Wednesday.  Every Wednesday morning, my friend Jeaninne across the street, comes over to help me start my morning by helping with my medications--or I will probably forget.  She has it on her phone to remind her.  Where do friends like that come from!?.  God alone.  He takes care of us by sending angels unaware.

    Filling pill pacs is my responsibility.  I do them six weeks at a time, morning pac and evening pac.  I never thought about pills a few years ago.  Growing up we had iodine, vicks, aspirin, and merthiolate.(spelled wrong)  If those didn’t do the trick, you were out of luck.  Put a bandaid on it.

  Now days, they treat you for every little thing.  Take a pill for this, take a pill for that.  And every time I see a doctor, we go over the list with me begging to take some of them off the list.

    So far, no.  They must be afraid?  They’ll give it to you, they just won’t take you off of it. And every speciality has their favorites.  And there is a specialist for e v e r y t h i n g......

    I pulled into a drive through to get a burger today and the car in front of me (stopped at the speaker to give her order) had huge white lettering all over their back window.  Big letters you could read from a long way off telling me that our government had killed all the people in Hawaii.  Telling the world that the government was our enemy and using the worst cuss word over and over...(probably her age was in her 40’s, early 50’s)

    As she drove off, there was such vitriolic printing on the other windows as well.  Along with web sites you could go to.  I was in shock.  Good thing one of our service people weren’t behind her.  I wonder where such hate comes from. I guess I am naive, but I’ve lived through Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, Trump, and Biden--fifteen presidents--and I am still an American who loves her country.

    We are better than people like the woman in the car in front of me.  We get to vote.  We can protest.  We are free to move, travel, work, make friends, go to any church we want to, and get a hamburger at a drive through.  Being married to a 21 year career Marine who served at the pleasure of the president--no matter who he was--taught me to be thankful for our country. It may not be perfect, but it is ours.  We can change it with a vote. And we do that on a regular basis.  God bless America. 

    Sunday, the lesson was about Abigail--who was married to a wealthy idiot who “dissed” David the king.  She took care of the situation with humility and wisdom.  I was thinking of all of the women of the Bible who were honored by being wise.

    Esther.  Ruth.  Mary the mother of Jesus.  Elizabeth. The woman that touched the hem of Jesus’ robe...I could go on and on.  The list includes women who were prostitutes.  Mary Magdalene. Rahab who helped the two spies by hanging a red cord from the window. The woman at the well in Samaria. 

I can’t think hardly any women in the Bible that weren’t elevated by the writers.  But it seems today, that denominations have a problem elevating women.  And yet, the very first people to tell the story of the resurrection were women.  And they took to message to men!  If you have a job to do, a woman will get it done.  Maybe I am biased?   

 I broke a crown off my tooth--the dentist said the root had to come out.  You all know the drill.  Get your checkbook out.  

It has taken three months to get the partial, but it is amazing how they do it now.  Instead of biting down on a mouthful of goo to get an imprint, they do it with a machine of some sort.  I didn’t think it would work...but it is an exact fit.

I am out of it in the world we live in today.  Last night my computer went blank; I tried every thing I knew to get it up.  It took a trip to Becky’s house, and she and Craig had it up and going in fifteen minutes.

Part of the problem is that I’m tired of learning new things.  I don’t know where to put them.  I've got so many “old” things overloading my brain (that aren’t worth anything any more) that I’ve run out of room.  I have brain over-load.  Carolyn said that she had all of the answers, but nobody asks those questions anymore.  So true.  Lots and lots of useless knowledge rattling around inside my head. 

Hot, hot, hot.  How are people living who have no homes?  It’s too hot to live in your car. They have no where to go.  And we haven’t solved this problem in our government.  It has just gotten worse.  Instead of being able to get a down payment on  home, now it takes twice as much and the rate is twice as high.  God help us solve this.

And the people of Hawaii, how do they prove who they are.  No birth certificate, passport, credit card, SS card, check book, admit to savings...and on and on.  They may have cash in the bank, but how do you get to it? They’ve lost everything.  Burned up. Where do you go when you have no identity?  How do you get your identity back?

Our lesson yesterday was on the fact that we are citizens of heaven. (Phillipians 3)  We don’t have to prove our citizenship.  Jesus will vouch for us.  We are His.  We are members of his kingdom.  Praise God for His son Jesus.

I got a text from my publisher  this morning and am pretty well stoked--and floating on air.  She said, “Congratulations.  You have been chosen to be the Oklahoma fiction  author at the 2024 Oklahoma Library Association’s Oklahoma Author’s Luncheon! You talk will be about your book ”The Letter” on March 7, 2024, in Tulsa.”

That means all the libraries in Oklahoma will push the book on their reader’s list.  

The book’s world-wide publication will be in September, next month.  I am over-whelmed. Those of you who bought one in Pryor or Edmond were part of an introductory release.

I decided to celebrate and ordered a Big Mac--I hadn’t eaten one in over fifteen years.  That was a mistake.  Ugh.  I’ll never do that again.  Live and learn.

I wish I had a coach on how to find things on this computer.  I don’t understand files.  There is a little icon at the bottom of my face page that says finder, but I don’t know how to use it when I’m looking for something.  I’m always afraid the entire thing is going to blow up.  I can use “Word” to write, but that’s it.

Molly has learned the word “sit”.  She does it (if she wants to).  We are working on who is in control.  She can heel (kinda), and come--most of the time.  She knows the word “no” really well.  That’s good.  She just has a hard time with who is in control. Which is a toss up so far.  I control the treats, so she is coming along, but she is really independent.  She was on her own for so long that she is a surviver at heart.

I made a meatloaf this week that was terrible.  I think I’ve forgotten how to cook.  But she loves it.  I’m bribing her into obedience.  So far, so good.

One thing a dog does for you is that they force you into a schedule.  At six in the morning, Molly starts wiggling around in her crate, no verbal noise, just enough motion to wake me up.  She has been very polite in the mornings.

Next step--all my morning rituals of getting up and dressed while she waits on me---I am very aware that she is patiently waiting.  And then I let her out and head for the back door.  She has learned the routine and knows what she is supposed to do and that a treat is waiting when she comes back in.  That done, I take my four “first thing in the morning” pills.  And think that I should eat something--which I don’t.  That thought keeps running through my mind until about nine o’clock when I finally eat something.  In the meantime I usually blog, figure out when I am going to do my “three” things that I laid out the night before.  All the while, Molly is laying on my lap with her head tucked under my arm.  She loves the routine. I kinda do too.

When I go to bed each night, I always plan out three things to do the next day.  Things I don’t want to do--and have been procrastinating.  It’s 8:00 AM and I have already finished doing one of them.  Hallelujah!!  I always feel relieved when one of those “I don’t want to do” tasks is completed.  Now...on to the other two.  I can put them off the rest of the morning....or maybe I’ll get on to doing the second thing.  I have all day to do them....and am an expert at procrastinating.

Molly has learned to “come”, “heel”  and (kind of) to “sit.”  She is smart.  She has also learned the “go outside” routine...that if she does what she is supposed to do, she gets a treat.  She comes back inside, runs to the refrigerator and sits in front of the door and waits. I’m slower than she is, but she is patient.

Dogs are a lot of trouble.  But I think it’s worth it.  She is so happy all the time, I can’t help but smile.

We all know people who are a few feathers shy of a full duck. I  told Pat it’s because they don’t want to work.  She said, “No, it’s because they don’t know they are supposed to work.  Everything has been done for them.  And also, they don’t know how to work.  This generation has been raised without chores to do, and with expectations for success that aren’t realistic.  

She said that when she asks them to sweep the barn floor at the arena, they don’t know what a broom is.  “I have to get a broom, explain the concept of removing dirt from the floor and show them how to do it.  There are dozens of things like that that they don’t know how to do. 

She said we have infanticized them with the concept that everyone gets a trophy and they haven’t learned the pleasure of doing something that you do well.  Better than others.  Work brings a self satisfying reward that they haven’t had the opportunity to learn.  It was an interesting conversation.

When I married Ken, every day when the newspaper came, he would do the crossword.  I had never done one.  He did it in ink.  “Always do what you do in ink.  You will make very few mistakes that way.”

That’s true.  And now each day as I do the crossword puzzle, I do it in ink.  And the cryptograms, the Ken-Ken’s, the Suduku, etc.  All in ink.

It is interesting the things we remember.  I was married to him 57 years, and there are a some things he said (like that) which come back to me. Of course, he was so smart he made very few mistakes.  Like his check-off list for landing.  “You make the list in your head so one thing comes after another and you never land wheels up.”  He came in once and the tower told him to lower his wheels, and he said “I did.”  The tower said, “Sir, your wheels are not down.”  Ken said, “I only did that once.”

I just finished reading “How the Irish Saved Civilization” again.  I’ve now read it three times.  It is so interesting.  While Rome was crumbling from within and being raided by Huns, Irish monks worked in solitary--copying manuscripts by hand, embellishing them with curly-Q designs.  Hand written books were all they had.  We wouldn’t have the books we have today if not for those men.  How time-intensive that was before we had the press. And the size of our books today was determined by the size of a sheep-skin back,(parchment) cut into a rectangle, and folded down the middle. 

I had seen their work when I went through museums in Europe, but didn’t know “why” they were so embellished with jewels, fancy lettering, etc.  They had time, and they created beautiful works of art on the first page you saw.  After libraries were burned in the dark ages, Irish books remained in small isolated Irish hands.  Some are still being found that were buried when Ireland was ransacked.  I love old things done by hand.

Pat calls each morning at 7:15 on her way to work.  Carolyn calls every morning at eight to to make sure I’m up.  And Scott called this morning to see how I’m doing.  It’s nice to have someone call even when we don’t have much to say.  Lisa calls every evening at five fifteen when she gets off work and is driving home.

Every night when I go to bed and put my phone on charge and get the covers over my feet, I call Carolyn and tell her, “You can go to bed now.”  Then I call Jeanette and ask about her day.  And then I call Jeanine across the street--to tell her I’m done for the day.  She always checks to see if I have turned the outside lights on.  She takes care of buying my groceries when I need something.

People are what make life good.  I am thankful to have so many people who care about me.

Yesterday was one of those days--you know...every time you turn around you spend money.  I was over a thousand and hadn’t even gotten started.

The car had to have shock absorbers.  Cha-ching.  The dentist wanted a check to order a partial where I had lost a tooth.  Cha-ching.  And then I went to Walgreens to pick up meds.  Another Cha-ching.

I’m staying home today.  If I don’t leave the house, I don’t spend money...or it seems like I don't.

But, I’m not going to cook, so I have to order something or raid the fridge.  Which is low on stuff I want to eat.

If the first day of the month looks like this (!) I’ll be broke before I get started in August.  August !!!! Where did the first half of this year go???