another day,

no more dollars. Oh well. The weather is cooling a little bit, and everyhthing helps when we have been running wellover 100 for a couple of months. We all pray for rain and occasionally we get about 20 minutes worth.

I've not posted lately, because I have difficulty using my left hand and arm. One doctor thinks the arm is broken, one says no, it is riddled with arthritis and osteoporosis. When I told him I don't have osteoporosis, he disagreed, saying it is impossible to be 77 and not have it. I shall tell him I will appreciate a test to prove that. We have no reliable dianosis for my pain (which kept me up till nearly three this morning) but I plan to not be cooperative about waiting weeks and weeks for an appointment and roar that I need one NOW. I expect we will need further tests to accurately diagnose this continuing problem. I cannot even chop onions, Dad is a little stunned that he actually has to peel them completely before chopping. He keeps giving me "why does this matter?" looks. I finally slept this morning about 3 AM, after hydrocodone, ice and prayer, listening to psalms - very soothing.

Nancy is still bringing me a mid sized chest of drawers for the bedroom, but shehas been covered up with various responsibilities. Mb will be here the 19th, and hopefully we can knock out the rest of this mass of paper.

Dad played golf his past week for the first timein several months. He enjoyed it, playing with a friend, and his game hadn't slipped too very much. He will be 84 very soon. At this point, neither of us really wants much that we don't already have. His blood tests were outstanding! Our doctor was dubious about us trying the Nutri system for diabetics, but it has been a miracle. His only problem was a possibly too low blood pressure. The dizziness problem seems solved since he has picked up his monthly B-12 shots. He had forgotten to go in each month.

The garden is a jungle at this point. Needs weeding and cutting back - one of these days. I have been forced to learn what can take care of itself in this alkaline soil and punishing heat, and those things which are adapted are actually still blooming. Probably some fertilizer would help. We make slow progress on trying to do something about this garage. have total faith that it will happen. Since I have a Mally box and know how to reach christians in Action (they pickup stuff) we are moving things out of here. I keep losing weight, but I'm afraid to get rid of the 'fat' clothes. Been here before and done that. But I may have to stop wearing my wedding ring as it keeps slipping off.

The hearing over our possession of our church building will be held soon. We would of course, like to keep it, and truly feel it is legally ours, however if the judgement goes against us, we will need to move. We had one judge whom we all approved (both sides) and after he started the hearings, he died. Two more were put up - we dismissed one, and the other side dismissed the other. So now we will have one and have no choice about it. It's in God's hands, here, I'm glad I don't have to worry aboutit.

There is nothing profound in this post - just our lives.

Anna is here!

My new housecleaner is here,busily working away. She is Sylvia's mom and I like her so very much! She is a terrific housecleaner. Even cleans the trash cans so they shine.

Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!!! thank you Nancy, Sylvia and Anna, who brought this about!

If you are tired of being old and think you want
to be young again,

Remember Algebra!

Today I am ticked

at our President. He has actually said that he and God are going to be partners in the new medicare scheme when it comes to the proceedures used for patients in their old age. First of all, this is an extraordinary claim to make. I can't see God handing over the life span of anyone to President Obama. It is His purview alone, we just need to leave our lives in His hands. I object to any person deciding whether I can have any treatments except for my family and my doctors. Obama doesn't need in on these decisions.

We went to Nancy's Saturday to swim and visit. The boys each had a friend over and Mally was upstairs in her room. I'm pretty sure she was reading and I can't fault anyone for that since I spend most of my time reading. The boys swam with us, but mostly Nancy, Dad and I visited. This was great, since we haven't much time for just the three of us. While I always hurt the next day, I think sitting in the hot tub before we go home helps ease some of that. I've decided to go to the neurologist here. The last one (Fort Worth) demanded instant surgery (some 6 years ago) but this doctor doesn't believe in surgery unless nothing else works and he has lots of treatments he tries.

Saxon's friend was Hank, who is the new quarterback on the JV - Saxon is the manager and even helps occasionally with the varsity. He enjoys this and will do other activities later -tennis, golf, etc.

My bedroom looks as if a volcano erupted there. I am moving furniture and the floor is full of boxes of just 'stuff'. I wish I dared put them all in the garbage, but I don't. The good news is that when I go through these boxes I keep finding all these 'thingies' that I don't want, but won't throw away. So, now I keep a 'MallyBox' and put these things in for her babysitting business. Maybe they will go home with her clients - ok by me. I just don't want them here. Nancy is bringing me a loaner chest of drawers as the volcano also hit Mally's room. My standing mirror is going to her room also.

Working on a prayer shawl and a scarf and spinning some fleece for Mary Beth right now, but my left hand still isn't quite over the sprain from our week in Florida. That first finger lets me know when it is being overused. I'm going to order a woollee winder ( I know, you don't know what that is - don't worry about it) as it will give me larger bobbins and make it easier to spin.

Dad has been on altar service 4 weeks out of the last 5, and now with the new schedule he isn't on at all. They don't seem to spread this stuff out. I am lector one Sunday and then we can sit together in church.

Nothing really profound today except that all my neighbors hurt also. That's why I only talk to a few of them. Misery compounds. I prefer the folks at church. They have problems, but as a church we are pretty much overcomers.

Blessings..................................

Well,

It's been a long time since I blogged. When Mary Beth was here, she checked her blog, and it didn't go away. Today, by phone we (she) figured out what to tell me to do to get back to mine own. It worked!. If my computer just had a listening component, so I cold explain my problems to it, it would probably die laughing.

Church yesterday, loverly! Our preacher was a young man who, with his wife are training and raising funds to join friends in a mission in Moscow for two years. They have most recently, been in New Orleans with Crusade for Christ. Learning Russian must be a really hard job, being a different alphabet and all. After church, took communion to a friend who fell and broke her hip. She's 85, but she still goes to work every day. We are taking on a local school to sponsor. I am limited, but plan to volunteer one afternoon a week to read to or tutor or whatever. As long as I don't have to teach algebra, I'll be ok. I will also be prayer partners with the teacher and being there once a week will know the children and can pray probably more effectively for their needs. We'll see how this works out.

I have learned that I can only do two things in one day, or I simply forget to do them. There's probably a lot of wish fulfullment in this. I missed a meeting and a prayer and praise both this week, but when evening comes, we find we really want to stay in. Some of TV we both like but when it is awful, I just read and am able to block out the Tv if it isn't too loud. If it is, I complain and it goes down.

Teresa has quit and I now have no housecleaner. Looking, though. Surely someone will turn up before we drown. We are going to have to get someone out here to spot clean the carpet, but I don't want to do that befoe I finish moving the furniture in my room. I've been using the hose soaker on the garden, but only the yellow bells and the yellow lantana are blooming. The rest looks like a jungle. Some pots need to come out and some need moving - we'll get to that when I have help. Nancy is coming in a while when school gets going, with a truck and some boy scouts and they will clean out this garage. Can't wait!. I have two rugs which are going away this week, and a bag of angora, which looks a beautiful tan, but I expect to turn white when I wash it. That's on for today.

KIds were here for a couple of hours on Saturday and we had FUN. Mally, Spencer and I played aggravation and Sax played some game or other. Mally was very calm and encouraging to the two of us, and I'm glad to see this developing. She was a good sport about not winning also. Spencer said he'd teach me to play Texas Hold 'Em but when we started it turned out he really wasn't sure how it went. Last week when Mary Beth was here, she, Dad and I went to the Scotts (Scooter,Nancy and Mally weren't home) and used the pool for a very long time. Spencer and I solved lots of the problems of the world, just floating around. then we were all hungry, so we sent Spencer out to the henhouse and all 5 of us had scrambled cheese eggs and toast for dinner. Yummy! They are so much fun.

Mary Beth will be back next month for a weekend and I hope to get the rest of these piles of paper either filed, shredded or ditched. She's great help. I have a box of 5 scarves to get off to Katie and a book to get off to Mary Bethie. This is the week - not a lot going on to confuse me. (Not that I'm not generally confused.)
Blessings.....................

woo-hoo...

Thursday, Dad asked me to go to see the new Harry Potter film with him. Yes, he really did - are you astounded too? He just knew I wanted to go. As usual, I stewed over the parts that they left out, but I don't really want to be in the theater 10 hours or so watching the whole thing. There seemed to be a lot of whooshing around going on in this one. Very fast. Too fast...

After, we used a gift card and went to Chili's, where we found the 2 for $20. dinners. We ordered our appetizer and when we had finished that we were ready to go home. We made a serious effort to eat our entree and quickly gave up, taking both that and our mini desserts home. The next night we ate from their menu again. It was novel, and fun.

Mally had a great time at camp. She chose the medical track this year and ended up by dissecting both an arm and a cow's heart. She was indignant that the cow's heart squirted 'cow juice' on her. Probably formaldehyde. Yuk. But she is sick now - with a bad throat. Since they are planning a a trip to Schlitterbahn, Nancy will probably take her to the Doc in a Box for some help to get her well.

Scooters dear Aunt Mary has died and we will go to the visitation tonight and the funeral in the morning. She was a lovely lady and very gracious and kind to us both -- we thought very highly of her. She was always interested in Scooter and gave him a great deal of academic help while he was in college.

At the doctors suggestion I tried knitting again with this sprained finger. Yesterday at the Fiber Arts group I discovered I can't use the finger yet, but the second finger works just fine, so I'm off again. So many projects in mind that I have trouble deciding what to do next.

Blessings........

Round up---

I have been invited to attend the West Texas Crochet and Knit Round-Up here this next weekend. I am thinking that I may go for a little while - I'm not able to stand for very long, or walk around. I think I'd just like to see who is there and how this goes. Started by a young service wife whose husband in stationed at Goodfellow, here, this is really going 'uptown'. The real reason I'm not interested is that she plans for us to start two different guilds -one for knitting, one for crocheting and pay dues to each as well as elect officers. The guild I now attend has both knitting and crocheting, and I even offered a spinning demo for a program once. We provide programs from our membership mostly by volunteers. The potential guild offers classes, and conventions. Also they talk of organizing as in officers and dues, etc. I really want to run away here. At my age I really enjoy the two groups in which I participate. In one we chip in a dollar each time we come for a gift for the church in which we are meeting. The other one is in our church and costs nothing. We have no officers, nobody reading minutes, no real agenda except to help and teach each other and create things for both hospital NICU's and for the church, as well as for ourselves. People have tried to organize me all my life and I still don't like it. So I think I'll stick with what I have.

At church yesterday, friends were horrified at my recent fall. They had threatened me earlier to wrap me in bubble wrap - several layers. Now they talk of bolstering that with pillows. They have picked me up often enough. Just realized that when I fall on carpet, I usually don't damage myself but if it is in the bathroom or kitchen, I really do. Maybe I should see a neurologist about all this falling - it is increasing. Maybe some PT would help. Something needs to.

Nancy is coming in today - we will be off soon to run and play a bit. A church friend brought in lunch, which looks to me more like dinner, so in the fridge it goes to be heated up tonight. Loving churches are good places to be - we are blessed. Likewise, blessings to you all.......

Remembering.

I've been doing some of that. Partly because being incapacitated means I have more time to just think. I remember getting my drivers license at 18, just because I thought I should. I had no car to drive - my parents certainly weren't letting us near their car! I had learned to drive on Allan's parent's car - they probably wouldn't have been too pleased but they didn't know. At any rate, my dad promised me a car when I finished college. I never asked him too much about that, but it turns out that my expectations and his were very different. I was ready to start my first job, half a state away, and he took me to find a car. We found a very fine third hand Studebaker and it even had a 'hill holder' on it. No AC of course, or automatic transmission, but when I came to the top of the hill, the car wouldn't drift backwards while I changed gears, because I had a "hill holder". I was pretty pleased with this. Then, dad took me to the bank and took out a loan for me, and he co-signed the loan. This was his gift to me. I hadn't had any way to build any credit, so he gave me a chance to get a start on my credit record. It was really a good thing for him to do - much better than just giving me a car. I learned his work ethic very early.

Next, he had me drive out into the country, and pull off on the side of the dirt road. He got out of the car, went back and let all the air out of the rear left tire. Then he looked at me and said "Now what are ya' going to do?" This began my first lesson of what a jack was, how to use it, how to get the lug nuts off, etc. In short, I learned to change a tire. This really has blessed me all my life. Everyone should learn to do this. OF course today, we have cell phones and AAA and all that. We also have credit cards, which hadn't been invented either, when this happened. I remember when the first cards came out. Daddy deeply disapproved of them - he really thought they were a tool of Satan, and predicted dire consequences for people. He finally had to take one out, because the bank where he worked required him to have one, but he never trusted them. They really can be a trap, easily fallen into. Been there, done that. No more.

We've just had about two inches of rain. I expect the flowers will be beaten down, but they'll come back. Church tomorrow. Hooray!

Blessings-----