Sunday, October 11
It was a pretty chilly morning as we headed off to the morning service at First Baptist Church. When we got there, we found that Pastor Rick was not here this weekend, but the pulpit was very ably filled by the new administrative pastor, Joey White. He delivered a very meaningful message; one that hit us right where we needed to be hit today.
After church we went directly to the laundromat to do several loads of clothes. It’s getting hard for us to understand why, when we really don’t wear a lot of different clothes, the hamper is always full…guess it’s just another of life’s mysteries. While Barbara stayed to watch the washing machines, I drove over to Sonic to purchase our Sunday banquet...there’s just nothing like fine dining in the parking lot of a laundromat!
With the clothes all washed, dried, and folded, we returned to Big V to take our traditional Sunday afternoon nap. It was, after all, a cold and windy afternoon…no chance of getting outside to work (even if we had been inclined to do so), and therefore almost a sign that doing nothing was perfectly in order.
Jerry and Nancy invited us over to their house for a wiener roast this evening, so we rode over with Jean to stay out of the cold as much as possible. When we got there, we found that the plans had changed and Jerry was cooking our tube steaks on the outdoor grill instead of the traditional fire. Nancy was inside putting the finishing touches on all the “extras” that go with hotdogs and soon we sat down to a table laden with sauerkraut, relishes, chili, onions, and other assorted goodies.
Becky was absent from tonight’s wingding since she was really feeling yucky…I missed “picking” on her…she says all I do is give her a hard time. Can’t imagine why she would feel that way!
When the meal was over, we all pitched in to clear the table and get the dishes ready for washing and then sat down around the table for a rousing session of Wits and Wagers, a relatively new game that we really enjoy.
Monday, October 12
Happy Columbus Day, America!!!
While Barbara worked on getting our journal/blog entries up-to-date, I tackled some house cleaning chores, mainly scrubbing the bathroom. It isn’t one of my favorite jobs around Big V, but it is one that needs doing on a regular basis, and it hadn’t been done regularly enough lately.
Later in the morning Jerry called and asked if we could give him a hand in putting up an extension on their TV antenna (he had asked about it last night and we told him to just holler whenever he was ready). We trekked across the lot and in almost no time, with Jerry and me standing on ladders to maneuver the extension into place and Barbara handing us tools, we had the antenna up and (we suppose) working. Luckily, the wind wasn’t up to speed yet, so the job was accomplished fairly easily.
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Tonight was just a kick back and relax time.
Tuesday, October 13
Happy Birthday, Becky R., in Lubbock!
I spent the morning doing some straightening and filing in my “office” area of Big V. I’ve let the mail and other “stuff” pile up to the point that something finally had to be done about it. Meanwhile, Barbara continued to hammer away at the journal and blog. We are way behind on writing and posting our entries and have the dream of getting current this week.
Artesia hosted the regional high school marching band contest this afternoon, so while I watched the smaller schools present their performances, Barbara went out and did some shopping for the younger grandchildren before returning to Bulldog Bowl to see the presentations by Roswell Goddard, Artesia, Carlsbad, and Hobbs.
It was a beautiful evening in the bowl, perfect conditions for marching bands to strut their stuff, and Artesia did just that with their presentation of Indiana Jones Meets the Pirates of the Caribbean. Tom Dillon, the AHS band director, arranged all of the music and designed the show (believe it or not, a rarity among band directors these days) and the Bulldog Band played and executed the show with great precision and enthusiasm, earning a Superior rating from the three Texas judges.
We can’t write about the band without telling about the great amount of support it receives from the school and community.
Monday was a holiday and an opportunity for the band to get in some extra practice time.
They started their day with a breakfast provided by the football coaching staff. As the band entered the stadium prior to their performance tonight, the entire football team and coaching staff set up a victory line and gave high fives to the individual band members as they passed through.
Wednesday, October 14
Jean told us last night that we wouldn’t be having the regular Chaos Lunch Bunch today (Jerry and Susie had a board meeting to attend and Jean had to work through the lunch hour), so we went into full work mode for the day.
Barbara spent the morning finishing the last of the “late” journal entries and got it posted to the blog site. Hallelujah, that albatross has lifted off and we can now focus on the present instead of the past (and quit trying to figure out what we meant my all those scribbles and cryptic notes and quotes that had been stacking up).
While Barbara was editing and publishing, I went outside to do some more hoeing, raking, trash hauling, and mowing. By noon I was finished cleaning out three of the four fence lines that enclose Jean’s four acres of property.
During the afternoon I tackled the job of cleaning out the area under one of the fourteen large pecan trees that Jean has around her house. The pecans have already started falling, a little earlier than usual, but at least a sign there should be a pretty good crop this year. Today’s work was as much to gauge the time it will take to clear under each tree as it was to get this one cleaned. The work isn’t difficult, but it is time-consuming and tedious, and I found that I need to figure on spending close to two hours on raking, sifting, and sorting the pecans and hauling away the trash…hmmm…looks like we’ll be spending a week to ten days at this job.
Thursday, October 15
Last night the moon was a sight to behold and then this morning watching the sunrise was another inspiring moment…both of which we tried to document with the camera…obviously, our camera isn’t expensive enough to really do justice to the beauty we witnessed…nevertheless, we tried.
The first two trees I cleaned under took a little over an hour apiece and I finished the second one just as Barbara returned from the laundromat, so I took a break to go back to Big V and help carry in and put away the clean clothes. With both of us working at it, the job didn’t last long and soon I was back outside, enjoying a gorgeous day and making some progress with the trees.
Meanwhile, Barbara swung into a full-scale cooking mode and whipped up a new recipe, crock pot lasagna…what an easy way to cook up a familiar dish!
When I finally finished with the row of five trees, I fired up the riding lawnmower and started mowing under them to get the grass short enough that we could see the pecans when they really begin to come down. One thing led to another, and a couple of hours later I had mowed down the entire east side of Jean’s property and was once again too filthy to even get in Big V; but, the lot looked great!
Jerry called during the afternoon and invited us to join Nancy and him for a concert at the Ocotillo Performing Arts Center tonight. We almost said no, but decided that maybe it would be fun after all, so we rearranged our schedule to allow us to get cleaned up and presentable.
When we were finally fit to be seen in public, we took the lasagna and some garlic toast over to Jean’s house to share the meal with her until it was time to go to town.
The concert tonight was by “Project,” a truly great jazz trio featuring a flutist, a bassist, and a cellist, all of whom started on their instruments at early ages and are classically trained musicians. We spent a couple of hours being entertained, educated, and amazed at the virtuosity that each of the musicians demonstrated and how well they played off of each other. I think our favorite piece of the evening was their own jazz arrangement (along with dialogue) of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf; they took great liberties with both music and text, but the basics were there and the arrangement could be great fun for young listeners.
Friday, October 16
I began the morning very early so I could attend the Friday morning Methodist Men’s Prayer Breakfast at the hospital cafeteria. When we were here before, the breakfast was cooked at the church (Jerry was the chief cook and bottle washer), but over the summer they moved it to the hospital cafeteria where, for only a couple of dollars apiece (and no cooking or cleanup) they could get a very good meal and have space and time for the weekly devotional and prayer time.
When I got back to Big V, Barbara was finishing her breakfast and we decided we’d go to town, do some shopping at WalMart, and post some mail that we needed to send out.
When we finished with our shopping, we decided to check to see if we could get haircuts while we were there. The Style Shop was closed, but was supposed to open in a few minutes at 9:00. No one except customers) was there at 9:00, but we figured we’d just wait around until someone finally opened the shop, which did happen around 9:15. There were two ladies ahead of us, one of whom was getting a perm, so the stylist told us to come back in an hour or so to get our cuts.
We couldn’t decide whether to hang around the store, go to Sonic for a coke, or just go for a ride while we were waiting; finally Barbara suggested that we drive out behind the airport to see what we could of the FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) complex out there. The main campus is in plain sight just north of town, but we’ve seen busloads of students traveling on a road that leads behind the airport and decided to see (if we could) where they were going.
After winding around a bit, we could clearly see the three Boeing 747’s that were brought to Artesia to train Federal Air Marshalls to deal with hijacking and hostage situations. I also spotted the great mounds of dirt that were the backstops for the firing range (we wake up each morning and go to bed at night to the sound of automatic weapons firing.) We also saw part of the driving track where prospective agents and officers practice chases and stops. Their night exercises provide a nice balance of sirens against the background noise from the firing range.
When we drove far enough to see the main gate (FLETC is guarded almost as strongly as any military facility), we decided we’d seen all we could see and looked for a place to turn around…after all, it wouldn’t do to be loitering around the place and it WAS time to get back to WalMart.
We had only a short wait before we finally got to sit down and get our cuts. When I was finished and Barbara took her place in the chair, I went on to the post office and then came back and picked her up. Neither of us was particularly thrilled about the quality of the cuts…it’s very difficult to get anyone to understand exactly what we want, but we were less shaggy and that’s a big part of what counted.
We went back to Big V and had a bite of lunch and then I went back out to pick up pecans and hulls under the tree at the front entrance to Jean’s lot. That particular tree had a large number of nuts and hulls that had fallen, so it took about an hour and a half to get the area cleaned and raked. I decided that was enough for one day, put away my tools, and went back to Big V for a short nap.
Tonight I went to the Artesia/Clovis football game with Jerry and Nancy. It was a beautiful night for football, but unfortunately, it wasn’t a good night for the hometown Bulldogs as they were steamrollered by the 5-A Wildcats and fell to a 4-3 record on the season. The ‘Dogs have done well against 3-A, 4-A, and a couple of 5-A teams and have been beaten only by top-ranked 5-A schools. They should be well-seasoned as they head into their district schedule in a couple of weeks.
Barbara stayed home and listened to the game on the radio (until it became a rout) and then switched on the TV to watch one of her favorite shows, taking time out to have a large tray of nachos ready for me when I got back to Big V.
Saturday, October 17
This quickly became a very lazy day for us. I had thoughts of getting up early and doing some work outside, but those thoughts evaporated when we both slept in until nearly 7:30. We just took our time moving around, had some breakfast, and then I settled in to watch the Texas/Oklahoma football game from the Cotton Bowl at 10:00. I don’t know that there is much to say about the game except that it was a victory for my team, but it was an ugly one; and, I did get to watch former Artesia quarterback Landry Jones lead the Sooners after Sam Bradford went down. Because of Landry, many more Artesians now cheer for Oklahoma, but I can’t be counted among the converts (sorry about that, Lance and Jill Stout), but I do enjoy watching Landry play.
When the game was finally over, we drove downtown to take part in the annual Arts in the Park celebration at Central Park. There were around 130 tents and booths set up in the park with vendors hawking all kinds of food, drinks, and other items for sale. The main attraction for us was the annual band boosters’ cakewalk, an event in which I participated over 50 years ago when I was in the Artesia Junior High Band. (48 years ago when Barbara moved to Artesia as a senior, she got to participate in it, too.)
The cakewalk is one of the main fundraising projects for the band program and features performances by all of the bands as 60 walkers at a time trek around two circles of numbers painted on the pavement in hopes of being in a winning slot when the music ends. We walked and walked and walked, but came no closer to winning than being in slots next to the winning numbers…must have been a sign that we really didn’t need any cakes around our place.
When the high school band finished playing and the cakewalk was over, the auction of homemade cakes began, with bids ranging from 50 to 100 dollars and all the proceedings going to help support the bands.
We decided to not take part in the auction; instead, we wandered around the park looking at merchandise (and even buying a couple of things for special gifts later on) and ended up at a booth where we bought a couple of hamburgers…it had been a long time since breakfast this morning!
I asked one of the men at the tent who we were supporting and he explained that they were first responders who helped with the “Ride With a Hero” program in town. The money they raise allows them to take selected needy children out at Christmas to buy them something special. That, in itself, was a good idea, but to top it off, they take the kids to the store in the emergency vehicles and the children get to sound the sirens, play with the emergency lights, and talk to each other on the vehicle radios.
When we finished with our burgers, we went to the Artesia Arts Council booth to get diet Cokes and give Becky a little grief. Over the past couple of years Becky has learned to give as good as she gets and pretty soon we had even had other workers in the booth joining in the banter.
With our day-in-the-park activities concluded, we walked back to the funeral home parking lot to get the Vibe, drove to the post office to send out a couple of pieces of mail, and then returned home. We went over to see Jean for a few minutes and I ended up staying until after midnight watching football and then watching the Angels find a way to lose to the @##$% Yankees in the thirteenth inning.
“God’s gifts come wrapped in people.” – Church Signs
From our Artesia home,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
