I walk around the block every morning and meet all of the neighborhood dogs.  I remember the dogs names  but can’t seem to recall the owners  names. 

 I have to get myself a  dog.  I just don’t know where to go to get it.  I don’t want a puppy.  I can’t do that again.  I want a female that is small and doesn’t shed.  No more males.  Squig ruined the skirt on my loveseat--I could never catch him in the act.  I can clean up the floor if a dog makes a mess, but furniture is impossible.  Iv’e tried all of those products that they advertise.  They don’t work.

Bill (my brother) is editing “The Corsair Pilot” for me this week.  I can’t do it for myself.  I can’t see mistakes. Carolyn will give the book another read and edit as well. I want this thing out of here!!!  Once I’m done....I’m done.  I’ve started on another book.  But I haven’t gotten my mo-jo back yet.  All I want to do lately is eat Cheetos.

 I think I have found the draft of The Corsair.  It took me all day yesterday.   Thank goodness for “Finder.”  I will have to read every page all 300 of them to know for sure.  I need a better filing system!!...which means I don’t have a filing system.

Today I go to breakfast with Ann.  She will be her in a few minutes.  Then I get my hair done, come home and eat lunch   and start reading, reading, reading.  I hope I have found the right manuscript.

I finished the book “Killer Angels,” last night.  Pulitzer prize winner.  But hard to read.  The version in the history books about Gettysburg don’t tell the story at all!

I wish I could go back and look at the field again.  “Little Round Top,”  “Big Round Top” and Seminary Hill.  Oh well, I probably wouldn’t know much more than I do now because I am not a warrior. 

I had written a book about Ken, (The Corsair) and the publisher wanted a different ending.  That was last year...so I spent months rewriting it  ... she wanted Vietnam included with the first part which was about Korea.  

Yesterday, she came to see me and said she had been wrong. And she was sorry.  She said adding another war made the book too long.  So “Let’s go back to the original,” and write another book about Vietnam.  I haven’t written anything in months because I couldn’t figure out what to do.

Ok.  I was so happy.  That’ what I wanted all along.  It should be out in the fall!!!.....But after she left, I opened my computor and couldn’t find the original.  It has to be somewhere...but where??? I’m going to spend all day looking and then probably take it to Craig and hope he can find it.  He says it’s in the cloud wherever that is.  But....I am energized.  And so happy.  I liked what I had written in the first place and it’s hard to please someone besides yourself.  I’m so, so, so, relieved.

We lived in Virginia for three years, right across the Potomac River in Woodbridge.  And Ken was fascinated with the Civil War and wanted to go walk every battle field within driving distance.  I knew very little about that war. But he knew every detail.  Especially the battlefield layouts and the men on both sides.  Where they were positioned and how they advanced.

He took me to Gettysburg and went over the positions of Lee’s army, Longstreet, and the northern generals.  I was unable to understand what the ridges and positions meant, but I tried!

I am now reading a book about that battle.  Each general.  Each tactic.  And after 62 years I am starting to understand how uncertain the outcome was, and how much the personalities played a part.  And how our nation’s future was at stake.  I have never been a history student; math was my field, but this book is very interesting. I wish I had been able to play my part better.  He would stand in a position, tell me which general I was supposed to be, and of course, he adored Lee.  It wasn’t about the north and south, but the character of General Lee. 

 The fourth is over.  There weren’t as many fireworks here as ususal...maybe because it rained.  And it rained again yesterday.  In July!!

 

I’m eating Cheetos for breakfast.  My daddy used to eat cookies, so I guess it is OK. I have never liked eggs.  Or milk.  Which makes breakfast hard to do.

Tomorrow, my publisher is coming at 1:45.  I pray she does.  She has cancelled the last four times.  The book I have written about Ken is ready to go.  I read the letters he wrote me from Viet Nam to find things that he said about the war while he was in the middle of it.  From 67-68.  I hadn’t read them again in all this time. It was sad.  So many deaths.

I’ve been reading my way through the New Testament again, and finally got to Revelation.  Tough reading.  Everyone has an opinion and I got to hear the very best of scholars in the late 1940’s.  My pastor was Ken’s dad and he had huge linen bolts of fabric, hung from hooks in the ceiling at our church.  They read from left to right, with very artistic colored pictures that depicted the prophecies of both Danial and Revelation.  And in the years since, I have heard and read many differences of opinions.  But my go-to guy on the subject now is my son Scott.  He’s who I call when I have a question--which I did last night.  In one of the Revelation prophecies there were 45 missing days and I couldn’t figure out where they went.  I won’t go into it, but he answered my question and in the discussion said, “You notice that Dan is not included in the twelve tribes of Israel in Revelation Chapter 7.  He was cursed as a serpent in the Genesis 49, and Judges 18--because he led his tribe into the worship of idols.”  Well, no.  I didn’t remember that and had never noticed it when I read Revelation chapter 7.  Scott has become a Bible guru on details like that.  I guess we can learn from our children.  

Monday...and it is July.  I don’t know how that happened.  I still don’t know where January went.  Time is passing faster for me than ever before in my life.  And I’m accomplishing less!!.  As Ken would say, “I get up every day with nothing to do and go to bed with it only half done.”

We had a wonderful discussion group yesterday in our Sunday class.  As we have been together for eight years now--we know each other really well, and instead of me being a teacher, I just throw out questions and we search Scripture.  It is a much better way to do class.  We just stay in agreement with the word of God.

Most of the classes I have taught in the past have been filled with people who didn’t study  their lesson very often.  This group always comes prepared.  I look forward to Sundays.