Quiet Saturday

It will be a quiet Saturday. For one thing, when I went to Orchelon's to get Slinky's bed cushion yesterday afternoon, I noticed a strong odor coming from my car when I pulled into the garage. It smelled like burned rubber. I raised the hood and looked under it but did not see anything unusual but that's not saying much. What I know about a car could be put on the head of a pin. After awhile, I will call Bobby and see if he will come take a look. I believe Karan and Bobby sleep in so I'll wait until 9:00 or so. This is very inconvenient. I need to go to Independence on Monday morning to clean Leslie's house and back in the afternoon to a board meeting at 4:00. Tuesday I was going to meet Gay for lunch. Wednesday is my doctor's appointment in Wichita, a two and a half hour drive. Thursday is clear and so is Friday but Saturday I am to pick up the boxes of dinners at the Baptist Church from the Angel Food Ministries. It was to be a busy week. Now I don't know what to do. I lay awake awhile last night stewing about the situation.

Oh well. More later...

As usual all my stewing was for nothing. Bobby came over and looked over my car and found nothing. Then he noticed the insulation on top of my hot water tank was getting hot and sticking to the hot vent on the tank. It was melting it and that is what I was smelling. I am so glad I had Bobby over to look it over. I would have tried to take it in to the garage on Monday and I would have been fearful of doing that. I have some great friends!

I will go out to church and make some copies now of the Temple School material for tomorrow's church school class.

More later...

I got that done and came home and made a pot of chili. This is chili weather. I have some crackers and cheese that I will have with it. I even broke down and bought some cans of Dr. Pepper. I don't drink much soda. It is so bad for us. We may learn someday that it and everything else that contains high fructose corn syrup is what is causing all this diabetes.

I also went down to the booth in the mall to see if anything had sold. Not much..I'm afraid. This may be a slow month what with Christmas coming up.

While I was there, Scott called from a train in Germany, coming back from Munich. He decided to get a 24 hour train pass and see some of the lovely countryside there in Germany. He called three times, in fact, just to catch me up on his evening. There it was around 11:20 at night. It was 3:20 here. He seemed to be enjoying his train trip. He said the train had huge windows and the scenery was fantastic. I'm glad he is taking advantage of his opportunity to see Germany. I sure miss him.

I mowed this afternoon...mostly to mulch the leaves. Then I blew off the patio and driveway to make the yard look better. I am looking forward to my chili for dinner. I forgot to eat lunch and had about five or six bites of my oatmeal before Slinky begged the rest off me. That dog loves oatmeal. He slept well in the kitchen last night. He seems to like his new bed.

Another Friday

I have already had breakfast at Eggberts with a friend, and taken the Thanksgiving service ad for the Ministerial Alliance's service to the Journal to be printed in Monday and Friday's Journal. I paid one third the cost of last year for basically the same ad. That goes to show you how desperate print is for advertising. I wonder what the circulation of the Journal is now.

I will go see Phyllis at Windsor at 10:00. Right now I have Slinky in the kitchen. It is raining cold rain today and he really wanted in. Poor dog! He can't handle the extreme heat or the cold of Kansas. He was born in Hawaii and besides Shar Peis can't handle extreme weather changes anyhow. He will be thirteen in 2011 and I just wonder how long he will live. I'd like to get him a dog bed since he is so old but I'd hate to spend $30.00 or $40.00 for one just to have him die months later. Maybe Leslie has one from Jeromy's German Shepherd.

I found one at Orchelon's. It's a washable cushion that he seems to like. When I leave the house, I will put it in the garage on a rug there and he will be reasonably warm near the hot water tank.

I saw Phyllis this morning and she didn't make much sense at all. All I heard her say was that she wanted to go home. Other then that, it was just gibberish. Sad, sad, sad.

I will stay at home tonight. It is cold and rainy. It has drizzled all day. We needed the rain so I am not complaining. It's just different. Fall is definitely here.

Vinita and Lunch

I will be driving to Vinita this morning to have lunch with an old friend who lost her husband just a couple of months after I lost Bob. It's only about 50 miles. We had known them since our kids were very young. Her husband, another Bob, went camping with us before he met and married her. Scott was 2 that year. So we had known him about 48 years. He was a cousin of some great friends of ours, the Holts. The five of us took many camping trips with our collective six children. We had a pop up camper for the adults and the children slept in a tent next to the camper. We had some great times together when we were young.

Anyhow, they came to Bob's Celebration of Life service and he urged our older son, Keith, to participate in his dad's Celebration of Life. Keith didn't think he could do it.

It's raining and I never like driving in the rain but I will not leave until it gets light anyhow. The rest of the day, when I get home, I will go see my sister out at Windsor. It has been since Tuesday since I've been to see her.

I will take my camera and take some photos and perhaps share them here. I have a couple of photos that I took out of my scrapbook that I will give to Myra if she wants them. One was taken at Mission Center conference several years ago and one was taken at our church camp at "reunion". That's what our church calls family camp, where we gather for a week of reunions and preaching and class work. It's always great fun! We have two every summer. One is for families with children and one is mostly slanted for adults although children are welcome too.

This is Veteran's Day and I can certainly celebrate it. Although my dad was 4F during the second world war, my uncle Leon spent the war in Germany as an intelligence officer. He was fluent in German.

Bob also served during the Korean conflict. Both my sons have served. Keith went into the army straight out of high school. He is still in the Air Force reserves. He was in the army national guard but he was activated and sent to Iraq earlier this decade so he transferred when he got home. Scott has served several tours both in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is regular army. So, yes, I can celebrate that so far at least I have not lost family in these conflicts and honor those who did lose loved ones.

Heard From Scott!!

I heard from Scott today. He called twice from Germany. He has a free line and can call me and I can receive his calls on my cell phone free of charge. If I call him it will be 50 cents per minute and since this is Leslie's phone plan, I cannot do that. But he can call us free of charge. Hooray!

Tomorrow I will go to Vinita and leave at 8:30. I will have lunch with Myra. We will meet at her church at 10:00 and then decide where we will go to eat lunch. She lost her husband a couple of months after I lost mine. I have given her a couple of months to get some things in order and now we will meet and catch up on all the news.

Pretty quick now I will leave for the Presbyterian Church where I will attend the PINCH meeting. It begins at 5:30.

Very Busy Wednesday

Today will be very busy. I will pick up Juanita for breakfast at 8:30 this morning and then have my hair done at 10:00. At 11:45 I will go to Big Cheese for the Independence Ministerial Association meeting. Then after that, I will come back home. Later at 5:30, I will attend the PINCH meeting at the Presbyterian church.

I haven't heard from Scott since he arrived in Germany. He did accept me as one of his friends on Facebook....but no e-mail yet.

Keith called yesterday morning. We had a nice but short visit. He is very happy nowadays. That's good.

I met Leslie for lunch yesterday noon and after that, I went out to see grandson Jeromy's new house. They were to have moved in last evening. It is small but temporary and for just a few years. Then they will build a larger one. He was having lots of plumbing problems....leaks here and there. I believe he got the last one fixed while I was there.

On Monday, I will resume cleaning John and Leslie's house weekly.

More later.

Another Quiet Tuesday

This will be another quiet day. I am doing a load of laundry but that's about all. I am reading my book....quite an interesting book. I may have mentioned it before. It's called "Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus". It is by Robin Meyers, a pastor from Oklahoma City. The flyleaf of the book says: "The most urgent questions of all go unasked: What kind of God did Jesus reveal? What is the proper object of our worship and what would it take to make Christianity compelling, even irresistible again? How can our faith become biblically responsible, intellectually honest, emotionally satisfying and socially significant?

Our task, he says, is not to just demythologize Jesus. It's to let the breath of the Galilean sage fall on the neck of the church again. First we have to listen, not to formulas of salvation but to a gospel that is all but forgotten. After centuries of being told that "Jesus saves" the time has come to save Jesus from the church.

Countless thoughtful people are now so disgusted with the marriage of bad theology and hypocritical behavior by the church that a new Reformation is required in which the purpose of religion itself is re-imagined. The author takes the best of biblical scholarship and recasts these core Christian concepts to exhort the church to pursue an alternative vision of the Christian life.

Jesus as Teacher not Savior
Christianity as Compassion not Condemnation
Prosperity as Dangerous not Divine
Discipleship as Obedience not Control
Religion as Relationship not Righteousness

This is not a call to the church to move to the far left or to try something brand new. Rather it is the recovery of something very old. This book may help us recover what it means to be a Christian and how to follow Jesus' teachings today.

The book is praised by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bill Moyers, John Shelby Spong, Fred Craddock and Diana Butler Bass. It will give the reader something to mull over and may even change their viewpoint of what we ought to be about as Christians. I'm about halfway through it.

Mulling Over Monday

This was a slow day. I had cleaned on Friday and done laundry so I just had to walk Slinky and go to the market. I am trying to work up the nerve to strip the wallpaper from my kitchen and paint. These are photos of my kitchen. The paper is beginning to peel in places. I would like to paint the room a soft tan with a darker trim color. I have even picked out the colors. But it will be a big job to cover that green and I will have to pull that stove out to paint behind it.

I'll think about it again. It would be a good winter job.....or fall. I don't know. Give me some opinions.

I went to the market this morning. I didn't need much since I'm not cooking anymore.

But it would be nice to have a nice fresh kitchen. It has been like this for almost seven years. A little paint can do wonders and perhaps some new curtains. It would give me a neat project.

Scott called this morning. He will leave for Germany this afternoon about 4:00. He said he would call again before he takes off.

Fun Sunday

This should be a fun Sunday. First of all, Leslie is going to do the sacrament a different way...the way she did at the women's retreat. Then we will probably go as a group to lunch together. Later on this afternoon I will meet with the Living the Questions group and travel in a caravan to Tulsa for a Cole Porter music concert. Afterward, we will have dinner.

It should be busy....but fun.

More later.

A group of six of us went to Hong Kong delight this noon. Now I will not be so hungry for dinner.

The concert was really good! And we all ate together at the Spaghetti Warehouse afterward. I got home about 9:30, bathed and went to bed about 10:00.