I thought I had arranged everything in the family room every way it could be arranged.  But Becky came over and changed everything.  She moved the furniture into a plan I never would have thought of, and I like it a lot.  She spends days and days arranging estate sale furniture to it's optimal position, and has a knack for visualizing everything in her head.  I have to have paper cutouts to scale.

Craig and David carried the TV over last night and said it weighed a ton.  Tony will install the TV today, and I'll find out what has been happening in the world.  I probably don't want to know.

The granite man came to put the plates back over the outlets, and the screws weren't long enough.  It has been the little things like that going wrong that has driven me nuts.  I'm lucky I haven't electrocuted myself plugging into open outlets.  I'm going to write a book:  "The Anatomy of a Move."

I never got all my stuff out of my old house.  I thought I had packed everything, but David and his wife Jennifer keep bringing stuff over.  I must have been sleepwalking those last few days to have missed so many things.

And Jeanine and Dean, my next door neighbors, have been awesome.  Jeanine cleaned cabinets so I could line them with paper, while Dean broke down boxes for the trash men and swept up afterwards.

John Kerley, the next door neighbor that is my realtor, came over and put a tennis ball in my garage, hung from the ceiling, so I would know where to stop my car when I put it in the garage.  His wife Linda brought me sandwiches every day.

These four people are the neighbors that I would never move away from in a million years.  God just gave me a better place to live (with a nice flat driveway) without having to leave them.  They are so good to me.  God's blessings.  Like I have said before, God plopped me right down in the middle of heaven.

I spoke too soon.  Still no TV.

I am cleaning out all the unidentifiable items in my freezer.  Each day I open one of those see-through containers--I can see through them, but who can possibly identify what is in them.  Surprise every day.  Today it was something cheese mixed with either chicken or tuna.  I ate two bites and threw the rest out.  There are only about 20 or so of those containers to go.  Yum.

Luckily my neighbors, Jeanine and Linda, keep bringing me food.   I've got to stop freezing things that are left over.  I need to either eat them that day or the next, then throw out what's left.  I seldom freeze what Jeanine and Linda bring over, I eat it all.  It's what I cook that I have too much of.  I haven't yet mastered the talent of cooking for one person.

I can't fault those people in the desert with Moses when they complained about the manna and the quail (?).  Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for supper.  I'm sure I would have been complaining as well.  I guess they forgot how hungry they had been when God "came through"   for them and provided manna.  Pizza, fried chicken, steak and baked potatoes--I guess if you had to eat the same thing three times a day for weeks on end, anything would have become monotonous.   Except fried chicken, Mexican or Chinese food.

Sally sold her house in Hattisburg, Mississippi, and is moving back to Pryor.  I am happy for her.  She misses her friends and her friends miss her.  She is a beautician-supremo.   When she gives you a pedicure, your feet look like a baby's bum.  She soaks your feet in steaming hot water, and then starts scrubbing.  You lose ten or fifteen pounds in the process.

I still haven't found the toaster.   Or the cruet filled with canola oil.

I've got all the china put back in the buffet--I'm starting on the depression glass in the dining room tomorrow.  I've got it all unpacked.  As a matter of fact, everything except books, pictures, blankets, pillows and bedspreads are unpacked.  If I unpack those things, I will have to make the other two beds.  It can wait.  "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matthew 6:34

I have had no TV for a week.  Mine is mounted on the wall at the other house, and I haven't had any one to move it and install it here.  Tony said he would do it tomorrow.  I hope he brings the boys.  I have missed the boys.  I haven't missed the TV at all.

I found the shredder.  I haven't found the toaster.  Which is odd.  How do you lose a toaster?

The cleaning ladies came yesterday and cleaned above the top of the kitchen cabinets.  I can start my "decorating" up there now.  Which is good.  All the stuff that goes up there had been unpacked and was sitting on the dining room table.  Julia had me hand it all to her.  She put all of it on top of the cabinets--with a warning that I was absolutely not to climb up there and start arranging things.  She made me promise to wait until she came back in two weeks to help me.

I remember walking into my grandmother's house once when she was 80.  I found her standing on top of the kitchen cabinets getting her canning jars down.  I really scolded her and told her to call me when she needed something out of reach.  Her answer was: "Why?"  Now I understand.

I feel like I am at home.   Houses have never held much sentiment for me.  Places have.  But houses come and go.  I've lived in 27 of them.  Once I get my stuff in them, it becomes home.

Squig has decided he likes it here.  The back yard is huge.  He is still in the process of sniffing every inch of it.  He got a haircut yesterday--which is always traumatic for him because Jason puts him in a cage and Squig has to wait for me to  come get him.  His leg is healed.  He looks like a pirate with a peg leg because one leg is shaved and the other one is really fuzzy.

Carolyn called to tell me that her brother is horribly ill.  When we get this age, someone is always sick, in the hospital, or getting bad news.  We share each other's burdens and grief.  Our friend Judy Cameron burned her legs terribly, and was in the hospital for months.  She recovered.  It gives us all hope and reminds us that we are never to give up.  We are to pray for each other because, "The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much."  James 5:16  God is listening to us.  Waiting on us to pray.

The only problem is:  "Where is Squig's leash?  Where is my toothbrush?  Where is the Tide?  Where is my shredder?  Where is the garbage can?  Where is the rest of the china? Where.......I'm sure that it will all sort itself out.  I only have a few boxes left to unpack.  Every box I open is a surprise.  Something unexpected in every carton.

I have moved the furniture in the family room four times.  I lift the foot of something (sofa, chair, footstool....etc.) slide one of those round "sliders" under it, sit down on the floor and push with my feet.  You are never too old to get something you want to do done if you want it done badly enough.

The thing I am going to give up is the Schwinn bike in the TV room.  I thought that I wouldn't ride it if I couldn't see TV while I am on it...but my friend Jeanette gave me such good advice.  "Riding it is an act of discipline," she said.  "If you decide to do it, and set a time to do it, then "where it is" is not the problem.  It's discipline.  If you decide to ride the bike, it won't matter where it is.  Put it in the bedroom."  She is so right.  That's what I will do.

Sometimes you need a friend to point you in the right direction because you are blinded by habits that make it impossible to see.  That's what Christian friends do for you when your life needs tweaking. They improve your thinking with words of encouragment.  They improve your behavior by the lives they live.  You want to be better, too.

We become like those we run with.  That's just a sociologic fact.  If your life isn't what you want it to be, check the list of people you habituate.

That is what a church does.  Yes, it is full of hypocrites.  The world is full of them as well.  But people who habituate a church have admitted that they need help to get better.  And by surrounding themselves with others who are on the same path, it becomes easier to do the right things, and harder to do the wrong things.

You are who you run with.  Change your crowd.

I finally have all my stuff in my house.  It is a total mess.  Disaster.  There are boxes lying around everywhere, with the seal split open so that I can see what's inside.  Yes, I wrote on the box what was in it--except when there was room for one more thing, I grabbed what was handy.

The granite looks fabulous.  (Ask for Mike at Silex on Broadway.  He knows his stuff--and is pleasant to work with.)  The dishwasher was installed this morning--thank goodness.  I was about to have to do dishes by hand!  The oven and burner went in as well.  Tony did an expert job laying tile.  Jerry Stanford did a superb job of installing faucets and hot water tap--which I have to have to make hot Darjeeling tea.  I drink hot tea all day.

I can't find my paper shredder.  It's not filled with paper because I upended the shredded in the air.  I am finding shredded pieces of paper in everything.  What a mess.

Two weeks and one day and Becky Bacon is coming back.  We will hang pictures.  Ann is going to help.  And Jeanine.  I will supervise and direct traffic!!  Until they tell me to "can it."

I've got to figure out how to arrange furniture in the family room.  I'm trying to cram a 50 pound pig in a 10 pound sack.  I have to give up one of three pieces of furniture to do it.  1.  My matched sofa.  I have a pair.  No I don't need both of them but I like they way they look together.  2.  My Schwinn bike I bought 3 months ago--because I need exercise and can't walk very far--that's another story.  Or 3.  My marimba--but here is no room for it anywhere else.

Everyone who comes through wants me to play the marimba for them--so I don't want to give that up.  I don't ride the bike like I should, but if I put it in a bedroom, I won't ride it at all.  So the obvious choice is to give up the sofa.  Which causes me pain...I love having two of them.  I guess I'll get over it because it is the obvious choice.   However, I'm going to cram for awhile longer before I give up.

I went to bed last night and couldn't think of anything to ask for.  All I could think of was how thankful I am for the blessings in my life.   For all the wonderful people who have helped me get moved.  God is good.

The day the movers came, I crossed back and forth across the street so many times that the soles of my shoes cracked in six or seven places.  And finally a big chunk fell out of the middle of one of them.  I threw them in the trash and wandered around barefooted.

I still have stuff to move.  I have till today to get out.  My grandson David said for me not to worry about it, he will bring whatever is left over to my new house.  I do not understand how one old woman can have so much junk.  Christmas stuff, every medication for any ailment you might have, soap and cleaning products up the wazoo.  A cleaning agent for any kind of dirt or stain that could possibly occur.  And on and on...it's incredible.  I'm embarrassed.

Half of it I didn't even know I had.  Some of it I threw out.  There were six cans of spray starch that my lady in Pryor (Leota, who worked for us for thirty five years because I was so damaged after heart surgery I couldn't do much.  She stayed because she loved us till she was almost 90.  Everyone else let her go because she couldn't do very much.   She was trying to live on social security.  I didn't have the heart to let her go.  She was like family.)  Leota wanted to starch Ken's shirts, so I bought six cans of spray starch for her--which she never got to use.  Ken was a Marine and thought every shirt needed to be starched.  I will never use any of it.  If you can't wash it and wear it, I don't want it.

God has been so good to me.  I prayed my health would last for the month of August while I moved.  I usually get a sinus infection.  But I didn't.  I felt great except for exhaustion.  But that comes with the territory of moving.  I haven't even had a sniffle.

The hardest thing I have to learn to live with in this house, is that I have slept on the right side of the bed all of my life.  But the bathroom is on the left side of the bed.  And when I wake up in the night, I have to figure out where I am.  Last night I gave up and moved back to the right side.

I guess I should say that wondering "where I am" is in the hands of God, and the rest of it I will have to figure out.  Which I will.  I have found everything except the flour, sugar, and cornmeal.  I won't be making cornbread for awhile.

Tonight, I will sleep in my bed in my new house.  And I will be able to kick back and do nothing if that is what I want to do for the next few weeks.  Yes, there are boxes to unpack, but nothing I need right now.  I can unpack most of them at my leisure.

The kitchen is put together.  The pantry is stocked.  And makeup, lotions, etc. are in the bathroom.  All I can say is "Hallelujah."  I can make it for weeks before I have to do anything else.

Tony didn't have time to tear into the master bath, he'll come back in six weeks or so.  But, sadly, the boys won't be with him.  School starts before then.  I will miss the boys.  They were a wonderful relief in the middle of my chaos.

Becky Bacon will be here in two weeks or so.  She and Ann, Jeanette, Jeannine and I will hang pictures.  That will be fun.  And then I'll take everyone to Hide-away Pizza.  Best pizza in the state.

I haven't been to teacher's meeting on Wednesday nights for six weeks.  I had nothing left in me every day by four or five o'clock.  Pooped, beat, sore feet, backache and every other kind of ache.  I told the director I'd be back by the middle of August.

We've been studying the last years of King David.  His life was sad at the end.  Actually, his life was sad for almost all of it--after he messed up with Bathsheba.  That sin cost him for the rest of his life.  The repercussions went on and on.  The fallout was terrible.  That's what happens when you don't live according to the plan of God.  There are consequences for what you have done even though God forgives you after you repent.  I'll be glad to get to the life of Solomon.

It is supposed to rain again next week for four days running.  This is a strange August.  I'm certainly not complaining.