I've been cleaning off a bookshelf that holds old annuals, phone books that nobody uses anymore, math textbooks that are out of date and useless.  What would I use them for anyway??  But I was the editor for some of the math books, and seeing my name in print is kinda fun--to me, if to nobody else.  They all need to go in the trash.  Little by little I am cleaning it all out.  I'm never going to teach math again unless it's one on one.

We used to "remember" stuff on paper.  Now, we use our phone.  It's hard to let go of something that was such a big part of our lives.  What do I do with all of those black stand up file folders?  There are a dozen things like that.  Obsolete. 

I have two tall thin antique book shelves that I brought in from storage and put on either side of my bed.  So if I find something I want to keep, that's where I'm putting it.  It would be easier to just leave it all where it is, but I'm trying to downsize.  I just do a little bit every day. At least, I know where stuff is.  That's an improvement.

When I go to bed at night, I decide three things I am going to do the next day.  I try to put at least one thing that I have been procrastinating on my list.  So far, it is working wonderfully for me.  I needed to write three letters (which I considered as one thing on my list).  Two of them I received before Christmas.  I got it done.  One was to a 95 year old friend who I have not seen since 1961...she has 13 children, but finds time to write me.  I know she loves to get mail...I'm from that era also.

Ice is pounding the windows, coating the streets.  And I have an appointment thirty minutes away. I will have to cancel and think up another thing to do for my third thing.

I also plan what three meals I am going to eat.  I am such a creature of habit I even bore myself.  But since I have been doing my "three" things, I have done more this year that all last year put together.  So I guess it is working.  

 I couldn't post yesterday because my account was blocked.  First time in nine years.  Why?  Who knows.  They wanted a password.  I can't even remember what I ate for lunch yesterday much less a password from 9 years ago.  I'm still trying to figure out how computers make our life easier.

When I was raising children, I didn't make sandwiches.  I don't know why, maybe because my mom didn't--except for baloney.  Which is awful.  My brother Bill said the way to make a baloney sandwich was to spread the bread with mustard, slice tomatoes, lettuce and slap some cheese on it with onions and pickles--then slide the baloney out and throw it in the trash.

But now, I eat sandwiches every day.  Egg salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, BLT, or ham.  It beats cooking.  Every now and then I do cook a roast and make sandwiches from that. The only thing I will cook anymore is beans and cornbread.  And then, bean tortillas with all the fixings comes next.

 Sally called last night.  She was in the hospital with Ernie for weeks--far from home.  She got covid and had to leave the hospital and Ernie left for heaven while she was gone.  We will all pray for Sally to receive grace from God.

My friend Suzanne in Texas ran a campaign in Texas that became constitutional law, (not just something that could be changed.)  During the pandemic, they wouldn't let her in even though she was well.  The janitor, aides, housekeepers, etc. could go in...just not family.  For two years, her husband lay inside and the only  communication they had was to touch either side of a glass window and talk on their phones.  You can't separate family in Texas any more.  Yea, Suzanne.

Death is our enemy.  Christ conquered it--so that we know we have eternal life with those who have left us.  That is our hope. And we have peace knowing we will see them again.

I got myself together and ran to fill the car up.  Ken said to always keep the tank full so water didn't condense in the tank.  I guess Jets are sensitive to that?  You wouldn't want to lose power in the air.  My brother Bill told me that all plane ejections harm you in one way or another.  Ken said that you could land it even if you had no gas or no wheels. I guess he knew; he did it for 21 years.  Dead stick landings.

I stopped to get bread, etc. When I got home at 8:45, it started to snow and already we are covered up.  Thank God for heat in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer.

The professional photographer came to take my picture yesterday.  That's the last thing the publisher wants.  I broke out in hives stressing about it.  I don't like to have my picture taken.  However, I went to bed 1000 pounds lighter.  That's the last thing on the list to do.  Done.  My favorite word.

In going through papers I am trying to trash...I kept one from a student, Leonard Sweet, who had written a poem at the bottom of his calculus exam when he turned it in:

    Now I lay me down to sleep,

    This test is long and very deep,

    If it should end before I wake

    Just give my arm a gentle shake.

Some things you just can't throw away.  I handed the exam back with a poem I made up for him:

    In life there are some things, it seems,

    We need to do before we dream.

    Next time please dream before you test,

    Or you may fail.  (I do not jest.)

That entire class was one of the most fun groups I ever taught.  I liked them, and they liked me as well.  A satisfying experience.

    I went to get the paper...which wasn't there yet, and it is icy cold outside.  My rule of planning out tomorrow (each night when I go to bed) has been slowing down.  I always give myself three things to accomplish the next day, and plan out three meals to eat. Yes, I am OCD.  But it works well.  It motivates me to get something done.

    I have been so successful with this self-imposed routine that I am running out of things to do--except for paper.  There is always paper.  But even that is shrinking.  I am filling up the recycling trash can every week with paper.  In the mess of paper things, I found a notebook of limerics that I had written fifty years ago.  Silly stuff for a creative writing class.

      I have a young piggy named Hog,

      Who waggles his tail like a dog

      He jiggles like jello

      When I yell a "hello"

      And shakes all the pigs in the bog.   etc.  (Stupid stuff like that)

    

    My son-in-law Craig has a saying that I love and have put into action in my own life.  "We need to generously tip the working poor."  

    That is so true.  Even though they are working, waiters, cooks, and attendants can't make enough to survive.  And what does an extra couple of dollars mean to those of us who can afford to eat out.

    It has changed my interaction at the places I go to eat.  I've told you that I always wait until they are bringing our food and have their hands full (and can't avoid my question) to ask them if they have anything they would like for us to pray for them when we bless our dinner.  I have only ever had one say "No, I'm good."  Some of them have broken into tears.

    Maybe a larger tip will let them know we aren't just "Name only Christians."  I once heard one say, "Christians are the stingiest people I serve."  That is inexcusable.  

 The Bible has quite a number of references to trees and fruit. In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is nine fold.  Love, joy, peace, long-sufferering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance.

But fruit doesn't just happen.  It grows on a tree.  And Psalms 1:3 explains it. There is a tree next to water.  The tree draws strength from the water--which represents God, or Christ.  The trunk of the tree is the Holy Spirit which spreads God's words to us--the limbs.  If the tree is planted the water, the limbs--you and me--produce fruit.  Christians don't have to grunt and groan to produce fruit, it is the automatic result of where the tree is planted.  Where you are planted.  

God is the source of the message.  The tree is the source of our inspiration.  You...the limb, "shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings fruit in...season.  his leaf also shall not wither..."  You may have a season when your leaves are withered and you feel helpless, but don't despair,  Spring is coming.

    I had visitors Saturday.  Kim and Larry Larmon stayed for a couple of hours and we had the best conversations.  It was better than medicine.   

    I have mentioned Kim...she was new to our class one Sunday when someone mentioned that I was headed overseas again.  I said, "I'll take any of you that want to go with  me....just give me  your credit card.

    When class was over, Kim handed me her credit card and said, "I want to go."  It was the beginning of many trips for her and later she and my daughter would go to Europe to "scope" a place out for the rest of our group to go.

    One of those trips, we had taken a car to a place in the south of France to a field where pickup trucks parked and sold stuff off the back of their trucks.  It was pouring rain, and Kim was the only one who would get out of the car, get wet, and go rummage with me.  I found a hand carved walnut (gorgeous) towel rack.  When I moved into this house, there wasn't a place to hang it.  So I set it aside for Kim.  She was excited.  It is a memory that the two of us have.  The others in the car missed out on the fun. 

Kathy told Carolyn that she was going to keep on sending me hot yeast rolls even though i'm not supposed to eat white bread any more.  I will eat one a day.  That won't hurt me.  I just can't eat a dozen at a time anymore--with butter and honey.  I think this is going to be hard.  I love Kathy's rolls.

I went to Brahms and sure enough, eggs are 6.59 a dozen.  However they have 6 hardboiled, peeled and sealed, in a package for 2.59...that saves a dollar.  And I don't have to boil and peel them.  I chop them up and make egg salad.

Ann will be here in a bit and we will go to breakfast.  As long as she will drive, I'll go.  it gives me something to look forward.  She is my only "sister" (cousin) except for Lisa who was born when I was 21 and had two kids.  Lisa has become a sister in the last few years especially since she now has a grandson.  I get pictures from her.  He is a doll baby.

Every time Google updates I have to remember passwords, verification codes etc. and it drives me nuts.  Why do I need all that to blog?  

I have to learn to slow my movements down.  I have always been "quick" and done two or three things at once.  With four kids and the chaotic lifestyle I led, it was necessary or I wouldn't ever get through the things I had to do.

But now, I use a walker and quick movements are counter productive to say the least.  Older people fall.  Our balance is out of whack.  I can manage without the walker, but I promised that I would use it and I've kept the promise.  I don't need a broken hip--which is what most of the over-the-hill-gang seems to break.  Learning to do things different than you always did is difficult. New" doesn't come easy.  And I don't like change. I am a creature of habit.  When I was so sick last month, I quit blogging and now I am putting it in line before the crossword so that I do it and don't forget--until one of you reminds me.

Every time I write a book, it has to be edited, and edited and edited.  Which I couldn’t possible do without Carolyn.  I fix a sentence, call her and read it to her, and she changes a word or says delete that sentence.  I can’t edit my own writing very well.  She puts up with me.  And is an excellent word-smith.

Today I have finished the next (third) book I am going to submit--now that I have found a publisher who likes what I write.  And I am starting the first editing run-through of a book I have  written about my grandmother.  The first time I do this, I delete, delete, delete...because just like when I am talking, I repeat myself.  And don’t know I have done it.  My friends know and put up with it???

Amy...thank you for the notes you send me and updates on your children.  Looks like you are doing a great job and about to have an empty nest.

I have been on a tear...cleaning out superficial pieces of furniture and the junk they contain.  I have a beautiful desk that is useless.  You can’t get your knees in the opening because of the carved walnut edges.  I bought it because it was pretty.  Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

I am tired of things that don’t work.  I emptied the drawers, found a new home for things that mattered and threw a ton of junk away.  It is empty.  Out, out, out it goes.

I have emptied five drawers of stuff in the room I spend most of my time in.  They are now orderly.  A month ago, I had prayed for God to give me motivation to get something around this house done.  Like Pilgram’s Progress, I had slunk into the slough of despond.  Be careful what you pray for!!!  Wow, did He ever motivate me.  Thank God for helping me do what needed to be done.  It is so satisfying to have “order” in my home.

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, women shopped.  It was a big deal.  Up and down main street , looking in the windows that were staged to invite you in to buy--which very few of us could afford.  Stores specialized in one thing.  Not like Target and Wall Mart.

We all wanted to touch the product.  Hold it up, try it on.  We don’t do that any more.  Amazon is too convenient.  We are too busy to shop, and don’t really want to do it anyway.  When women went to work in the forties during the Big War, there was no turning back.  They didn’t have to ask a man for money. They made it for themselves.

And more than anything else that has happened in the last 80 years, it changed the way America functioned.  I don’t know if it was good or bad--with a female work force, the family changed, and mom wasn’t there for the family like she used to be.  Meals changed.  Child care changed, main street America closed their doors.  I lived through it.  I didn’t go to work until I was 39 and I thank God I didn’t have to.  Ken always gave me the paycheck anyway.  “Manage it,” he said.  I won’t be here most of the time and you need to know how.”  That was the truth.

There are words in my Bible that I put a circle around as I read.  One is the word “If.”  Another is the word “Ask.”  And “Woe.” 

 I’ve told you that I color.  Coloring is so satisfying!  When I open my Bible, “The kingdom of God,” jumps off the page in yellow.  The word “Faith” in purple, and the word “Spirit” in blue.  Everything I have memorized is green.

All of that helps me remember things.  And I never take notes.  If you do, you lose them, or put them away and never look at them again.  I selectively write in the margins of the Bible.  One or two words are enough to jar your memory.  Like the word “daily” in Luke.  “Take up your cross daily...and follow me.” The other writers don’t include that word.  But Luke was a doctor and got the prescription exactly right.  You have to do that every day.  Daily.  Words matter.  I like them.  And each writer of each book in the Bible uses different stress words.

People ask me, “Can God do anything?”  I think there are things he can’t do, like lie, or break his promises, etc.  But on a larger scale, “Does He know everything?”

That’s a different question.  We were talking about predestination in the class a month or so, which Calvinists believe--that some are chosen to be saved.

The problem is that if that is true, at the instant a baby is conceived, it is doomed or blessed.  And if God knows that baby is doomed, he is authorizing a soul to Hell.  How people can believe that a holy loving God would do that, I don’t understand.  The Bible doesn’t teach that.  So the next question is, “Does God know everything?”  If he can do anything, can he choose not to know something? That is what I believe.  I think He offers salvation to every soul and since he can do anything, he chooses not to know and keeps hoping that soul will choose Him.  “Come unto me,” He never gives up.

All of you are being so patient with me.  I just haven’t been able to think about anything but which pill to take next.  But I am through with the antibiotics, I feel like I’m going to live.  I’m slowly...putting things back on my to-do list.  Things like blogging.

I have spent hours on lists of what I can eat now, and what I can’t.  Luckily it isn’t going to be too hard for me.  (Kathy, they have taken me off white bread...that’s the hardest one.  Your rolls.)

My prayers have been in the “Ask and you shall receive,” category.  God is merciful!  I guess I still have a purpose.  If you are “out there” and feel discouraged, just know that God has a purpose for your life.

I haven’t taught my Bible class in over a month and the “girls” have taken the ball and run with it.  It makes me feel so joyful to see how far they have come in their Christian lives since I took the class six years ago.  They really don’t need me anymore.  That is very satisfying.   God supplies our every need.  That is so awesome.