I keep promising Becky Bacon that I will come help her pick out flooring for her living room.  So this week I am going to do that.  I hope to see my brother while I’m in Pryor.  The hospital released him and Janet and they are home for a couple of days and then going to assisted living until they get on their feet.

I hope I can do a two and a half hour drive by myself.  I’m leaving the house here to Josh.  He will take care of everything.

I’m taking my Mac so Joe can edit all the plane numbers.  My publisher wants him to do that.  So do I!  I think I remember them all, but Joe will.  The A-4’s, F-9s and so on--that Ken flew.  I keep thinking I will get this book out, and then one thing after another happens.

Becky bought me an exercise outfit to wear.  It is so soft and doesn’t rub my knees when I walk.  I’ve lost so much weight that I have skin on bone and everything hurts my knees when I walk.  Getting old is not for sissies they say.  I agree.  I’ve gained three pounds!!!  I took my neighbor that does my grocery shopping to Texas Roadhouse yesterday and ate ribeye--I need to do that more often.  

Every time I go out the front door to get the mail, I go by my piano--which has the lid down over the keys.  I rarely open it to play.  It is amazing all of the things we spent hours and hours learning how to do, we have left behind us. 

Occasionally I play.  When I married Ken, the next Sunday when we went to church for the first time, the director learned that I could play, and I was immediately put to work as the church pianist in Pensacola (Warrington) Fla.  And many other times as we moved--other places in America didn’t make their children learn to play the piano like Okies did.  I didn’t have as many opportunities as we moved, but played when they needed me.  And then a few years ago, Roy Jackson asked me to take over the services in Pryor and play.  I did, and renewed my ability because I was playing every Sunday.  When I moved here, one of the older departments needed a pianist.  I played for them.  But now, my piano sits there gathering dust.  It seems a shame.  For a while, I played my marimba for the church’s ministry group.  Now, the marimba is in the trunk of my car.  Seven pieces.  Waiting to be put together and used.  I just need someone to need a pianist or a marimbist. 

Bill and Janet both are better.  The entire world was praying for them. Probably every underground Christian in China where they spent 37 years. Thank all of you who prayed.

I have done nothing today.  All the hours I have now--that I do nothing--I needed when I was raising four children.  And now I don’t know what to do with all the time.  Yes, I write, but I have to be inspired somewhat to do that.  My publisher is calling tomorrow for the two of us to do final editing on The Corsair Pilot.  I want it done.

I have started a story about my dad, who came home from school one day to find that someone had killed his dad.  Shot him.  They never found out who.  I will have to call all my cousins to get their versions.  I did see the newspaper from 1917...but it is “iffy” ....if this, then that.  Who knows.  I’ll have to make something up? 

For those of you who know my brother--The Macau Mavrick--he is in the hospital with an infection in his kidney that has spread into his blood.  And his wife, Janet, is also in the hospital on a respirator.  They tried to take it out, but she can’t breathe on her own yet.

Please pray for them.  This is in the hands of God.  I am sure they are both very stressed worrying about each other--and not being able to do anything about helping each other.

Their son Matthew has come from Kansas and is there overseeing their care, which is a blessing.  (He is also a doctor.)

Just pray.  Please.

This morning, I mailed the edited manuscript for “The Corsair Pilot” to my publisher.  Praise God!  It has been hard to get it like I wanted it.  My first book “The Letter” was about children who have a parent who has gone to war--and how it affected them.  My second book “The Macau Mavrick” was about my brother’s 37 years in China.  This third book is about Ken and his time in the Korean war, and the Viet Nam war---and I wanted very much to do him justice.  And the publisher said I had to do it in sixty thousand words.  I have struggled.  I finally got it to sixty nine thousand--and can’t do any better.  The publisher will have to eliminate words.  I just can’t do it.

But when I hit “send” this morning, I felt like I had lost a hundred pounds.  It took a lot longer to write this than the other two books.  I’ve been working on it for three years.  Long enough.  Time to print.  You can get the first two on Amazon, or Chris Hardy in Pryor will have them.

I guess I will just have to accept that I can’t post like I used to post.  Everything in my life right now is hectic.  The Macau Mavrick--my brother Bill--almost lost his life and has been in the hospital.  And now, his wife Janet quit breathing, they did CPR and she is in the hospital as they try to stabilize her.  But thank God, they changed my meds and I am better.  Much better.  I’m going to shoot for posting once a week at this point.

Sunday, we covered chapter 4 and 5, and I told them that if they were ever forced to give up all their Bible except one book, choose Romans.  And if you had to give up all of Romans except one chapter, choose chapter five.  And if you had to give up all of five except a couple of verses, choose verse one and two.  It covers everything.  When Paul says “Therefore,” he is summing it all up.  Justification, faith, peace, Jesus, access to God, grace, rejoicing and glory.  It is comforting.

Yes, I’m still here.  I got busy editing and quit everything else.  And I am still not through editing.  I am going nuts trying to get this book to the publisher.  She wants three parts.  I had two done...ready to go when she said she wanted it in three parts...the last part about Viet Nam.

So I started reading Ken’s letters, hundreds of them from Viet Nam, and they were so sad, he was so lonesome.  Flying every day, people getting killed.  It was too much.

But I wrote.  It was, and is, hard to work it all in.  I think I’ve got it, then I re-read it, and I don’t.  So I start editing all over again.  It has consumed me.

Carolyn calls and says, “Janie, you didn’t post.” 

“I know,” I tell her.  I will.  In a minute--that never comes.  Some day soon, I will get back to posting regularly---just as I finish editing this book about Ken.  I have to do it justice.