Today started out as a good day. When I woke my wife was dressed and herding the semi-chimps toward the car and school. She felt well enough to attempt driving them to school. It has been almost 2 months since she drove. She told me that the physical part was ok but that she did feel stressed by being out and about.

The picture is more evidence on her continuing recovery. She has finally bought into my argument that we do not have the luxury of keeping unused stuff due to the tiny size of "shattered manor". At 1200 square feet and only 3 closets we have to declutter and remain decluttered. That is hard for me because I remember the innumerable times I have needed something just days after throwing that something away. In the picture she is sorting through the stuff in the past flatware drawer and discarding the outdated and the unknown. I found the duplicate key for our safe deposit box in that drawer. We lost the master key some years ago and I dreaded having to buy another key.

But in an ominous turn I opened the letter from the 2010 census bureau. The thing is in English and Spanish. I scanned. OCRed, copied and pasted the Spanish.

Estimado residence: Dentro de qproximadamente una semana, usted recibira por correl un cuestionario del Censo del 2010. Cuando reciba su cuestionario, per favor, completelo y devuelvalo por correo enseguida.

Sus respuestas son importantes. Los resultados del Censo del 2010 se utilitizaran para ayudar a cada comunidad a obtener su parte justs de Ios fondos federates para carreteras, escuelas, instalaciones medicas y para muches otros programas que usted y sus vecinos necesitan. Sin un censo completo y preciso, su comunidad podria no recibir la parte que le corresponde.

Gracias anticipadas por su ayuda.

Atentamente,

Robert M. Groves

Director, Oficina del Censo de los EE.UU.

Nothing gets my ire up quite so fast as a bilingual document from my government. I want to see $0.25 evidence that the Mexicans or any other Latin American Country contributed significantly to the building of America. The language our government uses in its official capacity should and must be English. Catering to any other language assures the speakers of the other language a secondary position in our economic system. Go south and see if any of those countries cater to the English speakers. Countries not businesses. But as long as the politicians at all levels of government are whoring for money they will do anything up to and including selling the USA to the highest bidder. I spent over half my day enraged. I stayed busy but POed.

I did finally get the second shelf installed to the left of her vanity dressing area in the bathroom. I have had those two glass pieces stored in the unusable central heater cabinet for 30 years. I know it was that long because the newspaper they were wrapped in was from July 1979.

The fact that I could use something hoarded so long just reinforces my tendency to save everything. I think the decluttering and staying decluttered is going to be harder on me than her. I have, in the midst of working on "shattered manor", also been cleaning and reorganizing my "rubber shed". I have it clear enough now that I have been considering returning to wood turning.

Then tonight I discovered a voicemail left at 5:03pm from my cardiologist's office telling me it was urgent that I contact them about the results of the blood test I had done March 4. Mary did not say why but did restate that it was very urgent that Dr. Gonzalez talk to me. I am taking a cholesterol drug and the blood test is checking for liver damage. Being paranoid and a hypochondriac I expect to be told my liver has totally failed and I only have a short time left. Let us hope I am wrong.





POTATO CRUST QUICHE

Crust:
3 Cups grated raw potato
3 Tbsp Vegetable oil
Mix and gently press into a buttered Quiche dish or 9 inch pie plate (press up the sides as well).
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.

**TURN OVEN DOWN to 350 to bake quiche.

Filling:
1 large Onion, grated. Spread over crust.
1 Cup grated cheese. Sprinkle over onion.
1 Cup slivered ham (or chicken or sausage or salmon or tuna). Spread over cheese.
2 Beaten Eggs
1/2 Cup Milk. Add to beaten eggs.
Pour slowly over ham or 'whatever'

*Add more milk if necessary to almost fill the dish. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until quiche is golden brown.
This quiche reheats quite nicely.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
Thomas Jefferson

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Saturday my Emmaus brothers and I went to Baytown, Texas to make repairs and paint a house belonging to an elderly widow. As much as I hate to paint I found that I actually enjoyed painting as part of a group. The exterior paint we were putting on looked strangely pink while wet but dried to something like a dusty rose. I painted about 4 hours and felt very little pain in my back. Then I stopped for lunch and sat on the front steps of the house. When I got up to go to my car I felt like a gorilla had been beating on my back. I could barely straighten nor lift my feet enough to step over twigs. My back has hurt ever since. I can hardly get my breath for the first 30 seconds after sliding into the driver's seat. Every bump I hit felt like a kick in my kidneys. My back is not getting better.

I planned to have an easy Sunday with only Sunday School and Church on the schedule. When I woke this morning I quickly realized I wasn't even going to be able to drive to church. So I went back to my recliner and slept another 4 hours. I realized I had not reported any progress here in over a week so I took a bunch of pictures of the kitchen with my iphone and stitched them together with an app. The floor tiles at actually grayer than the picture. The black at the upper left is an artifact from the "stitching" process. It is almost impossible to tell but one of the upper cabinet doors is still missing. I searched, unsuccessfully, all day for the mounting screws and decided to go to Lowes to buy more screws and a pair of shelf brackets for another glass shelf to the left of her dressing mirror in the bathroom..

Click the picture for a larger view. I returned from Lowes with 16 feet of wainscoting caps, 1/2" X 1 / 2" quarter round, four tomato plants, 6 broccoli sets, paint roller set, paint brushes, a gallon of Olympic Paint Cinnamon Diamonds flat latex paint, a gallon of Olympic Paint Winter Mood flat latex for the front room ceiling and 2 rolls of 2 inch painters tape. No screws. No shelf brackets. I sure do miss my short term memory.

Tomorrow the home care nurse will be here to change my wife's dressings. I have changed her dressing 3 times but worry each time about contaminating the wounds. She has a 6 inch incision on the front of her right thigh, a 4 inch incision toward the bottom right of her abdomen and a scary triangular incision about 5 inches long in the crease between her right buttock and her thigh. All the wounds look like they are healing well but they sure are in terrible places. I know of no place on the human body that flexes and stretches like the butt/thigh/groin juncture.

Plans for tomorrow:
1. Mix potting soil in bags (4) into garden patch,
2. Plant tomatoes and broccoli,
3. Set PVC framework over patch,
4. Stretch bird netting over PVC frame,
5. Buy screws for cabinet doors,
6. Buy shelf bracket (picture in iphone),
7. Buy IKEA corner table or shelves for southwest corner of dining area 22" by 18",
8. unload dishwasher,
9. Carry dried and folded and hangered clothes to proper areas,
10. Move chest of drawers out of my closet to her closet.

Click the picture for comic strips on-line.

An Italian grandmother is giving directions to her grown grandson who is coming to visit with his wife.

"You comma to de front door of the apartmenta. I am inna apartment 301. There issa bigga panel at the front door. With you elbow ,pusha button 301. I will buzza you in. Come inside, the elevator is on the right. Get in, and with you elbow , pusha 3. When you get out, I'mma on the left. With you elbow , hit my doorbell."

"Grandma, that sounds easy, but, why am I hitting all these buttons with my elbow?

"What . . . .. .. You coming empty handed ?"

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson

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Today's reading sent by the Upper Room contained a very riveting sentence. "For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths." Doesn't that sound like today? I cannot remember a time in my 68+ years when so many people believed in ghosts and vampires, and magic and other supernatural possibilities. I blame the schools for dumbing down our society so that people no longer have the tools to evaluate seemingly unexplained events.

Have you noticed men holding advertising signs standing on the traffic median in front of businesses? Here in Spring Branch we have about 8 places where men hold up signs. They stand in the approximate same spot all day and motion to drivers who whizz by. Mere inches separate the guys from sudden death. Some of the most vivid pictures I saw from the "Great Depression" were of hopeless men wearing sandwich board signs and walking a beat in front of stores for just pennies a day. I asked the guy in front of "El Patron" pizza joint how much he is paid. He told me "$5 a day but that is OK since I have a full time job at night." I think Washington is wrong. I think we are in the midst of a "Middling Recession".

Yesterday I found Rascal sitting in the doorway to my webbie/computer/bedroom/office/washroom/bat cave looking around at the floor, boxes, ceiling, window with what seemed to be a sadness in his posture and face.

Nothing in the house has stayed in the same place for two days since my wife went into the hospital. Now the flooring has remained constant for over a week so he is comfortable with it. He deals very poorly with change. Truth to tell, so do I. He is so traumatized that I have to carry him to the kitchen at least twice a day and force him to drink from the cold water tap. The whole time he is drinking he is tense and starts at every sudden noise. Between the watering he stays under my desk against my feet. At night he lays between my knees on top of the cover as I sleep in the recliner. He almost always has a front leg extended so that he can touch my chin or exposed arm.

Yet just as he seemed to becoming comfortable, today he received another blow. The tile guy came in with hammers and chisels and saws and dust and fregquent trips in and out of the front door. Even worse is that the kitchen was off limits while the guy prepared the floor for new "Porcelein" tile. The stuff is 18 inches on a side and a half inch think and is very heavy. I picked out the color and style while she was in hospital knowing full well that she would probably hate it. A decision had to be made and I made it.

From her reaction when tile man showed her the tile I am sure she doesn't like it. Too bad! She had her chance to pick the color years ago. I don't like the technique he used to lay the tile without moving the refrigerator. But he seems to know what he is doing and I have a full 30 days satisfaction guarantee. Tomorrow I hope to start cutting the wainscoting so I can move on to finish the living room. Then we can paint it, providing she ever decides on a color.

Click the picture for comic strips on-line.

Bacardi Rum Cake

1 pkg Yellow cake mix [18 1/2 oz]
1 cup Pecans or Walnuts [chopped
] 1 pkg Instant Vanilla pudding mix [3 3/4 oz]
4 Eggs
1/2 cup Cold water
1/2 cup Wesson oil
1/2 cup BACARDI Dark Rum [80 proof]

Preheat oven to 325°.
Grease and flour 10" tube or 12 cup Bundt pan. Sprinkle nuts over bottom of pan. Mix all cake ingredients together. Pour batter over nuts. Bake 1 hour. Cool. Invert on serving plate.

Prick top, drizzle andsmooth glaze evenly over top and sides. Allow cake to absorb glaze. Repeat till glaze is used up.

GLAZE:
Melt 1/4 lb. butter in saucepan.
Stir in 1/4 cup water and 1 cup granulated sugar.
Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.
Stir in 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum.

WRAP IN PLASTIC WRAP AND THEN STORE IN AN AIRTIGHT CONTAINER FOR ONE MONTH BEFORE CUTTING.
Thank you again Sammy for another delicious recipe!

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson

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We got her home Monday afternoon. Yah!! I just thought dealing with the semi-chimps and visiting her in hospital was complicated. Dealing with the chimps got tougher when she got home because they use her as a bargaining tool. She thought that as soon as she got home she would be suddenly well and able to resume housekeeping. I have been trying to get the grandsons trained in my way and she, without consulting me, relapsed them to their old style of throwing clothes on the floor in front of the refrigerator. NOT in my Kingdom. On my planet clothes only have three acceptable locations: on, put away in drawers and closets, or in the wash system. Eating utensils are to be put in the dishwasher before bedtime. The kitchen trash is to be taken to the dumpster every time it is full or the King says take it out. In the following picture she is in her own bed except we, unthinkingly, turned the mattress 180 degrees. That means she is now sleeping on the side I used to sleep on. She says that it is too hard and wants the bed turned again.

The swimming pool looks good and tests good enough to swim. However, when I got to my knees in the water this afternoon "willie" went to visit my left ear.

Tomorrow I will put baseboard in place in her bedroom as well as the trim under the air conditioner window. I think I will take measurements for the low wainscoting paneling. I am not sure what image our senior daughter's husband had when we bought the white paneling. I am also going to install a set of cup hooks for her measuring cups in the kitchen. I hoped to write this without the kitchen. The kitchen and my attempts to rearrange storage functions have all been met with a tidal wave of resistance. I cannot make her understand that she will never again be able to get up and down like she had. Her knees are too shot. I want to move the stuff she uses often down to where she can reach from a chair and move less used stuff to either another room or higher on the current shelving. NYET to all those ideas! But I shall continue to change because she cannot fight back at present.

Click the picture for comic strips on-line.

MONTANA STATE TROOPER

In most of the United States there is a policy of checking on any stalled vehicle on the highway when temperatures drop to single digits or below. About 3 AM one very cold morning Montano State Trooper Allan Nixon #658 responded to a call there was a car off the shoulder of the road outside Great Falls, Montana. He located the car, stuck in deep snow and with the engine still running. PuIling in behind the car with his emergency lights on, the trooper walked to the driver's door to find an older man passed out behind the wheel with a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat beside him. The driver came awake when the trooper tapped on the window. Seeing the rotating lights in his rearview mirror and the State Trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. He jerked the gear shift into drive and hit the gas.

The car's speedometer was showing 20-30-40 and then 50 MPH but it was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning. Trooper Nixon, having a sense of humor, began running in place next to the stationary car. The driver was totally freaked thinking the trooper was actually keeping up with him. This goes on for about 30 seconds, then the trooper yelled "PULL OVER!"

The man nodded, turned the wheel and stopped the engine. Needless to say, the man from North Dakota was arrested and is probably still shaking his head over the state trooper in Montana who could run 50 miles per hour.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

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Living/dining area

Except for the boxes of clutter and no rugs the room is 65% complete. SHE comes home tomorrow!! Joy in shattered manor. The grandsons have had all of me that they can stand. I announced today that I would no longer wash/dry or fold their dad's clothes. He has been no help during this whole trouble. NO HELP!! http://lyn1937.com/

This be a short entry saying we are home from Austin. My senior grandson's team won the state championship for Texas Lutheran middle schools. I would have really enjoyed the weekend except for the price of the rooms. The Drury Inns and Suites Hotel is a good mid size hotel with a really good free morning buffet. It was nice that the team and its supporters were all in one place along with players and supporters of the other teams. When my wife traveled with me I lloked for Hotels with amenities so that we did not have to leave to eat and relax. Now a hotel is just a place with beds. I paid a $100 per night per room and ended up sleeping in a recliner with a fan blowing directly over my head.

I find it almost impossible to sleep in a regular flat bed. Fifty years of heavy smoking did a number on my lungs and decades of heavy labor wore out my hips and spine.

I think my wife may be coming home this week. We won't really know until Monday afternoon.

Good night all. It has been a busy tiring weekend.

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State championship Austin Texas

This is my room. It is way too luxurious for me. I am fine with motel
6. I am next door to Mavin. He is the reason St Marks is in the
tournament. Son and grandsons are across the hall. We are in Drury Inn
& Suites. Leaving for first game now.




http://lyn1937.com/

under more desirable circumstances I would be in “shattered manor” seeing that my wife was settled comfortably. I believe she could have come home this weekend even despite the house being a wreak from partially completed update projects. I would have just kicked the stuff aside so she could get into her bedroom. Though she does not believe me I have missed her horribly. Her absence has been a hole in my universe. Instead I am in Austin at a state championship basketball tournament for Texas Lutheran middle schools. Pictures of tonight’s game which they won 55 to 37 over Plano, Texas are at http://picasaweb.google.com/vwr1941/JaredBasketballState2010#. At least I think they are all Lutheran. I haven’t paid enough attention to really know and do not intend to find out. My two Houston grandsons, my son, and my wife love the game. I think it is about 1% as interesting as baseball. It is too loud and self-absorbed for me. Any game that has a play similar to “FREE THROWS” where the players habitually perform at less than 80% success is a silly sport that does not value practice but rather glorifies the splashy drives to the hoop. During free throws no one is challenging the player, the basket is in clear view, and the basket is not moving. Anything less than 100% shooting is, IMHO, unacceptable. Yet the coaches and fans accept this shoddy level of performance.

I think my wife is going to check into a SNIF for a couple weeks so that I can wrap up the laminate, get the kitchen floor tiled by Lowes, put up mini-wainscoting in the dining area, and paint the rooms. If she doesn’t I’ll clear her a path to her bedroom and keep her door closed while finishing the work.

Rascal was very upset when he realized I was leaving for a while. He ran and hid when I pulled out my suitcase and started packing. I could not even coax him out from under my desk with milk. By the way: he says milk very clearly now. He is not ready for Letterman’s “STUPID ANIMAL TRICKS” but he did startle me when he said “milk” when I sat his bowl down with milk in it.

When I left around noon our pool was clear enough that I could see the pool vac in the deepest part of the pool. The water is a blue-green and is murky. I think the pH and salt content need to be adjusted.

I put an extra amount of food out for “orange kitty” because we were going to be gone all day and all weekend. Normally I feed him small portions morning , afternoon, and night. As I backed out of the driveway I saw his 5 buddies headed toward the food bowl. We have 6 cats that mill around in our backyard, they drink out of the Lily pond, and lounge under the Azaleas and near the heater by “orange kitty’s” bedroom.

My cousin –in-law sent me a video. This cousin often sends me lush photos of unclad young women which I normally delete after determining their content, but not always. God does do some GREAT work and the resultant scenery should be appreciated. Be that as it may the video was delightful. A very young Japanese boy, I assume he is Japanese by the background images, plays a full drum set with skill and enthusiasms. His facial expressions show he is having a great, fun time. The video is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJG9Tol1a0U.

Just last week I happened to fall into a conversation with a young man who seemed reasonably intelligent and educated. Somehow the conversation about the unparallel between Vietnam and Iraq veered off into genocide. He told me that he doubted that the Holocaust was nothing but a recently invented Jewish lie to cover-up their actions in the Palestine. I was stunned! What has happened to our schools? As a young man 60 years ago I saw the newsreel documenting the horrors of the extermination camps and the concentration camps. My nurse friend in Arkansas, by sheer coincidence, sent me a video about a photo album found at Auschwitz. I copied her words and pasted them below. There are no gristly dead bodies just pictures of Jews waiting for a fate unknown to them.

THE AUSCHWITZ ALBUM

This Album memorializes the arrival of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in May of 1944.

It is the only one of its kind, and it is solely due to this album that we have a visual history of what occurred in the Auschwitz-Birchenau death camp.

The album was discovered after the war by an Auschwitz survivor, Lily Jacob, who donated it to Yad Vashem in 1980.

Now, with the aid of the Internet, it can be viewed by millions of people, anywhere in the world.

Please pass this around, to help assure that people will continue to bear witness to this evil legacy.

Click here to view the Auschwitz Album

Or copy this url into your web browser http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/album_Auschwitz/mutimedia/index.HTML

We, the world, must never forget these horrors. The good and noble people of Germany bought into the insanity and that means anybody is capable of such hideous things.

Click the picture for comic strips on-line.

A U.S. Marine Colonel was about to start the morning briefing to his staff.

While waiting for the coffee machine to finish its brewing, the colonel decided to pose a question to all assembled.

He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed to get his usual amount of sound sleep.

He posed the question of just how much of sex was "work" and how much of it was "pleasure?"

A Major chimed in with 75-25% in favor of work.

A Captain said it was 50-50%.

A lieutenant responded with 25-75% in favor of pleasure, depending upon his state of inebriation at the time.

There being no consensus, the colonel turned to the PFC who was in charge of making the coffee. What was HIS opinion?

Without any hesitation, the young PFC responded, "Sir, it has to be 100% pleasure."

The colonel was surprised and, as you might guess, asked why?

"Well, sir, if there was any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them."

The room fell silent.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.
Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson did not foresee the way that power hungry politicians would manipulate so the VP has more power that George Washington. Sad what humans have done to the ideals.

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The unstate of shattered manor

Good news is that Caro is likely coming home before the weekend. Bad
news is entire house is a shamble from moving stuff around in front
room to put down flooring. Walls are not painted, kitchen is not
tiled, laminate is about half laid and I hate it, bathroom is not
tiled, etc. Jared has state championship basketball tournament this
weekend in Austin and I have already paid for two rooms at the team
hotel. I need to talk to her tomorrow to plan ahead. I do not know how
to manage her wound. Glad she is coming home. Just wasn't ready for now.




http://lyn1937.com/

Flooring prep work

We have to go long before we can go wide. Misty moved furniture from
living area to other places. Jared helped. Tomorrow I will buy a
scraper hoe.




http://lyn1937.com/