This past Friday we drove the grandkids back to West Texas. We had intended to stay a few days, but then realized we needed to get home to prepare for my wife’s cataract surgery on Thursday (weren’t sure when to start the eye drops). So we headed home on Saturday, arriving at 10:45 p.m. Yesterday was a day of true rest, as we did very little.
So now it’s Monday morning and everything’s back to normal.
Except, what is normal these days?
Stock trading, writing, house upkeep, exercise, medical appointments. These are all on the to-do list I started today. I have much more to add. It’s going to be a full week.
That’s good. I like to have things to do and to structure my time to get them done. I like to cross completed things off the list and have a sense of accomplishment.
But the new normal is now built around the corona virus and trying to make sure Lynda and I don’t come in contact with someone who has it. Isolation, use of masks, keeping up with news about it are all part of the normal now.
Concern about the violence taking place across our nation is part of the new normal. The violence will pass, you say? I’m not so sure. I think, as I mentioned in a previous post, that people have come to realize that the reach of the police is limited and that they can get away with lawlessness. I fear where this will take the USA.
Worry about the survival of the American experiment takes up some of my brain power. Maybe worry isn’t the right words. Rather, it’s time spent brainstorming what I can do to help the survival of the American experiment. I’m working on that.
So, I’ll end this post and get back at it. My thoughts are beginning to come together even now for resuming the series on racism I started before the grandkids’ visit.
I am worn out and worn down from the grandkids being here. Happy to have them, love having them, but I’m really tired. We will see them home soon. I hope Monday to be able to return to more regular blogging.
This bridge on the upper trail is a favorite destination for hikes. The end of the trail comes beyond this, after a hard uphill climb.
Yes, I’m worn out this morning. I slept well last night—had my fifth or sixth “all nighter” in a row, if you know what I mean. My weight is steady to slightly dropping, and my blood sugars have been low, low enough to cause me to reduce my insulin dose a little.
The cause of all this is, or course, our grandkids. Yesterday is a good example. We took two hikes. In the morning, before breakfast, we hiked what I call the lower trail. We walk downhill from our house to where the trail comes right by the road then walk the trail. It’s not an official trailhead, but it’s easy access from the street. The end of the trail brings us back to a city street and about 4/10th of a mile back to the house. The whole thing is 1.62 miles. Before breakfast. Three of us went on that hike.
Occasionally we have to bathe them. Even that is work.
Then, after supper, all four grandkids and me went to what I call the “upper trail”. It starts at the same place where the lower trail finishes. It goes through the same sort of woods, with a small bridge near the middle of it. The end of that trail segment is at a city street, where it continues across. A difficult uphill section takes you to that city street, and the three older grandkids run on ahead to that while the 3 year old and I go as far as we can and head back, the three older ones catching up to us. That entire route, up to the far street and back, is a little over two miles. Elijah and I did 1.93 miles.
Indoor times, like this hide and seek game, keep the uproar going.
That was the day of greatest walking. Today, I don’t plan on any walks. After breakfast I plan on cutting wildflowers with the two youngest. After that it will be into the woods with the two oldest to work on the fort. I may add a picture or two of it later, or maybe in a future post. It’s quite a production. So far that project is all building and no playing. Maybe that’s as it should be. The fun is in the building.
They all wanted to walk this tree, down across a small pond, about 7 feet to the water. I wouldn’t let the little one do it.
Is it fun? It’s fun to be spending time with #1 and #2 grandsons. Working is healthier than sitting at the computer. So, yes, I believe it is fun. Exhausting, all the sawing of logs, placing them, lashing them, and clearing away the debris. Ephraim is starting to understand the needs a little better and is requiring less instruction. Still, the work falls heavier on me.
They don’t believe me when I tell them this raccoon was frozen into the tree trunk last winter.
So my writing is on hold for another week. And my blog post series as well. I may or may not post on Friday and next Monday. Shortly after that I hope to be back in writing mode after that.
Or, perhaps I should title this post “Blog Interrupted”. Life is fine, just busy. We are keeping the grandkids for 11 days, and I find myself, while my wife is still convalescing from her surgeries in April, having little time to do such trivial things as writing and preparing blog posts. I’ll try to do another interim post on Monday, but won’t be back to my recent series until probably June 26.
This is the 1940s—or more likely 1930s—recording technology.
I’ve written before about my efforts on de-cluttering. We have a large house, with a lot of storage space. When we moved here from our less-large house (I won’t say smaller; it was, but it wasn’t exactly small), we made no effort to sort through stuff. We had no space to lay things out. So everything went in truck, car, and trailer. There it remained for the last 18 years.
From time to time I organized things or made decisions on what to throw out. When my mother-in-law moved in with us in 2015, we suddenly had a room of extra furniture. I moved that into her room, moved the furniture that had been in there to the basement, and found a place for it. But the storeroom was an absolute mess. I bought one more utility shelf unit and filled it. That let me see what we had. Clogging up the room was an old computer desk, both lower and upper units. It had been water damaged in transit back in 1996. We used it while our children lived with us, but with them gone, why were we keeping it? It wasn’t even worth giving away. I managed to haul it out the back and up to the street and arranged for the trash company to get it. And, thus, my first de-cluttering happened.
Somewhere around that same year, 2015, I re-found some old audio recordings on vinyl records. They had come from my dad’s house, and turned out to be songs recorded by Uncle Frank Reed, who married my father’s sister. He sang semi-professionally in his youth. These came to us from cleaning out Dad’s house in 1998, went into the crammed garage, got moved to the new house in 2002, and sat somewhere in the storeroom. In the 2015 clean-up I found them and put them on a shelf, lying horizontally and properly supported on the bottom, as recommended for vinyl. They were in a place where I knew I would remember where they were.
I played this game many times in my youth and childhood. I hope it is equally well-played at its new home.
Over the next couple of years I began going through photographs and sent some to Frank Reed’s grandson, Frank Reed 3rd, in New Jersey. Frank was close to his grandfather. It occurred to me that he might want those recordings of his grandfather. He said yes, absolutely. So I went to the storeroom to get them and…they weren’t where I expected them to be. I looked and looked for them and they just weren’t there.
Where did they go? Over the last three years, just about every time I did any work in the storeroom, I looked for them. I decided I must have put them elsewhere. I couldn’t find them. Last Saturday, during a time of some major sorting and discarding, I looked in places where they weren’t supposed to be. Sure enough, they weren’t there. I decided I needed to just quit. Someday they would show up. Meanwhile, in every message to or phone call with Frank I assured him I hadn’t forgotten my promise to find them and send them to him.
Then, Tuesday night, I went to the basement to find a certain book that I wanted to read. It wasn’t in any of the family room bookshelves. It wasn’t on my “literary” bookshelf in the storeroom. It wasn’t in three boxes of books awaiting sorting and shelving. I knew it wasn’t in one of the 20 or 30 boxes on the utility shelves, for I bought it after those boxes were filled and placed. But, on a couple of shelves were some loose books sitting on the boxes. I didn’t think the book would be there, and it wasn’t.
But, as I picked up a couple of those loose books, to my surprise, underneath them were Uncle Frank’s recordings! Exactly where I had put them five or so years ago. Apparently, after putting the records there, I put the loose books on top of them to help keep them from buckling, or to keep them from being jostled.
I immediately snapped a picture and sent it to Frank. He was elated and wondered when they might be winging his way. I was not very specific on when I would send them. Then I remembered I would be at a UPS store the next day to have a document notarized (the bank lobbies being close for that service right now). I already had the shipping box, sent to me years ago by Frank, so I could send them the next day.
Then, I remembered the peg game that Frank’s grandfather made in his commercial machine shop in New Jersey. It was, if I remembered correctly, sitting in a file cabinet drawer. It wasn’t doing anyone any good there. I went to the file cabinet and, to my surprise, the game was exactly where I remembered. The pegs seem to have been separated. Once I find them they will go to the UPS store and wing their way to Pennsylvania.
Neither of these items are big; they don’t take up much space. I won’t be able to get rid of even one box, or off-load one shelf. But these are items my children won’t have to mess with when they clean out our house some years from now. They won’t have to wonder, “Who’s on these recordings?” or “What the heck is this metal thing?” They won’t get thrown out in the confusion of going through many things.
Instead, they will have been in my cousin’s family, giving them pleasure, remembering the grandfather and great-grandfather who was talented with a guitar and song, who made unique things in his shop, and was a mentor and friend to his progeny.
It was truly a win-win situation. Hopefully, I haven’t simply added to Frank’s clutter.
When Dad set type for the “Stars and Stripes” newspaper in Europe during World War 2, he suggested this for the headline of the VE Day special edition, and the editor agreed. A typesetter chose the headline, 75 yeas ago today. Well, the type was probably set 75 years ago yesterday, but let’s not quibble.
I have been trying to find something to write about today. In recent posts I’ve covered decluttering, which I could write more on but is actually boring if covered too much. Who wants to know about what I’ve thrown out today?
I could write about helping a fellow writer with a used computer, allowing her to write more efficiently during these times when she can’t get to the places where she used to use a computer. That wouldn’t be bad, and perhaps I’ll cover that in a future post.
I could write about The Teachings and how I’m doing with it. Again, I’ve written about that several times. While I’m making progress, I don’t really have much new to report.
Dad at the mobile Linotype unit in Italy in 1943. He was within sound of the guns, subject to enemy bombers if they ever came over. Note the pin-up girl on the machine!
None of those sounded good, so yesterday and earlier this morning I didn’t write anything. Then I realized what day this is. May 8. VE Day. Victory in Europe in World War 2. This was the day that the Stars and Stripes newspaper used the headline Dad suggested. He was setting type for the S&S in Marseilles, France. On May 7 the news came that the Germans were surrendering. The next day would be the end of the war in Europe. A special edition of the paper was called for. Dad suggested this for the momentous headline, and the editor agreed.
The S&S were put out in several places in Europe. Each place had its own editor, and each place put out a different newspaper, the stories being what the editor chose as being applicable to that area. So this was the headline from Marseilles, not from Paris, London, or Rome.
So, 75 years ago today, a Linotype operator chose the headline for the newspaper that marked the end of fighting in the European theater.
I won’t write much at the moment. I’m a day late with this post. While my wife is in the hospital and I’m unable to see her due to the corona virus outbreak, I’m keeping myself very busy so as not to go crazy. On Thursday, between the elliptical and the trails in our area I walked almost four miles. Yesterday I took a new trail near the house and walked three hard miles. That was after an hour and a half of yard work.
I was quite tired after that and didn’t accomplish much the rest of the day. I read and re-read portions of the genealogy book I’m writing, still not able to let it go and get back to my novel. I’m decluttering, but that means I have more clutter than ever. It will all come together when I finish deciding what to get rid of, but not yet. Actually, I can see some progress. Things are better organized if not eliminated.
Lynda is doing better. She had at least five or six complications from the surgery and general health issues and has slowly, with the help of an excellent medical team, worked through them. Right now the remaining problem is her stomach not draining. Some kind of blockage, perhaps in the small intestine, is preventing that. She’s had to have an n-g tube in for days now to drain her stomach otherwise she has extreme nausea from gastric fluids building up. Today they are supposed to do a test to see where the blockage is so they can do a treatment for it.
Keeping busy prevents me from going crazy with worry. I have prayed much, read much, worked much. I think it was Monday evening that, after an extensive time in prayer, I had a wave of peace come over me. I knew in that moment that Lynda wasn’t going to die in the hospital, that she would be coming home to me.
I must now get back to my work. I found on the table in my office a book I read but didn’t review on this blog. It’s a book I’m not going to keep, so I need to review it and take it to the donation/sale pile. Look for it on Monday.
Well, the title of this blog post is sure a true statement. I never expected something like this corona virus that would send the world reeling. I never would have expected a stock market meltdown such as we’ve had. And I never would have expected…
…my wife to be in the hospital. On Thursday she woke up to a painful abdomen. It wasn’t long before she realized it wasn’t just gas, that something was wrong. We monitored it, but the pain was tolerable so we went about our normal routine. That is, normal for being socially distant and close to sheltering in place.
Friday morning the pain remained. It had also hit her hard during the night. After a couple of hours we called her primary care physician and arranged a video appointment. That happened but with much trial and error. The doc decided she needed to come in for an office visit. They aren’t doing many of those due to the pandemic, but she said come in before 4. This was around 11:00 a.m. The lab called us back and said we should come in before 3 because they would leave early on a Friday with not a lot to do.
The doc decided she needed a cat scan, so they scheduled it for the Mercy urgent care facility closest to our house, at our request, because we figured we’d be going home afterward. The thing took almost four hours, at which time they said we needed to head straight to the hospital operating room. The problem was most likely a ruptured appendix. We did so, getting there at 6:00 p.m.
Of course, I couldn’t go into any of these places with her. I read in the car. We left so quickly in the morning that neither of us brought chargers and Lynda didn’t remember her new cell phone. Thinking there would be surgery that night (as we were told), I waited in the parking lot, thinking if something went wrong they would call me and let me see her. But Lynda called around 8:00 p.m. and said the surgery would be at 10 Saturday morning.
The surgeon then called me around 10 a.m. on Saturday. They took her early to surgery, got out the appendix laparoscopically, She would be in the hospital a few days due to antibiotics due to the rupture, all of which time I wouldn’t be able to see her because of the corona virus.
In video calls since then, I’ve learned that her heart went into a-fib, she’s quite nauseous, she has an air bubble in her stomach, and water on her lungs. During which time I can’t see her due to the pandemic.
So, today, Sunday, I kept myself busy. I studied for Life Group in case I had to teach (which I didn’t), I had quite a few phone calls and many messages about Lynda. I did some more genealogy research, and I accelerated a de-cluttering effort in the storeroom that I began about five days ago. I actually saw some progress on both research and decluttering today.
And, of course I prayed—much, even almost without ceasing. God has this under control, all of it. He has Lynda’s health, he had the world’s health, and he has my peace of mind.
The nurses told me today that Lynda isn’t in any danger. What she’s going through (except the a-fib) is normal after an operation. Her body just needs time to work through it.
So I will rest easy knowing the Great Physician has this. Amen.
The scene at the Dodge dealership in Snyder. Ezra is in the middle of the photo.
I stated in my last post that I wasn’t getting much writing done, due mainly to the snow days and the grandchildren being home. And I was okay with that. But, in the three days after the snow days, I have’t done much.
I had sent the first five pages of The Teachings to my critique group, Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. I received one review back, and went over that carefully, incorporating many of the comments. Alas, I didn’t add any new material. I found a little time (maybe 30 minutes) to re-read some of the source material, which will help me down the road.
Leaders and boy scouts ran a good show on Saturday. Ezra’s car is the bright blue one.
Saturday I took #2 grandson, Ezra, to his Pinewood Derby competition in Snyder, about 50 miles away. That was a fun time. We had lunch afterwards, and Ezra commented it was lunch for second childs. Yes, it was.
This was a snazzy set-up. The display shows the result from one heat.
We walked around the neighborhood a couple of days. Yesterday, after church, Ephraim had a friend over for a visit. I found some time to sit on the front porch and read—not in the source book, but in other things I brought along on our trip. Enjoyable, but not necessarily productive for writing.
A good number from Ezra’s pack participated. All seemed to have a good time.
Yesterday, Sunday, was mainly for reading. But, as I read in the book we are currently studying in Life Group, and as I read some in a short book from 1886 about Thomas Carlyle, ideas started to come to mind. These were ideas for Bible studies to develop and write. One had been there for a while, but another came out of the blue. Actually, the thought came to me in the men’s Sunday school class yesterday, from a Bible passage we read and studied.
Ezra didn’t seem to be disappointed at not winning anything. He enjoyed being with his friends, and maybe with his grandpa.
Yesterday evening I took a few moments to write the ideas down. I didn’t take time to flesh them out. That may be an activity for later today or tomorrow. I also listed other Bible studies I’m thinking of. I have about six I’ve developed and taught but never written out in book form, and, in addition to the two added yesterday, I have six others I want to develop. I won’t give any of those here. That will wait on a future post.
So, in a way, this was writing productivity. One of my goals for this month is to decide on the next Bible study to write. Last night’s exercise will help me achieve that goal.
When we drove from NW Arkansas to SW Texas, I had been checking the weather for days so that we would know how to pack. Temperatures in Big Spring could be expected to be somewhat warmer than in Bella Vista. Not always, however, as air masses move easily north and south on the Great Plains and sometimes it is colder in the more southerly city. Advanced forecasts showed some cold weather, but not too bad.
A winter wonderland greeted us in the morning.
We arrived on Friday a week ago. Advanced forecasts were showing chances of a winter storm on Wednesday. This was new, and had not been in the forecast while I was checking. Cold we were ready for, but snow? Or ice?
Eventually we went outside.
As the days went on, the forecast became more in focus. Snow would arrive Tuesday night and continue into Wednesday. Accumulations of 1-3 inches expected. Then it changes to 2-4, then to 3-6. Finally, on Tuesday morning,
What mischief were they planning?
the winter storm warning showed 3-8 inches.
The storm indeed arrived, and right on “time” according to forecasts. At 11 p.m. on Tuesday, a check outside revealed snow coming down—not just a little.
Ezra, right before he destroyed his brother’s snow man.
Schools quickly cancelled. Actually, they may have done that an hour before the snow started, when weather radar showed it couldn’t miss us. By morning we had 3 inches on the ground and it was still snowing.
Snow continued off and on through the day, eventually accumulating to between 7 and 8 inches, the second largest storm in the city’s history. Needless to say, the four grandchildren bundled up and went outside to play in it. Also needless to say, I had to go with them. But, I had brought only light jackets.
Elijah loved it.
No problem. A tee shirt, two flannel shirts, and two jackets with light lining and I was all set. I went outside and had a blast with the kids. Two of them walked around the block with me, 4 or 5 inches on the ground and snow coming down. Then one went in and another came out, then that happened again. I don’t think all four were out at the same time.
That evening our daughter made snow ice cream, a tradition at their house for snow days.
Elise, like all the others, spent plenty of time on the ground.
The temperature dropped as the day went on. We went inside to warm up, then outside again for another snow session. We drank hot drinks. The temperature would drop to 7 degrees overnight, and school was closed again on Thursday. More play outside, more hot drinks, and some bored kids were the results. A trip to Wal-Mart on improving roads cured that.
So here it is Friday. School is delayed an hour and a half but will open. The last two days I got zero done on writing. No, that’s not quite true. I did some non-writing writing things. I kept up on blogs, did a little reading for research, checked out a couple of conferences I may want to go to, and answered writing group e-mails. But no new writing on my just-started novel. I hope today to add 500 to 1,000 words on it.
Grandpa gets back to writing today.
But I declare the last two days a triumph, and would be willing to see it extended.
