I've had a house guest this week.  Rebecca Perkins.  She lives in Dallas and stays with me when she has business in Oklahoma City.  I love having guests.  

However the people who stay with me aren't guests, they are friends.  They let themselves in, go to the guest room, unload their stuff and make themselves at home.

They know that I'm not going to cook and usually bring groceries to suit their taste and shove stuff around in the fridge.  (Sometimes I cook--not often.)

We talk, or we don't talk.  Mostly sit in a convivial silence with an occasional remark.  We know everything about each other anyway.

Becky Bacon said, "I'm coming to your house so we can sit around and not talk."  Those are the best kind of friends.

Yesterday my conversation was: (as I was doing the crossword puzzle) "What was the Beach Boys top hit?"  Rebecca and I ran through their hits, neither of us could come up with it.  I filled in the answer later when the answer popped into my head.

Carolyn says people ask her what we talked about on the phone.  She told me she has to say, "I have no idea."  Which is true.  I don't have any idea what we talk about either.

That's how it is with good friends.  You can talk for an hour, solve the world's problems, and be ready to do it all again the next day.

I love my friends.

Sixty two years ago today, a neighbor took me to the hospital because I was in labor.  Ken--of course--was thirty thousand feet in the air somewhere.  

It wouldn't have mattered where he was, anyway--because fathers didn't get to go past the waiting room back then.  I was nineteen years old, married thirteen months and had already moved cross country three times in those months.

I knew nothing about childbirth, babies and such.  I was on a military base--Camp Pendleton, California--and had no friends or family within a thousand miles.  

Alone and clueless.  And things went down from there.  I ended up spending seven days in the hospital.  The doctor who delivered the baby hadn't ever delivered a baby before.  I remember a second doctor coming in the door and screaming "Clamp that , you fool."

And then I went into shock.  I guess I had my daughter Pat.  I don't remember that part.

I don't remember if Ken came to see me.  I don't remember much of anything.  I don't recommend childbirth.  But I had four more after that.  Which were uneventful.

I've been alone in my life.  That was one of those times.  Makes you realize you how much the people you love, and the people who love you, mean to you.  

Those are "You and God" times.  As a Christian, I know He's always there.

Happy Birthday, Pat.

Becky is always bringing me presents--it's her love language.  She likes to get them, and she likes to give them.

Last night she brought me a bracelet.  I reminded her that I can't wear bracelets.  "You can wear this one," she told me.

"Thank you," I said.  "It's sweet of you, but my skin is like crepe paper, it will scratch my skin. " I told her.

"Not this one," she replied.

And sure enough, the inside of the bracelet was perfectly smooth.  "It has a magnetic clasp which you can manage," she added.  I can't clasp a bracelet because my fingers won't do what they are supposed to do any more.

It turned out that my wrists and hands are so small that I can just slip it off.  I wore it for the rest of the evening after she left because I forgot I had it on.  It was that smooth.

This is the first bracelet I have worn in a zillion years.  I put it back on this morning and can't even tell I have it on.  Go figure.

Why do women wear bracelets.  The Egyptian artifacts show that women wore bracelets way back then.  A bunch at a time.

I never did.  They rattled when I played the marimba, and sometimes I even caught the end of the mallets in the bracelets.

I'm going to give it another try.   I still don't know why women want to wear them.

My grandfather played the fiddle.  And he was good at it.  Every time I went to his and Gran's house, he would usually play the harmonica and do a soft shoe shuffle. He called it a "jig." He was a quiet man except for music.  

He loved to play records of Sons of the Pioneers.  Ghost Riders in the Sky.  Tumbling Tumbleweeds.  Cool Water.  I can still hear those songs in my head.  He would sit by his radio as well, and lean his ear against the mesh front and listen to the Grand Ol' Opry.

Those are the things I remember most about him.  I don't remember much that he said.  Like I mentioned, he was a quiet man.  But I remember the music he loved. I remember him leaning into the front of the four foot tall radio.

He ran a small grocery store on the northeast side of Pryor.  And everyone on that side of town owed him money, because people bought on credit back then.  He kept them supplied until the first of the month.  Sometimes he never got paid, but he kept on keeping people "on the books."

He would put coca-colas, the kind in the green bottles, in the freezer of an old refrigerator, and turn them over and over during the day until the coke turned into slush.  When I would get home from school, he would give me the slushy coke and the end of the bologna which was tied with a string. He had a slicer sitting on the counter to slice as many slices as you wanted to buy.  But he couldn't sell the ends.  He handed those out to the kids on the block.

That was back before there were zoning laws.  People would roll carts down the streets selling ice cream, tamales and whatever else they wanted to sell.

I wish I could go back to that time for just one day.  I would appreciate it more. But when you are a kid, you take everything for granted.

Never say never.  A year ago in August when I moved across the street to this new house, there was so much to do that I piled all the leftovers in the garage and thought I would clean it up the next month.

Which never came.  But this week, a year later, I am finally on it.  I have moved a zillion items, changed storage shelves from one side to the other where they won't be in the way, and swept leaves and dirt out from under them.

I feel restored.  Maybe I will feel like it's my house because I will know where everything is.

I don't put much stock in houses.  If you move, you take the things that make up your home with you.  The people are what counts most--which I don't have.  Then your familiar things.  And of course--the dog.  

Squig has been helping me.  He is calm today because I had to give him dog meds last night.  He's still drowsy.  It was raining and he was frantic.  He couldn't stop shaking. 

Once I get the garage done, I might can discipline myself to hang the rest of the pictures that have been lying on the bed in the guest room.

It's hard to motivate yourself when there is nobody else in the house.  I would just as soon sit down and read a book.

But then, there is the verse that says, "Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might."  Sometimes I have the thought that if I hadn't memorized so much scripture, I wouldn't feel guilty about so many things.  But then I'm reminded, "To whom much is given, much is required."  God has been good to me.  I'm actually glad I have scripture in my head. 

America doesn't need to go to war.  We're killing ourselves from the inside out.

I've lived eight decades, and I've never seen such a spirit of disunity--on everything.  I wonder if we could put an army together to fight a war if we were attacked from the outside in.

Would there be enough American patriots to fight?

If you listen to the news, CNN, or FOX either one, all you hear is what is wrong with the way the other half of what the nation thinks.  It is so bitter.

Congress can't agree on anything.  Where are the statesmen?

The only thing that remains consistent is that God is in control.  He has used dysfunctional nations in the past to teach His people to return to him.  

Reading the Old Testament gives you a  testimony of God's people being repeatedly punished by bad nations--because God's people didn't follow Him.

I don't think anyone would disagree that we are being run over by people addicted to drugs.  People who get through their day with alcohol. People that can't stay married.  People who cheat on their taxes.  People who spend their paychecks on gaming.  Etc., etc. Frivolity to escape from their problems.

Of all those decades I have lived through, the one with the most positive and encouraging life style was the decade of the "greatest generation."  

I pray that America will come to her senses.  That we don't give up.  That we trust in God and live lives that please him.   

I was listening to the news yesterday evening about our dysfunctional prison system.  I know someone who is caught in it. And this is the story of thousands and thousands of inmates in Oklahoma.  They are trapped in the system.

They made a mistake when they were young.  Non violent.  As a result, they were incarcerated.  They were charged for every time they went to court--with no possible way to pay the fees because they couldn't get a job due to their record.  Fees, and interest, mounted every time they had to appear in court.  

Upon release, they were ordered into counseling--which they had to pay for.  If they failed to meet any session, they had to go back to jail.  If they were lucky enough to find someone who would hire them, they couldn't take off work to go to the sessions.   It's a catch 22.  A vicious cycle.  Poor.  No money.  No job.

All the while, their court costs that they can't pay because they don't have a job or a car, are accruing interest.  Once caught in the system, it is almost financially impossible to get out.

They are continually in and out of jail over court costs. They can't pay--so back to jail they go. It costs the government forty to fifty times the amount they owe to keep them in jail.  But here's the kicker.  Police and courts are dependent on the offenders money to stay in business.  That's part of how they are funded.

The moral to the story: don't ever make a mistake.  They can take everything in your car, sometimes the car itself.  That's the law.  It helps fund police departments.  It's not the fault of the police or the courts that they operate that way, it's the state of Oklahoma who sets funding.  Our court system is a mess.  We punish with no hope of reform.  We don't help nonviolent people get out of the system.  They go to jail, don't have a job, sit in jail with their fines increasing daily due to the interest. Then go back to court and get charged again.  And again.  And again. We don't help people get back on their feet.