Fridays are stressing.  I am out of the house at eight A.M.  and not home till twelve thirty.  Today I stopped and got a hamburger and fries and when I finished it, I then proceeded to spill a bottle of thick, gooey chocolate Boost all over me and the recliner.   I didn’t get it on the carpet was the only bright spot.

By the time I cleaned the mess up, it was 1:30 and I hadn’t even read the paper or done the crossword.  Much less post.

I don’t have anything wonderful to say, except that the banquet last night left me disgusted with myself.  I couldn’t remember names of people that I should remember.  One lady talked to me about how much she enjoyed the choir with me and loved hearing my marimba.  I don’t remember her at all. Another said she enjoyed working Bible school with me--then introduced me to her husband.  I couldn’t even remember where she worked until the conversation was over. I came home feeling like a dumbo.  Does anyone out there do this???  Names are getting harder.  And it is so insulting to the other person when you don’t remember their name.  I’m going to try to do better.

Most mornings, I go outside and check the flower beds around the house to see if any dandelions have worked up the nerve to sprout.  If I get them soon enough, they don’t have time to run their root down and get hold.  The root is always at least three times as long as what is above ground.  Nasty little buggers.

I think children are the same.  They are always learning, putting down deep roots of “knowing things” long before there is any sign of growth on the outside.  By the time they get to first grade, they have five or six years of learning under their belt--  from watching their parents.  And we wonder why there are so many problems in the schools today.  Parents aren’t what they used to be.  The world isn’t what it used to be.  When I grew up, every woman on my block was my parent.  Everyone helped “grow us up.”  We couldn’t get away with anything.  Everyone went to Sunday School. The Bible’s instructions on behavior were the bottom line.  And the school teacher was respected.  It’s so bad now that we can’t find people to teach.  There used to be a line of teachers who wanted the job.  Not any more. Why apply for a job where you will be constantly abused? We have lost something in our society.  It’s sad.

Sunday, my lesson was on some Old Testament story about when the Israelites had been in wandering around for months after Moses led them out of Egypt.  It was all about places.  So I did that in three minutes--then told them to turn to the book of James and we spent the rest of the hour talking about people who wrote what we read and call the “New Testament.”

If you don’t know who is writing the letters in the New Testament, you won’t completely understand why they say the things they do--and how they tell the things they tell.  Paul wrote in most part to the Gentiles.  James wrote to the Jews.

I call James letter the book of “ifs.”  Every thing he writes is conditional.  Black and white.  If this....then, that.  If-then statements.  I had them circle all of the “ifs” as we read them.  And we only got half way through. I’ll finish it up next Sunday.

Becky Bacon drove all the way from Pryor to stay with me for a few days.  She is so easy to be around.  We both read our books, and look up every now and then to say something or ask something--and then go back to reading.  She likes to listen to the people on the Bill Gaither hour sing as much as I do, so we have that on in the background.

Pat brought me a dozen rolls from the Texas Roadhouse, and Becky brought stew (with okra) so we are going to have that for supper.  She got the recipe in Saudi Arabia where she and Joe lived for a number of years.

Tomorrow we are going to go to Red Lobster with Jeanette and load up on calories.  

 

 I slept ten hours last night and I am almost a new woman.  At least I feel like I can function.  Which is good because my publisher is coming at one to finalize some things on my book about Ken.  “The Corsair.”

Fridays are always good.  Ann and I go to breakfast, then I get my hair done, and then....nothing-usually.  Except today. I’ll be editing all afternoon----probably.  Maybe she won’t come.  I can live with that. 

The publisher has one more book I have written.  I wonder if we will ever get around to that one.  “The Jersey Cow”  About my grandmother coming to Arkansas from Tennessee in a wagon pulled by a cow.

Have a great weekend.

Done!!!  Tate and Brady are going home.  I am going to bed and sleep for three or four days.  I am amazed at how tired I am.  I thought I could do Bible School--no problem.  Well, I now know my limits.  I can’t do this again.  I will have to drop them off next year at the door.  And not volunteer to help.  I guess there is an end to everything.  And I am really at my end.

The boys were awesome.  They were so good--and sweet!  Every time I got out of the car, they would run around and each of them take an arm to assist me.  My kids weren’t that observant.  But Tate and Brady have been raised to be polite.  They said “We want to be there if you need someone to lean on.”

The next generation looks like they are going to be okay.

 I must be doing ok.  A young man, a high school senior, asked if he could take a selfie with me.  He is one of the helpers, and every day when the children file into the room that I monitor, I tell them to be good so I don’t have to be a grumpy enforcer. (!)  They all laugh--but get the idea.  When this young man goes in with them I always say, “You better be good so I don’t have to come in and get you.”  He gets tickled.  An 86 year old woman up against a buff 17 year old.  

I asked him why in the world he wanted my picture and he said, “Because you are so nice.”  Which made me laugh.  He took our picture and said, “I want to show my mom who you are.”

So I guess I am doing ok.  Just being nice seems to be working.

One more day after today.  I’m counting.

Day two...here I go!  They will give me a new assignment today.  I told them that I couldn’t do second grade or younger.  God didn’t give me those skills!!!

Brady had to go home to a soccer game, he will be back tomorrow.  He sat and talked to me nonstop yesterday for four hours. Interesting stuff.  He has grown 6 inches since last year--twelve years old and just shy of six feet.  Tate is in the third grade and looks exactly like Ken’s pictures at that age.  And so cute.

Two more days after this and I’ll start gearing up for next  year.

My oldest grandchild is 40 and then there is Tate who is nine.  And then there are eleven great-grandchildren.  The Bible says, “Blessed is the man (woman) whose quiver is full of arrows.  If so, I am fully quivered!!

Today I started Bible School.  My job was to be a hall monitor and take care of problem children.  Luckily, there weren’t any problems today!  Tate went with the third  grade, but Brady was too old for the school,  and they used him as a guide with the second graders to get them where they were supposed to go. 

I asked Brady how that went, and he smiled at me.  “They make a lot of noise,”  he said.  I asked him if he wanted to go back tomorrow and he said, “Yes.”  I might say, he is a trouper.

I haven’t worked in Bible School in two years.  I am not the girl I used to be.  But I can sit in a chair and moniter!!  At least I have a chair.

This afternoon, Brady is going to teach me to play Chess.  He said you can’t do if you don’t have a few brains.  We’ll see how I do with that.  Maybe I’ll have some luck.

When I was growing up, people had big porches.  From one side of the house to the other.  Sometimes they had what were called “Wrap arounds.”  My grandmother had a wraparound.  One end went into the living room.  The other end of the wrap went into the kitchen.  People sat on their porches in swings and visited with each other...or those who were passing by.  

TV ruined all of that.  Houses were no longer built with big side to side porches.  No more swings.  No more visiting with the neighborhood.  We became more isolated from each other.  Something was lost that we have never gotten back.

Nobody talks much any more with their neighbors.  Some of us don’t even know who our neighbors are.  In the late forties, you knew everybody.  Everybody knew you.  Kids acted better because if they didn’t, their mom knew it immediately.  I wish we could recapture some of that time.  I’ve lived through over eighty years of social interaction, and what we have now is social in-action.  It seems like a phone or a computor is “man’s best friend.”  Or some game.  I know...you can’t go back.  But sometimes I really wish we could.  I miss Pryor, Oklahoma back in the forties and fifties when everyone knew me and I knew everybody.  It was a blessed time.  

We used to write letters. From 1956 to 1969 (When Ken came home from Viet Nam) I wrote every week to my Mom, and to Ken.  For the last few months I have been reading those letters, and throwing away the “Blah-blah” ones and putting the ones with information in a folder for Pat or Becky.  They can throw them away if they want to.

Today, I am going through 1960.  I have at least separated all of them into the date stamp on the envelopes.  1960 was the year Ken came home from Japan and Okinawa--flying F4-Ds.  A plane that was actually a rocket. It killed a bunch of pilots.  They called it the Sky-Ray--and called the water outside El Tora “Sky-Ray Bay” because so many of the planes ended up in the water off the end of the runway.  It could climb to altitude faster than anything the Navy and Marines had ever had, but when something went wrong, the plane ended up in the water.  Luckily most of the pilots knew their chances and were ready to hit the eject button.  I went out to the squadron one day, and one of the pilots came through the door soaking wet carrying his helmet.  I asked him where he had been?  He said, “In the bay.”

Anyway, I’m trying to keep the letters that have something interesting in them, but almost all of them do so it’s hard to throw them away.  But you can’t keep everything.

On Fridays, I go to lunch with my cousin Ann--Ann East.  Her mom, my mother’s sister was a fifth grade teacher in Pryor.  Ruby East.  Having her here in Edmond is one reason I moved here.  We grew up together and having someone who remembers the things you remember is a comfort!!  Carolyn Brown and I were friends in the ninth grade...she was a year behind me.  So I have two people who “remember.”

Ann and I go eat breakfast, garage sale.  It’s something to look forward to.

I’ve been on a Cheetos binge.  I bet they aren’t good for me, but they have a lot of calories, and I’ve been trying to gain weight for a year.  I’m stuck at skinny and nothing seems to stick to me.  Everyone is trying to lose weight but me.  And back when I was thirty pounds heavier, it was hard to lose weight.  Now, I can’t put it on.  Anyway, the upside is that I can eat all the Cheetos that I want.  I don’t like the taste of sugar, so sweets aren’t tempting.  Everyone says that’s a blessing.  Maybe it is if you are on a diet--which I am not.  So Cheetos are going to make some money off me for a whilt.

I am adding something to my diet.  Flax.  It is supposed to be a wonder “seed.”  When I make chicken salad, I add a couple of tablespoons of flax seed to the mix, along with the cranberries and pecans.  I’m making an effort to eat healthy--which I have never done.  

Carolyn keeps me in pecans.  She has a pecan tree in her back  yard that is a “super-producer.”  When she gets to the point that her freezer is running out of space for more stuff, she sends me pecans.  And she also adds me to her   “Reader’s Digest subscription.  And I add her to my  “Time” subscription.  But both of us are fed up with Time.  “Time” has started listing  people who are famous for “something or other” in the last half of the mag and neither of us care about that. Boring!!!  So I am going to have to find another mag to send her.  I took “Smithsonian” last year, but I’m not going to do that again either.  Maybe we are just growing tired of the “same old stuff.”  If you live to be into your 80’s like both of us have done, you want to read books and mags that are uplifting.  Like Bugs Bunny.  Or Wonder Woman.  Reader’s Digest still makes the list.

It is pouring down rain--without a tornado warning.  It is just a quiet splash-splash on the roof and sidewalks.  So peaceful.

The week before I married Ken, I decided to make a “Squaw” dress.  Do you remember those?  I used a nut beige cotton with gold ric-rac and gold and white trim.  I sold it a few years ago when I had a booth for ten times what I had in it.  Becky said, “Mama I wish you wouldn’t sell it!  (But you can’t keep every thing.)

Today, Becky sent an exact copy of it in the form of a doll dress.  It was uncanny.  Same fabric.  Same trim.  Same ric-rac. She found it in an estate sale.  Only thing I can figure is that I must have seen the dress in a book and copied it, and someone else did the same thing.  But the doll dress was done by two people.  One who knew what they were doing, and another who didn’t.  Maybe a grandmother and grandaughter making a doll dress.  It is a puzzlement!!