Monday, Jan. 19, 2004 - 12:14 p.m.

Church games

I had lots to say about church games, politicking, good ole boying, networking, etc,etc, that goes on in the body, but the more I thought about it, the more it disgusted me. I think I will let You take care of it.

1d and e and I are going to big town tomorrow if the creek don't rise. She has to go to the doctor. Her Portland doc recommended she go to a psychiatrist to make sure the brain damage isn't causing harmful lifestyle changes, so she is going once a month for a while. It is a physiological problem caused by her brain's inability to produce the hormones needed to handle stress, so I am glad it is being monitored. She keeps saying, "I'm not crazy!" and I keep saying, "No more than the rest of us!"

I'll try to call my list today. I dug out three English handbooks and located some on the web. I want to find my ACE handbooks as they are some of the best grammar basics I ever used. When 1d went to Bible school in Canada, her profs were amazed at her English abilities, especially from an American, and often set her to helping the other students in English. They said then that they usually saw such skill levels from the students who had used ACE curriculum.

I will be glad to start classes. It is either that or clean the garage! I am having great success with my new tight-wad lifestyle. I went to Walmart and only spent $25 and that was for groceries. Even wandered around the store without buying stuff. I am not a big spender anyway but have to get a new grip ever once in a while. I remember my first job down here 25 years ago. It was only a few hours a week and only to pay tuition when all three youngest ones were in private school. The first 2 or 3 months, I bought several shirts, then I asked myself why I was doing that. After all, how many could I wear at one time? Then again in the plant, the big regular checks enticed me into buying towels, sheets, pillowcases, flowers, etc etc etc. Nothing that was out of line, but still, more stuff. Now I have a house with too much stuff. When all the children were home, I could have used all the stuff. Towels got threadbare, sheets wore thin and I split them down the middle and sewed them up again with the less worn outer edges now on the inside. There are not enough folks around now to wear things down. GET A GRIP!!!

I have decided not to take the crimson bedroom curtains, split them down the middle and sew them up. They are just in too bad a shape. I haven't seen any locally that will work. I need heavy ones that are lined. Penney's or Sears in big town will probably have them. Maybe next summer.

800 is cleaning out his office. The bunkbeds were already moved out here into the back of the family room last year, but now he is working on 40 years of paper work. He has about 4 incubators in there and it will soon be time to hatch eggs but I don't know if he wants to do that anymore. It will be hard to decide what paper parts of 5 different careers to chuck. I need to do the same with my conglomeration of interests.

Books have seemed to stay a part of my life during all the other changes. Cross-stitch, macrame, oil painting, water colors, Bible clubs, writing, gardening(very little), drawing, math, chemistry, guitar, piano, Mother Earth news, pressing wildflowers and making parchment cards. A little dabble here, a little bit there, sometimes just a toe in the water, sometimes jumping off in the deep end. Never had much money to throw at any of it, and some I just did because it was there. Younger sis-in-law used to follow me around. She was a single gal and whenever she found out I had an interest in something, she would take it up too, except she did have alot of money to throw at whatever. I probably deprived the world of some great literature when I hid from her the fact that I had written a novel.

I sure don't want to leave our kids the same mess Mamma left Judi and me. One thing I learned from that was what may be a treasure to you is just junk to your kids. Why would anyone want to hang on to at least 20 old purses? O, I would hate to round up all the ones I probably have scattered around. We used to move often enough to clear things out, but not anymore. When we left the coast, I was so frustrated by the move that I just sent box after box to the dump and never really missed any of it. Once in a while, I would think--I wonder what happened to ???---- but it never ended up as anything vital (but I do wonder if that is what happened to my diploma).

The diploma mystery is still not an issue to anyone but me. My WIA case manager knew me well enough not to care about seeing the actual paper and the college doesn't need it. The manager left Friday and my new one may stumble across the fact that there is no paper trail back to graduation. Maybe I will have to get a GED!! That would be so funny. Here I have gone all my life telling anyone who needed to know that I graduated from ------ in----, all the time never dreaming that there was absolutely no record of such an event anywhere that can be searched. No one ever asked to see proof, after all, why would I lie? And I wouldn't have, but now---. Can I still say the same with such assurance? I know I graduated, don't I? Well , I wonder. Was it all some dream that just planted itself in my memory, like calling myself D'Argonne in my early teens because I wanted to be French instead of Irish? Nah--how could I convince myself of something like that?

I have wondered if we don't make ourselves all over again ever so often, when radical change happens and then we look back. When I am at one position in my life experience, looking back across several intervening positions might give an entirely different view of what really was. Oh-Oh, it is getting too deep here for me.

EE's devotional

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