I went out this morning to gaze at the sun and saw the most beautiful pink sky. I waited for the sun and while it did rise to its full glory for a few minutes it soon disappeared behind a big black cloud. I came in and worked on genealogy until I decided to go out and split logs. I split two giant logs and later piled the split logs onto the hand cart and carried them to the stack. I made four trips with the hand cart. I also moved 3 more hard to split logs over to the group of logs that are drying out and then I was back to genealogy. I made a fire and got an early shower. Palm Terrace called to say they hadn't found his glasses and that he needed more clothes. I told her I would be there tomorrow and I would take him to buy clothes. Then I called him and he was very compliant. He said he needed more long sleeve snap up shirts and I can usually get those at Wal-Mart. I will also be stopping off at Sears there in Lakeland to get my new lawn tractor battery. It did rain today - hard – but it was late in the day. Rain is also predicted for tomorrow and most of my driving is late in the day but I am taking the slow back roads to get to Tampa and back to Lakeland. There is no slow road home, but at 7 pm perhaps it won't be busy. Family Tree quit on me so I gave up at 7:30 and figure I will read a bit. I usually start a new page every month but Sam said he would be back on April 30 to read and apparently he has not yet returned to read so I am leaving this page intact until he gets back from Spain.
Thursday May 2
I ate at big lunch and left for Lakeland a little after noon. I went directly to Sears Merchandise pickup and was told to go to Automotive. The guy in Automotive had a little I don't care attitude but came out of it nicely after I made a few unusual comments. I arrived at Palm Terrace and found Jim sitting in a wheelchair among other people in wheelchairs apparently waiting for more people to arrive, and once they started coming the whole group moved into the auditorium and one guy in a cowboy style hat with a slim bottom half and an an oversized top half played guitar and sang and then went to the piano and sang and actually he was pretty good at guitar, piano and singing. At the end he took of the hat and that one motion aged him 30 years. It was like the Wizard of Oz after the dog revealed the real him. I believe his name is Mel Hamilton. We had cake and a drink and after he finished I got a pull up diaper for Jim and off we went. We had a nice ride across West Knights/Griffin Road, found the Stacy road turnoff and arrived at the VA in the rain at 5 pm for a 6 pm appointment. The CAT took only 5 minutes and off we went to the local Walmart to get him reading glasses. We looked for long sleeve snap up shirts but all they had was short sleeved shirts.
Then he wanted to look in Sears so we set the GPS for Sears and the GPS took us to K-Mart. I had just been in Sears and you could think I could find it again, but the GPS didn't return us they same way we had come. Yes, the road was faster, but it had more stop lights and it went right smack through Plant City. I now know the way to Tampa and I had better learn the way back. I have until May 13 to figure it out. To make a long story short, for 20 minutes we drove in circles in the dark because I had lost my bearings when we got dumped at K-Mart. It is now 11 pm as I wrote this and for a moment I thought about going to bed and writing in the morning, but then I came to my senses. I can sleep late tomorrow. So Jim now has a big screen TV with ROKU on the screen but I was unable to get anything to replace ROKU. I don't even know if he can watch regular television.
Friday May 3
At 8 am I drove down to Knights Feed and got 2 bags of all stock which the ducks seem to love. At 11 am we drove to the animal shelter and tried to find a new dog but the only dog that would fit through our doggie door had already been claimed by the Humane Society. There was one huge dog that we loved but he was just too big. So we came home empty handed and after a short rain that didn't amount to anything I decided to try out the new battery in the old lawn tractor. First I mowed the front yard, then I mowed the west gully and then I mowed the hole that is no longer a hole and then I put that mower away and got the push mower going and I mowed the section west of the house between the front yard and the back yard. I wanted to mow more but I ran out of gas and I was mowing with an illegal mower. Illegal in that the cord that attaches to the handle that shuts the mower off when the handle is no longer pressed together was gone. We had it rigged with a clamp that kept the mower running even when I bent over to get a stick. Before I started mowing I made a fire and after I finished mowing I got a good hot shower. A bottle of Bolthouse Protein drink got me through breakfast and lunch and I had Ramen noodles with a mushroom and cheese added for dinner. It got rather cold and Aaron and Melissa had both the front and back doors open which created a breezeway that I measured at 74 degrees. So I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and instead of going out by the road to gaze for 11 minutes I gazed at 6:30 pm for 11 minutes on the hole that is no longer a hole. At 7:30 I was too tired to work on genealogy so I decided to update this page and then see if I can read more of my lawn book.
Saturday May 4
Today the was no morning sun and at 10 am I walked over to Alice's and rode in her truck to get horse feed and we did a little bit of shopping at Wal-Mart. On the way home we stopped at LD enterprises and asked about a replacement cord for my lawn mower. He said I would have to get the number off the broken one and bring it in. They closed at 1 on Saturday so at 12:30 I took the broken cable down there and he had to order one because he had none in stock. I stopped off to visit with Sam and then I came home still determined to mow but the gas can I had put the gas in had a broken spout and I wasn't able to get gas into the lawnmower. So Aaron came out and got the gas funnel out of the truck and poured gas in the mower with the funnel using no spout. I went out and started to mow the gully. For one thing the wheels were set to low and I nearly bottomed out every time I went over a bump or ant hill. I went back and forth and a little bit of up and down but I only mowed maybe a quarter of the double gully. I pushed the mower back to the shed and sat in the swing until my hands stopped vibrating and my energy returned. I was ready for a shower but just them Aaron decided to carry the big logs I was unable to move back to where I now have a collection of logs that need to dry out before I attempt to split them again. He did what I could not by taking my plants off the cart, hooking the cart to the back of the lawn tractor, raising the logs with the hand cart to cart level and sliding the log onto the cart and driving it back to the pile. He took about 5 logs back. I got my shower and they went shopping. While they were gone I worked on my genealogy and cleared the dump pile of the few logs that remained there. I also ordered Jim 5 new long sleeved snap up shirts since I could not find a go to western store that sold shirts in Lakeland or Tampa. At 7 pm I went out and got in my 11 minutes and 20 seconds of sun gazing and for some reason typed into Google “powerful light weight lawnmower that works on slopes”. One came up and it was at Sears, with free shipping. So I clicked add to cart and put that on my Sears card. Self propelled, just what I need. I went back to genealogy but ended up adding my people to Family Tree rather that Family Tree people to my genealogy and it was getting late and I had to write this.
Sunday May 5
I got an email from Children and Families this morning which is rare, so I went online to look at the account which last night said Medially Needy. This morning it said Medicaid approved Jan 1 through May 31. So tomorrow morning I will call Dawn at Palm Terrace to see if all is well there, then call Baldomero and get him back on the waiting list and then I will call the podiatrist in Safety Harbor to give them the number, since they sent me a bill. Alice picked me up and we went to the Unity Church in Leesburg. I've been to wild churches and dull churches and this one was right in the middle, and following the service, if that's what you can call it there was coffee, cookies and nuts. A pleasantly unusual looking man sat beside me while I was eating my cookie and we eventually got into eye to eye conversation, totally engrossed in each other. We hugged goodbye (everybody hugs everybody there), I touched my face to his and we said good bye. He lives in Colorado and is only here visiting. I came home and since Melissa who always does laundry on Sunday didn't do laundry this Sunday so my work jeans never got washed. So in shorts I mixed up my lawn concoction of beer,mouthwash, liquid dish soap, ammonia and Epsom salts put it in my new hose end sprayer and drenched my back lawn with this mixture. The missionaries came to give a lesson and said here are three sheets of paper, see how high you can build a town in 15 minutes. I had the second tallest tower but it could easily be blown down, so in effect I came in last because it really wasn't how high you could be a tower, it was how stable you could build a tower. It was a lesson on developing a good foundation They took a truck full of split logs for a missionary picnic tomorrow, and they emptied my very full and heavy wheelbarrow. I worked on my genealogy and this time took more out of the Tree than I put in. I now have 8775 people
Monday May 6
I made my phone calls and Dawn confirmed my worst fear that medicaid gave him the wrong medicaid. The one they gave him gave him free medicine which the VA already gives him for free. She was going to email the social worker to see what happened. At 9:30 Alice came over and we headed to Wildwood to get a $100 bill form the bank to give to the funeral parlor, which we delivered to the funeral parlor 10 minutes later. From there we went to Leesburg where I discovered the price of milk had gone from $2.68 to $3.09. I got 3 milks and some other stuff and we headed home. I worked on genealogy all day and I now have 9897 people. I called Jim to tell him his shirts were coming by UPS and that he should write his name on each shirt before they went to laundry so they knew were to return them. I also tried to explain that I would be down next Monday to take him back o the VA. He wasn't overly concerned that that was a whole week away. My bird arrived. I attached it to the stair post on the back porch and it moves and chirps every time a heat source is detected. In other words, every time anybody walks in or out of the back door, the bird chirps. On the way in it starts chirping as soon as you come up the stairs. It does have an off switch (thank goodness). This is the second week my Muslim acquaintance has not come here. Maybe something happened to him (I hope). I kept a sweatshirt on all day and still have it on at 9:30 pm. The solar did make enough hot water for the boys to get showers.
Tuesday May 7
I was working along nicely on my genealogy at 3 pm when Palm Terrace called to tell me Jim had seizure and they were taking him to Lakeland Regional; Medical Center. I called the hospital but he wasn't yet in the system. So I waited awhile, and even talked to Sam who said to be patient and then I called Palm Terrace to see if he had returned from the hospital. He hadn't. So then I called the hospital, learned that he was in Room 12-A and was transferred to his nurse. I talked to Jim and he literally begged me to come to the hospital. So I drove to Lakeland and found the hospital which is just down the road from Palm Terrace. I found the emergency room and got my orange wrist band and then found Pod 4 and room 12-A. Jim was hooked up to all sorts of apparatus. He was unable to tell me what had happened that cause him to be there. Eventually the doctor came in and said Palm Terrace had said he was unresponsive and could not be aroused and at first had assumed he had had a heart attack. So they called the ambulance and by the time it got there Jim had come out of his stupor and according to Jim he was fine. Even the doctor was confused. It was decided that Jim would spent the night there and return to Palm Terrace in the morning. Once I got the room number which he would be in as soon as it was cleaned I decided it was time to leave so I could get at least most of the way home before dark. I did. I went 80 or 90 mph and even hit 100 when I passed a slow truck. Now the amazing thing about this is that the hospital bill will be paid by the Medicaid he got on Sunday. He got the wrong Medicaid. It was supposed to be Medicaid for Nursing Homes. If they hadn't made that mistake and given him Medicaid for Nursing Homes, it probably would not have paid the hospital bill. I did however, travel over 100 miles for a one hour visit.
Wednesday May 8
Fed X brought my new mower around 9 am and I dropped everything to put it together. I was ready to push it over to get gas and oil into it when I realized the back wheels were not aligned and one wheel was cracked. I came in and called Sears and they told me to contact Husquavana and Husquavana sent me to the mower shop in Bushnell and the mower shop, since I had not yet mailed in the warranty card, suggested I return it to Sears. So off I went to Sears with the mower in the truck of my car and the box it came in in the back seat. I parked and took my paperwork into Sears and the workers there bent over backwards to help me solve my problem. They called CPO who sold the mower to me on the Sears web site using my Sears card. They wanted pictures and they would send a truck to my house to pick up the mower. My phone would take pictures but it would not send them, so one of the workers took pictures of the damage and sent them to CPO on his phone. Then we asked CPO if they could send FedX to pick up the mower at Sears, so I could empty my truck to put a new mower in there. Sears would then pack up my mower and prepare it for FedX. So I bought a new mower, a less expensive one, and they took it out of the box and placed it in my trunk. I came home and found a box addressed to me from my daughter Amanda and opened it like a 4 year old on Christmas morning. Everything was wrapped securely in duct tape. Inside the box for me was a lovekly card, 2 Aldi certificates, a green hose that I can carry around in one hand but grows to 50 feet in length, and a bottle of wine and a bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum in case I didn't like the wine. I was anxious to try the hose but the mower got the best of me. I put that together, read the instructions and went to work mowing first the gully I usually mow with the riding mower but can't around the concrete that carries water under the road and the spot where my mower bogs down due to ruts in the yard. When I finished that gully I started mowing the gully in front of the house. I did a good portion of that and then took a break because although the mower pulls itself up the hills I have to climb up the hill behind it. It doesn't pull me. I sat in the swing and recovered and then I got to use the hose. I have spigots all over, but that hose is so long I attached to ever other spigot and watered everything, including the grass in the gully that I just mowed. When I finished one place I turn the water off and the hose comes to me all by itself as it shrinks in size. I loop it up into one hand and off I go to the next spigot. No more dragging around a cumbersome 50 foot long hose. One hand. When I had watered everything I ate the spaghetti Melisa made and had a glass of Amanda's wine. Aaron took a sip and then Christian wanted to taste it so I dipped his fork into my wine and let him taste it that way. While they were out exercising I got my very fire heated hot shower and now I am updating this page. Jim was still in the hospital when I called at 2 pm and I guess I call again tomorrow.
Thursday May 9
I finished gassing up the mower and was returning the funnel to the porch when I heard a loud crack and witnessed a large branch fall from a tree. It bounced off the shed roof and settled with it's branches covering my mower. Had it fallen 2 minutes earlier it would have landed on me gassing up the mower. I pulled the mower out and got the alligator saw out and started separating the limbs from the trunk. I cut them it log size pieces and stacked them in the log pile. In 2 trips I pulled the branches to the hole, then I got the long handled rake and raked the stuff it left off the shed roof. By the time Melissa got back home all that was left was a broken roof and a small pile of raked up material. Around 11 am I tackled the remaining unmowed area of the front gully. I mowed finished the front gully,came in and took a shower, did some genealogy and then decided to go out and mow the remaining small gully which has four sloped sides and a small square bottom. It also has a concrete water collector that runs under the driveway and empties in the front gully. So technically, I have finished mowing. I called I called Dawn at Palm Terrace to see about what medicaid Jim got and she was pretty sure it was medicaid for nursing homes but was waiting for the the mail to being her a written statement. My mail brought me a written statement so I called Baldomero and had him put back on the waiting list. He was #1 when he was taken off the list pending medicaid, and now that he has medicaid he is now number 11. She said I should call back every few months to see if there has been any progress. So it looks like it's Palm Terrace for awhile. I now have 9,912 ancestors in my database. I have now shortened my mortgage payoff by 8 months.
Friday May 10
I had all sort of plans for today but all I did was pull weeds in the area of the septic tank. I filled one big wheelbarrow and dumped it, then went back and filled it halfway, then added leaves from the front lawn and some log splitting debris and dumped it and then went to work on my genealogy. I called the hospital and leaned that Jim was getting discharged from the hospital between 11 and 1. Palm Terrace knew nothing about this and they were the ones that were going to get him. I went to Amazon to check on a book I ordered that never came and found a book there for Christian so I ordered that. Christian was grounded from electronics for taking an I-pod from home to school and playing with it in school, then lying to the teacher by saying his mother told him he could take it. So he spent time in my room looking around in my bathroom and later I discovered that half my pile of quarters we missing. He dumped his piggy bank on my bed to count the money and there were all my quarters and some of my new pennies that shine that were next to the quarters in there too. So I put him to work puling the little weeds I I left behind and told him I wold pay him a dollar if he wold pull half the weeds, $2 if he pulled them all. He pulled maybe a dozen weeds and abandoned he project. I spent the rest of the night on my genealogy
Saturday May 11
I had a bout with itching at 2 am so I applied CDS and worked on my genealogy while it took affect. At 7 am I gazed for 11 minutes and 30 seconds stopping occasionally for a cloud to pass and then went in to again work on my genealogy. When that slowed down I went to pull a few weeds where Christian left off and then moved over to the hole that is no longer a hole and pulled the big hard weeds thinking I would mow the rest. I was finishing that when the missionaries came in on bikes and said that wanted to split logs. I got them started and then decided to see if Aaron would mow. He did, using the hand mower to mow the part I just cleared and then he used the riding mower to mow the area around the tree that I cleared last week. Aaron also emptied the wheelbarrow that was full of weeds from the hole that is no longer a hole. The missionaries split 3 big logs and I stacked them (it took 3 trips with the hand cart filled to capacity. They left when it started to sprinkle and I came in to work on my genealogy when all of a sudden I got tired and slept until 5 pm. We had the air on by then so I stayed in and got a shower with fire heated water ( I did that, too) and washed my hair and ate a slice of pizza they ordered and then went back to work on my genealogy. I now have 9965 people. I told the new missionary I would put his written out genealogy on gedcom form so I am torn between going to church and working toward 10,000 people by he time he gets here with his paperwork. It is close to 11 pm and the kids are still paying video games. I hope I can sleep through that noise.
Sunday May 12
I got up early and worked on my genealogy and got my 10,000 ancestors and uploaded it to Rootsweb.
I wanted somebody to come to church with me today but there were no takers. I went all alone and walked it at the last minute. I more or less wanted to go just in case my man from last Sunday was there. I walked in, was handed a live rose, scanned the sparse congregation and sat down, somewhat dejected. After the first song we are urged to meet and great the other people. I stood up looked back and there he was. He moved up to my seat and we held hands for the rest of the meeting. After the meeting I invited him home as it as Autumn's 13 birthday and we had cake and ice cream. But we were both hungry so we drove to Wendy's and I had a big Chili and he had a little chili and a hamburger. We came home and I showed him around and eventually got around to eating the cake and ice cream. Since I go to Lakeland tomorrow and he has plans for Tuesday and get gets on a plane back to Colorado Wednesday morning it is unlikely we will ever see each other again I do have his phone number, his home address, his birth date and whatever else I need to contact him. I even took his picture. The new missionary brought his genealogy which consisted of 15 names with no dates on a pedigree chart. Between Family Tree and Find a Grave I ended up with 67 names all with dates except for the missionary himself, and his parents. They should be able to fill that in themselves. Tomorrow I go to Tampa by way of Lakeland.
Monday May 13
I planned to arrive in Lakeland at noon but Paul dropped off logs, I had to find a stopping place in the genealogy I am working on and I had to change clothes after I discovered my green shirt had three holes right in the front, and it's almost a brand new shirt. Then I got behind a slow moving vehicle and I managed to hit every traffic light when it was red except for the last light. I arrived 30 minutes late and Jim was all dressed and shaved and waiting so we just packed up and left. They didn't want him walking but Jim knows I want him to do what he can do and he can walk. So I winked at Jim and gave the nurse the evil eye. Once again he is cancer free. Tomorrow I am going to write another care meeting letter and drive down there again Wednesday to attend that meeting. I stopped off at Aldi and used one of the certificates my daughter had sent me for Mother's Day and I when I checked out I wasn't close enough the coupon value so I had to go back and get another bottle of Keifer. I came home to an empty house so I did some dishes and tried to look at the setting sun that was too bright the first time and behind a big cloud the next. So I worked on genealogy. I took him from 15 people with no dates to 187 people with dates. I'm hoping to hand him back at least 200. When I left Jim was getting ready for a nap, confident that I would be there Wednesday. I got up at 4 am, tried to nap at 9 am and now I'm ready for bed at 9:30 pm
Tuesday May 14
I made a fire and kept adding fuel which I and everyone later enjoyed the hot water it made. I worked on the new genealogy on and off all day. The mower shop called to say my part was in so I went to town and got the part and filled my car with gas. Sam wasn't home but called later when he was home and I went over and talked to him. Lyle called to say the person in whose house he was staying got mad at him and if he went out at all he would have to find his own way to the airport tomorrow morning. If he stuck around she would take him to the airport. I said if I took him I would have a 4 hour wait before my meeting in Lakeland. I told him to call if he could get away and I would come and take him out for lunch. He never called. Aaron bought a cheap badminton net and ended up playing badminton over the net that was lying in the ground. I told Aaron to plant two posts in the ground and attach the net to that. That may or may not happen. My meeting tomorrow is at 1:45 and I believe Aaron has agreed to go down again with me this weekend
Wednesday May 15
I'm almost too tired to write. I printed out my letter to the care team at Palm Terrace and then waited until 12:30 before I left. I arrived at Palm Terrace with about 15 minutes to meeting time so I invited Jim to come with me. He was still in bed and half naked when I got there and he hurried and got dressed but they called me to the meeting early and I didn't want to be late and Jim couldn't climb the stairs anyway, so I went to the meeting and presented my paper. They said they would work on my issues so 5 minutes later I returned to Jim was was still dressing. It was now time to attend a veteran's recognition presentation and Jim was presented with a flag pin and a certificate as recognition of the years he spent in the Army 60 years ago. When that was done we went looking for his lost shirts so we walked around the building and finally found the maintenance building. You had to have a code to get out of the building, and someone provided that, we found the building and the shirts and since we didn't have the code to get back in, we had to walk around the building until something familiar popped into site. It finally did and we went in and unpacked the shirts. Once unpacked I had to run out to the car to get the fabric marking pen so I could write his name on all the shirts. I hung them in the closet on the hangers that came with the shirts, said goodbye and drove home. Linda brought over a bunch of feathered baby chicks to put into our nursery. There went our hay. I worked on genealogy and got the Augenstein file up to 267 people. As I said, I'm really tired.
Thursday May 16
Melisa and I dug 2 holes in the hole that is no longer a hole and set two posts into the two holes. Then we attached the badminton net to the posts. I worked on the Augenstein genealogy, got up to 334 names, ran potential problems and tree and called it done. I then went out and played badminton with Aaron, Melissa and the kids. I got a letter that e-gold pleaded guilty to unlicensed seizure of accounts. The last I checked I had about $35 but after that I could never get in to see if that grew in value or if the maintenance fee ate it up. I will have to work on that.
Friday May 17
I worked on the Augenstein genealogy until the repetition got the better of me and I laid down to take a nap. I napped about 15 minutes and then the missionaries came and Elder Augenstein took his genealogy on a flash drive and I also uploaded it to Gencircles. It is now officially out of my hands. Then Alice brought me an index card sized piece of paper with 4 names on it and only three counted. It was husband and wife and their daughter. I was able to find the mother's line up to 1700 but as far back as I could go was 1910 on the husband's side where I found him in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census of New York. I continued working that line until Alice called to tell me go give it up and then I had fish, potato and a small glass of Amanda's wine. I can do that when there is not genealogy to worry about. I guess Aaron and I will be driving to Lakeland tomorrow and I called Palm Terrace to tell them we were coming and that Jim should be dressed. I have plants potted for his window sill and I an wondering if there is such a thing as a window sill extender. The pot is 6 inches thick and his window sill sticks out only 3 inches.
Saturday May 18
Aaron and I left for Lakeland around 11 and found Jim sitting in the yellow room watching television with a bunch of other people in wheelchairs. He seemed surprised to see us. We went back to the his room when we figured he needed new batteries for his Roku remote. We also needed a window sill extender so we figured Lowes was the best place to get both. We took Jim with us and he drove the cart while Aaron and I found batteries, a suitable board and 2 c-clamps. While Aaron was off measuring for window size and I was looking at something else Jim rested his head on the handlebars of the motorized cart which raised concern from more than 1 employee. I assured them he was alright and when we all got together Jim drove off in his cart. We checked out, went back to the room, installed the board over the narrow window sill with the c-clamps and soon realized that Jim needed a different Roku remote. Jim was tired so we left and came home. Aaron and I had a good talk on the way home (and on the way down, also) and the first result of that talk was that when I went to get pineapple he told me it was pizza night, and when it arrived he called me out to grab a piece. He hasn't yet decided about the Dave Ramsey class at Lake Panasoffkee Baptist Church that starts Jun 2. The missionaries stopped by with Mel Coleman and we had a nice talk, mostly about genealogy. I worked on my own genealogy and and found 4 more low number grandparents I was never able to find. I am going to church in Tavares with Paul and Pauline primary because I want to remind him about my lawn ruts and they always take me out to eat after church.
