barbara had Mother dressed and ready to go for an outing with TJ. TJ needed to go to Big Sandy and thought she’d take Mother along for a ride through the Piney Woods and into some of the areas that Mother had grown up in.
Barbara told me that while I was gone, Mother was so excited about her outing that she got out of bed on her own, hunted through the closet for what she wanted to wear, and just propelled herself all over that room until she found everything she wanted! It was exciting to watch!
While Mother and TJ were out doing their thing, Barbara and I took advantage of the time off to go to Lindale and take care of some business. We did some shop-looking at Cracker Barrel…didn’t find what we wanted, unfortunately, but had a good time anyway…and then went to the RV place to buy a couple of things for Big V and check on some future repair work.
On the way back to the house we stopped at the GMC place in Mineola to look at cars, but couldn’t find what we wanted or anyone who would help us find what we wanted to look at, so we left.
We got back to the house shortly after Mother did. No one was hungry, so we took early naps today and then got busy again. I worked on the journal/blog while Barbara set up a Facebook page for her sister Carol.
When Barbara was finished at the computer she turned her attention to calling florists to find out how to care for a plant that Jerry and Nancy Terpening gave us at Jimmy Clint’s funeral. It is supposed to be indestructible, but it wasn’t working out for us. Barbara called the florist in Lubbock to find out what it was (a Peace Lily) and how to give it the love and respect it needs.
This evening we went to Walmart to find a new pot for the plant (it was too root bound and needed more space), but we didn’t have enough potting soil at the house to transplant it tonight…besides, it was miserably cold and we didn’t want to disturb the plant more than necessary, so we put that job off until I can get out to Big V and pick up a couple of bags of soil we have there.
Wow…this is the last day of January…2011 is barreling right along!
Tuesday, February 1
I had a rough night last night…got up with Mother at 1:30 and although she went right back to sleep, I tossed and turned until after 3:00 before dropping off. When the alarm went off at 5:45, I found that Barbara was already up and in the dining room. I went ahead and started the coffee pot, but decided that because it was raining so hard we could barely see across the street, and the temperatures were steadily dropping below freezing, I’d not go to Yantis this morning for the prayer meeting. Instead, I had a cup of coffee and then returned to bed and fell asleep again.
When I woke up at 8:00, Barbara had already gotten Mother up and going on her morning routine and was fixing breakfast. Barbara served Mother in bed and then we went to the kitchen to eat.
After eating, Barbara took her shower while I waited to see if Mother was going to need anything and then we all waited for the speech therapist and the physical therapy evaluator to come in and do their bit.
When Mary and Becky got here, Barbara stayed with them and I drove out to Our Little Lot to pick up a few things we needed and to turn off the water. The arctic blast that was dropping snow everywhere else was mainly dropping temperatures in our region and we weren’t supposed to get back up to 32 degrees for a couple more days, so we figured we’d better do all we could to protect Big V.
The rest of the day was pretty lazy. Barbara fixed her chicken crock pot pie for lunch, but we didn’t eat until nearly 3:30…no one seemed to be in a hurry for much of anything.
Michelle and Gene Young came by around 5:00 and we spent the next hour and a half visiting, eating, and playing Chickenfoot. We always have a lot of fun when we have visitors here and tonight was no different…very little talk about schools (which is what we did when we first met Gene and Michelle) and a lot more about what is going on in our lives now.
We didn’t have time for a complete round of Chickenfoot, so we made our own arbitrary quitting point (The Youngs needed to return to Holiday Villages to take care of their hunting dogs) and then we took time for the winner (Barbara) to take a picture of the three losers in tonight’s contest; and, no, the band aid on Gene’s face wasn’t from a particularly rough game of Chickenfoot. We get verbal, but not very physical.
Wednesday, February 2
It’s Groundhog Day…How much more winter will YOU have?!!
Depending on when our local groundhog got up and around, we may or may not have an extended winter. It was cloudy early, but the clouds didn’t stick around for long. So, if the groundhog slept in this morning that could be good news for us.
We spent the morning getting ready for a date day and an overnight trip. We first thought we’d get away around 10:30 or 11:00, but nothing seemed to go on schedule, so it was noon before we finally got errands run, the car packed, and had Sophie in place to spend the day and night with Mother.
Our first stop, after checking at the Mineola post office, was in Longview, where we have a favorite country store. It is a part of a chain in which we have found some of our favorite gift items. Today we were looking for a house-warming gift for a special friend and, luckily, found something we liked. We were going to mail it from Longview, but didn’t have our packaging materials with us, so we just boxed it up and left it in the car for another day.
From Longview we got back onto I-20 East and drove to downtown Bossier City for a few hours and then to our hotel. We’ve been needing some new pictures for the blog posting and to share with family members and were able to set the camera for a few shots before we went out again.
Thursday, February 3
Happy Chinese New Year…The Year of the Rabbit!
We took our own sweet time getting around this morning…even had a little fun with the camera as Barbara was putting on her makeup before we went to the lobby to build our own breakfast. We were staying at one of the Marriott properties, one that we especially enjoy, and the breakfast buffet suits us just fine.
We then spent a couple of hours in downtown Bossier City before leaving to return to Mineola. We stopped on the outskirts of Shreveport to gas up the Vibe and grab a couple of burgers at Sonic and then pointed the car west on I-20.
On the way home we stopped at the Sprint store in Longview to see about upgrading our phones and wireless card for the computers. The last time we got new phones we were in Tennessee and decided, for some really dumb reason, to go simple. We haven’t been pleased with our phones since then, and decided we’d go as high-tech as we could afford this time around.
The store was full when we went in and we were about to give up and leave when one of the salesmen, Todd, called our name. We explained what we were looking for and asked what was available for an upgrade. Todd showed us a couple of units they had and we decided on a couple of Sprint LG phones with the slide-out keyboards for easier texting. By the time Todd finished with us, I was signed up for texting (Barbara had added that feature to her phone last year), we had two new phones, and a remarkable new wi-fi hotspot that will handle up to five computers simultaneously. Boy…did we make a quantum leap into the 21st century today!
We got back to the house around 4:30, got squared away with Sophie, and then unpacked the car and put everything away. Most of the evening was spent trying to figure out our new phones and the wi-fi set-up, but by bedtime we were up and running with all the new equipment, even if we weren’t sure which direction we were running.
Friday, February 4
Happy Birthday today to son-in-law Andy Dondis in Richardson, Texas!!!!
I woke up at 5:00 this morning when I received a call from John in San Antonio…seems that when I was programming the new phone last night I accidently called John’s cell number, but he didn’t see it until he woke up. John said it was snowing in San Antonio and they were locked in at the house for the day. He also said that the storm was headed our direction.
When I finished with John, I found that Barbara woke up at 4:30 and she told me the storm was already here in Mineola…I looked out the front windows, and sure enough, the ground was covered with snow and there was plenty more falling. The beauty of it was that except for rare small wind gusts, it was a vertical snow, rather than the horizontal snowstorms that folks out west were experiencing.
We made the decision that we would just hunker down for the day and see what happened, but that we definitely would not go to Yantis to pick up the MP3 recorder at the church so we could burn discs of this week’s Bible study lesson; nor would we venture out to the post office…whatever is there will be there tomorrow.
Barbara decided that I needed a Facebook page of my own, so she spent most of the morning building one for me while I turned my attention to the cooking duties for the day. With a cold, snowy day outside, I worked on a breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuits, and grits which the three of us enjoyed around 9:30. Then, while Barbara continued working through the complications of setting up the Facebook page (nothing is ever as easy as it should be), I started building a pot of beef stew and some homemade jalapeno bread for lunch whenever we got around to it.
We took breaks from time to time to go out to the garage to watch the snowfall and take pictures of the neighborhood. In order to preserve the blanket of snow in front of the house, I put on my boots and walked out through the back yard and the lot next to us so I could get across the street and take pictures of the front of the house. We also got some good shots of Addie’s house next door and John and Wanda’s house across the street. Maybe on a hot day in July they will want to remember some of the cool weather we are having now.
When we got back up, Barbara put the finishing touches on my new Facebook page and I took it for a test drive…still don’t know much about it, but Barbara is a good coach and I’m sure she’ll be able to talk me through the intricacies of the thing.
We gathered around the table at 3:30 for stew and bread and some mealtime conversation. When we were finished and Mother was back in her recliner in her room, I took some stew and bread to John and Wanda and to Addie. None of them had gotten out either, so all of us finally got to see someone outside our own homes today.
During the course of the day we got a message from the church that our special speaker who was scheduled for Sunday services is unable to get here because of the weather. Sunday morning activities will go ahead as usual and there will be no formal service Sunday night…just the Super Bowl and chili cook-off fellowship.
This evening Barbara started building a new recipe that she learned from Mary at Bible study last week. It’s a breakfast casserole that’s made of slices of bread covered with a sausage, egg, and cheese mixture. She fried up some sweet Italian sausage (one of our favorite sausages), mixed the eggs, milk, and cheese and poured them over the bread, and put the pan in the refrigerator so everything could set up overnight. The baking will begin tomorrow morning.
Tonight we made a few phone calls, worked on the journal/blog, read and wrote on Facebook, and played computer games. There wasn’t anything interesting on TV, so we just turned on some background music and chilled (literally and figuratively) for the evening.
Saturday, February 5
Wow…the sun finally came out this morning! It’s the first time since Wednesday that we’ve seen it here.
Barbara and I were both up with Mother at 1:00 this morning and then Mother and I were up at 3:00. After all of us getting back to sleep, Mother was up again at 6:45 and ready to start her day, so we hit the deck running. Barbara started the oven and got the casserole that she built last night going.
The casserole was a big hit and is sure to become a part of our breakfast menu rotation…fairly easy to make, and since it sits overnight in the refrigerator, it’s perfect for mornings when all we need is time to bake and serve it.
Mother decided after she ate that she’d just nap a while longer, so Barbara and I used the time to get caught up on our journal writing and Facebook interactions.
Around 11:30 we ventured into the world around us to go to the pharmacy, bank, post office, and to pay some bills. The temperature came up enough that it felt comfortable outside and the radiant heat was clearing the roads quite nicely.
When we got back to the house, Barbara started to work designing and arranging the photo collages and adding her part of the text or this week’s entry. We hadn’t done a whole lot, but the trip to Shreveport and the snowstorm gave us lots of pictures to choose from.
Barbara fixed some rice and meatballs and we heated up the leftover stew and bread from yesterday and had a nice lunch and conversation time with Mother before taking a little time for an afternoon nap…the “early morning” start was starting to wear on all of us.
This afternoon I went out to check the mail and decided that I could get a good “day after the blizzard” shot with the camera. Our rain gauge indicated a little over 1 ¼ inches of water out of the snow, which we estimated at 6 inches at one time yesterday. It was some heavy, wet snow, so we got lots of good moisture out of it. I was just sorry that I hadn’t gotten the winterizer put down on the lawn before this storm showed up.
This evening we just kicked back and relaxed…nowhere to go and not much to do except finish the journal for the week and catch up with folks on Facebook.
“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility." - Albert Schweitzer, German philosopher, musician, theologian and physician
A quiet Saturday night in Mineola,
Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
