My friend Carolyn in Pryor gets Ken-Ken puzzles in the Tulsa paper every day.  My paper only has one on Sunday.  So Carolyn cuts them out for me each day, and when she gets a stack of them she mails them to me or sends them with someone coming this way.  That is love.  It is tedious, boring and tiring to keep track of.  But she does it.

My neighbor across the street lost her husband a year ago and takes care of her mother-in-law.  She says it is the least she can do.  It is a two and a half hour drive to get there and she goes almost every week.  That, too, is love.

Love is a behavior.  Feelings come and go.  Actions are the thing that express our love.

Pat comes when I call her to take me to the doctor.  Becky brings me food two or three times a week.  Jeanette and Jeanine shop at the grocery store.  And deliver!!!  Kathy bakes me yeast rolls and sees that I get them.  Linda makes beans and fried okra every Wednesday for me.

I hope you are on the receiving end of real love this year.  Happy New Year to you and those you love. 

Today is the last day of the year.  Goodby 2021...Welcome 2022.  We are finally having a freezing day today.  There have been multiple records broken for the low temperatures this month.  It has been warm most days.  Many days in the 70’s.  Oklahoma is the new Florida.

The national weather service confirmed the news that “Tornado Alley” has moved to the East.  I hate it for them, but we Okies have had that title my entire life.  I didn’t know it could move.  Good riddance.

When Jon and Jennifer came to get Tate, they brought Brady with them.  He is ten.  Tate is six.  Just enough difference to tussle.  I found out one thing.  I can’t handle two of them.  One at a time.

Which means that this summer, for Bible School, I have to make a choice, or I could send one of them to Pat or Becky.  They are a handful.  Boys.  I’ve had two boys, so I understand that they love to rumble, but I’m too old to deal with it.  One boy--good.  Two boys--nope.  Good kids, but they are boys.  

I raised two girls and two boys.  So I do know a little about the subject.  

I am going to spend the day doing nothing.  That’s my plan.  Say goodby to the old year in style.

God gave children to young folk, and today, I am remembering why.  I raised four of them and don’t know how I did it.  I’m eighty-three now, and Tate--who stayed all night with me--is six.  I’ve played nine or ten games of flip the coin, battleship, and read books in between.

His energy is unlimited.  Mine sags.  But it has been so much fun.  His vocabulary is huge.  He talks without taking a breath because he has so much to say.  And surprisingly, it is all interesting.  Last night I put him to bed and opened the Bible to read him the Lord’s prayer.

I said, “This book is full of the words God wanted us to know.”  Tate said, “He sure had a lot of words to say.”

Jon and Jennifer came over yesterday and hung two picture rails.  They will allow me to change pictures from time to time without nailing them to the wall.  They will sit on the ledge.  They will hang the last rail up when they come back this afternoon to get Tate.  I really like them.  I will be moving pictures around on the ledges all week long I am sure.

Two more days left in 2021.  These last two years have been a blur.  They have gone extremely fast----and extremely slow.

The youngest of my clan, Jonathan, is bringing his wife Jennifer and two boys Brady and Tate today.  Tate is going to stay all night for the first time.  He is excited.  I just wonder how  in the world I am going to keep him entertained.

Jonathan has made me picture rails to set picture frames on.  I am excited.  I can get a dozen or so pictures up without having to nail and level them.

It has been a busy week.  Tonight, I made veggie stew with the left over prime rib.  I made a pan of cornbread and they ate it all.  No leftovers.

Jon’s two boys are younger than some of my great-grandchildren.  Jon was born nine years after I was done (done) having children.  Surprise child.  So he got a late start having children. Tate is in the first grade.  My oldest grandchild is forty in February.  The great-children are in between all that.

Like I have said before, My quiver is full of arrows (as the Bible puts it).

We are almost to a new year.  I know it has to be better.  The last two have been difficult to say the least.  Thank God I didn’t get Covid.

Every Christmas my two daughters outdo themselves.  They put on a feast.  Becky on Christmas eve night and Pat on Christmas day brunch.  And I bet all of us gained ten pounds.  Which is fine, because sometimes it is worth it.  I’ll pull a Scarlett and think about that tomorrow.  If you don’t know what a Scarlett is, you need to read,  “Gone with the Wind.”

Pat sent creamed-corn soup with shrimp home with me, so that takes care of lunch tomorrow.  Becky sent home a biscuit gravy diced egg dish that takes care of breakfast in the morning.  I bet I can come up with something for supper.  Everyone is really good to take care of food for me.

My freezer is stuffed with leftovers from all of their largesse, and when I take something out of the freezer, it is called Surprise-a-meal.  I don’t write anything on the containers, so I never know what I am going to be eating.  Which is okay.  I’ll eat anything I don’t have to cook.

My sister Lisa’s son Thomas--and his wife Megan--are having their first baby this week.  A boy.  Lisa has flown to Florida to be there, but babies come when they are ready. I am already a great-aunt twice with my brother’s two boys.  It’s time to have some girls.

But a last minute December tax-exemption will be okay, too.

Merry Christmas....I will post again on Monday.  May Christ reign in your heart.

I’m having trouble with new words because I can’t see the thing they stand for.  Words like “Streaming,” and “Bluetooth.” Every time a new word comes out about my phone or TV or computer, I can’t figure out what the word means.  When I was growing up, words represented things. Or emotions, or ideas.  Now they stand for invisible occurrences that you use in some capacity.

Pod cast.  What does that mean?  It sounds like pea pod shells you threw away and cast out.  I am always going to be a day late and a dollar short about what these words mean.

And letters.  Nobody uses the entire words for things.  They are identified by letters.  Scotus, etc.  Someone asked me if I had tried CBD for my pain.  “What’s CBD?” I asked.  “You know...weed,” they answered.  I said, “No, I grow tomatoes.  I throw the weeds out.

Someone trying to learn the language of America for the first time wouldn’t understand if you said you were, “Behind the eight ball.’  Or “That’s so funny I’m in stitches.”  It’s hard enough learning English without all the letters and funny names for things.  

I can’t keep up with it.  Technology is moving faster than I can think.

Passwords are driving me crazy.  I used to go into the bank and was identified by my face.  No more.  I’ve lost that identity.  Now I have to have a password.  Even through they know me!   And just about the time I learn it, they make me change it. 

You know you are over the hill when you finally can’t think up any more passwords that you can remember.  So you have to write them down and find a place to put them so that nobody else can find them.  And then, of course, you forget where you put them.  

Eventually, I am going to be locked out of everything that I own.  I think I need to put my assets in a Folger’s can and bury them in a post hole like they did in the old west days.  I bet there is a fortune out there in post holes.  But since all the good land that used to be farms with fences has been covered up with housing developments, who knows where the post holes used to be?

People who developed the west built on the good land, and eventually covered the good land with towns and cities.  Small farms are a thing of the past because of the cost of equipment.  They can only exist in a small perimeter.  Support your local small farmers!

Well, it sounds like we are in for another round of Covid.  Eventually, I think we will find out that it is with us forever.  You will either get the vaccination, or get Covid.  Or both.  It’s rather depressing.

I am finally realizing that my life has changed and I am in the condition that I am in, and they can't fix me.  You can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  I can live with that, but every time you give up a part of your body, you grieve--because you can’t get it back.  Then, if you are a realist like me, you adjust to whatever it is and keep on keeping on.  

That’s what growing old is all about.  Giving things up and going on.  This year for the first time, I didn’t put up a single Christmas decoration.  Because if I put them up, I would have to take them back down and pack them away--and no one will be at my house but me anyway.

I bought a rib roast for ten people for Christmas Eve.  We will go to Becky’s house, not mine.  I've had to give up cooking for a crowd which I have done all of my life.  The interesting thing is that when you give up things you’ve always done, it’s not too bad.  In some ways it is a relief.  You’ve had a life pattern that ran you “ragged” and you don’t have to do it any more!!  I am in the same place Paul was: In whatever condition I am, therewith to be content.  I am truly content.  I write, and someone out there is reading it.  That is a wonderful feeling.  I have a purpose.

God created man for a reason that was different from the other forms of life.  Man was created as a communicator with God himself.  God breathed into man the breath of life.  His holy Spirit.  

 

We were created “In His Image.”  God didn’t want a robot.  He gave us the gift of choice.  He chose us...but we are free to choose him as well--or not.

It is a wonderful thing to be chosen.  When Ken asked me to marry him, he would fly back and forth every weekend from Pensacola--where he was teaching pilots to hook wire on a carrier.  He would ask me to marry him, I would say no, and he would do the same thing all over again the next weekend.  He chose me.  That is the most wonderful thing in the world--to be chosen.  I finally said yes.  Best decision I ever made.  57 years of wonderful.

God chose us.  But He did not make the relationship automatic.  We must choose him back.  He gave us choice.  A relationship must be two-way for it to endure.  The Old Testament is the story of God’s desire to put his Holy Spirit--the breath of God--back into man.  It took a sacrifice for our rebellion. God’s only Son.  When we choose God’s gift, we once again become whole.  In his image.  

 

I felt that the way the Bible story of creation was being taught was from a “You just have to have faith that it is true,” position.  Which was limp and wimpy.  And not necessary.

I decided to really read what it said, and found that it was exactly scientifically true.  Three words are used.  Create, make, and let.  If you understand those words, the first chapter of Genesis reads perfectly.  

 

Create: Take absolutely nothing and design a perfect thing.

Let:  Allow something to occur.  “Let me get that for you, or let me out at the corner.

Make: Take something that already exists and “make” a different thing. Use cloth, scissors, thread, etc., and make a dress.

The word “create” is only used three times in Genesis chapter 1.  God created the heavens and earth.  He created great behemoths (mammals).  And man.  everything else was making and letting--or allowing to happen.

Only the first verse deals with creation of the earth.  All of the other verses are about reconstruction of a “void, dark, formless mess found in verse 2.  The dinosaurs died, but water life continued as it always had.  Then 66 million years later, God got back into the creation business.

Once you read the first verse of Genesis and agree that a creative work is a perfect work, you can’t read verse two and say that a void, dark, formless blob is a perfect work.  Something did happen.  I wish God had told us about the years between those two verses, but He didn’t.  What he tells us in the following verses is how he reconstructs the earth, not how he created it.  He’s already done with creating the earth and heavens.

The earth is not 6000 years old--as some religious groups claim.  It is millions of years old. The master Scientist--God himself--put the laws of the universe into play, and carbon decay rate is one of those laws.  All living things are made of carbon and when they die, they decompose with what is called a rate of decay.  You can mark time by it.  God invented it--just like he invented every other scientific law.

Water existed in verse two that had been created in verse one...”God moved on the face of the deep.”  And life in the water continued living undisturbed.  Land life died out at the exact time an asteroid hit the Yucatann sulfur deposits, shook the globe and darkened the skies with smoke as sulfur burned.  (The earth was dark...)  Plant life died because the food chain disintegrated.   Land life died, but water life didn’t. 

That’s why evolution theorists try to prove that we evolved from the things in the water.  Life on earth disappeared between Genesis 1 and 2 and there is almost nothing in strata after that.  Nada.  Nothing.  No evolving life forms.  And then....life reappears, seemingly bursting out of nowhere after 66 million years.  Skip to verse 21 to see where God begins to create again. 

 Every day, when I open my Mac to post, I wonder what I am going to have to say.  After over 2000 posts, I’m running out of stuff.  But some of you joined late, so I guess I could repeat myself.  I don’t think any of you would remember what I wrote five years ago anyway.

I started out because I wanted to get the word out there that the first chapter of Genesis was scientifically accurate.  It still is.  As long as you recognize that dinosaurs existed and that they have to fit into the Biblical account somewhere.

We only have two records of those times.  The Biblical account, and the strata remains in the earth. (Bones, leaves, etc. laid down  year after year in layers of dirt--strata.)  Strata also exists in the ice cores at the poles.  Dust, volcanic ash, etc. laid down in yearly layers of ice.

They  have huge warehouses of ice cores at the pole to be used by scientists who study strata.  Watch Nova.  Anyway, dinosaurs existed and went extinct 66 million years ago all at once.  And strata holds no fossils after that.  No evolution data.  Verse one of Genesis says God created two things, the heavens and the earth.  Verse two says the earth was a void, dark, formless mass.  Not very pretty.  Something happened between those two verses to destroy His creation.

Today, I am going to Hideaway Pizza to restore my pizza slices that I eat for breakfast.  I order three pizzas, fruit, and slice them into eighteen pieces.  If you haven’t eaten their mushroom appetizer, you’ve missed one of the best things ever. 

Pat brought a horse with her and parked the trailer in the street, so we can’t be gone long.  His name is Rudy, and he comes every Monday to the vet so Pat and I go somewhere for lunch.  Pat has been dragging a horse trailer around for most of her life. 

She bought and sold horses for the YMCA out of Tulsa for years.  She ran their camp Takatoka (out by Wagoner) every summer when she wasn’t teaching school.  And found families to take the horses to board over the winter--getting the horses to them and going back to get them in June.  They did week long camps for the deaf and also blind children in addition to the other week long camps. 

She just got back from upper Illinois where a vet friend lives.  She drug two horses with her up there and back.  She does love horses.

With Ken it was planes.  With Pat it has always been horses.  I don’t particularly care for either one.  But I will fly.  And occasionally, when I am at Pat’s, I do get on a horse.

Personally, I like my dog.  All the people in my family have strange habits of transportation.

I think I’m going to live.  Antibiotics  are doing their job.  I’m going to see how I feel at 11:00 and if I can, go get my hair done.  If not, I’ll look like a witch for another week.  I haven’t been out anywhere for a week unless someone drove me--and then only to the ER.  I think getting my hair done would be a good picker-upper.  

. 

The cleaning ladies are here...praise the Lord.  It has been six weeks since they came last.  Thanksgiving, sickness, etc.  I spilled the paper shredder junk on the floor when I tried to empty it--and just left shredded paper all over the floor.  I looked at it a couple of times, but decided it was doing no harm and left it.  It wasn’t in a pathway.  That’s how weak I was.  

I haven’t picked at the cuticle skin on my nails.  Never again.  I am a new creature.  Repentant.  Reformed. You can quit a bad habit if you are motivated--and brother! am I motivated.  I don’t ever want to be this sick again.   I would think to myself: “I’m just going to pull this little fragment of skin--but sometimes it would bleed.  Most of the time I got away with it.  But last week, I didn’t.  I got a wake up call.  Pat said it was a suicidal habit.  I have decided to agree with her.  At least it is for me because I have lymphedema in that arm and any cut, or opening in the skin is a danger.  Like I said.  I’ve repented.  

I’m going to live.  It was a toss up for awhile.  Sepsis.  I have repented from pulling the dead cuticle skin off from around my fingernails. sometimes I pull too hard and it bleeds.  And that is how bacteria get into my right arm.  I have lymphedema in that arm and the lymph can’t drain out and infection begins to build up....

My suggestion is to not get breast cancer, or chemotherapy, or radiation and then you won’t get lymphedema.  But if you do, don’t pick at your nails.  I’ve repented.  I don’t ever want to go through this again.  I’ve been hospitalized 6 times with it and had home treatment twice.  You would think I would have learned by now.  I’m finally convinced that I have to do something drastic or it’s going to deep-six me.

If you get breast cancer and it has spread to your lymph nodes, they have to take the nodes out along with the cancer.  Without nodes in your shoulder and arm, you can’t drain lymph--and that is the clean-up system of the body.   The good thing is, I lived.  One in four American women will get breast cancer.  That’s outrageous.  

Now that is a pandemic.  If it was about men, I bet it would get solved.  Oops, what did I just say.  Sexism in print.  I bet I hear from some of the guys.

 

Yesterday was a toss up.  Today, I think I’m going to make it.  Infusion antibiotics did the trick.  My right arm still looks like a red balloon, but I can stand up without fainting.  Yea!  

I thought I could pull a little piece of skin off one of my fingers--with my teeth instead of clipping it--it tore the skin.  Nope.  I won’t do that again.  They have warned me a zillion times against a puncture to my right hand or arm.  I just forget in the moment.  I’m not going to forget again.  I’ve learned my lesson. 

Being good is hard.  There are too many ways to fail.  I detest the stop sign at the end of my street.  It has no purpose.  I don’t want to stop there.  But the law says stop.  It’s one of those “Am I going to be good, or am I going to “kinda” stop.  Good is my goal.  Being good is an effort.

I have to go back to see the doctor at 11:00 today, so she can decide whether I have to go into the hospital and stay there until this arm clears up.  Pat stayed all night with me, she is very compassionate.  She will drive me.  I’m still not steady on my feet.  It is a blessing to be able to call on her when I need someone.  Becky would come as well.  And I have wonderful neighbors and friends.

I detest being sick.

I would swear dad told me about Belle Starr.  But no, even though my brother and I both remember that, it couldn’t be true.  She died before dad was born.  It must have been the Dalton brothers.  I wish I had written everything down.  It was probably his dad that knew Belle.  I know they fed her from the cafe.

I spent all morning in the emergency room.  I have lymphedema in my right arm from the chemo and radiation I had years ago.  My arm goes septic from time to time. It’s a blood infection that spreads.  It was so tiring--and took too much time.  I’m running a fever And of course, the worst part was the bed they put me on.  It like to killed my back.  

Used to be you went to the doctor, he asked, “What’s wrong?” You told him and he gave you medicine.  Now, all of the medical people are trying not to get sued.  And it takes forever to get in and out with all the paper work.

I think we may have too many lawyers.  They need cases.  And there aren’t enough cases to go around.  Medical suits are lucrative.

Anyway, I’m really sick.  My arm is bright red, hot, and the infection is spreading.  I’ve been hospitalized for this 7 times.   Today they gave me a drip antibiotic and finally let me go home, but I have to go back in tomorrow.  Some day, I think that this is going to get me.

    When outlaws in Arkansas tried to escape the famous “Hanging Judge,” they would cross the Arkansas River into Oklahoma and sometimes end up in Wilburton--which was in Southeast Oklahoma just across the river.  

    In the early 1900’s my grandmother opened a cafe there, and my dad killed hogs, chopped wood, ran the kitchen, and did about everything else to keep the place running.

    His father had been murdered when he was seven years old, and of his six brothers, only he and one other brother (who was ill) were left at home.  One brother died of appendicitis and another in the 1918 flu epidemic.  

    Outside Wilburton, there are caves.  They call them Robbers Caves.  And they were a refuge for criminals back then--who were running from the law.  My dad delivered food to them from the cafe.  Belle Starr, Pretty Boy Floyd and a number of other outlaws knew my dad well.  He was just a kid and no threat, and there was really no choice about delivering food.  You had to stay on the right side of the wrong side or end up dead.

    I don’t know how my dad escaped all of the things that happened to him, but he did.  He was a wonderful Christian man, a deacon in our church for over fifty years.  Three brothers died, and his oldest two brothers were bootleggers.  Go figure.  When he started telling stories about his past, everybody sat down and listened. He was part of the original Oklahoma Territory story.  He was a legend.  He was a gentle Godly man.  It is a privilege to be his daughter.

If any of you out there are also writers, you know that most of what you do is edit.  And you can’t edit while you are writing.  You have to wait for some time to pass, and go back and read it fresh.

I know what I am saying when I write something, but reading it again lets me read it as an outside observer.  And sometimes I didn’t say what I wanted to say at all.

All that aside, I have been writing a pamphlet for Christian parents to be able to understand decay rates, strata, carbon dating etc. so that they can be confident that the creation story in Genesis is scientifically accurate--which it is.  I don’t expect the average person to know about that stuff, but have tried to simplify it to explain that what the Bible says is true.  Not a fable.

Editing it has been going on for months and months.  I write. put it down.  Forget about it.  Reread it again.  Edit, and go through the process again.  It takes a lot of time.  And patience--which I have shared with you that I don’t have very much of. (You aren’t supposed to end a sentence with the word “of.”)  Yes, I edit what I blog before I post.  Sometimes I catch my mistakes, sometimes I don’t.  But I have the best editor in the world.  My friend Carolyn patiently listens to what I write and gets me going in the right direction.  She is an excellent editor.

My cousin Ann picks me up on Friday morning and we go eat breakfast and garage sale.  I never buy anything, but I do try and find things for here that are brand new and unused for her “You did very good” basket.  Trinkets and toys.

She teaches piano (She is an OU music major extraordinaire’) and has a basket on the floor by the piano filled with goodies for those piano students who did what they were assigned to do--to pick something.  The kids love it

I was over at her house the other day when she was finishing up with a student and I can’t describe how patient she was with him.  It would have driven me crazy.  One note at a time, one missed a note at a time, replay a note over and over again...for thirty minutes.  She was saying, “Good...good”  I would have been saying “You’re time is up.”

I do admire gifts in others that I don’t have.  And patience is one of those gifts that I didn’t get very much of.

If I was a piano teacher--I do play the piano--I would keep a bottle of aspirin on the piano.  God bless piano teachers.

Not only did I forget to post yesterday--as my close friends advised me--I didn’t get much of anything else done either.   I did go to lunch with my friends.  And Squig got a bath and a haircut.

My cleaning ladies haven’t been here in four weeks.  I don’t know how clean you are, but my idea of clean has deteriorated.  The girls called and said they couldn’t be here for two more weeks.  I’ve reached my limit and can’t do anything about it.  The holidays have messed up their schedules.  My house needs cleaning in an extreme way. 

As you age, the way you spend money changes.  I can’t vacuum anymore, much less move anything to clean under it.  And doing my hair is impossible because holding my hands in the air to fix it is too tiring.  I’ve re-thought how I spend.  Certain luxuries are now necessities.

It’s okay.  You just have to learn how to do a different budget.  And as frugal as I have always been it is hard.  I never paid for anything I could do myself.  Yard work, gardening etc.  I keep saying to myself that to move somewhere that everything is done for you would cost a fortune.  I don’t want everything done for me.  Just vacuuming and my hair.  Becky and Craig said they would come change my sheets when I need it.  There!  That’s it.  That’s all I need help with.  Jeaninne, across the street, has my credit card and buys what I need when she goes to the grocery store.  Look around you.  There may be an older person that needs a light bulb changed.  They all need something done.