Stormy Weather with Clear Skies

I am not only finding it hard to believe that February is just about over but also that our Spring Break starts in two weeks! Someone said they saw a neighbor out mowing the other day. I’m not ready to think about that yet, but I know its coming pretty soon.

GONE TO GATLINBURG. This weekend Vicki and two friends from church, Michelle Garst and Tracy Cockcroft, took a short trip to Gatlinburg. While there they met up with Angi Arnold, her high school friend who now lives in Sevierville. I know they had a great time because whenever I called Vicki I could hardly hear her over all the laughter. To relate the short version of the trip they basically shopped and ate with a little sleeping in between.

ON THE HOME FRONT. Those of us left behind here in Cross Plains enjoyed the weekend too. On Friday night Nate spent the night with Pauline and Jenna stayed with Mom and Aunt Mar. Saturday night Jenna stayed with Pauline and Ben went to Mom and Aunt Mar’s. I think things were a lot quieter this way.

This has been the first time in several months that any of the kids have slept over with Mom and Aunt Mar. I wouldn’t have considered it but Aunt Mar looks like she is walking and feeling much better here lately. A few weeks ago Aunt Mar decided to change doctors. Her new doctor is reevaluating a lot of her medications and in this time several of her prescriptions have run out. This has left us to wonder if the combination of medications she has been on was a contributing factor to how she was feeling and walking over Christmas. Saturday, for example, Aunt Mar went to see Jenna’s last basketball game. This was something she never felt like doing at the start of the season and she was walking so well she only brought her cane along.

ROUGH WATERS AHEAD. To explain the title of this newsletter a little bit, we are having our first hints of spring weather. In spite of that there is some bad news we are now dealing with. Pauline has been diagnosed with cancer in her uterus. We feel it has been detected early. The doctor she saw today was positive, saying that it is very possible that surgery will be the only treatment necessary. She goes to see an oncologist at Vanderbilt tomorrow. We will know more after that. So far she feels fine and is trying to take things as they come without dwelling on a lot of “what if” scenarios. I know she will greatly appreciate your prayers.

Joe

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News from the Oncologist
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

I thought I’d send out an update after Pauline and Vicki’s consultation with the doctor this morning. He told them that the procedure is minimally invasive and normally takes two hours. They will take tissue to the lab and will get results back while they are in surgery to know it they need to go further. The surgery is set for March 14 and she should plan to stay in the hospital anywhere from two to five days.

Joe

News from a Frozen Land

The thermometer read 9° F when we woke up this morning. Cold but not all that strange for a Tennessee winter--unless you consider that Wednesday’s high almost reached 70°! From snow to warm weather to a touch of snow again--I’m getting confused (or at least some Bradford pear trees I saw the other day are as they are getting ready to bloom).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NATE! We celebrated Nate’s third birthday on Tuesday. It was a small party with just the grandmothers invited over for supper and a cake. Before they came I got the video camera out and filmed the most precious conversation between Vicki and Nate as they decorated his cake together. By the time Mom, Aunt Mar and Pauline arrived he was so excited I thought he was going to jump out of his skin. And later when we lit his “fires” on his cake and sang Happy Birthday to him he clasped his hands to his chest and had that “for me!?” look on his face. I think he had a great party.

VALENTINE’S DATE. Vicki and I put off our Valentine’s activities until Friday night. We went out to eat at The Depot in Springfield and then to see a movie. They were showing The Pink Panther. I was hoping Steve Martin would pull this off but the story bumbled right along with Inspector Jacques Clouseau. It’s pretty bad when Vicki and I are pointing out all the obvious and simple things they could have added to the screenplay to have made the story funnier and better. There are several humorous moments in the film but basically if you have seen the trailer to the film you’ve seen about all that’s worth seeing.

JENNA’S BAPTISM. The little bit of snow canceled a few activities yesterday (like Jenna’s ball game) but we still had church as usual. Her baptism was scheduled for this morning and it was a beautiful sight to see. Vicki and I got a small chuckle because she had a time getting her feet back under her when Bro. Bill raised her back up (we were told the same thing happened to the gentleman who was baptized after Jenna). She also participated in her first communion service this morning. As an active deacon I helped to serve in this ordinance and was able to serve Jenna which was very special for me. Mrs. Phillips, Jenna’s teacher at school, came just to see her baptism. It was one of several things that made her day.

We gave Jenna a necklace with a cross charm and a personalized Bible to mark the occasion. We know she really appreciated it because her “thank you” was so very sincere.

A QUICK VISIT. Will, Darice and their kids dropped in last night for a quick visit. They are taking a vacation this week to go to Mississippi to visit with Darice’s relatives and stopped here to spend the night along the way. This will be the first time they’ve been down to see Darice’s mom and step-dad since Katrina. We let the kids stay up late to get some play time in with their cousins and they did their best to make up for lost time. Emily sure is cute. She had a lot of fun playing with Ben. He was letting her “hit” him and he would fall over like it had been a knock out punch. She laughed and laughed. For a 17 month old kid she’s learning to hold her own with all the others. We ate breakfast with them this morning and they came to church long enough to see Jenna get baptized before hitting the road.

COMPUTER GAME REVIEWS. I’ve never reviewed any computer games before but there are two games I have downloaded that Jenna and Ben really enjoy playing. Since both games are free and exist for special reasons (and run on both Mac and Windows platforms) I thought I’d share....

The first game is named Ben’s Game. It is produced by the Make-a-Wish foundation in response to the wish from a little boy who has cancer. In this game you travel by skateboard through the inside of the human body shooting cancer cells and fighting things that make life miserable during chemotherapy. While it is impossible to get killed in this game it can take a while to complete if you have to make repeated trips to the hospital for health, home for attitude or the pharmacy for medicine (when these run low you simply become less effective in fighting cancer). This game is a public beta release so it is a little rough around the edges but still fun to play.

The other game is Food Force and is put out by the World Food Programme. You will need QuickTime installed on your computer to play this game (a free download for either Mac or Windows). The goal is to provide food to the nationals on a fictional, war torn, island nation in the short term while helping them become self sufficient in post war reconstruction for the long term. The game is designed to teach you how the WFP works in a fun way.

A PRAYER REQUEST. Jackie Swann, my first cousin, is having surgery tomorrow. He has been having a lot of trouble walking lately. His neurosurgeon feels very confident that doing some surgical work on his back will fix the problem. I certainly hope so and I am looking forward to his being fully functional for the Threshermen’s Show in July.

Joe

Moving through Mid-Winter

The days are starting to get noticeably longer as we move toward springtime. I usually stop this time of year and wonder what happened to the last six weeks. It seems like we just celebrated the holidays a week ago!

DEALING WITH DEATH. We went to Marijo’s funeral on Wednesday and it was a really good service. What made the service most helpful in finding some closure is that her grandson, Brian Barry, delivered a eulogy. He had written it when she had been seriously ill a few months ago and when she got better had shared it with her so his words had her blessing before he delivered them. He gave everyone a chance to laugh and cry about all the traits and quirks that made her the person she was.

Mom rode with us to the funeral home. During the course of the conversation she told me that a nephew of Mrs. Connie’s had died last weekend as well. He was quite a bit younger than I am but I remember him out in the tobacco patch when Kenny and I were raising tobacco together. Unfortunately, I learned this after he was already buried. Then Mom told me about another fellow, Ritchie Escue, who had just died from liver problems. He was a couple of years younger than I am and grew up in the community. We didn’t share a lot of interests but he was a likable fellow and he came to a lot of activities at church when we were growing up. In recent years I had kept up with him through his mom who had been hired to sit with Aunt Ruth.

SNOW SUPERSTITIONS. All the weather people were calling for snow Wednesday night. Jenna was sooo excited and told the boys to put their pajamas on inside out to make sure the snow would come. So our crew trooped off to bed with all their stitches showing, dreaming of a fun filled day of playing in the snow. In the morning I flipped on the TV to learn that we were running two hours late and all the neighboring counties were running on time. Jenna was pretty disappointed and when I mentioned that the pajama idea hadn’t worked she simply said, “I guess we should have put spoons under our pillows too!”

They were calling for another snow to begin on Friday afternoon, this time predicting 4-6 inches for our area. It looked like they got this one right but alas, it began to taper off a few hours later. We woke up the next morning with two inches and rising temperatures. We did get a great snowball fight in after Jenna’s ball game.

MOVIE REVIEWS. Vicki called me before I left town Friday evening and asked that I stop by the movie store on my way home. Being the dutiful husband I went along with half of the population of Springfield to rent some flicks to keep us entertained during the impending blizzard. Jenna requested Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which we watched Friday evening. This is not just a weird movie, it redefines for me the 10 on the weirdness scale.

I also rented The Legend of Zorro and Batman Begins. Vicki and I enjoyed these films very much. Zorro was fun to watch. My only complaint with it was that some of the jokes and one of the sets seemed a bit too modern for the year the year the story was set (1850). For those of you not up on the Batman movies this was a prequel to all the other films produced in the last 17 years and is by far the best.

THE FUDGE. Everyone has those foods they grew up with that are so good to your own personal taste that the same dish cooked by another person is measured against what you grew up with. For me one of those items is fudge. Mom and Aunt Mar make the fudge that sets the standard for me. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy fudge made by someone else, as long as they don’t contaminate it with nuts I usually do.

The recipe is titled Never Fail Fudge and it reads simple enough. It needs to be renamed. During our first years of marriage I asked Vicki to make the fudge. After her third failure she vowed never to attempt it again. Unfortunately, I married a woman who is true to her word. Since neither Mom or Aunt Mar made any fudge this holiday season I became desperate and took matters into my own hands. Now I am not a confident cook. When I am preparing food in the kitchen I always feel I am about half a step away from burning down the house or something so I approach the chore with fear and trembling.

To get back to the fudge, my first batch failed--too grainy. The second batch was good but never set (you could dip it out of the dish and 10 minutes later never tell that any fudge had been taken). By this time my supportive wife had presented me with a recently purchased candy thermometer. My third attempt produced chocolate brittle (I burnt it, okay). I finally succeeded on the fourth try but was so mixed up by then that for the life of me I can’t remember what I did right. If you want to give this a go here is the recipe:

2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cocoa dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all ingredients except vanilla and bring to a boil. Boil one minute for icing, two minutes for candy. Add vanilla and beat well. Pour into a buttered pan. Hope for the best.

Joe

Normal Weather

We have enjoyed a mild winter this year so it has been sort of a shock when temperatures dipped back down to normal this weekend. It snowed Saturday night but the ground was too warm for anything to stick. The Olympics are set to begin this week and I’ve been thinking about just how mild our winters have become. I remember the 1976 Winter Games very well because we had so much snow we were out of school practically the whole time. When they took a break from the games at lunch to show a few hours of soap operas, we all went outside to try what we had seen on TV. It is a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves trying to “bobsled” down a frozen creek.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. Last week I mentioned my cousin, Marijo, who was in the hospital. She passed away Sunday afternoon. Between smoking and breathing hair spray (she was a beautician) her lungs were simply in a terrible shape. However, her getting sick and passing away is really quite sudden and unexpected. She was at church three Sundays ago.

One thing I’ll always remember about Marijo was how good a cook she was. We had her cooking a few months ago as she had fixed supper for all of us the night Mom came home from her stay at the rehab unit at Skyline Hospital after her knee replacement.

A BIRTH IN THE FAMILY. I have reported on various births over the course of this newsletter but the news I have this time is better than welcoming a new baby into the world. Jenna has accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior! She has been asking questions for several weeks now and last week she wanted to meet with Bro. Bill. We met with him in his office last Wednesday afternoon and she invited Jesus to send the Holy Spirit to live in her heart at that time. She went forward during the invitation Sunday morning and will be baptized during the morning service on the 19th.

MORE HOOP ACTION. The Lady Cougars burned up the court again Saturday. Jenna contributed three goals to the game this time. It was another exciting contest with lots of goals scored and lots of turnovers.

We borrowed the wheelchair from church and took Aunt Mar to the game this time. She really enjoyed getting to go and see Jenna play. While I think it was a wise move to get the wheelchair for her she is actually walking better right now than I have seen in many weeks.

A DARK DAY. Most of you know that I am an avid Mac user. My job has been perfect in the sense that I get to work on Mac hardware and software pretty much exclusively. We are currently migrating to a new student management system at work and while it does work with the Mac our Director of Schools wants all administrators to use Windows units for this system. Last Wednesday I unpacked a Dell and put it on my desk.

I still have and use my PowerBook (Mac laptop) and I’ll probably have one for several years to come but I am venturing into new territory. I am going at this with an open mind and have learned several things about the Windows OS, but the last five days at work have been extremely frustrating due to my unfamiliarity with the way Windows works. I will have to be honest and say that I have discovered several features in Windows that I wish Apple would adopt in the Mac OS, but then there are several things the Mac can do that a Windows machine either can’t do or is extremely complicated. I’ve never had to worry about viruses before on the Mac and was deeply disappointed to see how the antivirus software practically killed the performance of my new computer. I feel like a fresh water fish that has been dumped into the salt water ocean. I’ll learn to swim there but I’m mighty glad I can return to the fresh water both at work and at home.

On the positive side, we have a new iMac at home. I have people ask me to do video slideshows on occasion and have enjoyed doing the projects. We have just never pursued doing this as a side business because we didn’t own a computer capable of burning the finished product to DVD. We now have the capability and hope to explore opportunities in this area soon.

Joe