It is pouring down rain.  A frog strangler.  Ann and I went to breakfast and when we got through, it was raining so hard you couldn't see to drive and the streets were flooded.

I don't think this place I live in is Oklahoma anymore.  It feels like a strange country.  Kinda like a rain-forest.  I've never seen this much rain here.

I am having a Battle Royal with the Oklahoman newspaper.  They don't deliver my paper half the time. I call them, but it does no good.  They tell me they can't find carriers.  I say, "I'm sorry for your troubles, but I just want my paper."

They sound like their excuse for the problem is something that I will try and understand.  I want the paper.  That's it.  When they miss a day, I can't check the crossword puzzle and see if I missed anything.

I told them that I cared nothing at all about their news, I get that on TV every night.  All I want is the Sudoku, the Cryptogram and the Crossword.  My daily "fix." 

I think you could make some money opening a company that sent you a daily puzzle sheet.  Yes, I know, you can buy all of those puzzles at the book store.  I don't want them that way.  It's too many.  And most older people take the newspaper for the same reason.  There's a market out there.

I like the anticipation of getting my puzzles each day.  When I buy a book of puzzles, it's no longer a treat.  It's a glut.

Something in the mail every day.  Those of us over seventy don't have that much to do and it's exciting to go to the mailbox and get something besides junk mail.  Or go down the driveway and get the paper.

It's interesting how your life with your grandchildren turns out.  I have two grandsons who call me every week.  Sometimes twice.  Just to talk.  It's nice when a grandchild not only loves you, but likes you as well.

I hear about what they are doing at work, what's happening in their lives.  And they ask about what I'm doing that day--is anything new?  How I'm feeling.  It's interesting, because they seem genuinely interested.

I am ashamed to say that they are usually the ones who initiate the calls.  I'm always afraid they will be working or busy.  No excuse.  

You would think that it would be one of the four granddaughters who would be talkative.  Women get teased about talking all the time.  But, no--it is these two grandsons.

The thing that happens when you have interaction with someone is that you become a part of each other's lives.  It isn't that you love one grandchild more than another one, you just know more about them.

One thing I know for sure--they all love me.  They just show it in different ways.

It's just that these two grandsons surprise me.  I feel blessed to have them in my life.  I feel blessed to have all ten of my grandchildren in my life.  And my six great-grandchildren as well.

When I married Ken, I had no idea all these people would end up in my life.  I've lost count. Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and all of their spouses...mercy!  The Bible says, "Blessed is the man who has his quiver full of arrows..."  It's talking about your children.  Does that apply to women as well?  

I miss my home town of Pryor.  I knew everyone there anywhere from fifty to seventy years.  They knew me.  We raised each other's children.  Taught them in church and Bible School.  Some of those children now have grandchildren.

Moving to a new town--and I've been here four years--is so difficult when you are older.  The people here have done all the things here in this church the same way things I did things in the church in Pryor.  They know each other.

I don't know many of the older people here, much less their children and grand-children.  Friends like I had in Pryor were made over a life time.

Nobody knows Ken.  Who he was.  What he did.  There is no conversation to be made about that.  Nobody knows my children.  Or my grandchildren.  I don't know theirs either.  I've made one really good friend.  Which is a blessing. 

It's amazing how much of our life is about our families--or our work.  And I don't work anymore.  Nobody wants to talk about math anyway.  I take that back--my brother has decided to learn Calculus and want's me to help him.

So when he was here last week, I dug around in my books and found two Calculus books that were the same edition, and we got through three chapters before he left to go home.  He can call me and I'll help him on the phone because we have the exact same text for us to use.  I wonder if he will really do it.  Why in the world does he want to???  Oh, well; I'll get him through it. 

I, on the other hand, don't want to do much of anything new.  My head is full of things learned over a lifetime that are no longer relevant.  I think I've run out of space in my brain. But if anyone else has a use for Calculus, I'm your girl.  I have absolutely no use for it anymore.  I'd love to give it away and clear some space in my brain. 

The weatherman is saying that winds 80 miles an hour are headed my way.  I don't think he knows what he is talking about.  This is August and we don't have that kind of rain, wind, and such in August....

I wrote that last night.  Turns out, I was wrong. 

The wind was 80 miles an hour and so much rain that there are floods, trees down, and no power in much of Oklahoma City and in Edmond.  I guess there are firsts for everything.  Blinding rain and wind and floods in August in Oklahoma.

I walked across the street because there was a hook-echo right on top of Edmond--and the weather man on Channel 4 is over cautious ever since the Moore tornado.  He gets so excited he can hardly catch his breath.  My neighbors have a cellar.  They make sure I make it across the street.

It takes me so long to gather myself and the dog up,  that I would have been a goner by the time I got across the street if it had hit us. 

My dog and computer and phone and the editing on the book I'm working on.  Everything else is expendable.  I have a better  chance of falling and breaking my neck crossing the street than getting blown away.

Next time, I'm going to get in a closet.

I had to give Squig tranquilizers.  He panted and shook until 4 o'clock this morning.  We neither one got much sleep.

We're probably going to have a snow storm before the summer is over.  Like they say about Oklahoma, "If you don't like the weather, wait a second."


  

Have you read Pilgrim's Progress.  Christian wanders along in his search for the happy life as a believer and meets obstacles along the way.

I completely identify with one of those obstacles.  I, too, have fallen into the "Slough of Despond."  My publisher sent a finished copy of the book I wrote.  It is unrecognizable.

The Slough of Despond is where I am having to go back over the original, word for word, and correct what she has done.  She took the main character--a seven year old girl--and turned the child's "voice" into a sophisticated adult.

If the child said, "I cain't," the editor changed it to "I can not."  I want to pull my hair out.  It's like I am having to write the book all over again.  Every "don't" is changed to "do not."  Every "can't" is changed to "can not." 

I have to agree to the changes for it to be published.  So it probably won't ever be published.  Because I will never agree to the changes.

I'm sinking into "despond."

I'm just going to have to put this in the hands of God or I am going to go nuts.  I've reviewed 50 pages and have hundreds of corrections.  And there are two hundred and four pages.

I think I'll have to live to be ninety to see this thing done.  The Slough of Despond is like quicksand.

"In everything give thanks..." not, "...for everything..."

Wednesday I forgot to post.  My friend Rebecca, who lives in Dallas texted to remind me I hadn't posted.  I'm glad for friends who not only read what I write, but keep me on track.  My brother Bill and wife Janet had come that morning to celebrate "Being Here" with me, and take me to the Mellon exhibit.  Janet is a fabulous artist, and wanted to see the paintings that aren't normally on display.

Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and dozens of others that have been held in a private collection and rarely seen.  It took me ten minutes to look at them.  It took Janet and my cousin Ann an hour.  I have no "art-genes."  I actually can identify the artist by looking at the painting because I've been to Paris a number of times where some of the more famous artists have their works displayed.  I've learned their "style."

But the only thing I noticed as unusual about this exhibit (And I ask myself why I am sharing this because it shows the depths of my art-ignorance) was that they were so poorly framed.  The frames were so embellished that they detracted from the work. The first thing you noticed was the gaudy frame, not the art.

My art teacher in high school, Mrs. Janz, taught us perspective.  She wanted us to know where the person who was painting the picture was standing.  To emphasize this she would have us draw a three-dimensional picture of a chair looking up at it, down, and from either side coupled with up or down.  I drew zillions of chairs--which helped me when I taught Calculus.  I could draw freehand three dimensional diagrams on the board. 

That is my extent of art knowledge.  Along with color.  However, I do know what I'm looking at and who painted it.  So I guess I've learned something.  I can look at it.  Janet, and my sister Lisa can actually "do" it.  They both can take a blank piece of canvas and transform it.  It has to be a God-given talent.

My grandmother on my mother's side made cookies that were really simple.  Her recipe came from cooking restrictions back in the depression.  They didn't have the extras that would make them all jazzed up--like peanut butter.

They were simply flour, shortening, eggs and a little vanilla.  There may have been something else in them--I don't remember.  I just remember that before she baked them, she brushed the top with and sugar mixed with a little water.  Then topped them off with raisins.

Once when I went to the St. Louis area to visit Becky, Craig and the boys, Becky baked those cookies.

The boys were at school, Becky and Craig were on their way to work, and Becky said, "I baked you some of Gran's cookies."  There were about three dozen cookies on a platter on the counter in the kitchen.

Later when she got home, after the boys came home from school, she asked them if they liked the cookies.

"What cookies," both of them asked.

"The ones I baked," she answered.  Then looked at me with a question in her eyes.

"You said you baked them for me," I answered.

"You ate them all?"  She was shocked.

I didn't think anyone should shocked.  She knew they were my favorite.  It took me three hours to finish them off.  In my defense, I skipped lunch.

My publisher came Monday with a bound edition of my book.  They had revised it.  The entire writing style had been formalized, and I don't write like that.  To say that I didn't like what they did would be an understatement.

I am supposed to give final approval to it.  Which I won't do.  I am having to go back to the original edition and go over every word in 204 pages to see what they changed and fix it.

I did 9 pages last night and am pulling my hair out.  They aren't going to be happy, but I don't really care. If they wanted a book in a formal style they should have written it themselves.  They like words like "did you" instead of "did'ja" when a nine year old boy is the speaker.  Sorry, but no.

I didn't think they would change it.  I thought they would make corrections.  There is a big difference.

I've been reading books since I was six years old.  My mom said that if we were reading, we didn't have to help with the housework.  So I made sure that I was always reading something.  She didn't care if it was Shakespeare or Wonder Woman.  Just as long as I was reading.  

Reading increases you're vocabulary.  It also gives you discretion.  You learn what is interesting and what is boring.  And that doesn't take very long.  You will eventually discard authors that aren't worth your time.  

I know there are some changes that need to be made.  I'm willing to make changes.  I'm not willing to convert to a different style.  Right now, I'm "fuzzed up."  Editorial correction would be: "Disturbed."

I had to go to a meeting today.  I'm sure you love meetings.  

You get 30 people in a room and ask for suggestions on the topic you are presenting--and of course 29 of those people don't have anything to say, but one person in the room does and proceeds to say a lot of words about something unrelated to the subject.

The moderator thanks that person for their input, and closes the meeting.  

I can honestly say that I don't remember a single thing from this meeting I went to today.  I don't know what the point was.  I was listening.  I was.  And I clapped when everyone else did.  I just didn't get it.

What's the point of meetings?  Whatever needs to get done will be done by one or two people anyway.  

You've heard what they say about  church work.  Ten percent of the members do one hundred percent of the work.

Which is okay with me.  I used to be part of that ten percent.  Now I'm just a watcher.  And a sit down teacher.  My energy has gone out the door. 

Maybe that's why I don't like meetings.

Or maybe I'm just an old party pooper.

Nobody but you and me know I didn't like the meeting and I'm counting on you not to tell.

I'm working on my attitude.

You know the routine.  You get up, wash your face, brush your teeth, get dressed, get your hair into some manageable arrangement, and make up your face--that is if you use make up.

I do.  Somewhat.  And every time I put lipstick on, I think of my mom.  She loved those free kits that Estee Lauder gave you when you made a purchase.

When Mom died, I found dozens of unopened Estee gift packs in her dresser.  I gave all of it to charity except the lipstick--which happened to be a color of light pink that I liked.

Still using them.  So when I make my face in the morning I think of my mom who bought Estee, so that she could get all the free stuff she never wore.

There is something about "free" that attracts us.  I know myself.  I love the BOGO deals at Walgreens.  For those of you who don't get excited about free stuff, BOGO is Buy One Get One.

When I try to explain the plan of salvation to someone who doesn't exactly know about Bible stuff, I start with the fact that we are loved.  As strange as it may seem, God loves us, and has a free gift for us.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave...."  Loving involves giving.  It doesn't have to be a present; it can be time, or a listening ear, or some help with a task.  There are lots of ways to give.  But God's gift was different.

He gave "...His only Son.  That whosoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life."  Now that is a free deal.  You would think the world would be rushing to Him to get their own eternal life.

Remember Bible School.  We marched in a line into the building to the anthem.  Pledged allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag and the Bible.

Every church in town had a Bible school.  Staggered at different times so you could go to almost all of them.  There may have been denominational differences, but everybody agreed on Moses, Jonah, David and the other stories.  

People saved orange juice cans, oatmeal and match book boxes, and anything else that could be the repurposed into a fun creation.  You saved them all year to be used in Bible school.

I especially remember the colored scripture cards.  Ten verses to a card.  If you could quote them correctly you got the next card.

I did them all.  Not because the verses meant anything to me.  I just wanted the colored cards.  All of them.

But things memorized simmer in your brain, and when you are older a moment comes when you need what you learned.  And God's word becomes meaningful. 

Ten verses to a card.  Ten days of Bible School.  One hundred verses every summer.  I memorized hundreds of scriptures to get the colored cards.

What we do for one reason, God uses for another.  I wish I could go back and thank the teachers in Bible school who helped me.  But I don't even know who they were.

God does.  That's what matters.  His Word is, "A lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path."  I learned that in Bible School.

I went to get the mail today, and for the second time this year, a surprise awaited me inside the box. A spider web that I readily recognized by its random stringiness.  A black widow.  I dispatched her before she could lay eggs.  Hopefully. The second one I've killed inside my mailbox in a year.

Scary.  Stick your hand in to get your mail and end up dead.

After the first one, I've been careful to check.  But you never know.  I've found them when I worked in the flower beds.  They like to hide between rocks, or bricks, or stacked wood.  In a dry place with access to damp areas.

They don't spin pretty webs.  Their webs have no shape at all.  Just strings of webbing randomly stretching in no particular direction.  At least a rattle snake gives you a warning.

Not so the Black Widow.  Unless you know what you are looking for, you would just think you were looking at a spider's web that has been torn apart by the wind.  It certainly doesn't look organized.

I've always been interested in creepy crawlers.  I took a course in entomology from a guy who was the lead entomologist for the Viet Nam war.  He went in ahead of the troops to inspect what types of insects, snakes, spiders, etc. that they would encounter. Things that would kill you besides getting shot.

I learned one thing that was interesting.  If you ever have roaches, spread dry borax along the base-boards and in the cabinets.  The bugs walk on it and then lick their "feet," go back where they live and they die.  The borax is a cleaning agent so you can just sweep it up or mop the floor.  Better than spray.  We moved into a rent house that had bugs once. It worked.  All gone in 24 hours.

My Mac can do anything.  Problem is, I can't.  The simplest things escape me.  Same with my phone.

Learning a language takes years.  Just think how a child learns English.  First they learn nouns: Ball, chair, water, etc.  The other words just "come" and fit in because they hear them over and over: The ball, A chair, wet water.  Words by association.  Adjectives, adverbs, etc.

With my computer, I spend half my time trying to go backwards to where I was a minute before.  I have learned about Command Z, X, C, and V.  It took forever.  I was erasing my trash, one item at a time, until Craig showed me how to use the Shift key to erase a column.  Where do you learn things like that!!

Jeanette bought me a Word for Dummies book. (I had been using Pages and didn't realize I had to buy Word and have it installed.)  I can hardly read the book.  It assumes I know the language when it explains something.

The rest of the world learned the words as they went along.  I got presented with the entire dictionary of words all at once and don't know what is important and what isn't.  I am constantly calling my daughter Pat asking for help.

I had Word installed because Pat said she could help me more easily if I was using what she uses.  I have never in my life seen so many little pictures, (icons) that are trying to help me, but just confuse me. "Pages" was simpler.

I think I need a Model T, but own a Jag.  I learned to drive with four on the floor and a clutch.  I'm thankful for all this power on my computer, but am learning to use it very, very slowly.  It drives me nuts.  I feel like the only person in the universe who can't keep up.  Just when I think I've got something down pat, someone out there changes it.  Obsolete occurs instaneously anymore.

When I was looking for information about a friend of Ken's, Pete Olson--because I was going to include something about him in this book I am writing, there was nothing out there.  It was as if he never existed.

But I knew he did, because Ken mentioned that he flew for the Blue Angels.  He and Ken went to flight school together, left Pensacola together, served a year at El Toro, then both went to VMF-212 in Korea, and flew missions together. 

But my son Scott and I remembered the story Ken told us a little different.  I know that Zeke Cormier asked Ken to join the Blue Angels.  I thought it was after Pete was killed; Scott thought it was before.  

It was probably after Ken turned it down. Pete took the solo position.  Ken turned it down because he didn't want to spend three years flying formation.  He did that with the Seattle Reserves before the war.  He was just back from a hundred and ten missions in Korea, and living out of a suitcase didn't appeal to him.  So he went to the carrier as a landing signal officer, training cadets to hook wire--horrendously dangerous.  Pete went to the Blues. 

It was if Pete vanished without a trace.  The Blues had no record of him.  And if I hadn't been writing a book and looking for information on Pete, and asked my son Scott for help, Pete would have been forgotten.  Scott searched newspapers from 1950-55, and found a record of the fatal crash.  Pete rolled an F9 into the ground off Corpus Christi in 1955.  March 24.  Practicing in the solo position. Now, the official record of the Blues will be corrected on their web page.  Pete was an only child, parents gone, and nobody to remember him.  Now they will.

He and Ken were friends.  If Ken had taken the position with the Blues, it might have been him?  The interesting thing is, if I hadn't started writing a book and looked for Pete's name, he would have been forgotten.  Scott found him.

Thursday, the church had an ice cream social for over-the-hill types.  Every church tries to come up with a cute name for us.  The names aren't cute.  We're old.  You can't make that very cute.

I don't like ice cream--I know, everybody likes ice cream.  But I don't like milk, yogurt, etc.  So I need a bottle of hot fudge to pour over it to kill the taste of the milk-cream flavor.

I always re-read what I am writing and what I've said so far sounds like I'm a grouchy old coot.  Maybe I am?

What I should have said was, "Isn't it nice that the church plans something special for the old-timers!!  Even the grumpy don't-like-ice-cream ones.

I think I just have a case of "I'm tired of doctor's appointments."  Yesterday they wired me up with a cardio-halter.  I had to try and find a position to sleep last night that I wasn't lying on wires.  These tests are coming to an end soon.

Surgeon called yesterday.  Said they put a stent in my neck.  I thought they ballooned it.  Oh, well.  It's done.

I'm thankful they have tests to discover stuff.

I'm just tired of it.

I'll start next Monday being cheerful.

Promise.

I hate asking for help.  I've always managed.  But the release orders from the hospital said no driving a car for a few days.

I was 99% sure I could make it down the turnpike without using my right arm--which they didn't want me to use.  But I knew my friend Jeanette might ask me if I was following the doctor's orders.  I doubt she would have asked me that, but there was always a chance.  The worst possibility was that one of my daughters would have asked me if I was following directions.

And since I am known for always telling the truth, I knew I would have to admit that, "No."  That I wasn't following the doctor's orders.  I doubt that there was a 1% chance of something going wrong, but just in case I got caught being bad--by my daughters--I asked Jeanette to drive me for a return appointment.

My daughters are my problem.  They expect me to follow doctor's orders!!

I knew she would be happy to do that.  But I still hate to ask for help.  I'm not a very compliant patient when I know I can do something myself without asking for help.

But lately, I'm trying to be good.

Instead of so independent.

And headstrong.

And stubborn.

It's hard.

Ken and Pete were best friends from the time they went through flight school together, served the next year at El Toro together, left to fly together in the Korean War and bonded as brothers.  They shared everything and the only argument they ever had was an ongoing one.  Which of them was the greatest fighter pilot in the Marine Corps.  Both of them claimed that title.

When they left Korea, probably 1952, Pete went to Washington as an aide for some General, Ken went to Pensacola to qualify cadets on the carrier.  But they stayed close.  I have pictures of Ken walking down a street in Washington D.C where Pete was stationed.  I have a letter Pete wrote Ken saying he was coming to Pensacola. The two of them came from similar religious backgrounds.

Pete left Washington to go to the Blue Angels.  I just couldn't find the records.  Ken told me Pete rolled his plane into the ground practicing for a show in Corpus Christy.  But the official Blue Angels site only listed those killed in shows.  Scott found the records.  Pete died on March 24, 1955.  I'm sure Ken was devastated.  Ken was Pete's body escort to take him home to Oregon where his parents lived.   A couple of months later,  Ken flew to Pryor to to visit people who had been close to him growing up. My parents and his were close friends. Grief moves us back to familiar things. 

I didn't know until today that Pete died just five months before I met Ken.  Somewhere in that time frame, Ken began to think about marriage.  He was 26 years old.  Perhaps when Pete died, Ken was ready to settle down and find a wife.  I met him in September, thought nothing about it, because he was so much older.  But he thought on it, because the next March on my eighteenth birthday, he called my dad and asked if he could pursue that thought.  I knew nothing about his interest in me.  Dad said if you can catch her, go for it.

It took awhile, but he caught me.  I'm glad he did.
  

Home from the hospital.  Veins in the neck were very narrow.  Had to be ballooned.  But it is fixed for now...doctor said it would probably have to be done again--which is fine.  I can do that.  Just thankful somebody figured out what to do.  And it was something that could be fixed.

Worst part was I couldn't eat before hand.  Not eating is traumatic.  I live to eat.  And eat.  And eat.  Luckily, I don't gain weight very easily.

Joe Bacon, Becky's hubby, (who is my Pryor RN friend) is helping me research airplanes for the book I'm writing.  He has come up with a lot of relevant stuff.

Scott, (son) also found something I had spent weeks looking for and couldn't find anything.  

Ken had told me that his best friend, Pete Olsen had been killed while he was with the Blue Angels.  Everyone called Pete and Ken "The Gold-dust Twins."  I had searched the official Blue's site and couldn't find anything about it.  Turns out the only deaths the Blues recorded were the ones that occurred in shows.

Scott finally found it through old newspapers.  And validated the exact story Ken had told me.  Once again, I should have written the story down back then--but didn't.  

No way I could know back then that someday, I would want to write a book about my husband's life.  We were young--I wasn't thinking about such stuff.  Certainly not about Ken no longer being here with me.

I have a million questions now.  Joe and Scott are helping.  If anyone out there has something to add, mail it to me!  Joe had stories that Ken had told him that I had forgotten about.

Tomorrow, I am going to get a procedure on my neck vein.  Finally!  It has taken forever to get to this point.  Trying to get someone to listen to what you are telling them is impossible when you are an 81 year old female.

If you are a woman, they look at your age, categorize you as senile, stupid and over-reacting and hysterical.   Even though I am calm, knowledgable, verbally clear and precise.   

I would tell them that my blood pressure was always, always low, and the reaction I would get was:  "It's high because you are frightened.  (Which I wasn't)  Thank God there are doctors out there who listen or I'd still not know what was wrong.  Seven male physicians before my female GP sent me to the right specialist.  Not that I have anything against men--just saying....

So.  If you know something strange is going on with your body, don't give up.  Change doctors.  Find one who listens to you.

The hail storm in March ruined my roof, gutters, shed and fence.  They are finally going to re-roof this week.  I told them to put me last on the list because I figured we'd get hail again.  I'm dreading the hammering.

I just finished reading Proverbs again.  I call it the Book of Buts.  Starting in Chapter 10, almost every verse says something like, "If you do this, something good will be the result; BUT....if you do that something bad will happen."  Sometimes, instead of 'but' the writer uses 'and.'

It continues through chapter 15.  The book is a manual for what to do and what not to do.  Problem is, people don't listen to good advice.

It would save the world a lot of misery if they listened.

Well, I went to see "Hamilton" last night.  There have been so many rave reviews, that my exceptions were high.  People are asking how I liked it.

So I'm going to tell you.  If I had been by myself, I would have left after twenty minutes.  I stayed for the whole thing, and it was the most disappointing drama I have ever been to.

First it was horrendously loud.  Every minute.  No variation.  Ear-drum pounding loud.  I had my fingers in my ears for almost the entire thing it was so painful.  There was never any relief from it.

Second, the choreography was ho-hum.  Too many people on stage with very mediocre dancing.  Nothing but a lot of moving around.  Poorly done.

Third, all but two or three of the characters  including Arron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were black.  There was such discontinuity between the race of the main characters at a time when slavery was rampant that it was hard to keep track in your mind who was who.  I'm all in favor of more representation of black people.  But playing the role of white historical figures at the time Alexander Hamilton lived was poor role casting.  Just as bad as white people playing the part Negros back in the 30's an 40's by painting their faces black.   I find both instances unsettling.

And finally, the entire musical was done in rap.  Which is a difficult medium in which to tell a story.  And the lines were so "fast-rap," you couldn't understand most of what they said.  Too many adjectives with no nouns.

Three of us went together.  All of us agreed it was a horrible production that should have been an uplifting story of a truly honorable patriot of the Continental Congress and Revolutionary war.  Read the book and save your money.  The actors did a good job was the only high point.

I'm going to see "Hamilton" this week.  I want to find out what all the ta-da is about.  The only memorable stage production I've seen was "The Jersey Boys."  I think I'm not very "artsy."

"Cats" was strange.  But it has the "Memorable memory" song:  Memories. 

I loved the music of the Jersey Boys.  Later I found a rendition on facebook of the Navy ensemble singing the songs.   With a band.  In uniform.  I think they were better than the on-stage production. 

Today, they are ripping off shingles on my house.  The hail damage from the freak storm in March destroyed shingles, decking, storm drains, leaf guards, shed roof and decking and the wood fence.  It got it all.

There were so many damaged houses in Edmond that insurance companies sent reps in from all over the US to get the claims done.

And there were so many houses to repair that roofing crews have been working night and day all over town to get it done.  And still aren't finished.

Edmond has a permanent pinging sound now.  We've had it since March.  Day and nights, hammers pounding nails into shingles with nail-guns.  It's worse at night.  And they start at five in the mornings.

I had them wait till now because I wanted to be sure we didn't have another hail storm and have to do it all over again.

Stacy, Scott's wife is a State Farm Agent.  She said that Edmond is dead center of hail-storm-Oklahoma.  We're special.  I'd rather be special some other way.