When I went out to get the paper this morning, it was dark, and there was a full moon.  God just keeps the world turning, the sun coming up and the moon in the sky.

    Scientists want to argue about evolution of the species.  I want to hear  the evolutionist explain where they think the earth and space came from so that "their" evolution could occur.  Just think of it...planets, moons, suns, stars, galaxies, black holes, meteorites, asteroids....and on and on.  Things are in "space."  Almost all cite the big bang.  I have no problem with the physics of that.  But.....where did this big bang occur?

    For me, the question is---If you don't believe in a supreme creator (which I do) to argue about evolution is pointless unless you can first explain to me where evolution might occur?  (I am not an evolution theorist) Where did "space" came from?

    The question is, "Can something come from nothing?"  If you go on-line, there are dozens and dozens of great minds trying to answer that. They eventually run out of ideas.  I've listened to many, many, many of their lectures.  They get a group together of brilliant minds and discuss it--They are interesting...but they can't come up with an answer that all of them agree on.  Actually they have no answers, just theories.  But you and I have the answer.  There is a supreme creator.  God.   

 Everyone is buying guns.  Supposedly to protect themselves.  Ken always said, "You don't need a gun for protection unless you always keep it loaded.  By the time you load it, the emergency will be all over."

My only experience with a loaded gun was a few months after I married Ken.  When I got home from work, Ken's car was in the driveway.  Which was unusual.  He always stayed on the field waving planes in--to hook wire--until it was dark.

I called to him as I walked in the door.  He didn't answer so I went into the bedroom.  He was lying on the bed, sweat running off his forehead, with a Luger pointed at me.

I said, "That's not funny," and walked over and took the gun by the barrel.  It was loaded.  He was running a a high fever, thought he was in Korea and someone was coming for him.

Later, he remembered nothing.  "I could have killed you," he said.

"The gun's going out," I said.

So far I haven't needed it.  I wouldn't want a Luger anyway.

 I am set up for a procedure on my back next month.  Supposedly....it will kill pain.  But that is always suspect.  I haven't heard anyone say that their back procedures work very well.  

At this point, I don't have anything to lose.  At my age, things don't seem to get better.  Was it the movie "Benjamin Button" that the man lived his life in reverse and was old and worn out when he was born--then got younger and younger?

That would be ok if you got smarter and smarter as you got younger and younger.

I do understand the phrase I heard old-timers use back when I was a child.  "I've got a hitch in my git-along."

I'm just glad that my fingers are pain free.  That is a blessing.

We need to concentrate on the things we can be thankful for instead of the things that go wrong.

When Ken and I moved to Miami, Oklahoma for him to begin his job at the College as a professor, we bought a twenty acre piece of property with a four room house.  It had a breezeway between the house and the garage.  I knew I could enclose it and make another two bedrooms--which I did.

We bought the place because of the barn.  It was spectacular.  Much better than the house.  The kids, especially Pat, wanted animals.  We got them.  Chickens, ducks, a horse and two collie dogs along with various other animals and wild things that slept in the barn.

In the interim before the extra bedroom was finished, we put the girls in one bedroom (which was a big fight every day), we slept in the second bedroom, and Scott slept on the couch.  His place for clothes and stuff was the towel closet.

I hired a man to do the work. I hung sheetrock, nailed 2 by 4's and generally whatever I needed to do--we got it done and added a bath as well.  But I was pregnant with Jon, and eventually couldn't stretch.

My advice is:  don't do what I did.  It's not worth it.  Send your children to the zoo to see animals.  If you get a horse, board him at a riding stable.  The only thing I would keep would be the chickens.  They were fun.

 

 Forgot.

My grandmother had numerous chickens.  And she knew which egg had been laid by each individual hen.  Not all eggs are exactly the same shape, shade or hue.  

Knowing who laid what was important because if a certain color egg didn't show up in the coop, it was getting laid somewhere else--and Gran knew that hen was hiding eggs to sit on and hatch.

Biddies are clever.  They sneak off to the loft, or field, and scratch a nest together out of hay or straw and sit on their eggs.  They knew they couldn't do that in the hen house.  Gran wouldn't let them. 

Because she knew the individual eggs and which hen laid them, she knew which eggs were missing and which hen to watch.  I remember helping her track a wayward hen down, and finding a huge clutch of eggs out away from the barn.  Gran was, of course, much smarter than the hens. 

I got to throw the eggs out of the nest and help her replace them with white glass dummy eggs.  The hen didn't know the difference--and each day we could collect a fresh egg.  Gran wanted eggs, not baby chicks.  Eggs could be sold.  Chicks had to be fed--and when she wanted to raise a new brood, she had a plan to do that.  When she decided to do it--not when the hen decided to do it.  Gran was the ruler of the hen house.   

 Had an early morning appointment.  Blogging comes in order with a number of early morning rituals.

If I miss something in the order of the list...well...I miss it.

I did go to bed last night with something finished.  The book about my grandmother is ready to print.

But the publisher still won't put any books out.

"When you are ready to sit in a bookstore and sign books, I'll spend the money to advertise."  Is her position.

Covid has messed up a million things.  I'm not going to sit and sign books until I get my second shot.  So...I am very frustrated.

The publisher wants the money from book sales.  I just want the book out there!  We are at odds.

I get the second shot on the fifth of February.  Then we'll find out it the publisher is really ready to go to print.  Carolyn told me that someone once said, "If you can't possibly find anything else to do...then, and only then...become an author.  I now understand that.  I just thought you wrote.  Nope.  That's the easy part.

Today we have a new president.  We are told to pray for our leaders. 

I will do that.  I will pray for...

Peace.

Civility.

Safety.

Kindness to others.

Courtesy.

I don't know about you, but I would like to turn on the TV and not hear someone ranting about something.

What we need is Hee-Haw and I Love Lucy.  I'm ready to laugh and be at one with the world, my neighbors, my friends and family.

Rejoice in what we agree on.  God is supreme.  He rules.  He reigns.  He has a plan for His world.  It isn't ours.  We're just renting space for a short time.

 

Last Friday, I wrote about my grandmother and chickens.  What I didn't add was the expertise with which she dispatched a hen.  Not just any old biddy would do.  It depended on whether she was going to fry it, or make chicken and dumplings.  Young hens went to the frying pan.  Old hens went to the stew pot.

So the first thing she would do was decide what she was going to fix for supper before she would call me and say, "Janie, lets go get us a chicken."

Then we would go to the barn yard, she would pick out the chicken she wanted and tell me where to stand and wave my arms if it came my way.  She would back the hen into a corner, and like lightening grab it's neck and with the expertise of long experience give it a rodeo roll in the air and that was that.  

The chicken didn't know it was dead.  They never do.  The head kept squalking and the feet kept running around even though they were not connected any more.  It took a while before both parts gave up.  She would throw it in a boiling kettle she kept outside, and then remove the feathers.  Which went in many a feather bed.  

Farm life wasn't easy.  Farm women weren't very sentimental. I learned early just where fried chicken came from.  It isn't pretty.  

My great-grandfather George Livesey moved his family from the east to Arkansas back in the 1800's.  He took a job as a bookkeeper with a local firm, and found that the owner had been embezzling funds to keep from paying taxes.  He reported it.

The result was that the owner said that George was the one who was doing it.  Even though it had been going on before George took the job.  But the man was an "Upstanding" member of the community. 

George was convicted, sent to Little Rock state prison, and died there, leaving my great-grandmother Sarah with five children and no means of support.  Sarah died within a couple of years--leaving five orphans. 

The eldest, Laura, married and raised my grandmother Georgia and the youngest in the family, baby Jimmy.

My grandmother Georgia, married my grandfather Ozie just one month shy of fifteen.  She had an 8th grade education.  Ozie a 2nd.  They had five children, sent all of them to college--all of their children were very successful.  So when I hear hard luck stories, because you can't have this, or that--it's hard to sympathize because of the heritage I have. Gran and Ozie had nothing. They never complained.  They just did what they had to do. And made sure the next generation had better opportunities than they did.  My grandmother Georgia was my ideal woman.

There are a lot of people in my family.  That's what happens when you are the matriarch.  Your four children marry four people.  They have ten children who marry ten people, and then your grandchildren have multiple children.

That doesn't even count my brother and sister and their children and grandchildren.  Which adds up to forty-two.  I gave up on birthdays, getting everyone together, and remembering anything about anyone that I am supposed to remember.

And I still have many cousins that I keep up with, and their children.  It is mind boggling.  

All of these people make up my life.  And then there are friends--many are closer than some of the family members.

It's all called "Community."  And when a pandemic hits, your community is broken.  You don't see them.  You lose track of what they are doing and what is happening in their lives.  You care, but don't know what about...

And then, if you are like me and don't go anywhere  but the church, grocery store, gas station and medical appointments...it gets lonesome.

And all of your opinions of yourself...that you are self-sufficient, independent, and can take care of yourself......that goes out the window.  God created us to be with others.  And Him.   

Mitch and Joe Biden have been friends for a long time.  They have a history of working together even though they are on different sides of the aisle.  Maybe they can agree on something--anything--that will benefit the American public.  I hope so.

I was thinking the other day what I really want from the government and the top of the list was Peace.  At home and abroad.  The second thing I want is safety.  At home and abroad.  

The third is civility, and the fourth is roads without holes in them.  I love having a fire department--they will install smoke alarms in your home free of charge and be on the spot if one of them goes off.

I like sidewalks, street lights, libraries, schools, parks, and a zillion other things we as a people provide for citizens.

What I don't like is unnecessary taxes.  Why does the government tax you to get a license to get married?  It is an institution of the church, not the state.  Why do the taxes on my house go up every year.  I own it and paid tax to buy it.  Why do they tax groceries--the one thing the poor have to have.  And every time the Congress raises their benefits and salaries and retirement, I wonder...who is watching over the politicians who are supposed to be serving us.  What does the oversight committee do...?

I am ready to get back to writing about my brother's life.  I quit working on it three months ago.

Now, I have to reread it to figure out where I was...

I am the world's most prolific procrastinator.  I never finish what I start in one sitting.  I have a dozen things going all at once and on any given day will finish one of them.

My projects are in all stages of disarray.

But I do finish them.  I work on some part of each project every day.

I have the attention span of a gnat.

Yesterday, it was paper---because---the inevitable is coming.  Taxes.

That is something that I can't procrastinate.

It's like a day is out there...looming over you...narrowing down to engulf you in horrible details.

It's easier to just drink tea and write.

 The guys who removed my 8 foot tall 20 foot long stack of tree limbs brought their lift arm down on my brick mailbox and cracked the top.  

Now comes the hard part--getting the city to fix it.  I texted Craig and asked him to call them because past experience tells me I would get nowhere.  

I've got two strikes against me.  (You girls will understand.)  1. I'm a woman.  2.  I'm an old woman.

What are the odds that they will fix it?  Not good.  Probably will tell Craig that I should be happy they picked up the limbs.

They left a zillion leaves and acorns for me to deal with.  I would call someone to help rake it all up if I knew who to call.  So far I've tried three people with no luck.

In twenty six days I'm going out to eat every day for at least a week.  The vaccine may not work perfectly, nobody seems to know. But it's going to be good enough for me.  I'm done with this pandemic.  Tired of it.  Ready for it to go away.  I hope God hears our prayers for that.

Got the call this morning to come in.  Got the vaccine.  No side effects.  Glad to finally get it.  28 days and I'll get the second one.

I can't believe that the long wait for a vaccine finally is here.  Pray God that this is the last pandemic for awhile so we can go back to a somewhat normal future.

It will take a long time for small businesses to recover.  I am ready to eat out, my plan is to eat out three meals a day.  Ha!

World economics are in disarray.  When people don't have money to spend, products don't get made and sold and manufacturing jobs are lost--sometimes permanently.  And jobs don't just fall out of the sky.  They have to come from somebody investing in production--and they have to get startup money from a bank.

Right now, banks are hesitant to make loans on businesses that seem destined to fail.

God is on his throne.  Budget what you have.  Help others if you can. 

I finally figured out how to get the vaccine.  You have to know someone.  If you have a friend in the medical business--nurse, ET, etc.  Call them.  They know where you should go.

It may not be in your county, but who cares.  The point is to get the thing.  I find it interesting that intelligent people aren't going to get it.  It's the same as refusing a measles shot, or a polio shot.  My brother who is an MD said, "Duh...get the first one you can!  No brainer."

If someone wants to make fun of your concern about this virus, they say things like,"Did you know that the deaths from cancer and heart attacks are dropping dramatically.  Did you know that it's because all the doctors in America are saying that people are dying of Covid instead of heart attacks and cancer because they get more money that way."  People actually believe things like that.  The fact that the total death rate in the world is off the charts doesn't seem to matter.  They believe the stats are propaganda.  They believe that the companies that sell PPE, etc. have dreamed this up as a scheme to make money.

Visit your local hospital and watch medical personal on their second shift of the day.  Listen to those people on the front line.  Stop listening to the propaganda from the political parties. 

  

 I've spent two days trying to get signed up for a covid vaccine.  Nobody seems to know where to go or what to do.  In the middle of one session on line, discovered I had dialed a covid site that was a spammer.

They don't seem to limit what county you can get it in, but every county has its own system.  And when you call, you can't get through.  The line is busy.  Some friends in Pryor finally gave up on the phone, walked into the health center and got the vaccine.

They are now vaccinating phase 2, and I am in phase 1--with no contact in any way or information from anywhere as to what or where or how to activate that.

When the Polio vaccine was introduced, it was orderly, you were informed, sites were given where you could get it immediately, and it went off smoothly.  The covid vaccine on the other hand is a national mess.  Nobody in charge, no contact information for citizens.  Random pop up doses with no pre-knowledge of where they are.  

Contacting your doctor doesn't seem to help.  My doctor works in a hospital where the vaccine was being given to the public, and she knew nothing about it.  Neither did CVS or Walgreens.  I'm appalled at the condition of our National health system's inadequacy to pull this off.

Went brain dead yesterday.  And by the time my friend Rebecca Perkins sent me a note----"You didn't post,"  I was at the doctor's office for an appointment.  Which of course, I had to wait for an hour after they were supposed to see me.

Sunday, we talked about Jesus as a twelve year old boy.  From the time of his birth--and fleeing to Egypt--there is nothing.  Nothing...until he is twelve.  There are people who say that Jesus knew everything because he was God.  Not true.  He was a kid like every other kid, playing kick the can, climbing trees, working in the carpentry shop along with Joseph. 

When he was twelve, his family had gone to the Passover in Jerusalem, Jesus went to the temple and sat down to listen to the teachers and ask questions.  You don't ask questions if you know it all.

And in Luke 2:52, it says that after he went home with his folks to Nazareth, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."  You can't increase in something you already know.  

We hear one thing about him at the age of twelve, then nothing--until he is thirty.  Then, full of wisdom, he began to teach.  When he prays in the garden, and sweats blood, the full weight of his human purpose is bearing down on him.  He is going to die for our sins.  On a cross.

It's a new year.  2020 will always be remembered in history as a disaster.  So many people died unnecessarily.

Yesterday, I did something to make my life easier.  I had Tony remove the water heater and put an instant water heater in.  The one I had was two and a half feet square, sticking out into the garage so that when I parked the car there was no way to get around it and get to the door in the house.

Whoever built the house and put it there was an idiot.  You had to back  the car up two feet out the garage door to be able to get to the door with your sacks of groceries.  It is the one thing that I didn't like about this house when I bought it, but thought I could live with it.

Nope.  I couldn't.  I've tried, because an instant heater is so expensive.

But somethings get harder as you get older and trying to squeeze between the front of the bumper on the car and the water heater with sacks in your hands became impossible to do.

The new one is 10 inches deep.  Which leaves me space to walk through.  No more squeezing, dropping things, and being frustrated.  Anything I can do to make things easier for myself is a win-win for me.