My publisher came Monday with a bound edition of my book.  They had revised it.  The entire writing style had been formalized, and I don't write like that.  To say that I didn't like what they did would be an understatement.

I am supposed to give final approval to it.  Which I won't do.  I am having to go back to the original edition and go over every word in 204 pages to see what they changed and fix it.

I did 9 pages last night and am pulling my hair out.  They aren't going to be happy, but I don't really care. If they wanted a book in a formal style they should have written it themselves.  They like words like "did you" instead of "did'ja" when a nine year old boy is the speaker.  Sorry, but no.

I didn't think they would change it.  I thought they would make corrections.  There is a big difference.

I've been reading books since I was six years old.  My mom said that if we were reading, we didn't have to help with the housework.  So I made sure that I was always reading something.  She didn't care if it was Shakespeare or Wonder Woman.  Just as long as I was reading.  

Reading increases you're vocabulary.  It also gives you discretion.  You learn what is interesting and what is boring.  And that doesn't take very long.  You will eventually discard authors that aren't worth your time.  

I know there are some changes that need to be made.  I'm willing to make changes.  I'm not willing to convert to a different style.  Right now, I'm "fuzzed up."  Editorial correction would be: "Disturbed."

I had to go to a meeting today.  I'm sure you love meetings.  

You get 30 people in a room and ask for suggestions on the topic you are presenting--and of course 29 of those people don't have anything to say, but one person in the room does and proceeds to say a lot of words about something unrelated to the subject.

The moderator thanks that person for their input, and closes the meeting.  

I can honestly say that I don't remember a single thing from this meeting I went to today.  I don't know what the point was.  I was listening.  I was.  And I clapped when everyone else did.  I just didn't get it.

What's the point of meetings?  Whatever needs to get done will be done by one or two people anyway.  

You've heard what they say about  church work.  Ten percent of the members do one hundred percent of the work.

Which is okay with me.  I used to be part of that ten percent.  Now I'm just a watcher.  And a sit down teacher.  My energy has gone out the door. 

Maybe that's why I don't like meetings.

Or maybe I'm just an old party pooper.

Nobody but you and me know I didn't like the meeting and I'm counting on you not to tell.

I'm working on my attitude.

You know the routine.  You get up, wash your face, brush your teeth, get dressed, get your hair into some manageable arrangement, and make up your face--that is if you use make up.

I do.  Somewhat.  And every time I put lipstick on, I think of my mom.  She loved those free kits that Estee Lauder gave you when you made a purchase.

When Mom died, I found dozens of unopened Estee gift packs in her dresser.  I gave all of it to charity except the lipstick--which happened to be a color of light pink that I liked.

Still using them.  So when I make my face in the morning I think of my mom who bought Estee, so that she could get all the free stuff she never wore.

There is something about "free" that attracts us.  I know myself.  I love the BOGO deals at Walgreens.  For those of you who don't get excited about free stuff, BOGO is Buy One Get One.

When I try to explain the plan of salvation to someone who doesn't exactly know about Bible stuff, I start with the fact that we are loved.  As strange as it may seem, God loves us, and has a free gift for us.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave...."  Loving involves giving.  It doesn't have to be a present; it can be time, or a listening ear, or some help with a task.  There are lots of ways to give.  But God's gift was different.

He gave "...His only Son.  That whosoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life."  Now that is a free deal.  You would think the world would be rushing to Him to get their own eternal life.

Remember Bible School.  We marched in a line into the building to the anthem.  Pledged allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag and the Bible.

Every church in town had a Bible school.  Staggered at different times so you could go to almost all of them.  There may have been denominational differences, but everybody agreed on Moses, Jonah, David and the other stories.  

People saved orange juice cans, oatmeal and match book boxes, and anything else that could be the repurposed into a fun creation.  You saved them all year to be used in Bible school.

I especially remember the colored scripture cards.  Ten verses to a card.  If you could quote them correctly you got the next card.

I did them all.  Not because the verses meant anything to me.  I just wanted the colored cards.  All of them.

But things memorized simmer in your brain, and when you are older a moment comes when you need what you learned.  And God's word becomes meaningful. 

Ten verses to a card.  Ten days of Bible School.  One hundred verses every summer.  I memorized hundreds of scriptures to get the colored cards.

What we do for one reason, God uses for another.  I wish I could go back and thank the teachers in Bible school who helped me.  But I don't even know who they were.

God does.  That's what matters.  His Word is, "A lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path."  I learned that in Bible School.

I went to get the mail today, and for the second time this year, a surprise awaited me inside the box. A spider web that I readily recognized by its random stringiness.  A black widow.  I dispatched her before she could lay eggs.  Hopefully. The second one I've killed inside my mailbox in a year.

Scary.  Stick your hand in to get your mail and end up dead.

After the first one, I've been careful to check.  But you never know.  I've found them when I worked in the flower beds.  They like to hide between rocks, or bricks, or stacked wood.  In a dry place with access to damp areas.

They don't spin pretty webs.  Their webs have no shape at all.  Just strings of webbing randomly stretching in no particular direction.  At least a rattle snake gives you a warning.

Not so the Black Widow.  Unless you know what you are looking for, you would just think you were looking at a spider's web that has been torn apart by the wind.  It certainly doesn't look organized.

I've always been interested in creepy crawlers.  I took a course in entomology from a guy who was the lead entomologist for the Viet Nam war.  He went in ahead of the troops to inspect what types of insects, snakes, spiders, etc. that they would encounter. Things that would kill you besides getting shot.

I learned one thing that was interesting.  If you ever have roaches, spread dry borax along the base-boards and in the cabinets.  The bugs walk on it and then lick their "feet," go back where they live and they die.  The borax is a cleaning agent so you can just sweep it up or mop the floor.  Better than spray.  We moved into a rent house that had bugs once. It worked.  All gone in 24 hours.

My Mac can do anything.  Problem is, I can't.  The simplest things escape me.  Same with my phone.

Learning a language takes years.  Just think how a child learns English.  First they learn nouns: Ball, chair, water, etc.  The other words just "come" and fit in because they hear them over and over: The ball, A chair, wet water.  Words by association.  Adjectives, adverbs, etc.

With my computer, I spend half my time trying to go backwards to where I was a minute before.  I have learned about Command Z, X, C, and V.  It took forever.  I was erasing my trash, one item at a time, until Craig showed me how to use the Shift key to erase a column.  Where do you learn things like that!!

Jeanette bought me a Word for Dummies book. (I had been using Pages and didn't realize I had to buy Word and have it installed.)  I can hardly read the book.  It assumes I know the language when it explains something.

The rest of the world learned the words as they went along.  I got presented with the entire dictionary of words all at once and don't know what is important and what isn't.  I am constantly calling my daughter Pat asking for help.

I had Word installed because Pat said she could help me more easily if I was using what she uses.  I have never in my life seen so many little pictures, (icons) that are trying to help me, but just confuse me. "Pages" was simpler.

I think I need a Model T, but own a Jag.  I learned to drive with four on the floor and a clutch.  I'm thankful for all this power on my computer, but am learning to use it very, very slowly.  It drives me nuts.  I feel like the only person in the universe who can't keep up.  Just when I think I've got something down pat, someone out there changes it.  Obsolete occurs instaneously anymore.

When I was looking for information about a friend of Ken's, Pete Olson--because I was going to include something about him in this book I am writing, there was nothing out there.  It was as if he never existed.

But I knew he did, because Ken mentioned that he flew for the Blue Angels.  He and Ken went to flight school together, left Pensacola together, served a year at El Toro, then both went to VMF-212 in Korea, and flew missions together. 

But my son Scott and I remembered the story Ken told us a little different.  I know that Zeke Cormier asked Ken to join the Blue Angels.  I thought it was after Pete was killed; Scott thought it was before.  

It was probably after Ken turned it down. Pete took the solo position.  Ken turned it down because he didn't want to spend three years flying formation.  He did that with the Seattle Reserves before the war.  He was just back from a hundred and ten missions in Korea, and living out of a suitcase didn't appeal to him.  So he went to the carrier as a landing signal officer, training cadets to hook wire--horrendously dangerous.  Pete went to the Blues. 

It was if Pete vanished without a trace.  The Blues had no record of him.  And if I hadn't been writing a book and looking for information on Pete, and asked my son Scott for help, Pete would have been forgotten.  Scott searched newspapers from 1950-55, and found a record of the fatal crash.  Pete rolled an F9 into the ground off Corpus Christi in 1955.  March 24.  Practicing in the solo position. Now, the official record of the Blues will be corrected on their web page.  Pete was an only child, parents gone, and nobody to remember him.  Now they will.

He and Ken were friends.  If Ken had taken the position with the Blues, it might have been him?  The interesting thing is, if I hadn't started writing a book and looked for Pete's name, he would have been forgotten.  Scott found him.