A Blue Moon for Neil Armstrong

We enjoyed a blue moon Friday night which, as the Neil Armstrong family pointed out, was a fitting farewell to the man who first set foot there. I was beginning to wonder if I would even see it. We had some rain that afternoon, and I enjoyed a large rainbow in front of me as I drove home from work. However, the sky cleared quite a bit by moonrise and the moon was beautiful.

I remember watching the astronauts walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission happened just before my third birthday. I am assuming it is the Apollo 11 mission as I distinctly recall Uncle George being in the den with us and TV coverage for subsequent missions would have been less. More likely is that my memory of several moon missions runs together as Uncle George would have been interested in all of them.

A BRIEF VISIT. We got a quick visit from Uncle Bob, Aunt Linda, and Ann Beth last week. They arrived Tuesday and left Thursday. The Bradley/Dee clan was even able to drive over for supper on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see too much of them with school, work, Scouts, and Awana, but the important thing was that they got in some time with Mom and Aunt Mar. I think they even got in a few rounds of Spades.

FUND RAISERS. One reality of parenting I could do without are fund raisers. Everything the kids are involved in requires fund raising. Half the stuff we sell doesn’t even interest me so it’s hard to be motivated. Occasionally, though, the kids sell something really good.

We have been involved with the Boy Scout popcorn sale for six years now, and yes, we do have popcorn to sell this year. In addition to the popcorn Ben’s troop also sells barbecue. One of the dad’s of the troop makes it. This year they cooked 32 shoulders. All of it was sold by pre-order. Friday night the troop camped out over on this family’s farm and the boys worked in shifts to help tend to the barbecue pits (Ben had the 3-5 am shift). Yesterday morning we set up an assembly line where we processed the meat and packaged it in two pound bags.

I mention this because we’ve thought this was the best barbecue we’ve ever had. My family’s preference for barbecue has always been Baldwin’s, but they just got moved to second place with us. If Ben’s troop does this again next year I will let you know. Those of you who live locally may be sick and tired of buying coupon cards, popcorn, etc, but you won’t regret this purchase.

ODE TO THE LAMP POST. When Uncle George and Aunt Mar built their house back in 1965 Uncle George put up a lamp post at the corner of the patio next to the driveway and it has brought a warm, cheery light to the patio all this time. We noticed the lamp beginning to lean sometime last year and tried to stake it up, but nature finally took its course last night. Mom was sitting in the den and saw it fall over. She called saying, “It’s the end of an era!”

A trip to town and an hour of install time later and they have a nice, new lamp post standing where the old one used to be. The new one features an ambient light sensor so I won’t have to reset the timer whenever we have an interruption in power!

MISS CAT. I think I’ve mentioned before that we have a momma cat and kitten that have taken up residence at our house. The kitten is really skittish but I am starting to gain its trust.

No one has offered any names for our cats so I call the momma cat Miss Cat. She has taken up with me, but she is not a cat that likes to rub your legs or be picked up. She’s more like a dog than a cat in some respects. She followed me out to the shop the other day. It was warm so I left the doors open while I was working in there. I would have thought Miss Cat would have explored every nook and cranny of the building but I was w rong. She walked in a few feet, did a quick visual survey of the building, and walked out. The whole time I was working she sat just outside the door with her back to me and her ears turned back to listen to what I was doing. When I got done for the evening and closed up she happily escorted me back to the house. I don’t think she’s been back in the shop since but is content to sit outside and wait for me to get done.

UNEXPECTED NEWS. Over the past month or two I had begun to notice a little bit of vision loss in my right eye. At first I thought it might have been due to accidental exposure to a laser from a barcode scanner at work, but I kept feeling like I should go in and see about it. To be brief, after a visual field test and a 3D scan of my retina I have been diagnosed with normal-tension glaucoma.

Glaucoma is usually caused by high interocular pressure which causes capillaries that supply blood to the retina to collapse which, in turn, causes nerve damage. With my variety of glaucoma the interocular pressure is normal so the traditional “puff” test we all get when we visit the eye doctor doesn’t raise any red flags. It is not yet known what causes the nerve damage in cases like mine.

Glaucoma cannot be reversed, though it can usually be slowed to a virtual crawl. The standard treatment is to use eyedrops to lower the interocular pressure, and I am testing one of these now to see how my eyes respond. Please pray for me as I see my way through this. By the way, Aunt Mar is the only person I am intentionally not telling about my glaucoma so to those of you who may see her please keep this in mind.

A MUCH NEEDED LAUGH. My first trip to the eye doctor was back on the 21st. I was feeling mighty low when the appointment was over. I would rather have heard, “Yes, Mr. Swann, I can see where that laser has damaged your eye.”

I had to swing by the office to pick up a few things before heading home. When I got there I discovered that one of our schools had gone into lockdown due to the report of a suspicious character in the area. This turned out to be a false alarm, but the lockdown happened right at the end of the day and delayed dismissal by 20 minutes. The principal felt it would be wise to send a call out to all parents alerting them that their kids would be late getting home, but, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the internet was down at her school right then and she couldn’t access the phone broadcast system. I happened to be the only one at the district level in town who knew how to place the call, however, my eyes were still dilated from my exam and I couldn’t read anything smaller than the E on an eye chart. So here’s me and my boss trying to work together to send out this call -- I’m driving the mouse and he’s reading my screen -- and we get to laughing so hard we can hardly accomplish the task.

Sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t plan things like that for people when they need a laugh. Who knows, that delay may have thrown the timing of our buses off and kept them all safe on the road that day as well. Whether God was behind it or not, I got a chance to put my troubles behind me when I needed it most.

Joe