There is a place in Edmond that has fried oyster nachos on Wednesdays for $6.00.  They are to die for.  Craig and Becky got me started on them.  And their crab bisque is unbelievable.  Last time I had decent bisque was in the Boston airport waiting on a plane.  It was so good I never forgot the experience.  But this is as good or better.  Fish City Grill.  Last week Jeanette and I had crab and shrimp stuffed flounder.  I can't even describe it--I would fail.  It was extraordinary.

So anyway, Jeanette and I went yesterday and did the whole shebang again.  Oysters and bisque.  It was delicious.  I was so perked up I came home and stained the bathroom cabinets, and unpacked three huge boxes of kitchen stuff and put it in the cabinets I had lined with paper.  I'm starting to feel like this is going to be home.

Houses don't mean much to me.  I've lived in dozens of them.  The thing that makes a home is getting your stuff and your family in it.  Once the kitchen is set up and you have your bathroom stocked with all the things you use every day, you're home.  But I don't have kids or a husband anymore.  It's just Squig and me.

And Squig caught a mouse in the garage, so he now feels like he is at home.  He has a job to do.  He was so proud of himself that he brought it into the living room to show it to me.  I'm sure that isn't the last one because I left the door from the house to the garage open--to make it easier to unload stuff and bring it in.  He will be very happy if there are more mice.

Becky's dog Max used to catch locusts.  He would snatch them out of the air or catch them when they landed.  Locust time was his best time of the year.  My last dog, Bo, would catch a mouse on the run. Schnauzers are great at catching moving things.  And digging up moles.

God gave us dogs because we needed a companion.  I think God must have made mice specifically for dogs to catch--because Schnauzers need a job to do to feel needed.  Squig is very puffed up and proud of himself.  I just wish he had dropped it on the tile floor instead of on the living room carpet.

My second piece of advice is:  Don't fall.  You will be so sore you can't move by the next day.  I had to get down on the floor to line the bottom cabinets with paper yesterday, and getting back up was a problem.  Pain.  And more pain.  But three more bottom cabinets and I'm done.

And on this eighth day of August, an unfamiliar thing has happened.  It is pouring down rain.  Thunder, lightening and frog strangling rain.  It has been so hot--above 100 almost every day--that the odds of it raining were zero.  But God took mercy on us.  It is wet and cool outside.

Carolyn calls almost every day to tell me how wonderful I am.  And she doesn't pass out meaningless compliments.  "You are 80 years old and doing a difficult thing--and you are getting it done.  You are almost there.  It will be over soon."  She knows how much I need encouragement about now.  My mind is willing, but my body is shot.  It is maddening.  I have things to do and my body won't do them.  My body betrays me.

Jeanette is going with me to lunch at noon.  That gives me incentive to get over to the other house and finish the cabinets.  I refinished the fronts with walnut stain yesterday.  All of them.  They were scratched everywhere.  When I finished, they looked brand new.  Walnut.  My favorite wood.  It is so forgiving.  I will stain the bathroom cabinets this afternoon.

I don't have time to write, I've got to get going.  I have today and tomorrow to finish up.  The movers come to move the furniture on Friday.  Praise God, Jeanette drew paper models to scale to show where everything goes, so I can sit in a chair on Friday and direct traffic.

It was inevitable--as tired as I am--I fell, last night,  hit my head and thought I might have broken a rib.  I picked myself up, ignored the pain, drove to the emergency room--just to be safe--because I take blood thinners and didn't think I should take a "wait and see" approach.  I told the staff that I was being cautious and they kept saying that I had done the right thing to come in.  All is well.  I am bruised and battered but fine.  And very sore.  So today I will be slow.  But determined.

Which is a good thing since I am in the final "rush to the finish" to get moved.  I've been lining shelves all day.  And my lovely neighbor Jeannine has been cleaning the cabinets.  I finished the pantry completely and everything is moved in there.  It is satisfying to have finished something about which I can say that it's done.  Done.  It's a lovely word.

 Squig is upset about the entire process.  He can't figure out where to lie down.  He knows something isn't right.  I cross the street dozens of times a day with my arms full of junk, and usually take him with me--but he isn't happy.  So then I leave him at home, and he isn't happy there either.  He is very stressed.  But then, so am I right now.

Amy (grand-daughter) came Sunday to go to church with me, and she stayed and moved pictures and greenery.  I had no idea how many pots of greenery I had--over twenty vases and pots.  I kept buying stuff at garage sales and sticking it on end tables, etc.  It is excessive.

Every time I take something out of a box, I've been asking myself, "Why do you have this?  Do you ever use it?  Do you really think you ever will?"  And I have filled a box full of things to go to the thrift store.  I am forcing myself to do this every time I unwrap something.  It is cathartic.  I should have done this years ago.  But they are wonderful things.  Wonderful and useless to me.  I don't need the cookware I used to use to feed a family of six.  There is only one of me.

Here is my advice for the day.  Don't move unless you have to.  If you have to move, get rid of everything you can before you move.  There are charities that will come and pick it up.  God gave us everything we have, but when we don't need it any more, we can bless someone else with it.

My boys came.  They moved every one of the boxes.  Some of the faucets have been installed.  The granite has been finished and tweaked in four rooms.  There are new toilets.  Everything works except the air conditioner.  It needs freon and clean coils.  The dishwasher, oven and top burner need to be installed and I think that's it.

I will line the pantry shelves with paper and move all my pantry stuff in today.  I don't know why I line everything with paper.  Probably from the military days when I didn't want to leave dirty shelves for the next occupant.  When I moved, I could trash the paper and the shelves would be pristine-- without being wiped down.  You always had to pass an inspection in the military.  I always passed.

I bet all of you readers are as sick of this move as I am.  I have nothing else on my mind to share.  My creative efforts are kaput.  I am kaput as well.  It will soon be done.

As if I wasn't already overwhelmed, I was trying to find a piece for the bath that the plumber wanted, drove 15 miles to get it and smoke and fumes started pouring from the hood of my car.  I was next to Pep Boys, but didn't have a way home.  Becky was working, Pat was in California, Ann didn't answer her phone, her husband Dave just got out of the hospital and all of my neighbors were out of town.  I left the car there, called my grand daughter who just moved here to come get me.  She works out of town and was on her way home.  Thank God.

Who knows what is wrong with my car.  It doesn't look good.  They are supposed to call me.  I see dollar signs--or junking my dependable old 1999 Town car.  I sure don't want to do that.  I'll leave it in the hands of God, I already have my plate too full to think about it.

Scott just texted me that he is going to stay all day Saturday and Sunday as well.  Hallelujah.  I need a set of shoulders to lean on right about now.  I've been calling Carolyn twice a day for emotional support, and to whine.  She's the only person who will listen to me when I am in that condition.  I never whine, and she knows that.  She keeps telling me that I am going to make it--and makes me believe it.  I do see light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it isn't an oncoming train.

The granite came today.  I am having my last nervous breakdown.  All that worry over nothing:  Will I like it?  Will it be too dark?  Did I choose the right pattern?  It is absolutely gorgeous.  Everything I hoped for. "Get a grip."  I kept telling myself that.  And reminding myself of the real problems in our world.  Our men at war.  Crime in the streets.  Hungry children.  I must have said to myself, "Quit Obsessing, you are being an idiot," a hundred times.

It's almost over.  I can go back to being normal.  The only thing left is the movers.  Then I can spend all winter unpacking and such stuff as that--taking as long as I want to.

Sally called me.  She is going to the beach this week with her grandchildren.  They only live two hours away.  I told her to squish sand between her toes for me.

I love the beach "abstractly."  It's the "actuality" that stops me from going.  I've lived on the Pacific--four different times.  The Atlantic--twice.  And the gulf at Pensacola once.  The white sand in Florida is the best.  But to tell you the truth, I hated brushing kids off--and trying to get keep sand out of the car when we left the beach.  I have pictures of Pat when she was a toddler playing in the tide pools at Laguna Beach after the tide went out.  That was 1957; it isn't the same any more.  The beaches are dirty.  And crowded.  We are destroying our natural wonders.

In Beaufort S. Carolina, we lived two blocks from the Atlantic backwash and the kids would go catch crabs and come home full of sand.  So I have mixed feelings about beaches.  You need to live on a beach after your kids are grown and gone.  Then you can enjoy sun-up or sun-down views without dreading the aftermath of clean up.   You can walk up and down the beach and only have to rinse your feet with a garden hose after you get back home.  And find some little hole in the wall restaurant on the water, where the boats come in and unload their catch and you get to watch them do it.  And eat the kind of food you couldn't afford when you had children and were feeding six.

I love those little cafes on the beaches where everything they serve is fresh.  Why, then, am I living in Oklahoma.  I ask myself that every now and then.  And of course, the answer: it's the people.  Oklahoma people are the best in the land.

Lowe's called and are delivering the dishwasher, oven, cooktop, microwave and other stuff.  Supposedly in 30 minutes.  But you know how that goes.

I can't get them installed until Monday.  That's okay.  Next week I'm going to be finishing up with odds and ends.  I don't have a clue what those odds and ends will be.

I went to Braum's Ice Cream store, and got a couple of kinds of ice cream--and cones--and took it over to the boys.  You would have thought I had given them the moon.  Their dad had them cutting in the paint edges, while he is rolling it on the walls.  (I picked the wrong color.  I'll live with it.)

I've made a couple of mistakes, but none quite so big as that one.  Oh well.

I packed all the napkins, didn't know which box they were in, and had to go get some.

I've purchased and returned faucets and towel rings and towel bars four times.  I can't seem to get it right.  Lowe's is patient with me.  So is Home Depot.  The hardest thing to decide on is drawer pulls.  The ones that I can get my hand through aren't "pretty."

I'm to the point of idiocy over my pickiness.  I keep saying, "It's just drawer pulls, Janie.  What is your problem."  And I have started talking out loud to myself, saying, "I don't know what is the matter with me."  I was driving along yesterday talking out loud to myself and thought:  This is getting ridiculous.  I was saying, "There are starving children all over the world, and you are worrying about drawer pulls.  Get yourself into perspective, Janie.  Get a grip."

I'll be glad when this is over.  I just want to get moved.  I want to be moved yesterday.

Scott called.  He is coming Saturday to help Jon and Blake with boxes.  He's bringing a pickup.  Thank God for the men in my family.  They are absolutely wonderful.

Thank God for everything.      

Retroactively, I am frightened.  I did something really scary this last month--something that I knew better than to do.  I just didn't make a critical connection that I should have made.  All my life I have been interested in bugs.  My first degree was in Zoology--with a concentration in entomology, which is the study of insects.  Who knows why that interests me.  I don't know.  It just does.  All bugs.

And I know which spider weaves a distinctive pattern for a web.  Especially the Black Widow--who weaves a random, scattered, undefined web characterized by it's seeming messiness--as if it got caught in a wind and blew apart.  Chaotic.  I know that.  I have found and studied many, many Black Widows.  The first one when I was 6 years old.  She had strung her messy web by the step on my back porch, and laid her clutch of eggs--which had hatched.  Babies running in every direction.

I made a garden back in Pryor, lined with concrete blocks--holes up--which was the perfect home for Black Widow spiders.  Dozens of them.  They like dark, cool places near a source of water.  I filled the holes with dirt and destroyed the spiders.  You don't want to give them an opportunity to nest.  They can kill you.  One of the men on our street was bitten and died.

However, the problem around here has been copperheads.  So, I have been carefully watching for copperheads when I change the filters in my Koi pump.  As a result, I didn't think much about the fact that there were strands of webs in the pump housing.  I had stuck my hand down in there a dozen times at least, and brushed away the stringy strands of cobwebs.  But this morning, my friend from next door (Dean) was getting ready to stick his hand down into the pump when he jumped back and said, "That's a Black Widow in the pump."  Sure enough, there she was in all her pitch black glory with a bright red hour-glass marking on her belly.  I had stuck my hand in her web a dozen times.

They are deceptive little critters.  And more dangerous than a copperhead because you don't see what it is that bites you.  How many times had God protected me from being bitten?!!  And I know what a BW web looks like.  I just let my guard down.  Thinking about one thing--copperheads--and not noticing another.  I walked right into a lion's den.  But like Daniel, God spared me and shut the mouth of the lion.  Like I said, if anyone should know about BW spiders, it's me.   These sneaky female buggers live everywhere in America.  They are the Devil's handmaiden.  She will even eat her mate.