Home again, minor injury, Victoria

 

After a week away from Mama, the farm and my office it is good to back. Last was one of those weeks where I traveled over 1300 miles and met with dozens of people I do not get to see very often; not the least of which were some of my own staff. Outside of work the trip was relatively uneventful. I dislike evenings alone in a hotel room. (I used the free time to start getting receipts organized for income taxes we will file soon.)

I did get to have dinner with Chase and Makaila on Wednesday night before church. We had a painful discussion about spiritual leadership or the lack of it Mama and I are seeing in their lives. All in all it went well and I do not think there was any offence taken on their part but such discussions can make dinner difficult.

I went to Central Baptist in Amarillo to meet with the Kroker’s so Mama and I could finally get back our oil filled heaters they had borrowed some time ago.; over a year at least. We had not really needed them until now so it was nice to get them back.

It was really good to be back in Central and see the same folks still faithfully serving the Lord there. As I walked up to the church I saw Mrs. Patrick walking in with another older woman who faithfully brings her. Mrs. Patrick was surprised and delighted to see me. Of course, the first question she asked was about Mama.

I will have to bring her next time. In fact,I am under orders to do so. I sat with her during the service and several of the young boys of the church joined us. We had a great time, but I did not get back to my hotel in Dumas until almost 11p.m. That made for a very short night.

I got home Friday evening a couple hours before we needed to leave for the RU meeting at our church. Again, we did not make it home until almost 11 p.m. Even still Mama and I were up before 7 a.m. Saturday morning. We both had big plans and we actually got to work through some of those plans; rehanging the horse feeder, cleaning up the hay area in the calf barn, pulling down and wrapping up the fencing around the garden, hanging pictures in our apartment, and hanging a door on the laundry room.

Unfortunately, as I was straightening up the hay bales in the calf barn later in the afternoon I mis-stepped on my way off of the stacked hay and caught the edge of a pallet on which the hay is stacked, twisting my ankle. From the bone breaking popping I heard I assumed it to be worse than it actually turned out to be.

I had on a pair of boots I wear on the farm when it is dry. Those boots are tight fitting and very supportive so I did not wrench the joint as far as it could have been had I not had on those particular boots. After a few minutes of lying still I got up and tried to walk - with some success. I was doing pretty well until I had to get that boot off. It was far from painless, but things could have been far worse.

The only real drawback to the injury was getting on and off the platform at church the next day as I led singing for our congregation.

Victoria is quite sick right now. It looks like the flu – chills, fever, vomiting and diarrhea. She had a lovely weekend and was not much improved after spending most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday in bed.

Mama is still suffering with a rash around her eyes. She has had the rash for a couple weeks now. There has been some improvement but it is pretty distressing to her.