This is the end of the fifth year I have been writing.  I have committed myself to it like I have committed myself to brushing my teeth.  I'm going to do it.  I wonder what will happen to all of it.

Sunday, we discussed Jacob leaving Laban to go back to his homeland.  God had told him to go, but Jacob had left his home because he had tricked his father Isaac, and his brother Esau.  Jacob's mother Rebecca had helped him with his chicanery.

Jacob naturally was fearful.  He figured that Esau would kill him since Jacob had tricked Esau out of the birthright.  But God said "Go."  So he took all his cattle, goats, and sheep, along with his family and headed home.

One of the most difficult parts of being a Christian is knowing what you should do, but not knowing the outcome.  If you can know what it going to happen "next" you can make plans to deal with it.  But God doesn't seem to work that way.  He requires trust.  There are times that we just have to do what is right, plod ahead, and deal with it when we get there.

We are given the stories in the Old Testament to remind us that the great leaders were just humans, like us.

Moses said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?"  Exodus 3:11.  And later, "...they will not believe me, nor listen to my voice...they will say, The Lord has not appeared to you."

But God said, "Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

We are starting a new year.  Each year, we think of resolutions.  We know we should become better people, we should grow in the faith.  We should resolve to change something in our lives.  We should become more like Christ.  But it takes resolve.  Resolve.  That's the hard part.  Which is almost impossible without dependance on God.  If you decide to resolve something, do it for the year, not for the day.  Because if you fail on a day, you might give up.  Keep going for the year.

Today, I did something that I will never do again.  I cut up a chicken from scratch--which I used to do once a week when Ken and four kids were home.  It had been 7 years since I had fried a chicken and the only reason I did it was because David, my grandson, begged me to.

I couldn't pull the skin off of it!!  I have lost so much strength in my hands, that it took me almost an hour just to get it cut up.  But David had said, "Grandmother, you've always told me that fried chicken doesn't taste right unless you cook the whole chicken.  Please fry me a chicken."  Which is true.  There is something about all the juices from brown meat, white meat, liver, gizzard and the fat and skin sizzling in the cast iron skillet that makes a difference.  Plus, you get flour and gummy juice sticking to your hands.  Which, every little bit, you scrape off into the skillet to brown so that you have crunchies for the gravy.  Besides all which, you don't get a pulley bone unless you cut the chicken up yourself. David called me from college once to have me walk him through it--which I did, but he didn't cut the chicken up and only fried white meat.  That doesn't work.  So there I was today, by myself in the kitchen, cutting up a chicken and making a terrible mess.

And I thought about how things change.  I  don't know anyone in my family that cuts up a chicken  anymore.  And the generation before me wouldn't be caught dead buying a chicken already cut up and packaged in a store.  I remember when I was a little girl going down town Pryor to get a chicken with my grandmother at the chicken house.  They had a zillion coops with chickens squalking.  I can't even begin to describe the smell.

Gran would pick out the chicken she wanted and the man would kill it, put it in boiling water just long enough to loosen the feathers, scrape, then pull the feathers off and finally, gut it.  It had to be fresh or she wouldn't eat it.  After inhaling the smell it was hard to imagine the final product being edible.  The chicken house was right off main street.  It smelled up the entire town.  (The first time I went to Paris, I was shocked that they sold chickens with the head still attached.)  Before my gran moved to Pryor, I would go out to the chicken pen with her.  She would back the hen she wanted into a corner, grab it by the neck and sling it around and snap off it's head.  Then wait for it to stop hopping around before she tended to it.  After I was grown I asked her for her chicken and dumpling recipe.  She wrote, "First you snap off the chicken's head and throw it on the cellar to flop.......

Becky cooked a rib roast last night.  She does this every Christmas.  Her two sons and wives were home for Christmas--and they got me talking about my experience protesting porn in the seventies.
I had asked local gas station by the school to please put the magazines under the counter.  The sixth and seventh grade boys were regularly spending their lunch hour in his establishment going through them--and getting an unrealistic education on sex--since the owner left porn open on the counters.  He told me in no uncertain terms that I was off limits.  I said that it wouldn't be a hardship to put it under the counter.  He said no, he wasn't going to do that.  (Red flag to a bull moment.)

So, in light of all the picketing going on in America, I thought, "What have I got to lose."  I got a pole, attached a sign to the top that told what was being sold there, and began walking back and forth in front of his store.  Before long, the whole town knew what I was doing, and other mothers joined me with similar signs.  The proprietor called the police.  The chief of police got out of his car and said, "Janie, what in the world are you doing!?" (Pryor is a small town.  Everyone knows everyone.  My grandsons broke into laughter at this point because the police chief called me by name.)

"I'm protesting," I said.  "And these other mothers are exercising their rights as well."  He told me he wasn't sure that was legal.  I told him (politely) to look it up.  About then the mayor showed up, along with a Tulsa (!) news reporter with a camera.  The mayor said, "She's right, we have a statement on the books about local decency."  All that time the reporter is trying to get me to say something stupid.  Which I didn't, but I answered his questions.  By then, two other stores in Pryor that were selling that kind of stuff showed up and were yelling and saying that they had taken all that kind of "literature" off their shelves and told the distributor not to restock.  "Don't bring your ladies to our stores," they were actually begging me.  "Please don't picket us." The number of mothers picketing were growing by the minute.  The mayor told the gas station to put the stuff away.  Out of the sight of children.  Mission accomplished, we all went home.  Maybe I should have asked him to burn it?

By that evening, the national news had picked it up, and friends on both coasts had seen my TV interview and were calling to ask what was going on.  I guess it was unusual for an everyday person like me to picket?  I got a letter from Larry Flynt lambasting me and telling me basically that I was a nobody and who did I think I was.  Threatening.  However, the little lady won that one.

There are three types of behaviors in the species we call man or humankind.

1. Reflexive behavior.  You have no control.  If a doctor hits you on the knee in a certain place, your leg will jerk.  If you touch a hot stove, you will jerk away.  And so on.

2. Controlled Actions.  You think about doing something, and you make a choice to do it--or not.

3. Drives.  These actions can be controlled to a point.  Hunger, thirst, sleep, sex...they are necessary for the continuation of the species.  You are driven to indulge in these behaviors, but most cultures believe that you need to control them.

God gives instructions for human behavior.  Those instructions are for the good of humankind.  They are not destructive.  But man tends to indulge in behaviors that are detrimental to himself.  Behaviors that destroy the body, the mind and the spirit.  Why?  Because we have not agreed on controlling the third type of behavior--drives.

We eat and drink too much, grow fat and induce an overwhelming number of problems and side effects.  You know the illnesses that come from overweight.  And the joint destruction--knees, hips and feet.  Also, there are problems that result from not eating proper foods--even if you maintain a good weight--and induced problems of drinking the wrong things for our body to function properly.

And then there is the sex drive.  We all have this drive.  If we didn't there would be no survival of our species.  As a matter of fact, the very first instructions that God gave the man and woman that He had created was to have sex.  He created them for each other.  His actual words were "Be fruitful and multiply."  Probably no drive given to the human species has been so horribly abused.  To the detriment of society as a whole.  Misuse of this drive can lead to emotional pain, heartbreak and sadness.  Which is a shame when God gave it as a reward of commitment in marriage.

God did not intend people to treat each other with cruelty.  He said to love each other.  Just as we love ourselves.  We are about to start a new year.  Examine yourself in the light of what God intended for your life.  If you aren't a better person than you were a year ago.......why?

Merry Christmas.  Have a blessed day with family and friends.

Instinct.  From the definition:  "An innate fixed behavior that is found without exception in every member of the species, and that presents itself full blown upon stimulation."

When you hear someone say that all people protect their babies, you know from experience that some people abuse and kill their children.  Instinct does not allow that kind of deviation.  There are entire courses that delve into the subject of instinctual behavior.

If you study sociology, you will, from the definition, conclude that man has no instincts.  There are too many deviations from the norm within the species.  But I believe that man has one instinct.  All tribes, aborigines, cultures, etc. that have emerged--that we call human, or that have been found archeologically--have one thing in common.  They make gods.  Totems, or they worship cows, snakes, or other animals.  They worship the moon, the stars, the sun and on and on...  They, without exception, look for the cause of their existence and design a god.  They make sacrifices. They know that there is "Something."  They seek to fill some empty place within themselves.

God created that empty place.  And until it is filled, man will search for something to answer his questions about his existence.  Where did he come from?  Why is he here?  Is there something more?   Is there something in the sun, or the stars or moon?  No other species does these things except man.  God created this "chamber" within us in which He intended to live.  He breathed into us a living soul.  His Holy Spirit.  His very breath.  And without this Spirit, we are not whole.  We are always searching.  Looking to find something that will calm our fears.  That will give us peace.  That will take away the fear we have of death.

The entire Old Testament of the Bible is the story of God's plan to return His Holy Spirit to man.  To complete him once again.  To dwell in man--where God intended to dwell from the beginning.  "Christ in you, the hope of Glory," is how the Apostle Paul described it.  All of us are the children of a man--Adam--who lost God's Spirit and was cast out of the garden of Eden because of disobedience.  We are born empty as an Adamic species...and we search for a God.  This God desires to be found.  To take up residence within us and make us whole.  He loves us and was willing to take our sin and die in our place.  We have an instinct.  We want God.  And for some reason, He wants us.

We humans don't understand the mind of God.  I've often wondered why he created animals at all.  Were they for us?  That seems to be the reason.  But some animals, like lions, tigers, rhino's and such, seem to be here just for themselves.  And yet, the food chain that now exists, will begin to suffer and die if you are not able to sustain this diversity.  Predators, and tiny bugs, all have a place in the ecosystem.  All life is from God.  And He is getting ready to design a caretaker for this life.

God's third creative act is man.  Not just any man--this creature has a unique capacity that the other animals don't have.  He has a place within himself--think of it as a chamber--that will hold the very breath of God.  No other animal has this capacity.  This "man" is in God's image.  God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...So God created man in his own image...male and female created he them." Genesis 1:26-27.

Why?  That is the eternal question.  What did he want from something, someone, in His image.  Why weren't the animals enough?  Like I said, we humans don't understand the mind of God.  But here we are.  Living and breathing on the earth.  I find it utterly ridiculous to think that we evolved.  The human body is a miracle of intricate parts fused together into a functioning whole.  Everything we know about physics denies the possibility of evolution.  We are perfectly created.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."  Genesis 2: 7

God gave us His breath.  That was His original plan--to fill us with Himself.  Designed to hold Him, his Spirit.  Able to communicate with Him--made in His image.  He intended for us to live with Him forever.  But we, created to make decisions and think for ourselves, did the one thing God said not to do. We disobeyed.  (All sin is disobedience.)  Adam, and we, denied--and continue to deny--the Creator's supremacy over us.  We want to rule ourselves.  We've done a terrible job of it.

Free will is a blessing and a curse.  We don't behave as the animals do--through instinct--for the purpose of  survival. An instinct is a unique behavior.  We choose our behavior.  Humans have no instincts.  (I'll discuss that tomorrow) We choose to do behaviors that destroy us.      (Continued....)

We have soil.  We have water.  We have light.  We have grass.  All we need is prime rib on the hoof.  The world that God has created, made, and let flourish is ready for animals to live there again.  But this time, the animals are different.

"Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life."  Genesis 1:20 For the first time, life is mentioned.  And this life is in the water.  It's been there all along.  But now, the conditions on earth are right for this life to flourish.  Abundantly flourish.  "...and fowl that may fly above the earth..."  If you are a theorist, (which I am not) this is the verse for you.

You can make this verse seem as though birds came out of the water.  I think it is simply a continuation of the flourishing on earth.  Birds were allowed at this point to find better refuge in the air.  Some were probably still living from the beginning--fish eating birds?  Now they were nesting in the newly growing trees.  Pecking at seeds on the ground.  Within the species of "birds," they were naturally selecting traits suited to this new environment.

God is now ready for his second creative work.  It has taken 21 verses in Genesis to get here.  The animals that appear at this point are totally different.  They produce milk for their young.  "And God created great whales, (a mammal) and every living creature that moves which the waters brought fourth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind."

Each of these animals had a "Kind."  They are all different.  One did not evolve from the other.  There is a Gap between them and dinosaurs.  Science has never answered how so many different "Kinds" of animals appeared on earth suddenly--seemingly all at once.  Evolution theory can't explain it because there is nothing in strata to support the change from dinosaurs to these new creatures--except for fish and fish eating birds--which were here all along.  And that is the reason the theorist says we evolved from fish.  They can't find an explanation.  What the Bible says next is interesting.

"Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things and beast of the earth after his kind."  As I said at the beginning, prime rib on the hoof.  Every thing is ready for the third creation mentioned in the Bible.  Man.  Different from the other creatures.    (Continued.)

If we give up the notion that a day back then is exactly like a day now--24 hours--you can see that we don't have a set time for the creation story in Genesis.  It could have taken a long long time.  Peter, the apostle, gives us a clue when he says in 2 Peter 3:8-9: "...do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day."

In whatever "time span" this series of events happened, once everything was in place, things on earth begin to grow.  An interesting comment about this is in Genesis 1:11-12,  "Let the earth bring forth grass...and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself, upon the earth...and the earth brought forth grass...whose seed is in itself upon the earth.

Does "letting"this happen mean that "pockets of dryness" held seed on the earth from when God created plant life in those dinosauric times?  I don't know, but seed will grow after very long periods of time if kept in dry pockets.  I have okra seed from over ten years ago that sprouts when I plant it.  I heard that scientists planted corn seed from Pharaoh's tomb and it grew.  Whether God used seed caught in dry pockets on land, or He started over, is not clear.  Either way works scientifically.

Now it gets interesting.  Genesis 1:14, "Let there be lights in the heaven...let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.  And let...them give light upon the earth.  And God made two great lights..to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.  He made the stars also. He had previously created them.  He takes something already there--and lets something happen.  Is matter gathering up into a sun? Is the earth spinning so fast the moon breaks away from the earth? (Science tells us that the substance of the moon came from earth.)  Is God flinging stars off into the universe?

I don't know how long this took, or how He did it.  God doesn't tell us much about what went on before we were created.  Is this about the earth rotating around the sun?  Or is it about the earth rotating on it's axis?  In Genesis 1:3, God already said, "Let there be light."     Whichever way it is, God is getting ready for His second creative act.  The world is ready for mammals.  We have seen a huge gap between the dinosaurs and this moment.  And if you read Genesis to find out what it is actually  saying instead of what you have assumed, you can see that there is no error scientifically.        

God created the heavens and earth.  Then, something happened.  The dinosauric ages ended, but water life continued in the gap between dinosaurs and mammals. Then, God decided to REPLENISH the earth, so He said, "Let there be light."  The word "replenish" means to re-fill.  Re--plenish. Which implies that there was something here on land before this.  He didn't need to replenish the water life.

Three words in the first chapter of Genesis are important:  1. Create, 2. Made, and 3. Let.
1.   "Create" means that you design a brand new thing (that is perfect) out of nothing.
2.   "Made, or Make" means that you take something that is already here and turn it into something  else.  (I'll get some fabric and "make" a dress.)
3.   "Let" means to not stand in the way of something occurring.  (I'm going to open the blinds and "let" the sunshine in.)

The word "Create" is used four ways in the Old Testament.  1. God created the heavens and earth.  2. He created large animals, behemoths.  3. God created man.  4. Then later in the Psalms, when David said, "Create in me a new heart."  (David knew that he could be righteous only if he became something entirely different than the sinful man he was.  It had to be a creative act of God.)

The progression after God said, "LET there be light" was orderly.
1.   Light had to come first.  You can't Re--plenish without light.  God parted the dust clouds.
2.   Division of the light from the darkness. (Rotation of the earth) We have no idea how fast or slow rotation was.  Rotation time, even today, changes.  The length of a day back then is uncertain.
3.   Separation of the waters above the earth from those below.  Rain, clouds, and such.
4.   Separation of the water on earth from land. Oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams--and earth
5.   Finally the earth was ready for plant life to re-emerge. God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself..."   He is getting ready to end the "Gap."  God is putting things in order for land life to survive.  This progression of "days" is a preparation for life.  These days depended on how quick a rotation of the earth was.  Even science--when they talk about time--is concerned with how long a day, or a year was.  We know from scientific records that an earthquake or volcano or meteor strike can speed up or slow down a rotation.  Continued.....

You may be asking, why does this stuff in Genesis matter so much to me?  The answer is: Because the schools are teaching our children that one thing evolved into another thing into another thing.....and so on and on.  And that God had nothing to do with it.  That the Bible isn't true.  Note, that I said "evolution theorist," not evolution.

The word "evolution" simply means change.  Change does occur within a species.  Bird's beaks, over time, will lengthen or shorten depending on the food source available.  That is change within a species.  We humans are losing our wisdom teeth because we no longer need them to gnaw bones.  There will always be natural selection within a given species as their environment changes.  But one species does not evolve into another species.  The evolution theorist has tried to prove that we all, all species, evolved from one cell.  That those first cells produced everything alive on earth.  This defies the rules of physics.  Theorists depend on fossils in strata.  Which they haven't connected.  And one really big problem is between Dinosaurs and mammals, because there isn't a connection.  There is a GAP.  Nothing is in strata. The theorist hasn't connected anything, anywhere.  It is theory alone.

The evolution theorist says that Genesis is a myth.  That God doesn't exist.  So for me, it is critical to show that the sequence in Genesis is exactly true scientifically.  The Bible isn't a science book.  but it is perfectly in line with proven scientific facts in the order they occurred.  But you have to read it scientifically.  And for too long, we have glossed over it without looking at what it really says, and   why that is important.  It introduces events in a sequence...a perfect scientific sequence.

I don't want young people to be challenged about the Bible.  If Genesis isn't true, what can we say about the truth of the rest of the Bible.  I want to arm young people with truth concerning what the first chapter of Genesis actually says.  I want parents to be able to intelligently defend the faith.  I want parents to know how to discuss creation as described in the Bible with confidence.

You can't defend something you can't understand.  And I am furious when science discredits the Biblical account.  It is an orderly, scientifically accurate account written by people who had no knowledge of science.  Yet, they got it exactly right.  In the exact order in which things had to happen.  That in itself is a miracle.  "In the beginning.......God."  Period.                 (Continued)

This water life--that survived whatever happened to the earth--continued to thrive.  And interestingly, a shark from eons ago looks like a shark today, as well as fish, crickets, etc., (no evolution)  The animals that lived in a wet environment survived.  They look like they did in the dinosauric ages.   Only land animals disappeared, and virtually all at once.  The world continued in this condition in what we will call "The gap."  There was a gap on earth of land life.  The evolution theorist has not been able to connect life in this gap.  There is a void.  So the evolution theorist proposes that (current) land animals came from life in the water.  They are stumped by the "Gap" of life on land.

After the first verse, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," the next verse after this statement says:  "And the earth was without form and void...  This is not a creative work.  A creation is a perfect work.  Something has happened.  We are not told what happened between these two verses but you can fit geologic ages in here.  And in the same verse where this formless, void earth is mentioned, it continues, "...and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

You can't have darkness without the concept of light.  The sun had been part of the original creation, but now it is blocked out.  The light is hidden.  In the following verses, God doesn't create light, He says simply, "Let there be light." If the earth was destroyed between verse one and two by meteorites, or volcanic eruptions, there might be ash circling the earth.  This would block sunlight--like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens did but on a much larger scale.  Enough darkness to cause plants to die.

And the "deep" is a statement that the oceans were still part of the earth.  Life that was in the ocean would still exist.  Whatever the case, God decided to do something new, "And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep."  What God is sharing in those first two verses of the Bible is that He created the heavens and the earth.  Something happened.  And later, he began a new story.  The story of the restoration of our earth.  An earth fit for the habitation of "us."

He starts with "light."  The necessary ingredient for land life.  God says, "Let there be light.  And there was light."  The condition of the earth was instantly changed.  God parted the darkness to let the light in.  He had created our sun eons ago, He didn't create it again.  He just let it shine once again on the void, formless, dark mass we call earth.  What follows is progression, not creation...(continued)

Genesis.  It keeps coming back to me.  It is the cornerstone for people who don't believe the Bible is true.  They say that the creation account isn't true--that it is a myth handed down from people who didn't understand science.  I am a scientist.  And I beg to disagree--wholeheartedly disagree.  Such disbelief about the first chapter of Genesis means you won't believe the rest of the Bible--how would you decide what to believe.  You either believe the Bible is true, or you don't.  You can't accept parts of it piece meal.  So, to catch you readers up to where I come from, I will once again lay the "truth" groundwork for the book of Genesis creation story.  It is a true story.  And there aren't any mistakes in it.  People who disbelieve it haven't read it with a scientific perspective.  So let's review.  Genesis 1:1

1. "In the beginning..."  Christians don't know when that was.  Neither does anyone else.  I have no problem with the Big bang theory...maybe there was a big bang.  The problem is "When. "Nobody knows that either.   (The universe is still expanding.) But we know it was a long time ago.  Eons.
2. "God..."  The latest explanation from those who don't believe in a "Creator" is that we came from aliens.  No explanation of where the aliens came from or who created them. No explanation of where  "Space" is.  We are here.  That is a fact.  The question is:  Where is "here?"  Where did space come from in the first place.  Everyone seems to agree that there is "Something."
3. "...created the heavens and the earth..."  How did He do it.?  Nobody knows.  But we do know what the word "Create" means:  To take absolutely nothing and make something perfect.

Those are the first three lines in the Bible.  We are not told what, or who, first lived on this earth that God created.  Scientifically, from strata, we know that there were huge dinosaurs, and that they had a relatively long span of life on earth before they were wiped out.  Wiped out in this order:  Animals that ate grass began to die due to some catastrophe (perhaps darkness) that wiped out vegetation.  And as plants began to die, the animals that depended on them died.  Then, animals that were meat dependent lost their source of prey, and they began to die.  It was a decreasing food chain.  It works exactly the same today.  (Google what happened in Yellowstone when the gray wolf was killed off.)

So almost all--except water based life--disappeared.  The evolution theorist wants to connect that time, and that dinosauric age with the age today.  We scientists who disagree call that period the "Gap."  It is the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 where it says, "The earth was dark...(Continued...)

Neither my dad, nor Ken, were handy men.  I was the one who nailed things together, hung sheet rock, insulation, tore out old bathrooms to the studs and put them back together, hired contractors and refinished furniture.  Even before I married and left home, Daddy would watch and say, "Where did you learn to do that?"  To which I would say, "I learned how while I was doing it."

Ken would help, but I always had to show him what to do.  Reworking the studs in a house, or relocating walls is just like sewing.  And I learned to sew when I was ten.  And perfected it in Home Economics through four years of sewing in high school. (Which was required of all girls.  Unfair, but it was the 50s.)  If you can correctly attach the curved top of a sleeve to the bodice, you can build whatever you want with lumber and a saw.

All I ever needed was an idea, or a pattern.  Ken once said, "I'll fly the airplanes, and you can do everything else."  He was teasing, but maybe it's why he wouldn't give up when I would tell him, "No, I'm not going to marry you."  I know how to do stuff.  He liked that.

Unless it is electronic.  Computer things escape me.  You can tell me how.  You can show me how.  But it just won't stick.  I don't get electricity, satellite transmissions, etc.  If I can't see it or touch it, don't ask me what to do with it.  It's Voodoo and black magic.  Ken on the other hand, had gone to electronic military something or other kind of school.  It came in handy when I was reworking, or building something and needed someone to wire it.  He could always fix a lamp or install a switch.

When the Apple came on the market in the late sixties, Ken and our son Jon got one--and from that point on, I rarely saw them unless it was time to eat.  Every time an upgrade came on the market, they would go get one.  A couple of years ago, Jon dug one of the old Apple 2E's out and took it to his physics class and set it up.  The kids had never seen such a thing.  They were fascinated.  So Jon left it there for the students to play with.

The first computer class I took you had to punch cards for "open or closed."  I gave up.  But if you ever want to add a room to your house, give me a call.

Pat took a picture of our feet in the water of the Gulf when we were down there last month.  Then, she made me a cleverly crafted picture frame to remind me of the fun we had.  She is a crafter.  I'm not.  About the only thing I can do is say, "That's so cute!"  Which I did.  I'll put it by my bed.

Jeanette came to see me today.  I love it when she comes.  Becky Bacon is coming Thursday and staying a few days.  This is going to be a great week.  We'll all go eat somewhere.

I never knew anything about estate sales until Becky (daughter) got into it.  (Check her out at "Swan Estate Sales", she also posts on Facebook.  Swan was my maiden name.)  Anyway, I've worked a few of them--if they have a lot of sewing stuff and fabric.  They usually last two or three days, unless it is exceptionally large and then they may go four days.  First day is reasonably priced, second day could be 25% off.  Third day it might be 50% off.  It depends.  You never know how a sale will go.  The weather is a big factor.  Since she started doing this, I've been going to other estate sales.  It is really interesting.  Even at full price, you will get a bargain.  I don't want to put anyone out of business, but I'll never pay full price at a retail store again after learning about these sales.  The prices are too good.

Becky Bacon is coming Thursday and she and Jeanette and Ann and I are going garage hopping, and also to an estate sale.  It will be fun.  I think Becky (friend) is going to stay through Sunday.  I think I have died and gone to heaven.  Having my friends here and doing fun stuff is the ultimate joy.  Becky (friend) is having another eye surgery.  This seems to be endless for her.  They have stopped the glaucoma, which is a miracle, but scar tissue keeps growing back.  Bad for her, but lovely for me since she has to come to Ok. City and stay with me.  Janie's Bed and Breakfast, Lunch and Supper.

I have two Beckys I write about.  Daughter, and Becky Bacon.  (And Rebecca Perkins.)  My Becky doesn't like for me to call her Becky, she prefers Rebecca.  I named her Rebecca, but never called her that--it's hard to change what I call her.  Habit.  Our habits hold us.  Good and bad.  Even at my age I have formed new habits.  If you do something over and over, you will keep on doing it that way.  Unless you force yourself to do it a different way.  I'm forcing myself to do multiple things different since I've moved.  Loading the dishwasher on the right instead of the left.  Etc.  Light switch locations.  Force yourself to form a new Good habit at least once a month.  You're not too old to do it.

It's cold.  I don't like it.  The only thing good is that in two and a half more months, the daffodils will start to bloom.  I've even seen them pop up through a late snow.

Saturday, my class went to see a stage play of "It's a Wonderful Life" in Guthrie Oklahoma.  Guthrie was the state capital of Oklahoma until 1910 when the state seal was stolen and moved to Okla. City.  History says it was done at night.  Sneaky.  My dad was born in 1910.  It was the wild west.

The buildings there are rather majestic for Oklahoma.  And most of them on main street have basements.  Nobody in Oklahoma builds with a basement.  Underground water is a problem.  But they did it in Guthrie.  And on the corner down from the theater is the original State Capital building. A letter has fallen off--it says "The _tate Capital."  The entire street is now antique stores.

Over lunch, one of the members of my class said, "I have something to tell all of you..." and began to cry.  She lives with her daughter, and they are moving.  We are such a tight knit group that losing her is painful.  But she is losing us as well.  It is really hard to move at our age.  You have to start finding friends all over again, and it is difficult.  We promised her that we will get a church van, and come see her.  She doesn't drive.  She is going to El Reno, not too far west of us.  It will be a day trip, and this group of girls love to "go."  We'll make a day of it.

Someone suggested that we could be in El Reno in time for church.  We could do our lesson on the bus.  And then go eat.  We all love to eat.  We are going to have a pot luck next Sunday for our friend that is leaving, right after class. Connection groups are a quick way to find friends when you move.

The only real friends I have in Edmond are in my class. There aren't may ways to meet people and make any lasting relationships when you move.  The older you get the harder it is.  It reminds you to be aware how many of the seniors that you know are alone, and don't have people to help them.  It is amazing how much a visit from someone means to them.  Especially in the winter when they are pretty much house bound.  Day after day, many of them sit at home with nothing much to do.

I thank God that I have my health, family and friends.  It is what counts in your life.

I read to Pat every day when she was little, and I would hold her in my lap and sing to her by the hour.  I tried to be a good mother.  But as she grew older,  we were like oil and water.  Becky, 18 months younger, was easy to raise.  Pat was not.  We just seemed to get on each other's nerves.

By the time Pat graduated from high school, the pattern was set.   I loved her,  she loved me.  But I can't say that either of us liked the other very much. Occasionally there were good periods--which didn't last.  She was extremely capable, smart and creative.  She worked her way through college without our help.  She was always able to stand on her own two feet.  But, once she was gone, we rarely heard from her.  Then one day, at the end of her senior year in college, she called me and said, "Would you come get me, I want to move home."  Of course I went and got her.  Immediately.  It was the first time she had ever asked me to do something for her.

She married, had two daughters which I adored, and slowly we began to interact in a better way.  I started to appreciate the stubbornness she had inherited from me.  I began to better understand who she was.  She began to appreciate who I was, and how hard I had tried to be a good mother.

I said yesterday, that the relationship I have with her now, was unexpected.  It is.  She opens doors for me and holds my elbow when I get in or out of the car.  She grips my arm when we walk so that I don't stumble.  She drives in from the country and takes me to all my appointments.  In every way, she cares for whatever I need.  She repeatedly tells me that if and when the time comes that if I need care, she doesn't want me to move out of my home.  "I want you to live where things are familiar, and are surrounded by your pretty things.  I'll help you."

Unexpected.  Also undeserved.  We were mismatched.  God must have had a plan that I didn't, that I don't, understand.  Because of all the people in my life, I never expected Pat to be my companion when I grew old.  But she is.  I must have done something right.  Perhaps she learned something from me after all.  You love the people that God gives you.  You take care of those you love.  And when you learn better, you do better.  Pat and I are friends.  A totally unexpected phenomenon.  I have two perfect daughters.  One was easy.  One was hard.  Both are wonderful people, and I thank God for them both.  I don't deserve them.

Today, I am going to write about something very personal.  Maybe, if you have a child who is difficult, it will help you.  I have an unexpected, and wonderful relationship with my daughter Pat, my oldest child.  Unexpected, because for many years, we were at odds.

When she was born, I was nineteen.  I was in a strange place--California--over a thousand miles from anybody I knew.  Friends or family.  Ken was the air officer for the 7th Marines and working from sunup to sundown teaching ground Marines how to call an airstrike--how to get someone in the air to deliver what you wanted from them--at the exact spot you wanted it--on the ground.  The day Pat was born, someone else drove me to the hospital.  Ken was thousands of feet in the air--somewhere.

The birth was not normal.  The military doctor who delivered her had never delivered a baby before.  He made a terrible mistake--I remember hearing a door open, and someone yelling, "Clamp that you fool."  (I paid for his mistake for many months.)  I went into shock, and it was seven days before I had recovered enough so that they could release me to go home.  I had only held a baby once in my life--when I was five, and my brother was born.  I had no idea what to do with a baby--and no one to help me learn.  I was traumatized physically, emotionally, and frightened.  And the baby was in pain. A colicky, crying, miserable lump of humanity.  She, and I, got off to a terribly rocky start.

I didn't know what to do with her.  I would sit on the side of the bed and jiggle her by the hour.  Which didn't help.  At all.  I was allergic to her saliva, which caused huge blisters--the pain was excruciating--which I endured for weeks before I gave up on what God equipped a normal mother do.   I obviously wasn't normal.

Finally, after three months, things began to even out.  Three months.  An eternity.  I was at my wits end by then.  I survived.  She survived.  We began to adjust to each other.  But by the time she was two, it was apparent that my mothering skills (which were zero) frustrated her, and frustrated me as well.  From then on we were at war.  It was a struggle of the wills.  And it was a matched battle.  She was every bit as stubborn as I was.  I had no experience in the art of how to discipline a child, so I spanked her.  That was how I was raised.  That's how everyone was raised back then.  Spanking Pat was like throwing gasoline on a fire.....continued tomorrow.....

My son Scott sends this blog to friends.  And when they comment on what I'v written, he sends me a note telling me that I owe him a TL.  I've told you about TLs before.  When my mom set dinner on the table in the evening, Dad would bless it and then we would trade TLs.  Mom invented this game, this thing, this idea--and named it "Tell Last--TL."

One of us would say, "I have a TL for you."  The other person would know that you had heard something nice about them, so they would rack their brain for something nice someone had said about you.  They also knew that they would get their compliment "Last."  So it was--in effect--a bribe.  Tell me something nice you heard about me and I'll tell you what I heard about you.

What it did was make us aware of being good listeners, especially when people said something good about another person.  Maybe the motive wasn't pure, but the result made us understand how important it was to pass compliments along.  We learned the joy of hearing something nice someone had said about us.

Praise is a powerful aphrodisiac.  It makes you want more.  And when you hear something good that you have done or said, you want to repeat what you did.  Criticism accomplishes nothing.  Praise is what we want.  When you tell me you enjoy what I write, I keep writing.  Scott calls me with a TL.

Squig wants to please me.  Because I always praise him.  Because I tell him he is a good dog when he does what I expect him to do.  Lately, he has been going to the mail box with me without a leash.  When I started letting him go with me to get the mail, he would run down to the neighbors and get distracted and not come when I called.  So, I would go get him,  pick him up and say "Come." I would sit him down on the porch, pat his head and tell him what a good dog he was to "Come."  He slowly got the hang of it.  He loved the praise.  More than he loved to wander.

Some people whip their dogs.  Or yell at them.  Love and praise are much more effective.  It works on dogs.  It works on people.  Try giving TL's to people.  I assure you that they will glow.  Nothing is as wonderful as hearing something good someone has said about you.

Ken was the most unusual, interesting, confident person I have ever known, heard or read about.  And he transmitted those qualities to the people around him.  If you were in his inner circle, he assumed you had those qualities as well.  He granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.

Two months after I married him, he turned twenty-seven.  A very old twenty-seven.  Marine boot camp, flight school, cat shots off of carriers, thirteen months at war, getting shot at every day, getting hit seven times and surviving, had aged him.  He was a man.  A man's man.  I've often wondered why he chose a girl child to marry.  But choose he did.  And not lightly.  He knew what he wanted.  He had a plan for marriage that was for life.  And knew exactly what he was looking for.

It wasn't like he didn't have dozens of choices.  He did.  Hollywood choices.  While he was flying out of El Toro in California, John Wayne would come down to the squadron and line up the unmarried aviators to fly in his movies.  (John didn't want to use married guys--in case there was an accident.)  The government looked on it as a win-win. War movies were the thing at that time and the US needed men to join up.  Marine pilots came with free gas and free airplanes--and were capable of arriving on target in a movie film-shot at the right moment.  Ken flew in a bunch of them.  Toro Toro.  Flying Leathernecks.  I wish I had written all of that down.

He wanted me.  And he didn't have a giving up bone in his body.  He would ask me to marry him; I would say no, and the next weekend he would fly whatever he could round up back to Pryor.  And ask again.  And I would say no.  I was eighteen--what more explanation is there.  He was just an old friend of my parents.   But like I said, he granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.  And he assumed I was going to become his wife.  He assumed I would come to my senses?

Why me?  Ken had a list.  He knew what he wanted in a wife.  I was it.  I asked him once about that--how I had met all the "qualifications" on his list.  "Oh," he said, "You didn't.  You missed two points.  That was deflating.  "What!  What did I miss," I asked.  By that time he had convinced me I was perfect.  "You were too young.  And you had never lived on your own or been away from home.  Being too young won't be a problem now, but someday it will, someday you will probably be alone." He was right.  It matters now.  But for 57 years, It didn't.  We were perfect together.  I do so miss him.

When I married Ken, he had a Jag XKE--or some letter or other--convertible.  Two seats.  Baby blue.  He told me to keep it at 4000 RPM's.  Whatever that meant.  So every time I went somewhere, the police picked me up for speeding.  I absolutely couldn't seem to get the car under control.

I had learned to drive with four on the floor, so shifting wasn't a problem, but every time I put the thing in fourth gear it exploded down the road like the racing car that it was.  The Police never gave me a ticket, they just stopped me and told me to keep it down.  I was eighteen, cute, and polite, and usually broke into tears when I explained the problem. They had pity.

Finally, I got stopped by a police man who explained what the problem was. "Didja ever drive a car like this before," he asked?  I told him I was from Oklahoma, married only a few weeks and had no idea why the car kept getting away from me.  "Well, sweetheart," (everyone calls you honey, sweetheart, darlin' or sugar-pie in the South), "You have to adjust your RPM to the gear.  Don't put this thing into fourth gear and you can stay under eighty."  Ken never told me what RPM meant.  Or how the gear you were in determined the speed of the car.  And in my defense, it was an English racing car.  I had always put the cars we drove in Oklahoma into fourth when I got out on the road.  You don't put a Jag in fourth gear unless you're on a race track.  I guess Ken thought I knew!!

I'm lucky I didn't kill myself.  However, I never got it over 120.  I had enough sense to turn the key off and start over again when the speed got away from me.

Ken never told me anything important.  He was 26, I was 18.  He assumed too much.  Flip side was that he never, ever, criticized me, griped at me, or corrected me about anything I did.  "You'll figure it all out," was the extent of conversation.  As a matter of fact, I don't remember a single time in 57 years of marriage he said anything critical to me, about me, or about anyone else.

I can't believe he turned the Jag over to an 18 year old kid with no instructions.  But he did.  And he did the same thing every month with his paycheck.  He would lay it on the table and tell me to learn how to spend it because he would be gone a lot.  I made mistakes, but he came in every month and laid the check on the table.  No instructions, no directions, no criticism.  I learned.  It was hard.

Well, I didn't have to way-lay anyone.  Pat came into town, took me to lunch, and hung the oil painting of the poppies over my bed.  It looks absolutely perfect.  And it was done within twenty-four hours of when I gave up doing it myself!!!  Next on my list is to hang the drape in the front guest bedroom.  All I need is a ladder.  Actually, a step stool.  This is a job that I can do by myself.

When I go to bed, I lie there planning what I'm going to get done the next day.  I had planned to water the plants today, but last night as I was listening to the news, the weatherman said it was going to rain.  I can mark that job off my list.

I go to choir every Thursday morning.  We are practicing a Christmas thing for the holiday.  We sound terrible.  But not for lack of trying.  We are exuberantly discordant.

I got a new insight from a retired pastor who came to teacher's meeting.  He said that the Baptists and the Church of Christ's major point of difference was on the subject of baptism.  The C.O.C believes you have to be baptized to be saved.  The Baptists don't.  They think you should be baptized, but Christ's death on the cross for your sins did it all.  The pastor said that he believed the difference comes from whose writings you give emphasis to in the New Testament, Peter or Paul.

Peter converted the Jews--and the Jews already had a religious background.  Perhaps, they needed a sign of their conversion to Christianity--Baptism.  Paul converted the Gentiles who had no religious background in symbolism, or rituals--so to them, baptism simply meant you identified with other Christians to form a church.  Christ said that after you were saved you should be baptized.

He said that Baptists put much more weight on the writings of Paul--who says very little about baptism, other than you need to follow Christ's example.  Paul is clear about Christ's atoning blood being the payment for sin, not baptism.  But the Church of Christ leans heavily on the way Peter phrased salvation--in a couple of particular verses.  Most of Peter's letters say nothing about it.

So that is one way denominations are formed.  Over disagreements.  I have been baptized.  To me, it was a public symbol of what Christ had already done for me--he died for my sins on the cross.

I've been putting off hanging a huge oil painting of poppies above my bed because it weighs so much.  I bought the picture in 1962 in Alexandria, Virginia and have always loved it.  This morning, I crawled up on the bed with my shoes on--for balance--and measured and marked and measured and marked the wall again.  Drove the nails and started tugging the picture up the wall over the head of the bed--it weighed a ton.  At one point I was standing on one foot balancing the bottom of the picture on my raised knee trying to get the picture wire on the hooks--two hooks for leveling.

It took me 30 minutes, but I finally got it up there.  And....It was off center.  How that happened, I still can't figure out.  I measured twice!  I don't have the emotional will to start over.  I think I'd rather scoot the bed over one inch--which I am not strong enough to do.  I'm going to way-lay the next man neighbor or relative that comes by to help either center the picture or move the bed for me.

There are so many things I can't do any more.  It irritates the be-goodie out of me.  I know what I want to do, and get halfway through before I am forced to give up and admit I can't get it done.  It is a major frustration.  I used to be able to do anything I wanted to do.

Yesterday, I went out to water the plants that I put in--its been dry here--and couldn't get the hose hooked up.  I struggled with it for five or ten minutes before I got it done.  Simple things like that take forever anymore.  Small motor skills like threading a needle.

But.........I can drive, and do almost anything I want, unless it requires lifting something heavy--or small hand maneuvers such as screwing on a hose nozzle.  I can't seem to get the two parts to line up unless I get down to eye level.  Ridiculous.  I'm down on the ground on my knees trying to hold  the hose cap and twist it at the same time.

If you are still able to do everything you set your mind to, you need to thank God.  There will come a day you can't do it anymore and it will come as a shock.  It will make you mad.  I give marching orders to my body all the time and nothing happens.  My mind thinks I am still twenty-five.  I'm not going to quit trying to do everything for myself.  I may fail, but giving up is not in my nature.

The people in the United States aren't the same as they used to be.  They don't have a common moral standing.  Yelling, screaming, shooting people, bullying people at school, sassing teachers, cursing and foul language, disrupting organizational meetings, disrupting family gatherings, rioting, setting things on fire--I could go on and on.  Whatever they feel like, they do.  No boundaries.

Those kinds of things rarely happened when I was growing up.  I know that sounds unbelievable to most people, but it's the truth.  I never heard anyone say a bad word when I was growing up--but once, when I was nine.  My cousin and I came into my aunt's house covered in mud with our clothes torn.  And tracked mud on the floor.  She apologized after she said the bad word, and cleaned us up.

Now, from kindergarten on up, kids use every foul word you can think of.  And teachers hands are tied.  There can't be discipline for the purpose of correction when parents don't agree on who gets to decide what is right and wrong--it isn't the teachers or the school anymore.  People sue each other over nothing.  They don't seem to agree on who has the right to decide.  They want to fight.

People don't agree on a common moral base.  And if you don't have a common authority as to what is acceptable, and what isn't, people do whatever they feel like with no regard to others.  Especially without regard to women and children.  Call me old-fashioned, but women and children used to be considered special.  Nowadays, women curse as bad as men.  Why would anyone respect women like that.  And the internet is awash with filth. It's depressing.

When the Biblical studies of history were removed from the schools, we lost our moral base.  Say what you will, but the guidelines God set forth were for the common good.  Even if you aren't a Christian or a Jew.  People back in the 40's agreed that God's guidelines were just.  And fair.  And good for society.  Now we have war, wars and rumors of wars.  In the 60's, young people declared that "God was dead."  And began to live without any rules for their lives.  Without any authority.  I thought it was just a phase and would pass.  No. It got worse.  The Bible tells us what happened to the Jews when they took that path... Judges 21:25.  "In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit."  And their nation fell apart.  We need someone with moral authority to guide us.  God is a good place to start.

Today was a good day.  I went to Sprouts for milk, and checked the freezer case for huckleberries.  Someone told me that they stocked wild blueberries--that's what they called them.  I had been checking for the last three or four months every time I went to Sprouts.  But no luck.

They aren't wild blueberries at all.  They are huckleberries--Sprout's just doesn't know it.  The only place I had found them before was on-line, upstate in the Northwest, and they were ninety-nine dollars a gallon.  So if Sprout's wants to call them wild blueberries and sell them for thirteen dollars a gallon, fine with me.

Well finally, today, I got the last bag they had.  I would have bought more if they had been available.  But other huckleberry affectionados like me have been watching for them as well.  If you have never eaten huckleberry pie you won't understand.  And no, blueberries are not the same.

I took them over to Jeanette's house.  She is the pie maker in our connection group at church.  Next time we all get together, she said she would make a huckleberry pie so that everyone can see what I've been talking about.  And I'll keep checking the store to see if they get more in.  I hope Sprout's doesn't figure out what they are selling for ten cents on the dollar.  I've got room for them.  I bought a freezer from the owners of this house (when they moved out) and it's empty except for a few things.

We used to go to Jay, Oklahoma and buy huckleberries.  They only grow in a few places, and are wild.  The Osage (or Choctaw) Indians would pick them and once a year have a Huckleberry Festival.    They still have the festival, but nobody picks the berries any more--at least that's what they told me.   Pat and I drove all the way across Oklahoma to Jay, to see if we could buy some.  Nope.  None.

Rattlesnakes are a problem under the bushes is what I've been told.  When I was little, I believed rattlesnakes ate the huckleberries off the bushes.  I was grown before someone laughed at me, and told me that wasn't true.  Mice and other small animals eat the berries.  And the snakes lay in wait to eat the mice.  Maybe that's why people quit picking the berries.  I don't know where the "huckle" came from.  Maybe they should have named them "Rattleberries?"

I watched a movie Sunday afternoon--True Grit.  How I had missed seeing it in the past I don't know.  I love the old movies.  They are so politically incorrect that they are refreshing.  We have become so afraid of doing or saying something that will offend someone, that real life in the 1800's and early 1900's can't be portrayed realistically anymore.

My dad was born in 1910.  His dad ran cattle in Western Indian territory and the Texas panhandle and made a ton of money.  He and my grandmother had seven sons.  My dad was the baby of the family.  The three middle ones died young of measles, pneumonia and such. but the two oldest and two youngest lived.  My grandfather was murdered when my dad was seven.  He and Harvey (next to the youngest) worked from then on in the family restaurant.  They slaughtered hogs, dressed and cooked them and everything else required to feed the family--and the town.  Story goes that the two oldest boys rigged up the undercarriage in their dad's Studebaker and ran bootleg liquor out of Arkansas.

 Their mother ran their restaurant.  They had no money, because a charlatan passing through--after someone shot and killed their dad--wooed her, married her, and absconded with all their money.  She was a naive woman who trusted everyone.   I have a picture of the restaurant--my grandmother is standing out in front, holding my father who was a baby. They spent the rest of their lives very poor.

We are one generation removed from the wild west.  One of my dad's friends was shot down on main street (dirt of course) by someone who wanted to kill him.  Shot between the eyes and left for dead.  Dad crawled under a car to get away.  From beneath the car, dad saw his friend move.  The bullet had struck a grazing blow, run under the scalp and out the back of his head without piercing his skull.  He lived.   People got shot regularly back then.  Kinda like today.

When I was young, my dad would occasionally have me get the tweezers and pick tiny pieces of bone that were breaking through the top of his head.   Seems one of his friends accidentally hit him in the head with a pickax.  Who knows why it didn't kill him.  It just shattered the top of his scull.  "How did it happen," I asked him.  "Well, we were splitting logs, and I leaned over to steady the log at the wrong moment."  My dad was tough.  But he was a quiet, gentle man.  He just grew up in the middle of the wild west.  He was honest, trustworthy, and kind.  A Christian.  He took care of his mother for the rest of her life.  Everybody loved my dad.   I adored him.

I have never gone shopping--that I remember--on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  As a matter of fact, I very seldom shop.  Except at the grocery store, or at Lowes for gardening stuff.  It seems to be a sport for some people.  They want the lowest price for something--even if they don't need it.  I think it is a game.  Black Friday has become an American tradition.  Crazy. I do better if I go to the store with a list and don't make any impulse purchases.

The noise you hear when you step out your front door today is a collective groan all across America from people who ate too much yesterday--and that includes me.

Our dinner was so noisy with seven children yelling, and everyone talking at once, that I didn't hear much of anything.  Some people I didn't get to talk to at all.  The variety of people who come from year to year is such a random mix, that some people don't see each other for a number of years.  I love to hear them laugh when they meet up. "You grew up!!"  or "What happened to your hair."  or "I didn't know you got a new job!"  And so on.

One sad thing happened.  My friend Rebecca is moving back to Dallas.  I hate it when my people leave.  I like my life just like it is.  I really don't like things to change.  I now understand the saying that "old people are set in their ways."  You better believe it.  Being set in my ways is delightfully comfortable.

When I straighten up, or reposition something in my house (something that has been in a certain place forever) to a better location, I never can find it later.    I had two copies of the book I wrote.  One copy is at the publisher.  Rebecca wanted to read it so I looked all over for the second copy.  Moving from one house to another has caused me to lose a zillion things as well.  They are all here, but where did I put them?  She helped me look, and we finally found the book.  Unsettling.

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.  

God bless you on this Thanksgiving day, year of our Lord 2018.

The weather is beautiful.  I am in good health.  I will be with my family today, over thirty of them.  I think five of my great-grandchildren will be there.  Six of my ten grandchildren and their spouses.  Three of my children and their spouses.  My brother Bill and Janet.  My sister Lisa and Mark.  My cousin Ann, Dave and their son Will.  And me.  I think that is thirty-one.  And if my other grandson and wife and baby make it, thirty-four.

We usually have more, but are thankful for those who are going to be together.  People bring friends, and sometimes Becky has those who have no family.

Last year, we ran out of gravy.  That isn't going to happen again this year.  I made enough for a standing army.  I had to boil six more eggs, which I watched like a hawk, and set a timer on to boot.  I am never, ever again going to let the eggs boil dry and explode.


I pray that all of you out there have a blessed day with friends and family.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, I always make the dressing.  And freeze it.  Then on Tuesday, I begin to make the giblet gravy.  Which is exactly what I did yesterday.  Starting by boiling six eggs, which I then chop up and refrigerate.  There is a lot of chopping going on before Thanksgiving.  I've done exactly this same thing for over sixty years.  Monday, make the dressing.  Tuesday, boil the eggs, and go to the store to get giblets and a chicken--to make broth.  Wednesday, put it all together and make the gravy.

But I got ahead of myself yesterday, and tried to do two things at once.  I put the eggs on the stove to boil,  and once that was done, I started thinking about going to the grocery store to get the giblets for the gravy and forgot all about the eggs. I can't even begin to describe the result.   When I got back from the store, of course, the pan with the eggs had boiled dry, and the house was full of smoke.

The result:  As the eggs heated up and the water boiled dry, they began to explode.  There were eggs and shells on the ceiling, the cabinets, the floor, and in every imaginable place.  An egg, when it is heated like that, is a hand grenade.  I can't tell you how bad the house smelled.  I opened the doors, turned on the fans and started cleaning up the mess.  It still smells terrible this morning.

I will never do that again.  And in retrospect, it could have been worse.

I used to be able to do a dozen things at once.  Now, I can't manage two things at once.  So I will reset my pre-thanksgiving ritual and I will finish cooking the eggs before I even think about doing anything else.  I will never forget the mess and the smell of this disaster.

Maybe by Thursday the smell of burned eggs will be gone.  I hope so.  It is pretty terrible.

Everyone in the family has an assigned thing to bring.  Becky has the dinner at her house and has a phone-group that everyone notifies everyone else what each of us are bringing so we don't duplicate.  I think there are thirty-nine of us if I count my brother Bill, sister Lisa, and cousin Ann and their spouses.  Every time I try to count, I lose track.  Most all of us will be there.  In nineteen fifty-six there were just two at our first Thanksgiving dinner.  Ken, and me.

It took me 5 hours to make the turkey dressing from scratch.  I somehow got two loads of wash done and folded in between.  And for the first time since I moved, I took Squig for a walk.  We made it to the end of the street and back.  I didn't put a leash on him and he was ecstatic.  He managed to leave a little message at every mail box on the street.  At least a dozen of them.  By the time we got to the lamp post at the end, his tank was empty and he was very proud of himself.  He now thinks he owns the block.

Tomorrow I will boil a chicken with extra giblets then bone it. I don't know why, but when you fry, or cook a chicken for pot pie, etc., it has much better broth if you cook the entire chicken.  Broth made with white meat is so bad you might as well use water.  You need the skin, fat, and bones to make decent broth.  My gravy is one of the few decent things I do in the kitchen.  Any gravy.  Especially fried chicken gravy.  My gran taught me how to do it.  I wish it didn't have a zillion calories.

We all do the entire family Thanksgiving every other year.  This year is our year.  We have had quite a time getting it to work out now that all the grandchildren have married and we have other families to consider.  Everyone has had to adjust to twelve sets of family inlaws.  We haven't perfected it completely, but we are getting there.  Until another one of us gets married and tries to adjust.

Jeanette came by yesterday.  I love having a friend that comes by to see me.  I've always been the go-see-er.  In my circle of friends, Jeanette is the hostess with the mostest.  Yesterday, November 19, was the fifth anniversary of the day Ken left, so it was really nice to have an interruption in my day, and a distraction.  Anniversaries like that are sad.  You would like to forget them, but you can't.

Tom and Pat took me to dinner that evening.  I had visitors throughout the day.  Linda and John sent dinner as well, which I will eat for lunch today.  With any luck, I won't have to cook again all week.  Turkey day is coming.  I have so much to be thankful.  We all do.  The privilege of being an American is a good thing to start thanking God for.  Family, health, adequate resources, a car (!), and on and on.  We are truly blessed.  For me, I will add: A flat driveway and a beautiful redone bathroom.  I make it to the mailbox every day without huffing and puffing.

So you got a post by accident on Saturday.  I hit the wrong button. I was aiming for the spell check and missed.  I was trying to get ahead on writing so that I wouldn't have so much to do during Thanksgiving week.

I'm in charge of the dressing (my grandmother's recipe) and making the giblet gravy.  I spent the weekend cutting up celery.  I usually do it in the processor, but it isn't as good.  So I broke down and cut it up into tiny pieces.  Everyone usually asks if there is any of "my" blood in the dressing.  They've watched me cut up onions and celery before.  (There probably is.)

I have done such a good job of taking off all my extra pounds this year.  But then Thanksgiving rolls around and I'm afraid I'll put them back on.  I only needed to lose ten or eleven, which I did.  I don't know how in the world people who are forty or fifty pounds overweight can deal with it.  Losing ten was really hard.  I dearly love to eat.  There are only two things I don't really care for.  Milk or  milk products (ice cream, yogurt, etc.) and cinnamon.  But I like cinnamon rolls.  Go figure.

I love nutmeg.  And will drink a malt if I can top it with a bunch of nutmeg.   I keep nutmeg in the glove compartment of my car.  When I was a little girl, my daddy would take me to get my shots and when I was good, afterwards we would split a strawberry malt with nutmeg on top.  It is my only "Milk related" thing that I love.  I am sure it is because it brings back a memory.  My dad was the one who took me "here and there" for things like shots.  Mom didn't do that kind of stuff.

My friend Jeanette had a party for my class a week ago.  She bakes pies.  She likes to bake pies.  The entire class is content to let her do it--if we get to eat them.  I was going to have the party here, but couldn't get my act together so she did it for me.  (We have a pot-luck once a month.)  I'll do it in January.  Surely I will have all my pictures on the wall by then.  All the major projects around here      are done.  All that's left is piddling stuff.  And I know how to piddle around.

My class is practicing saying "God bless you" to everyone they meet.  Trying to make a new habit.  You have to practice--when you are making a new habit--until it comes naturally.  And you can do it.  And whether you are losing ten or fifty pounds, it's still one pound at a time.

Saturday, I went out in the back yard, planted two peony bulbs that I brought from the other house, and spread 6 bags of mulch.  In November.  Less than a week before Thanksgiving.  It made me feel good all over.  In four months, I'll get my new outside guy to come and build me a raised bed and start planting stuff for real.  Serious planting.  Garden vegetables.  As quickly as this September, October and November went by, I'll be back outside and at it again in no time.

Becky is deep into another Estate sale.  I separated Christmas things for her to get them ready to price.  There is so much of it that I think this lady must have put up three or four trees.  Or changed her decorations every year.  Becky had to rent a store in a shopping center just to get it all the stuff in one place.  Everything had to be moved because the lady's home association didn't permit estate sales.

I'm doing church in the choir room from now until March.  They have TVs in there.  I can't take a chance on getting the flu.  (Yes, I got my flu shot.  Shots.  They have a double dose now--for people my age--that is more effective.  It think that they said 24% more effective.)  I saw my cardiologist last week and he gave me all sorts of instructions which I won't follow.  Well, I guess I'll follow some of them like avoiding crowds and getting my flu shot.  I could watch the service on TV, but it misses the point--I like to go to church.  God likes it too.  It's one of the big ten.

"Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy," isn't followed by many people today.  I guess they think that God didn't really mean what He said?

As for following my cardiologist's instructions, he thinks I am a wimp.  I have no cholesterol, no blockages, I'm skinny, and I have always had low blood pressure.  In other words, like my cardio-guy back in Tulsa told me before I moved: "You have a perfect, strong heart--the surgeon just cut the AV node out."  So my perfect heart doesn't get the message that says, "Beat."  Which means that nothing needs to be done on my part--my pacemaker and God are in charge.  I think this cardio-guy here just feels like he needs to tell me stuff because I come see him.  I come see him every six months even though I don't need it.  There's nothing he can do for me except to tell me I'm in good shape.  Praise God.

The greatest thing about the Christian life for me (in the here and now) is peace.  Yes, there is eternity, and life everlasting, but for now, peace.  I no longer worry about death--it will come along someday for all of us.  But for the Christian, the fear is gone--of facing God with the things we have done wrong.  Jesus covers it all.  He is our reconciler.  He will step between God and me, and every Christian who has ever lived, and declare that our penalty is paid.  This is the greatest gift that has ever been given.  Peace with God through the death of Jesus on the cross--our sacrifice for sin.

People don't talk about sin anymore.  They say they made a bad choice.  Or that they didn't do as good as they should have done.  Or they forgot for a moment what they were doing.  I've even heard people say that they weren't responsible for what they did because they were drunk.  Duh.

Anyway, God calls it all sin.  Missing the mark of the high calling...

As if that problem in our lives wasn't enough, James throws us a curveball.  He says, "To him who knows to do good, and doesn't do it, to him it is sin." James 4:17.  Just when you think you are on your way to being done with things you shouldn't do, you find that there is more.  You have to do things that you should do.

Which usually involves giving to those who need something.  Which is always either money or time. 

I have a harder time giving up my time, than my money.  And it gets more difficult as I grow older because giving time usually means leaving the house--which means getting dressed in something other than sweats.

The other possibility for "not doing" things you should do concerns "work."  You waste time that you should be using to get the things done that need to be done.  Dishes, laundry, mowing, etc., etc...

God expects us to be different.  Like I said yesterday, "lights."  A visible light to the world.  Obvious to the world around us because we behave in a different way.  We stop doing things we shouldn't and start doing things we should.

We Christians are living in an ever darkening world of godlessness.  Dark.  There is so much bitterness between people.  There is an ever increasing population of people who don't believe in God, and as a result have no moral base for living.  Our schools no longer can use the Bible as an ultimate guide to moral behavior.  As a matter of fact, the word "moral" has no ultimate meaning in the lives of most of the people in the world any more.   Anything goes.  Do your own thing.

And as the world grows darker, we Christians--who are lights in the darkness--grow more visible--and are easier to attack.   Like points of light on a dark night--just because we are different.  Jesus said, "Do not put your light under a bushel.  Let it shine."  Which means you are a visible target.  Our values are under siege.

The true Christians--those who live the life--will always be in conflict with the new "Anything goes" philosophy of tolerance.  Because of our moral agreement with the word of God, we are called judgmental.  Even though we don't judge.  We simply believe that God has the right to do so--to judge.  We choose to accept His Word as true, and live our lives accordingly.

When you believe something is true, you don't need to pass judgment.  It will affect the way you choose to live your life, which irritates and enrages people.  Because as long  as you adhere to the truth of God's word as your template for living, you "light" up in a world that disagrees with you--even when you keep your mouth shut.  Your very presence in the world is an irritant to those who attack the premise that you espouse.  The premise that God is the creator, and righteous judge of the world.  You can't hide--because in darkness, you are visible.  And your nature is an affront to the world.  We must do what the writer of Hebrews says: put on the armor of God.

That is why we band together in a group called church.  We are not perfect.  But we are moving in a direction that is not the way the world is moving.  Once we accept God as our judge, the judgement of this world is meaningless.  Once our desire is to please Him, pleasing this world is impossible.

I am a child of God.  I have invited Him into my life to take control and lead me in His paths.  I will glorify His holy name.  As Paul said, "I am pressing toward the mark of the high calling..."

Snow.  Less than an inch, but it set a new record for Edmond, and Oklahoma City.  And at my house, we set a new record as well:  Squig stepped right out into it, stuck his nose in it, wandered all over the back yard and around the fence line--before he came in to tell me that we had snow.  (As if I didn't know).  And did I want to come outside with him and play in it??

This is the same dog that ten years ago, when we lived in Pryor, would literally shake and shiver when he saw snow.  The same dog  that I had to pick up toss him out into it or he wouldn't "go."  The same dog that still is terrified of rain.  Rain freaks him out.  Snow is now his friend.  Maybe there is hope for him yet.

My friend Rebecca Perkins came over this morning and visited for a while.  She is a treasure.  I met her at a book conference.  Smart, funny, and cheerful.  I need all of those kind of friends I can get.

Carolyn calls and we talk almost every day.  When I "hang up," I can't tell you a thing we talked about.  I need those kinds of friends as well.

Jeanine, from across the street checks each morning to see if I have turned off my outside lights--and if I haven't, she comes to check on me.  I need those kinds of friends, too.  Her husband Dean is always ready to help me.  Yesterday, he loaded five boxes of tile that I returned to the tile shop for a refund.  They were too heavy for me to lift.  I am so very appreciative of that kind of friend.

Tony said he would come back and do a dozen or so small jobs for me--so make a list.  He's my right hand man friend.  And of course his two sons.  Austyn reads my blog every day.  A thirteen year old kid reads my blog!!  What a blessing to have him and twin brother Tyler as my friends.

And Linda, next door, brings me wonderful meals at least twice a week.  Her husband John (a realtor) fixed my car-stop-tennis-ball-thing-a-ma-jig in the garage.  He helped me sell and buy my houses.

Jeanette just gave me her brand new cheetah-fuzzy robe to keep me warm this winter.  I could go on and on.  I am so blessed.  Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.

My mom was a fashionista.  She loved costume jewelry.  Rhinestones, jingles and jangles.  When she died, those things ended up with me.  I wear her things all the time.  In fashion, or out--I don't care.  And through the years, I have purchased jewelry at garage sales, estate sales, etc.  It was cheap.  No longer.  What I could once buy for a dollar now goes for a hundred.  Who knew.

I had so much of it, and didn't want to dig through it, so I started buying those really old gold embossed boxes with glass lids and sides.  They were perfect, came in all sizes, and you could see what was in the box without opening the lid.  They kept the dust out and were easily accessible.

Well, as with all things in my life, it became unmanageable.  I would pick up a piece of jewelry at one garage sale, find a glass box at another--and find a place to put them.  I eventually couldn't find room for all of them, and had no idea what was in most of them.  One by one, they covered my bedroom chest, and then the counter in the master bath, and eventually I had to start stacking them.  So...I promised myself that when I got moved, I would dump it all out, clean all the boxes and sort jewelry.

Last weekend, the only place I could find to sort all that stuff was the dining room table--extended with leaves.  Box at a time, I filled them with things I actually wanted, according to color and space.  I am half way through and admit that some of it has to go.  I already gave three boxes away--Lisa wants some of them.  I'll take some of them to the antique store for Becky to sell, and the jewelry I have never worn--and have no idea why I bought--is going out.

Earrings that had gotten separated got put back together, and I found things that I thought were forever lost.  A gold chain with a diamond that Ken had given me--for one.  I found his USMC gold wings--which I will proudly wear on a jacket.  I found my dad's wedding ring.  And a platinum one that I think was my mom's.  There is a necklace that Becky made from sea glass that we picked up one year on the Riviera--no, I didn't buy a ticket to the Riviera.  Becky had miles from traveling to work.  Five of us went, shared cheap rooms, and ended up with sea glass jewelry.  It's really pretty.  Pretty gets me every time.  Vanity, vanity, thy name is "Woman."(Actually, Shakespeare never wrote that.  Hamlet said: "Frailty, thy name is woman.")  But the Book of Ecclesiastes has quite a lot to say about vanity.  I'm not vain.  I'm not vain.  I'm not vain...If I keep saying it, it will be true???

I went to a connection group party at Jeanette's house Saturday, and when I got home, my next door neighbor sent a plate over with BBQ ribs, baked beans, mac and cheese, fried okra, etc..  I bet I gained three pounds over the weekend.  And I have enough leftovers for a couple of days as well.
The plate was delivered by an angel.  Austyn.  He said that this week he will get his final check up, and aside from a broken collar bone that hasn't healed, he's good.  Lost his spleen, was cut open from chest to belly button, broken ribs, neck bones and both collar bones--in addition to cuts, bruises and internal bleeding and trauma.  He missed 3 months of school and caught up in three weeks.

"Miss Janie," he said, "I'm here to fix your sewing machine.  (He's been telling me he was going to do that as soon as he was on his feet.)  Ten minutes later he said, "Your gear shaft is disrupting the fabric feed--and parts aren't available for your machine."  (I thought it was bobbin tension, but no.  He is 13 years old and much smarter than me.) "You'll have to get a new machine," he told me.  Now I know.

I have been teaching a Bible class ever since I got kicked out of Sunday School when I was 17.  The teacher was boring, I talked too much, etc.  No excuse.  The pastor came and got me and said, "You come with me.  You are going to teach 9 year old girls."  To be honest, it was a relief.  I've been teaching ever since--63 years now.  Everyone in my family, and in Ken's family, were Bible teachers.  The pastor told me to teach--so I did.   I didn't decide to become a teacher.

The passage we read Sunday went like this:  James 3:1.  "Not many should become teachers, because you know that we will receive a stricter judgment."  I don't want to receive a stricter judgment!!!  I didn't strive to "become."  From my beginning, I was taught to read God's word, and listen when others talked about what was in it.  Osmosis.  I was blessed to be raised in a Christian environment.  Not to teach, but to learn.  I guess I "became" a teacher anyway, telling others what I had learned.

 I hope God forgives all the mistakes I've made.  I don't know that I made any Biblical mistakes--none that I know of, but living before those that you teach, well, I'm certainly not perfect.  And we teach with our behavior as much--or more--than we do teaching Bible.  Biblical truth is truth that must be put into action.  I get notes out there from you telling me to keep on keeping on.  Thanks.  I teach myself as well.  I'm still learning.

Well, I blew it.  I forgot to post.  Does that mean I've lost my faculties?  Mercy I hope not.  I had two back to back appointments early this morning and I guess I made a wheel's up landing.

For those of you who don't remember what I wrote about that from Ken's point of view, it went like this.  A fighter pilot has a take off, and a landing check list.  If something interrupts your sequence, any number of things can happen.  The tower is in charge  of visual checks of an incoming fighter pilot for landing--and if the pilot is distracted by battle damage, low fuel, etc., the pilot can miss a point in his check list--like lowering his wheels.  It happens.  "But not to me," Ken said.

I can't remember where he was, but he told it like this:  "Colonel, lower your wheels," from the tower.  "They're down," Ken replied.  "Colonel, check your wheels."  As Ken told it, "I was a few seconds from landing.  I had gone through an extensive check list for landing and knew I had lowered my wheels in the check.  But I hadn't.  I would have bet my life my wheels were down--and I almost did."

So this morning, I went through my morning check list, and would have sworn that I had lowered my wheels.  I didn't.

I'll do better next week.

We are having a hard freeze tonight.  I will go through my check list and double check that I have unhooked the hoses outside.

The bathroom is finished.  Hallelujah.  Done.  I will start finishing up small details in the rest of the house.  Tony said he would come back, when I am ready for him, and hang drapes.

I went over to my old house and cut off some dried brown okra pods, and collected the seeds for next year.  Ann went with me to get some for her son.  It is a good feeling to collect seed that came from my father's garden from many years ago.  Probably 10th or 11th generation of those seeds.  Life continues.  My dad's okra seeds will be passed down to other generations.  That is a good feeling.

I was flipping channels last night and an episode on Nova caught my eye.  It was on the recovery of the remains of pilots from WW2 who were lost over water.  I shouldn't have watched it.  It was horribly sad, and close to my heart.  I have such a deep emotion for those who have served our country in the military.  Especially those who have come under enemy fire.

For me, the hard part of a program like that is seeing the faces of those men in uniform--taken before they went into combat.  So young.  So determined.  Their lives cut short and lost in some strange place.  Far from American soil.  It is such a great tragedy.

Of course, for me, programs like that hit too close to home.  My husband and both of my sons served in the military during war.  When I think of that, I get a catch in my throat.  I know the stress and anxiety that comes with waiting.  Waiting.  Not knowing.  Fearful, but resigned.  You have no idea whether or not they will come home to you.  Or how they will come home to you.  Or if.

I carry a key chain with a picture of Ken on it.  He is twenty-two or twenty-three years old and is sitting in a Corsair, getting ready to take off on a mission in Korea.  He has a one thousand-yard stare, looking into nothing, not knowing what will happen after he takes off.  He is so young.  He is one of the ones who lived to come home.   Thank God.

But for every warrior that comes home, there are dozens who don't.  I have lived on the reverse side of war for three of my men.  The waiting side.  My heart breaks for those who waited, and who never found out what happened.  And for those who did.

The elections are over.  Thank goodness.  The vitriol was killing me.  I haven't had to endure such devision between people in this country in all my years.  It is wearying.  Exhausting.  People think that they are changing minds by yelling, using horrible language, etc....they aren't.  I think I am going to unfriend everybody on Facebook.  I grew up in a kind, polite world.  It has vanished.

James said, "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy...the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace."  James 3:17-18.  I am ready for peace.

James also said, "...the tongue is a little member...how great a matter a little fire kindles.  The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity...it defiles the whole body...no man can tame it.  It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.  Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing.  Brothers, these things ought not to be so."  James 3: 5-6, 10.

Tony finished the tile.  Tomorrow he will paint, grout and call the job done.  God willing.  For the first time since I moved, I feel like my life is going to be normal again.  It's close.  I am so ready.  My house remodeling....and the elections.  Equal irritations.

On Sunday, my class discussed what "works" are.  James 2: 17, 26 says, "...faith, if it doesn't have works is dead...For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead." I shared with the class that when I had open heart surgery, (I was thirty five with four children)   there was a lady in our church that made soup for me.  Over and over again, week after week.  It was one of the few things I could eat.  There are many works that we do, but we, as Christians, will do something for others.  It is a natural result of the Spirit within.

Works don't save you.  What James was saying was that the Spirit of God within you changes you and produces a servant's heart.  As a matter of fact, James introduces his letter by saying, "James, a servant of God..." You want to help others.  Your "want to" changes.  Paul says you become a new creature. 2 Corinthians 5:17 "...if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.  Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new."