Squig is still sleepy from his visit to the Vet.  He lost another tooth in the process.  He now has less than half of his teeth.  That's the problem with being born a schnauzer.  Bad teeth.  Choose your parents carefully???

He'll be twelve in March.  That's eighty-four in dog years.  I don't want to think about that.

Thinking about age, Jon, (my youngest son) brought his two boys over to see me on Saturday.  Tate is four, Brady is eight.  The reason God gave children to younger people becomes apparent when you are around a couple of them for an hour. They are very well mannered, but busy, busy, busy.

By the time you have the good sense to raise children, you don't have the energy you need to raise them.  So you just have to do the best you can when you have kids.  Jon has a lot of patience with those two energetic boys.  I can't believe I raised four children and had the energy to do it.

I gave Tate and Brady a shovel and sent them outside to tear the dried okra pods open and plant the seeds.  I didn't tell them that the seeds had to be planted in the spring to have a chance to grow.  No need to spoil their fun.

We played Uno.  They both beat me over and over.  I think I'm over the hill.

When It was time for them to go home, both of them began to cry and beg to stay with me.  That was flattering.  It's nice to know you are loved.  But Jon had the good sense to take them with him.  I could have kept one of them, but both at the same time would have been the end of me.

My oldest grandchild is thirty-seven; the youngest is four.  They were both born on Feb. 20.  They are the bookends of my grandchildren.

Becky and Craig took me to the Messiah last night.  The conductor turned to the audience at the end and directed all of us to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.  It was a wonderful evening.  They took Kathy and husband Steve as well.  Kathy and Becky do estate sales together all the time.

Steve is the guitarist for Darci Lynne, the American Idol winner--with her puppets.  So he travels a lot.  It was nice to have everyone in one place for the evening.  Josh went as well.  Steve and Josh were the guys on tap when I bought sofas at an estate sale Becky had.  They lugged them into my house and set them up for me.  Family and Friends are a blessing in my life.   

I stayed up last night at the Messiah way past my bedtime and am groggy this morning.  I'm going to have to take a nap before the day is over.

I'm on my way to the Vet.  Squig has to get his teeth cleaned.  And they have to put him to sleep to do it.  Which bothers me.  But schnauzers, as a breed, have horrible teeth so it has to be done.  Squig loses teeth every time we do this.  The best thing about schnauzers is that they don't shed.  I guess you can't have it all.

When I took him to the vet for a teeth-cleaning in Pryor, it was usually under a hundred dollars.  I've taken him to Guthrie for the last times and it was $185.  But it gets harder and harder to get him there, so I thought, "It can't be that much more to take him to a vet in Edmond.  Edmond--the home of the rich and famous.  $405.  We will be going back to Guthrie.

There is a steep price for a dog that doesn't shed???  But what is a girl to do.  I'm in love with this little dog.  I'll eat beans and cornbread for a month.  God created schnauzers for people like me.  They aren't good for much of anything but to love.  And I do that quiet well.

I was reading in the book of first John last night.  John wants to reassure people that what he had encountered was first hand.  That he is a first hand witness to events concerning a man named Jesus from the town Nazereth.

So he begins in the first sentence by saying that he has heard it, seen it with his eyes, looked upon the events and has handled numerous parts of the events.  This is not hearsay.

Then he says," That which we have seen and heard, we declare unto you, so that you also may have fellowship with us..."  Then he continues by saying, "This then is the message which we have heard of him..."  John was making sure that those people out there, (who believed in Jesus being the Christ) had the assurance of hearing it from someone who had been there when it all happened.  He was an on the spot reporter.

If you read through this short letter you find that he used the word "Know" 36 times.  He wanted people to know.  To have assurance.  In 2:3 he says, "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments."  Know that you know.  I love to hear first hand accounts.  He emphasizes that he is writing this down so that they will "know."  And uses the word "write," or "written" or "declare" at least thirteen times.

"Give me the facts," someone might have asked.  And John said, "Here's what I know; here's what I saw, experienced and I know absolutely to be the truth.

When John, Peter, Jude, Matthew, or James write something, you have a first hand, three year observance of the life of Jesus.  Paul asserts that he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and is also a first hand believer.  Paul did a 180 degree turn around from murdering Christians to becoming one of them.  I'm a believer in part because of what they wrote. 

Last week, our Sunday quarterlies started covering a study of the book of Numbers.  The first eight chapters cover a census of the people.  Twelve tribes are numbered.  Poor Moses.  He was out in the desert trying to get every one going in the same direction.

They started us in chapter nine--thank goodness.  The first eight chapters are like reading a phone book.  Most of you probably don't know what a phone book is?  (I still have one from 1956.  No, I don't know why I kept it.)

The people were complaining, "Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for supper."  After forty years of wandering around, I doubt we would do much better.  

They were led by a cloud by day, and a fire by night.  They got so used to those two things, and probably thought those two things were normal.

Like us...the sun comes up every morning and the moon every night.  That's the way it is.  Normal.  I can't help but wonder if they were just like we are.  We are so used to the sun and moon, we have lost our wonder of the universe.

Trees die in the winter.  And come spring, they burst into green.  Such a magical event.  It happens every year.  Maybe we are so used to it that we have lost our wonder of the miracle of things that are alive.

I've gotten hooked on Dr. Pol on TV.  He's a Vet.  After watching multiple episodes, I now think I could pull a cow, and dehorn a steer.  I think I could sew up a dog after a dog fight.  (I'm pretty good with a needle.)  New little critters being born is such a miracle.  Puppies, kittens, little goats and sheep.  Maybe we need to regain wonder.  Maybe we need to recognize the hand of God in our world.

There is too much stuff to read anymore.  Information is drowning me.  I made the mistake of ordering a "three for $5.00 set" of magazines for a year.  I won't do that again.  I don't have time to read them so I walk them over to a neighbor who does.  They are Mostly recipes anyway.  And I am not going to cook them.  It would take one person forever to eat one of those recipes.  

And my neighbor brings me "Time" mag. when he is through with it.  I try, but the articles are too long.  And boring. My attention span is short.

When I started writing this blog, I determined to write six inches--or however short the small page I write on is.  No longer.  If I go a line over that, I go back and edit it until it is shorter.  That's enough.  Nobody wants to read more than that unless it is a good book.

I found that when I was teaching math at NEO, the attention span of a student who was listening to instruction was fifteen minutes--then you had to give them something to do.  So I would explain something for fifteen minutes, then give them a problem I could assist them with--and when everyone got the concept, move on to explain the next concept for a minute or two.  "Doing" is more instructive if you have someone to help you than "Hearing."

The TV is just noise anymore.  If you want something near the truth, you have to listen to three or four different stations.  Nobody simply reports the news anymore.  They spout opinions.  It makes me weary.

And since some people only listen to only one station, they are brainwashed into that station's opinion.  Discussion of ideas is out, out, out.  Like I said at the beginning, Information is drowning me.  Let me rephrase that:  Opinions are drowning me.  Figuring out what is true is a huge effort.  

They installed my new washer and dryer this morning.  I am on my fourth load of laundry.  An interesting note about that:  When I took Squig to the Vet last week, the Vet spent at least twenty minutes with me, explaining everything.  Then took Squig to the back to run some tests.  My entire bill was fifty-five dollars.  For a medical veterinarian doctor.

When I called a service man last week to see if he could fix my dryer, he walked in and said, "It's seventy-five dollars for the call to be paid now for me to look at it.  And another eighty-five dollars to fix it if I can.  Parts will be extra."

That's one-hundred and sixty dollars plus parts.  With no guarantee that he would be able to fix it.  Somebody needs to advise high-school students to go into the repair business.

That kind of work has exploded in demand.  Probably because college doesn't teach very many hands on trades.  So nobody knows how to do common stuff.  Since the fifties we have geared high school courses to a pre-college direction.

Back when I was in the eighth grade, nobody had to go to school after that.  High school was for those going into professional careers.  Which obviously isn't needed any more to make a decent living. Now, we have a standard curriculum that everybody has to meet to graduate, and twelve years of education required to graduate instead of stopping at eight. 

There were also apprentice programs back then as well.  Where you could learn to do things.  One of the best kept secrets in Oklahoma is our Vo-tec schools.  Years ago we voted a sales tax exclusively for Vo-tec schools and now we have a bunch of them with permanent funding.  State of the art.  Low size classes.  Well paid teachers.  It's a real success story.  My son Jon taught physics at a high school, but now teaches robotics, drones, and such at a Vo-tec school.

I have never done Black Friday.  There is a reason for that.  I learned my lesson in Savanna, Georgia 1962.  Way back before the Black Friday concept had been invented.

 I had gone to a highly advertised sale at a furniture store at eight in the morning.  It was just a sale, nothing spectacular.  They were clearing out the store at reduced prices, and we needed a sofa.  

I was there early to get in and get a good selection, as soon as the doors opened--which opened out, not in.  When the doors opened, the crowd behind me surged forward and pinned me against the edge of the opening door and I couldn't breath.  

Eventually the pressure behind me finally rolled me off the edge of the door and into the store. But there were a couple of minutes I thought I was done for.  I was trapped.  I thought they were going to break my ribs.

Needless to say, I was done shopping.  I would look for a sofa some other day when there was no hysteria.  Saving a little money isn't worth risking your life.
I had never been in a crowd like that.  Being from the nineteen-fifties in Oklahoma, I didn't expect rude people behind me to surge.  I thought everyone would wait their turn.  I learned something about human behavior that day.  You can't predict what people are going to do.  Especially when money is involved.

I don't shop much any more.  For one thing, I can't walk any distance for very long, and for another, I have found that when I need something, I save money in the long run if I just go buy it.  I never make an impulse purchase because I'm not out looking for stuff.  It took me ten minutes to buy a washer and dryer last week.  On Monday--not Friday.  They gave me their Black Friday price--because I asked for it.  No crowd.