The cleaning ladies come today.  I always dread it because of the noise...but am glad when they leave because the house is clean.  But it forces me to pick up everything that is out of place and put it where it goes so that they can dust.

Paper is everywhere.  And when I pick it up, I stack it, only to have to re-sort it later...which sometimes doesn't get done.  This new generation just takes a picture of it and keeps it on their phone.

Yesterday I called Carolyn (who is my right hand editing authority when I write) and told her to sit down because when I read her the text I just got she was going to faint.  The text was from my first publisher who said, "I'll be at your house Tuesday with your book."  Three years...and maybe this is going to happen.  She also said that she was bringing the draft for my web page for my approval.  I've been disappointed so many times I'm afraid to hope it will happen.

My dad was seven years old when his father was murdered.  The case was never solved.  There were no suspects.  Why someone would kill him was never discovered.  

But dad's brothers, who were much much older than he was, effectively ran the family show from then on until they married and left.  What they said to do was law.

Writing a book about him is mostly guesswork.  But my children have always said, "Give mom one fact and she will expand it to fill ten pages."  I think they are stretching the truth somewhat, but you do end up making a lot of conversation up.

Which has been hard because my dad never had much to say.  He was a quiet man.  Highly respected by everyone he came in contact with.  On the other side, when he was a boy, his job was to take food from the family cafe to Robber's caves outside of Wilburton to Pretty Boy Floyd, Belle Starr and their cohorts.  They all considered  my dad to be their one honest associate.

I went to the grocery store for the first time in months to get junk food.  Fruity junk food.  Dried apples, dates, peaches and nuts.  I nibble all day while I am working on another book.  About my dad.  He had an interesting life.  Seven boys in the family, and he was the youngest, but ended up caring for his mother her entire life after someone murdered his father.

Two older brothers formed an enterprise on the wrong side of the law.  Bootlegging.  When dad was just a little boy, they put him on a cushion to boost him high enough to see over the dashboard the of car, put him behind the wheel of their father's Studebaker and told him to be ready to drive if they needed to escape.  When he was a little older, he stood up for himself and told the brothers he wasn't driving for them anymore.  By then, he had learned the name and location of every lawbreaker in four states--and when he was grown and went to work for the IRS, he was  able to help the government with a number of tax evasion arrests of those who had made a lot of money selling illegal hooch.  Even criminals need to pay their taxes?

I got a notice last week that my third book has been sent to the review board for consideration.  Which is the second step in publishing.  First you have to get a publisher to acknowledge that you exist--and that they are interested in what you have written.  Then, if they like it, you get a contract.  This publisher is already in the process of printing one of my books and said they want to read what else I have written.  There is hope?

Another publisher has had the first book I wrote for three years with no sign of publishing.  It is frustrating beyond description.  I finally gave them notice to return it, or get it into bookstores by the end of April.  I don't have time for that kind of stalling.  I did learn something from it however.  You always want to get a print date written into the contract.  Which I did do with the publisher of the second book.  So now, there are three books out there, waiting on printing...and I am hoping that God sets a fire under someone.  The New York publisher gave me an October or November date in the contract.  We'll see.  All of you keep asking when.  I don't know, but you will be the first to know when it is published.

I was tying a bow yesterday on my pull up kakis yesterday.  It was perfect.  Two loops right and left lying flat and the ties lying down neatly.  And I remember the day that I learned how to do that.  

I was getting ready to go to church, married two or three weeks and my dress had a bow I was trying to tie--unsuccessfully.  Ken watched, then said, "You want me to show you how to do that."  I was surprised.  A man?  Tie a bow?

He went through the steps and when finished, I had a perfect bow.  Yesterday as I was tying a bow, I wondered where he learned that?  It must have been USMC regulation for tying the laces on their shoes?  What ever the reason, when I see some kid with their bow loops going up and down rather than side to side, I want to tell them to call the Marines.

I seem to be forgetful about posting anymore.  I get busy doing something else.  A lot of nothing else, as a matter of fact.

When they came for my birthday, Kim brought me Twining's Darjeeling tea which I can't buy in Edmond.  Kathy brought me two pans of homemade yeast rolls that she made.  Carolyn brought me the ken-ken puzzles she cut out of her daily paper for months and months.  About a zillion of them.

So I can drink tea, eat a roll and work a puzzle.  It doesn't get any better than that.

I took Pat to dinner at Texas road house the other night.  I've been trying to eat the leftovers ever since.  You would have to be a huge person to eat everything they put on your plate.  I always get the prime rib which is the only kind of cow I like to eat--besides a hamburger.  Seafood is my first choice for protein.  I'm going with Jeanette to Red Lobster tomorrow.

Every time I prepare a lesson from the Bible for my Sunday class, I learn something new.  The week before Easter was the crucifixion story, and Carolyn (who is teaching from the same book as I am) got me interested in the plant called  hyssop.  

It was used to spread sacrificial blood on the doorpost as the Israelites fled Egypt.  And in the Psalms, David said "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean...whiter than snow."  There is no way to say for sure because the written word doesn't tell us.  But when Jesus said "I thirst," they gave him vinegar on a sponge.  A sponge fixed in the branches of hyssop.

At that moment, he was carrying the sins of the world.  Could it be that (as David said) the symbolic brushing of the body of Christ with hyssop was God's final word on cleansing him of all the world's sin as he died.  That is a random thought in my head--from nowhere in the Bible.  It just is interesting that the last thing to touch Jesus was hyssop which was used in cleansing rituals of the Israelites..