Austyn is over the hump--as Ken used to say.  He is up, regaining his strength, and on the mend.  Praise God.  The family thanks all of you for your prayers.

Becky Bacon is surely going to come this week.  Surely.  I am hanging pictures like crazy.  She can help me decide where the leftover pictures go.  I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Friday, I killed another black widow spider.  That's four in one week.  She was hanging on the pull tab on my mail box.  It's a good thing I looked before I pulled the latch.  She had been living in the blocks around the bottom of the mail box, and when I moved the blocks, she started climbing up the bricks, looking for a new home.   She found one.  In spider heaven--wherever that is.

I never kill spiders in general.  Just black-widow ones who invade my territory.  You seldom see a fiddle-back, they hide really well.  Leave all the others alone.  They eat bugs.  That's their job.

The fellow who mows my lawn is coming to cut down a tree.  The tree is dying  and needs a little help getting there.  My next door neighbor wants the wood.  I never use wood in a fireplace.  It's too messy.  It puts ash-dust all over the house no matter how tight the fireplace doors are.  I had a wood burning fireplace put into a house I built back in 1973.  Never again.

My family room is finished.  Pictures, doo-dads, TV, furniture and lamps are all in place.  It is wonderful to sit in my chair, look around the room, and not be able to find anything that needs to be done.  (Unless I look down on the floor beside my chair where I have piled paper to go through.   I am drowning in paper from the last two months. )

 I failed to record a single check I wrote.  However, I learned years ago that I needed a carbon copy check book.  All I have to do is balance it.  Which I absolutely hate to do.  I am a mathematician, not an accountant.   I don't even trust myself to add.  Addition and subtraction are the reason God made calculators.

Pray for the families in the Carolinas.  My cousin is an EMT there and it is devastating.