Yes, you can listen to a sermon on TV.  Yes, you can read your Bible at home.  Yes, you can gather your family around you to pray, Yes you can sing praise songs by yourself...But...

There is something about assembly that God as asked us to do.  We do it for “others” to strengthen them.  To give them fellowship.  To give them a sense of belonging.  There is strength in numbers.

Over the years, the best friends I have, I have met in church.  Those are the friends that have lasted, supported me when I needed something, been there when family has died, been sick or faced some difficult event in my life.  God says it this way:  Hebrews 10:23-25 “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith...let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works...not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is...but exhorting one another...”

Profess, consider, provoke, assemble, exhort one another---are done in a group.  It’s not always what we get at church, it’s what we give.

Good morning.  My grandson Stephen has convinced me to go outside in the morning before I do anything else and look toward the sun (Not at it) and get light in my body.  He has a guru that shows scientifically what sun light does for the system.

I’m not a guru follower, but I’ve been doing this for a week, and if nothing else, I like doing it.  It feels good.  I’m a hermit by nature, so maybe it is just jarring me out of the house!

I had the worst restaurant meal I ever ate in my life yesterday at Longhorn.  Texas Roadhouse wasn’t open or we would have gone there.    I explained that I couldn’t eat any spices.  All of the food was covered in every spice imaginable.  I ordered a small sirloin--I usually get the prime rib, but thought I would try something else.  It was so tough that the serrated steak knife couldn’t cut it.  I brought it home and put it through the processor to grind it up for Molly.  I usually give a place another try.  Nope.  Not this place.  Molly liked it.

Today is going to be a good day.  I am not sick at my stomach.  I should have been more sympathetic with Ken when he had ulcers.  But it is hard to know about something you haven’t experienced.  I’ve never had a stomach ache in my life.

Pat spent hours on the phone with me yesterday going over every prescription I take.  What a blessing.  Now I know which ones to get the GP to eliminate.  The prescription that is supposed to cure you is killing you.

They say they can tell you if two drugs interact, but if you take more than that, nobody knows.  You have to figure it out yourself.  Pat did that for me.  I don’t have the patience to do things like that.  Praise God.  Maybe there is a solution to all of this.

 Do some of you out there have organized lives.  I feel like I am on a ferris wheel.  Going in circles--but doing it up and down.

Molly loves being here with me.  My lap is her favorite place, and when she gets tired of that, she crawls in her crate.  I think she must have been mistreated, and the crate feels safe.

Her stitches have healed.

Pat took me to eat lobster yesterday, or was it the day before?  It tasted really good. I dipped it in a ton of butter, and ate butter and sour cream on a baked potato.   Everyone is trying to put weight on me. 

Who would have ever thought that they would try to gain weight.  Everyone is trying to lose weight.  Either one is difficult. 

Molly had a tough post surgery day yesterday.  She is pepped up today, but still wants to sit on my lap and sleep.

My publisher came by the house yesterday.  She was thrilled with the way Pryor received my book “The Letter.”  She asked if anyone had said they liked it and what they thought?

I gave her my third book, “The Corsair.”  I had it printed at UPS for her.  It is a rare thing to have a publisher take this kind of interest in you...I am blessed.  She may not like it, but at least she will read it.  

She said she visited Chris Hardy in Pryor and that he had only a few signed books left.  (If you want one.)  I won’t be coming back there to sign any time soon.  “The second book, “The Macau Mavrick” is coming out this fall and if he gets it, I’ll come to Pryor and sign them.  It was fun to see everyone.

Today, Molly goes to the vet for her surgery.  She will be sore when she comes home...but guaranteed that she will not be a puppy producer.  I’ll also get them to chip her.

I hope all goes well.  I don’t think I could go through losing another dog.  I know.... they do this all the time-----but just not on my dog.  That’s different!!!

I have done my part.  No food for her after 10 PM, nothing to eat or drink this morning.  When she gets home, I’ll spend the day holding her.  So she can be calm and still.  I can do that.

Everyday my prayer is that we don’t lose the electricity for the air conditioner.  Poor people who have no homes and live on the street are suffering in this horrible heat.  The news said that the 15 hottest days in the history of the world have happened this month. We haven’t taken care of our world much less our poor people.

Well, Becky didn’t know Molly was a runner...and opened the front door.   That was entertaining.  Everyone in the neighborhood was involved.  She refuses to “come.”  However... she will get in a car.  I finally came back to the house and got the car and drove down the street and told her to “get in.”  And she did.  We’ll work on that.  I think she thinks we are chasing her and it is a game.

By the time we “caught her” (or she agreed to be caught) I was stressed out of my mind because I had an appointment with a doctor that had taken me three months to get--and we were going to be late.  Which is a critical issue for me.  My mom said being late was breaking one of the commandments, “Thou shalt not steal” because you were stealing someone’s time.  It stayed with me, and I ended up nuts because we were going to be late. I wonder if everybody’s mom stuck something in their head like that???

I was at the store and they had large pork roasts on sale...I bought one.  Never again.  What was I thinking?  About all I can handle is a small pork chop.  I must have had a moment of thinking I was cooking for six people again.  

Six people are long gone.  It’s just me, and I have cooked my last pork roast.  Period. 

I took the bones out to the trash and--within a minute--when I got back in the house, Molly had hopped on my chair, hopped on the counter and run off with a huge chunk of meat.  She is a survivor.  Pat found her in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere and she was skin and bones.  She hasn’t realized yet that three meals a day are going to be her future from now on.

I’m going to have to be more careful about leaving temptation on the kitchen counter.  She isn’t a thief, she just knows how to take care of herself.  I have fallen in love with her, but there are some things we are going to have to work on.

The big news....Turkey agrees to let Sweden into NATO. 

When he invaded Ukraine, Putin didn’t plan on Europe coming together and revitalizing NATO.  Things that have been in the works for decades and decades look like they may gel.  

Maybe it will be a United European military front against aggression instead of simply counting on America?  We would become helpers instead of the main thing! That would be nice.  As usual, just when I give up on the sanity of the world, God steps in.  I’ve been wondering what God’s plan was...maybe it’s this??...Europe putting their big boy pants on.

Slowly, since I lived through WWII, Europe is recognizing they are stronger working together than apart.  My generation remembers the details of WWII.  Bad.  

Molly slipped out the front door when Tony came to put a new drain in the bathtub...we ran after her, but she took off.  However, when I turned around and gave up and opened the front door and went in.  I said “come,” she came in the door with me.  Maybe running is a game for her???  

She does know the word “come.”  And is coming when I say the word.  That is a big thing.  BIG.

We are learning each other.  She trusts me now completely.  Which is a good thing.  She got on the kitchen counter again, but she has  trained me not to leave anything there.  So I’m not sure who is training who.

After she ate the entire bowl of ground chicken on the counter that I was going to make chicken salad with, I learned.

In all my life, I have never seen a July like this one.  It is pouring down rain again.  At 5:00 AM.  Everything is green.  When you go for a drive, the world is fresh and green, not brown and crispy.

I wish we could catch all the rain and save it.  It seems like such a waste to watch it run off into drains in the streets.  If July is like this, I wonder what August will be like.

Molly went to the groomer’s yesterday.  He didn’t have time to cut her hair, but she got a bath--which was badly needed.  I can’t lean over the tub and do it anymore.  Everything in Edmond is twice as much as it was in Pryor.  $25.00 for a bath.  Somebody is making money in this town.  But they have to turn around and pay for what they buy, so I doubt anyone has much left over.    Carolyn says she pays half what I do to get her hair done in Pryor.  Why did I move?  I wish I could remember...

Molly and I have come to an agreement.  When I open the back door, she goes out into the yard and does her business.  So far, she is doing everything I ask her to do except “come.”  She will hop in my lap when I ask her to, but if I am standing up, she won’t come.  We’ll get that straightened out.  Food is a motivator. 

Today the agenda is to call the vet and see about getting her spayed. And getting whatever shots Pat didn’t get for her after Pat found her in the middle of the road.

I left her loose in the house when I ran to Braums to get some milk, and when I got back, the chicken I left on the kitchen counter was gone.  Molly said she didn’t eat it!!!

How did she get on the counter??? She is very tiny.  12 pounds, maybe 13.  I have an ingenious little scrapper.  I’m going to have to rethink things.  I’m probably going to get trained instead of Molly.

 

 My daughter Pat has drug home wounded animals ever since she was able to walk.  Everyone in the family now owns a dog that Pat picked up on the road on her way to work.

Yesterday, she said that she was bringing me a dog.  I said “No.”  I now have a dog.  And I do admit, she is my dog.  Someone treated this animal with cruelty and she is so thankful to have me.  Lying on my feet as I write this.

She is definitely a mutt.  No papers for this one.  And her foot is cut, she has bite marks under her neck.  She got the worst of whatever happened to her.  She is thankful to be here with me.  And I am thankful to have her.  She has yet to bark.  She yelped when I rubbed her ear.  We are going to the vet on Monday to get everything done.  Pat took her to the vet to get shots and all of that, but I’ll get her fixed and see what is wrong with the ear and foot.  This is going to be a “throw money at the problem” for a few weeks I’m sure.  But it will be nice to have some company for a change. 

Jeanette and I went to Pat’s house, (farm-horses-chickens, etc.) and had barbecue at noon yesterday  with mexican corn, slaw and baked beans, banana pie and were stuffed by mid afternoon.  Then on to Becky’s and hamburgers with a million sides and homemade Porter peach ice cream.   I’m still stuffed.

My new great-grandson Ken Jack Johnston found very quickly that I would feed him my ice cream with a spoon and stood by my side with his mouth open---like a little bird!

My plan for today is to read the paper and work the puzzles.   I brought enough food home to feed me the rest of the week.  And Jeanette brought me a container of home made lemon curd.  Which I love, love, love.   I don’t have to figure out what to eat for four or five days.  Sweet!

The fourth of July.  Our forces are all volunteer.  You have to join to be in the military.  We haven’t had a draft since the 1960’s.  Almost 65 years. 

Ken always said that every young person should have to serve their country a year--preferably  in a third world country.  To get an idea of how blessed they are to be American.

They could do all sorts of things--it wouldn’t have to be to fight or bear arms.  Just live somewhere else where the conditions are not perfect.  And learn how blessed they are to be American.

Ken joined.  As an enlisted person.  Korea broke out and the Navy and Marines didn’t have pilots because WWII was supposed to end all of that and we hadn’t trained them.  A few enlisted who could pass the equivalency test of college got to go to flight school. Ken passed it. He didn’t get a college degree until he retired and went on the GI bill and also got his Masters.

God bless those who serve their country.  I don’t know if I would be brave enough to do it.

Joe Mike and Becky Bacon came and spent the weekend.  The worst part of that is that you have a wonderful time--and then they leave.  And it makes me so lonesome.  Joe bought all three of us reserved seats to the Blue Angels...of course I couldn’t get from the car to the seats--too far to walk and too hot.  They went and didn’t stay because of the heat.  Joe just wants to talk to the pilots (B-52s) anyway.

When I married Ken we lived in Pensacola and I watched the Blues every day practice over my house.  Chuck Hiett (Hayet?) was the first Marine to fly with them, Ken was the second to be asked to fly the solo position.  He turned them down (!) because he was just back from Korea and didn’t want to live out of a suitcase.   He was teaching cadets to hook wire on the carrier and told Zeke (who was head of the Blues) that he felt like he was more useful to the Marine Corps teaching critical tactics on the carrier.  Then, told him to call his best friend Pete Olson, that he had flown with in Korea--who was stuck in DC as an aide (and not getting to fly).  Pete took the solo spot, and was killed. Spun an F-9 into the ground off shore at Corpus Christi.  There was no record of it because the Blues had stood down in the war and were just getting going again.  When I wrote about him in my book “The Corsair” I couldn’t find any info.  I called Scott--who jumped in and got Pete’s info into the Blues history.  He even found a picture of the headstone in Oregon, covered with weeds.  That’s rectified.  If you want something to do with Marines--call Scott.  He’ll get it done.