My neighbor who lives across the street that is always bringing me something for dinner--she finally let me buy Chinese for us.  Finally. 

I had given her my credit card last year so that when she went to the grocery store, she could charge what few things I needed.  But she wouldn’t charge dinner and bring it home for us...which meant that I couldn’t ever return the favor.  But I’m persistent, and she finally gave in.  She used my card to buy our lunch.  Chinese.  Delicious.

People have been so good to me during the pandemic, and the ice storm during October, and the week of freezing weather and snow.  I don’t know how other older people who couldn’t get out of their houses made it.

Becky brought me breakfast this morning.  She is trying to coax me into eating more protein.  But I don’t like milk products--at all.  I force myself to eat eggs.   If it is sweet, I don’t want it.  Jeannine brought me peanut butter cookies last night.  Those are the only cookie I will eat and she knows it...everyone is trying to get food down me.  Jeanette brought sweet and sour chicken over rice yesterday. 

Wednesday is bean day for Linda Kerley.  She lets me make the cornbread---so I am not totally useless.  They are all such a blessing. 

Carolyn has been mailing me the ken-ken puzzles from her newspaper.  I only get one of them on Sunday.  But the Tulsa paper she takes raised her rate to over 300$, so she quit them---and I won’t get any more puzzles.

I went to the book store to get a book of them, but they didn’t have any.  They have every other kind of crossword and puzzle, but no ken-ken.

And my mathematical mind craves number puzzles.

The only kind of puzzle I don’t like is figuring out what to do on this computer.  This morning, I was writing and my power went off and I lost what I wrote.  When I finally was able to figure out how to retrieve it, it came up with two copies!!.  One with the original title, and one titled with the name of the first chapter.

Solution:  call Pat.  But she is packing up to go to a horse clinic and can’t come help me.  I would take a class, but the problem with those classes is that they never tell you the thing you want to know.

This Mac-pro has too many options.  And too many titles to things you can do.  Choice after choice after choice.  And a language all of its own.  I need something with an on/off switch.

After Ken retired--twenty one years in the Marine Corps and another 30+ years teaching college--if you asked him what he was planning on doing the next day, he would say, “I plan on getting up with nothing to do and going to bed with it half done.”

I read a comment in Reader’s Digest that fits my plans for what I am going to do tomorrow.  “I’m going to finish procrastinating the things I didn’t get finished procrastinating yesterday.”

That’s one of the things I love about being retired.  After moving all over the United States and back again every time Ken was transferred (I’ve moved 27 times in my life), and raising four kids, going to school, teaching full time and running a house with a million things to do everyday, I never seemed to catch up with it all and never had a minute to just do nothing.

Now, nothing is pressing.  Calm reigns.  I love it.  It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Time to think.  Time to just “be.” 

On the other hand, after a hectic life, I admit that sometimes it is boring.  But boring is good.  I like it.  Time to write is a bonus.  I don’t know that any of the things I write are memorable, but I enjoy doing it.

I have enjoyed teaching the Gospel of Luke.  He was my kind of writer-- always trying to get everything down--in order.

He was so thorough that he went around to every person and place that he could--to find out the story from each place and person where it occurred.

He wrote over twenty five incidents and stories that the other three gospel writers did not include.  Mark, on the other hand, only included two things that none of the others did.

Luke was systematic in his approach.  He started his gospel by saying that he wanted to get it all down from the mouths of the people who knew Jesus personally.  He wanted first hand accounts.

It is one of the few books in the Bible that you can read and get the idea that you were an observer.  It is personal.  Luke, a physician,  made sure that the people who read what he had written could be sure that they were reading a true account of what happened.  A true man of medicine, Luke wanted to see people spiritually healed.  We owe Luke a debt of gratitude. 

I have posted, as of today, 2113 times.  I am sure I am repeating myself by now.  What started as an explanation of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis has evolved....

I just wanted to tell everyone how it might have happened.  Since we know that dinosaurs lived, (and that the Bible is true), it seemed good to me to place those animals before verse two.  Back when God created the heavens and the earth...

And then something happened that wiped everything out all at once sixty-six million years ago.  Probably the asteroid that hit the earth on the north edge of S. America on the gulf.  There are traces and evidence of that event all over the earth.  Darkness of burning smoke and chemicals were in the atmosphere and lasted sixteen years.  I have written a booklet on the subject, and if you are interested go back in my blogs to read that.

Then God looked down and decided to reconstruct the wobbling, sloshing mess we call earth.   "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, (waters)."

So God began to "Reconstruct--not create--the earth."  After verse two, the first chapter of Genesis is the story of that reconstruction...and the story of us.

 I got up with one thing to do...taxes.  Which, since I am so disorganized with paper, meant that I had to go through every piece of paper, bills, receipts, etc. from the last year.

Which I did.  Shredding.  Sorting.  Stapling.

It is in order.  Now all I have to do is to do it.

That's the hard part. 

I've been applying what Paul said to my own life this week--as I've been stuck inside.  

I thought that after I got the second shot, that ten days later, I could return to my normal life.  But....no....we got the storm of a lifetime.  Worst on record.  29 degrees below wind chill factor.  13 below actual temperature.  There are at least 8 inches of packed snow on my roof, and the yard and driveway have six inches.  I'm wondering if the roof will fall in from the weight??

Paul said, "For the good that I would do...I don't do.  But the bad which I would not do...that, I do."  Romans 7:19 (My paraphrase)

Which applies.  I am looking at all my paper...I'm just not doing anything with it--like filling out my tax forms.

I have been without TV or internet for days.  Besides that, it has been up to 13 below zero.  Squig is so small that he sinks up to his belly in the snow.  His zip-suit just acts like a shovel.  He comes in near frozen and packed with snow.

My next door neighbor is a computer engineer and came over and got me on line again.

Stay warm.  I'll think of something interesting to writ about in a few days.  

My brain is frozen.

I'm ready for this to be over.  Next time I am going to do better about preparing to feed and water the birds.  They are in the trees out back freezing their tails off....