I mentioned the fall colors last week. We have had more spectacular years than this one I think the dry weather is the culprit. My favorite tree is doing its best to make a showing in spite of the conditions. It is a gum tree located really close to Lakeview Market on Highway 49. It is in a woods but there is an opening where you can easily see it from the road. Its leaves turn a to a deep red and when I am coming home from work the sun hits it at just the right angle. If I ever run off the road at this spot in October you’ll know why.
We have had our first frost this week. And Bill Chatman, after dealing with a couple of mechanical problems, has gotten the wheat sown.
ABOUT MY MAMA. Mom has done really well since her surgery. They had her sitting up and taking a few steps the next day. When I went to see her on Wednesday afternoon she asked me to hand her some of the chocolate that had been brought to her. When I placed the candy in her hand I noticed that the heart monitor started beeping a little faster.
I took off from work again on Friday to move Mom from NorthCrest to Skyline Medical Center where she will have about a week of rehab. Everything went very smoothly and we are pleased with the facility. She will be in therapy every day until 3:00 so if you call or visit before then you won’t find her. What was very encouraging was that the occupational therapist said she was in good shape for a knee replacement patient three days after surgery. She’s had two days of therapy already and is finding it much harder than she expected. We appreciate everyone’s prayers.
CALENDAR CONFUSION. On Friday Aunt Mar looked at the calendar, not realizing it was on the wrong month, and thought it was Halloween. She panicked because she had no candy. She had decided she would put coins in little bags and hand that out as long as it lasted until Kenny called and in their conversation set her straight. Morgan has since fixed her up with candy (she and Aunt Mar even have it in little bags so it will be easy to hand out) and Mac carved a jack-o-lantern and brought it over.
TACKLING A BIG PROJECT. I am like the plumber who is so busy that he has no time to fix his own leaks at home. I have wanted to start converting our home movie footage to DVD for quite some time and have finally begun last weekend. After counting video tapes I estimate that we have over 40 hours of footage.
One tape I converted was filmed when Ben was born. Ben had never seen this before and really enjoyed it when we showed it to him. He did not know he was in a TV commercial when he was born and thought that was really cool (I included this footage on the DVD).
SO, HOW IS YOUR MAMA AND THEM? This question all got started by Jeff Crawford, a fellow I work with. He goes to church with the secretary at our office, Sherri Traughber. One weekend their church youth group went on a trip. Jeff was one of chaperones. Now Jeff is one of those people that likes to keep some kind of fun going on all the time. On that trip he called their pastor’s wife (who had stayed home with her kids) and asked, “How’s your Mama and them?” By the end of the trip just about everyone had called her and inquired about her mama and them (and I am sure the question was bounced around all the people on the trip as well).
Jeff was laughing about that with me the Monday after the trip so we have just continued the joke ever since. I’ll even call him up after leaving Krisle Elementary where his mom is the financial secretary to report that she’s okay. (Save this thought, I’ll come back to it a it later.)
I WORK WITH GREAT PEOPLE, however, I’m sure our secretary is trying to figure out what she can do to me right now. She used to have an alarm clock on her desk and occasionally I would set it to go off during the day. One day back in the spring I sat down in my office and heard this strange ticking noise. A quick search revealed the clock hidden behind a picture on my window sill. I recorded the ticking and emailed the sound to her to let her know she had been found out. A few days later I pulled the same trick on her except that I taped the clock to the bottom of her chair. It took her several minutes of crawling around in the floor to locate it. The clock has also found its way inside her computer before it made an abrupt disappearance. (Rumor has it that it is still keeping time in the ditch somewhere along Highway 431.)
Somehow our toy collection picked up about 100, three inch, plastic balls. They are in an assortment of colors. In looking around Sherri’s office this week I decided one of the wall cabinets above the counter would be the perfect place to store all those balls. (I actually used about 30 balls and rigged the top shelf of the cabinet so that everything would come out when the door was opened.) It was also a great place to store an alarm clock Jeff happened to have. I’m not really sure how that clock got set to ring at 3:45 Thursday afternoon.
On Friday, when I took Mom to Skyline, I had thought I might work that afternoon. As I was driving back from Madison I could tell I was too late to get a half day in so I called Sherri to let her know. When she picked up the phone I could tell from the laughter in the background there were several people in the office. When she heard my voice she immediately said, “We have something to talk about!” When I asked what it was she said, “Balls!”
A bit later in the conversation I heard Jeff’s voice in the background. I asked Sherri if he was talking about me. “Oh yes,” she replied, “He’s telling our pastor and his wife all about your tricks.” Not wanting to miss this opportunity I told Sherri to let me speak to your pastor’s wife. When I heard a strange voice say “Hello” I said, “You don’t know me but I just wanted to ask how your mama and them are doing?” Jeff told me later that he and his pastor got a good laugh from her reaction after they found out what I had asked her.
So on behalf of my mama and them,
Joe
