Working, waiting, forward plans

I have been limited this week to working with Lee rather than working on projects at the farm – which is okay but it sure slows down the things I have to look at every morning and evening and wish were done for Mama’s sake. I am hoping that she and Grandpa can work on those projects even as he works at Victoria’s house. It is a necessary trade off but a painful one since I earn only enough to pay the little bills we have to cover.

I am still putting in applications and spending time on job searches but not in a huge way. With all the layoffs that continue to happen around the area it has turned into a pretty tight job market. We will continue to pray and thrust the Lord as we struggle through the next several months but it is disquieting to get no feedback from anyone to whom I have applied.

Before I left to meet Lee and Jeff yesterday we put Daisy in the loading chute and put some worming medicine to her. That was the easy part. Next we got Dash into the loading chute and into the head gate so we could give him a shot of antibiotics. That took some patience as he thrashed about once trapped but Grandpa finally got the shot administered and we were able to let him back into the barn lot where we will keep him separated for several more days.

We have decided to keep him so that we can feed him out for butchering in the spring. Mama has mixed emotions about that decision but it is a prudent one from the financial perspective. As our first calf, he came to us virtually without cost so the only money we will have in him is the feed required to get him to the weight we are aiming for before he goes to the processors.

For the past several days Grandma has been patiently peeling apples so they can be frozen for later use. In the past we have used them for fried apples as a breakfast side dish but I had an idea the other day and asked Victoria to look up whether or not you could freeze applesauce. It turns out that you can. So we made the last few batches of peeled apples into applesauce – and it turned out fabulously. It may become our new favorite especially since we still have some of the apples she peeled and froze last year still in the freezer.

Mama, Victoria and I have a test on Monday for which none of us have studied. I am sure we will find the time this weekend but it is never-the-less looming over us at the moment; one of the many little things to which we have committed ourselves and are finding difficult to honor in a focused manner. Two more tests follow this one – spaced two week s apart – and this semester will be complete. We have four more semesters if we choose to finish; and I think we will continue.

Tuesday Mama and I met with an estate planner to set up a will and tomorrow we will meet again with the financial planner to get the 401k and the pension transferred to Edward Jones for management going forward. It is both sad and exciting to see the changes as I move all my life away from ConocoPhillips. Our next step is to get health insurance evaluated and set up.

I do miss my job with Conoco.

Busy days

Norman and Seth left for West Virginia this morning. They were a full week working on Victoria’s house, buying Seth a truck, finding a place in the area to rent when they do permanently relocate and surveying the area for prospective work. It was full week for the two of them and I believe they felt it was a good use of the time they gave to it. There are multiple projects that are waiting on them back home and they felt constrained to get back so they could complete those projects before the end of the year. That may turn out to be a very tall order since Norman is heading to the Ukraine in early December for a ten day stay.

Grandma, Grandpa and Mocha stayed in Chico with us and are settled into their room for the moment. I am not sure of the plan going forward but Normand and Grandpa laid out a plan for remodeling Victoria’s house and it looks like a very good plan. Victoria is very excited about it but I am not sure how soon the work will commence or how long it will take since Grandpa will be doing the work pretty much by himself – except when Victoria is off, or when I am available.

Lee Davis asked me to work full time for him in his plumbing business and in light of the fact that there is nothing else available at the moment I agreed. It will leave me free every Saturday to work at the farm but it puts a damper on the progress I was making on Mama’s coop building. So we are back to the common theme in life; when I have the time I do not have the money and when I have the money I do not have the time.

Norman did give me a contact from his travels here. The realtor in Sanger, TX where they looked at a rental property told him about one oil company in Denton that was hiring all positions and begging for leads on prospects for that initiative. I will be calling him this morning when I get a break from work. Bear in mind that things are often embellished when retold, but you never know where the Lord will meet your need from.

Plumbing is an interesting variety of work; from digging ditches to repairing roofs. I have enjoyed the work so far mostly because it has such variety and for the most part Lee is good to work with but we have been on half-day and full-day jobs for the time I have been helping. We will see how driven he is when it comes to pushing through the little jobs – the six repairs a day kind of work - and still try to make money. After all, he has a business to run.

So between working with Lee, finishing the coop building and the equipment shed, making upgrades and repairs to our home we have the added project of the remodel at Victoria’s. Throw in the holidays and all that accompanies these end of year events and it begins to look like it could be a fun time going forward.

I am looking forward to it – mostly.

 

Productive times, big plans

Yesterday was a bit more productive than Monday had been. I got to work on the coop building very soon after I got up – which was not too early since I took half a muscle relaxer at bedtime the night before. I got the east wall mostly done and was at a point that I needed to place the long back wall into place on the foundation to continue. I was completely out of two by fours but I had the rafters sitting in my small lumber pile.

I had been waiting for Victoria to be off so she could help me get the wall into place but I am working for Lee Davis today – Victoria’s day off – and I did not want to be delayed further. So I loosened the braces that were steadying the wall about six inches off of the foundation and carefully scooted it into place; being careful to lift it onto the linoleum when I got to that point. It took me a bit of time to get it done (it is thirty two feet long) but I got it in lace and anchored it to the center wall and the east wall. I got five of the ten rafters in place before I had to quit.

I took a bit of time to redo the steps so that they are a bit more functional – for Mama’s sake. Now I am at the point that I need the roofing material. I will be calling Rex Cobb at BBI to see if he can spare some of the metal removed from the church roofs which we donated to BBTI. I am fairly certain that it is more than they need but I will not know until I do ask. If not, I will order the metal from a place in Bridgeport and have the roof on sometime next week.

We are forecast to have heavy flooding rains Friday but things clear up for a few days after that. We are in one of those weather patterns that bring rain every weekend. That would be more frustrating if I was working fulltime, but at the moment that is not the case.

Last night I took Mama to a ladies meeting at the church. While she was there I worked on Victoria’s laptop in the hope of getting some revisions made to my resume but that did not work out. She does not have Office on her laptop so I moved to listening to some training videos and eventually started an update to Windows 10. (I hope that was a good move.)

The update to the new operating system took all the time I was there and then some. Mama and I went to Wal-Mart after her meeting was over – about 9 pm – and came back to the church, where I had left the computer, only to wait another ten minutes or so for the update to finalize. As I go forward using the laptop I will know if that was a good move or not.

Grandma and Grandpa, Norman and Seth are due to arrive this evening. They made it to Union City last night. That is about the halfway point for them. They drove in the rain all day yesterday – which frustrated and really wore out Grandpa. Hopefully, they will have better weather for the remainder of the drive today.

They have pretty ambitious plans of getting the roof on Victoria’s little house in one day. We will see how that goes. Things look much easier from the ground when it comes to putting on a roof. I happen to be very aware of how steep her roof is and how slowly they will have to move to get the metal attached. But there will be three of them (at least) in the crew.

If I am available to help it will be from the ground – Mama will see to that.

Slow progress

When I went to Mom and Dad’s (Grandma and Grandpa Kline) in Chappell Hill a week ago I told Mom I would need to take a small portion of the roof to work on because I am pretty slow. I did manage to get a good bit done – especially on the portion of the roof that was leaking – but it took me hours to accomplish. That slow pace I keep has truly manifested itself in the ongoing projects here. On the positive side, I called Grandma Kline to see if the repairs I had made actually made a difference. One roof leak was eliminated but the second, more troubling one, still persists in a much attenuated form.  I will have to work on that next time I am there – which could be soon.

I am making very slow progress on the coop building. Of course I am working by myself and am constantly being called away to help Mama on one thing or another as well as having to make repairs on the tools I am using. Yesterday I had to take the guard off of the compound miter saw because it was too loose to continue to keep using it. After I got it off, tightened and reassembled and put back all the tools I had to get for that chore I had used up nearly an hour. Those things slow me up – but they are all part of life at the moment.

I also had to take time to get the truck and tractor out of the pasture where I had both of them stuck since Saturday. I had bought some more two by fours for the walls I am building on the coop and tried to get them to the coop via the roadway through the middle paddock. That worked only to the point where the ground, softened by five inches of rain, was too soft for me to go further.

When the truck was stuck I got the tractor out of the barn, loaded the lumber onto the forks and put it by the coop in the pile I have there. Since the tractor had done so well I drove it to where the truck was stuck and pulled the truck out of the very soft ground of the roadway but in doing so, I buried the front wheels of the tractor in a soft spot. So there they sat until yesterday evening the ground had dried enough to get them both free.

I feel a sense of urgency about getting the coop finished because Mama has thirty young chickens that need that spaced as soon as I can have it available. They are all getting large and will soon outgrow the cages we have them in. Of course, money is the issue. Sadly, it is required to get the materials I need to get the job done, but the Lord has provided so far. I am buying only a limited amount at a time because it feels better to spend smaller amounts at a time and I am using up what I have before getting more. That too takes time.

While we were at Lowe’s yesterday Mama and I agreed on the siding and the interior wall materials so I am at the point of moving forward to get those. By tomorrow I should have the rafters on and be ready for the roof so sheeting the outside would be the next step. If we can accumulate the materials I could have the project finished in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile I am honing my resume, getting some requisite work done for the employment agency hired on our behalf and searching for available job postings that are more than a manager at McDonald’s, Braum’s or Sonic. Such is the world we live in today.

Grandma called this morning to confirm that they are on their way here. I have mixed emotions about that; mostly positive.

Using time wisely – I hope

It has been less than two weeks since I was laid off but it seems like a lot longer. I have kept myself very busy getting projects completed at the farm and making repairs and improvements to the house. Monday and Tuesday I tore out the gun cabinet stands and put shelving behind those glass doors. The result was pretty impressive. Even more impressive was that Mama had the shelves loaded with canned goods and other items we had kept packed away in totes by the time I had completed the shelving. It really made our butler’s pantry clean and functional.

While weather permitted and I had materials available I worked on the coop building. It is coming along pretty well. I held off Monday and Tuesday working on the building because I needed both Mama and Victoria to help me put the linoleum on the floor of the building before the walls were put in place. (That is why I worked inside early in the week.) I had expected the linoleum to take a couple hours to lay but we were done in less than an hour – and it came out very nice. Victoria is still picking the glue off of her clothing.

I put a pallet in the hog pen for the water trough to sit on because the hogs had been rearranging the dirt to the point that Mama could no longer get the trough in and out of where we normally set it. She cleans it daily so the pigs can fill the clean water with muck as they stand in it to get a drink. For some reason it makes her feel better and I am all for her feeling better.

When we got several inches of rain later last week we were very disappointed to find the little covered area I had build for the hogs to bed down in was completely full of water and there was nowhere for them to lay. So I got four pallets and placed them in the area under the roof (wile it was still raining very hard)and put a piece of wood that was supposed to be a door for the other hog building over those pallets. With a little straw from Mama they made their beds made within a few minutes and probably slept better than I did that night.

Saturday Mama and I worked on pictures – sorting, hanging and repacking them. Mama worked for several hours going through photographs from the past. To her credit she discarded a fair amount of them. I talked her into only keeping those that were relevant or meaningful to someone in our family. So pictures of zoo animals and trees and flowers and settings that we no longer recognized were thrown away. It took a sizable box to contain them all. But it was time well spent.

This morning Mama has me scheduled for a visit to the chiropractor. I resisted the idea a little but eventually gave in – I do not want to spend either the time or the money on the appointment, but thought it not worthy of too much negative conversation. After that I can get back to work on the walls of the coop – until I run out of materials.

This week I hope to divide my time between getting applications posted online and getting things done for Mama. Those of us who lost our jobs were given access to a help group for things like resume writing, job searches and overall guidance in getting further employment. I have about ten hours of work to get done on their website. That will have to be done at the library or the church. It is a bother not having access to the internet at the house, but we can compensate.

Grandma, Grandpa, Norman and Seth are supposed to come down later this week but that is still up in the air. None-the-less, we are ready for them when they do finally arrive.

Mama’s snack, change is coming

Several weeks back Mama bought some pumpkin spice flavored chips to use in a recipe for a dessert for RU. It turned out okay but I was not a huge fan of the pumpkin spice flavor of the chips so the leftover pieces of the dessert sat around for a while before Mama finally threw them away. I think she was a little disappointed that I did not like them more – since I like pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, etc.

For our FBI class last night Mama made pretzels dipped in those chips. Victoria had come up with the idea so Mama got out the little crock pot and melted the chips and dipped pretzels until she had used as much as she could of the softened chips. The ladies at the FBI class really liked the combination – salty pretzels with the sweet pumpkin spice chips. It was not until very late in the evening that one of the ladies in the class stuck her tongue out at Mama that they all discovered that the snack had turned each of their tongues a pumpkin orange color. Then everybody was sticking their tongues out at each other. It was one of those moments when grown women become little girls for a few minutes.

I was pretty quiet on the short drive home and Mama knew why. I am thinking about what lies ahead of us this week. My boss was in Dumas and Perryton yesterday and will be in Elk City, OK today conducting layoffs with each of those groups. One of my ladies got let go yesterday and it was not a quiet, respectful dismissal on the part of the employee. But it is what I had told him to expect. Tomorrow he will be back in this office to let go those of us selected for such a dismissal. I am resolved to it but not anxious for it. It will change many things in my life.

For several years now I have kept this blog going by writing it first thing in the morning – when I arrive at the office long before most of the office staff. That is about to change and I am not sure how I will be able to continue in the short run.  I have no access to the internet at the house and will lose my job, my work computer, my daily internet access and the early morning routine that has kept this going for many mornings in the past. It has been a pleasure to write my thoughts daily and I will look for a routine that will allow that to continue but it may be some time before I come up with a solution to enable me to continue.

Today, if nothing has changed, will be my last full day in the office working for ConocoPhillips. Tomorrow it will be my turn to talk with my current supervisor and our HR representative for my exit interview. I will be laid off. It is not all bad. It is not all good. But there is a balance that, in the short term (several months at least) will allow me and Mama to cope with the loss of income while I pray about and look for another job. God really is in control and I can trust Him to take care of us.

I have communicated with all the ladies in my group - which will be reorganized tomorrow – what things to look for going forward; what has not been properly planned, what things have no backup plan at all in place, what processes are going to be so short-circuited that they will cease to function and how to resolve those issues. I have laid as solid a foundation as possible for each of them to continue in their respective roles for many months ahead.

I feel good about what I have done and what I am leaving behind.

The weekend

I took off Thursday and Friday to burn some vacation and those turned out to be very productive days. I asked Bro. Daniel to meet me at Lowe’s Thursday morning to help me load twelve sheets of plywood for the floor of the chicken building I am building for Mama. It was a real help to have him there both to stack the plywood on the cart in the store and to load it into the truck for the trip home.

I did not realize how far from square I was on the foundation until we laid out our first piece of plywood. I was way off so we squared to the floor joists and cut where we needed to in order to get the flooring to fit. It turned our okay and I considered pulling up a couple corners to make the building more square but put that thought away when I really calculated the work involved to avoid cutting one piece of metal roofing when the roofing is attached. We were both worn out be the time we quit.

Friday I debated going to Lowe’s to get the linoleum Mama wants on the floor of the building but used the day to build the back wall of the coop building. I decided to use up the materials I had on hand before I buy anything else – since I am very low on cash and will be laid off this week. As it turned out the back wall, which is thirty two feet long took a majority of the materials I had on hand. I did have enough to make two of the partial front walls that are ten feet each before I ran out of two by fours. So, hopefully later this week I will get the walls in place and be able to determine just how much I need to finish laying out the walls and the roof.

That night we went to RU. Mama had arranged with Erin to get the kids from her so she and Sam could have the night without the kids. Victoria was to meet us at the church to help as soon as she got off work. It was one of those nights when Luke, their autistic son, was in one of those moods where he cannot contain his energy and will not be slowed by direction, by coaching, by threatening or any other normal means.

It would not have been too overwhelming except that we had the twins and another child and Mama decided that putting the icing on her cake took precedent over everything else. I did not realize how uptight I was until instead of telling Luke for the fiftieth time that half hour to leave the classroom door open I hit the door as he was closing it – and punched a large hole in it. That got Mama’s attention. So when Victoria arrived she took the Echavarria children home with her while Mama and I finished out the time with the three we had that evening. I called the pastor to let him know I had punched a hole in the door but that I would replace it. A rather humbling conversation.

Saturday Mama, Victoria and the children went to Trade Days. I told Mama she would have much more fun if I was not along – based on my outburst the night before. I continued my work on the chicken coop and when I ran out of materials I worked on a couple little items on the house and the farm. I got our last bale of hay to Daisy and as I was clearing that up I noticed Chester working on the fence across the road from us. We talked for a few minutes and he mentioned that a grass fire could be headed our way.

A neighbor was burning something on his property and the fire got out of control. Fortunately, it was a very slow burning fire. Through that fire I got to meet the owner of the property beside us, Ricky Taylor. I was impressed by him. I also go to meet Chuck Smith, Chester’s boss. In an attempt to hinder the fire from coming on to our property Ricky got his tractor and twenty foot disk to plow a firebreak. Chester, Chuck and I took down enough fence to get the tractor and implement through but the firebreak never got tested. Someone called the fire department and they showed up to put out what was left of the fire just before 9 pm.

It was an interesting weekend.

Trying to see it, Norman’s plans

Mama pressed me pretty hard yesterday to let her go to West Virginia so she could make the trip over to see Jonas – our herbalist friend in McConnelsville, Ohio – and then come back with Grandma and Grandpa when they drive down the week of the 19^th. I was not the least thrilled with the request, especially in light of the things that are happening on our life right now. She mentioned it to Grandma and was being pressed by Grandma to come and help her pack, visit her uncles, etc.

They had offered to pay for the ticket so the trip would ostensibly be no cost to me. Mama asked me to pray about and see if the Lord would give me peace. I did consider it for several hours but finally I said no – for a myriad reasons. To her credit she did not push further after I said no, but it got me to thinking how to convey to Mama how life changing the loss of this job really is for us.

After I had been home an hour or so she brought the subject up and I asked her to consider how her life would be impacted if she lost me right now. Not how it would be impacted emotionally, but how it would be impacted financially. In a very real sense, when I walk out of my office next week having been laid off from this job I will die - financially speaking. I will have no further employment income, no promise of employment, no budget. The financial world is a cold world that does not recognize promise or potential, only actual.

I know God will somehow supply all our needs but I need to understand just what that really entails; because at this moment I am on the “faith” side of that equation rather than the “seeing” side. For most of our married life the Lord had given me and Mama very good employment and I have been able to make our finances work in hard times because there was the promise of the next payday. When all else failed I could go to the bank and borrow against the potential earnings of my employment. This is a new wrinkle for me – and for Mama, Grandma, Grandpa and Norman – who have always assumed I could find a way to make the finances work. I am struggling to get it right; in God’s eyes and in the financial world’s eyes.

When I was coming in from watering the plants and trees last night Mama was talking to Norman filling him in on my negative response and updating him on several other little issues. I heard them talking about a mobile home and how nice Mama thought it was. I had no idea what that was all about but as it turns out, Norman and Seth have agreed to rent the same property Grandma and Grandpa rented when they first moved to Bowie.

The owner is discounting the rent with the promise from Norman to remodel the mobile home and keep the property neat. Norman sounded excited about the arrangement. The owner is very excited about the promise. They will begin to rent the place next month. I am not sure how soon they will actually move down but Mama thinks it will be by year end.

Changes, they are a comin’.

Planning challenges

Word came trickling through in small bits yesterday as the layoffs were carried out in the office in Houston. A friend of mine spent the better part of the day watching people go offline in our Instant Messaging system. That is a truly sad way to pass eight hours. On the flip side one of my office buddies got some very strong hints that his position will survive the layoffs. He is scheduled for “rebuilding” meetings in Houston the last week of the month. He was encouraged.

Yesterday afternoon the pastor came by my office to give me the rest of the two by fours I had left for him when Mama and I collected the ones we got Saturday evening. He had mentioned that he was also going to build a coop so I did not want to take all the materials, but he told me his plans could wait – and probably would. With that addition of materials I have a very good start on what I need for the walls. I have only to get the materials for the floor in order put up the walls. I am working through that right now.

I talked to Daniel Wycoff last night at FBI to see if he was available to meet me at Lowe’s Thursday morning to help me load some plywood (for the floor of the coop) but I have not gotten peace about spending the cash to buy the plywood. It is the next step but I am not sure how to take it with the abrupt halting of income that I face next week. When there is no money coming in to replace what is being spent I have to choose very carefully. (The lord is bringing up some very old memories of how Mama and I did this many years ago; hard lessons I will have to relearn.)

Mama and Victoria were complaining about being cold while we were listening to the DVD for FBI so during the second break – about 8:30 – they started to play a little volleyball. We only have eight minute breaks but for the next hour they we trying to get cooled down. It was pretty humorous to watch. We are all thoroughly enjoying the Biblical exposition we are getting through the coursework.

Lately we have been dipping into the 50’s during the nights. Mama is still a little worried about her little chickens that we were forced to put outside in the tiny chicken house, but so far they have done well. The dogs love the evening and nighttime temperatures. Every evening around dark they are ready to play and every morning they run circles in the yard just for the fun of it. It will soon be colder and wetter so we are enjoying this while we can.

The days at work are very long. There is very little to do so I busy myself with homework for FBI,  getting ahead on the music schedule for church and using the internet. I am wrestling with the issue of losing all connectivity to the internet when I return my company furnished Hot Spot, but I know we will work something out. It is a major drag to have to retool so many areas of our daily life in response to the loss of my job –and all the company has provided for us. But it is unavoidable at this point.

I will be taking off Thursday and Friday again this week; just to burn through some more vacation - but there is little joy in it. I was talking with Mama yesterday about how to continue this blog without home access to the internet and I have not come up with a solution for that yet.

That, like many of the changes coming to our lives, is a work in progress.

An interesting weekend

I took off Thursday and Friday just to burn through some vacation days. We still had full evenings with FBI on Thursday and RU on Friday but I was able to use the daylight hours to get some more work done on the foundation of the coop building. I got it completed by late Friday evening and was still able to get ready in plenty of time for our RU meeting.

Thursday as I was working on the coop foundation I looked over toward the pig pen because I heard some very happy pig noises. You can get a pretty good feel for the disposition of pigs when you are around them for a while – and they sounded a little too happy. As I stared for a moment I realized I was seeing too much of two of them. Somehow they had gotten out.

I wasn’t terribly worried because they generally do not venture far from the food but I knew I needed to first, discover how they had gotten out and second, get them back in. I hollered for Mama but finally had to go to the house to get her. I knew the pigs would respond better to her than to me - she is the one that feeds them. I did find pretty quickly how they had gotten out; Mama had left the gate latch open and even though the gate opens into the pen – standard construction for pigs – they had nosed it open and found their way out.

We got them back into the enclosure pretty quickly and were moving on when I decided to make sure the chicks we had put in the little chicken house were all getting up and down the ramp from the bottom level to the nesting level on the top. As I shooed them down the ramp one of them got out on me and took off a t a dead run. It did not go very far and eventually Mama was able to trap it and put it back in the coop.

But just after we got that done Sasha, who we had penned in the back yard in order to keep her and Sam from trying to herd the pigs for us, started to exert her dominance over Kobe. Kobe tolerated her standing over her for a brief moment and then fought back with a vengeance. If she had been a little older, Sasha would have been taken down very quickly.

 Anyway, Mama took off running as fast as she could to get to the fracas. (That in itself was slightly comical but is did not spend too much time thinking about it.)  I was pretty sure it would be over pretty quickly – and that if and when I got there I would handle it differently than Mama; in a way that would not make her happy.

All that happened in the space of a few minutes. Mama went into the house totally worn out. I went back to work on the coop building. Life on the farm!

Friday went by without much ado. Saturday I went bus calling with the pastor and later Mama and I went to get Mr. Plumley so he could spend a few hours at the house with us. He helped me unload a few boards, move some dirt in the garden and tend to a few trees in the back yard. He swept the back patio and sat with us and watched the chicks Victoria had put out in a makeshift enclosure in the yard.

After we took him home Mama and I went to the church and picked up a few long two by fours from some crates that the metal roofing insurance was replacing on both buildings had been shipped in. I will use them on the coop building sometime this week.

Sunday morning we left for church and found the road blocked by a tree that had fallen across the road. I had to go back to the house, change and get the tractor so I could push the tree to the side of the road. As I got back to the tree with the tractor the man who tends to the property past us was trying to move the tree by hand. The tractor made pretty quick work of it and he was thankful I had come. He told me that when he had pulled onto the road his first thought was that we were probably going to be late for church. It’s nice to have a good witness among neighbors.

Once done I had to put the tractor away and redress for church. We were a little late for Sunday School.

It was a fun weekend.

Awkward moments, Becky

Life goes on at work and at home but it is a little awkward at times – in both locations. At work, the awkwardness stems from the fact that I know what is coming for me and yet have to maintain a sense of normalcy throughout the process. At home, I know what is coming and have to get Mama ready for a serious change of spending patterns.

I printed out a bank statement yesterday in an attempt to track down just where we are getting so far off budget. After all, I have to know where the spending holes so we can start to plug them. I was actually surprised by what I found. The overspending in not in the area of farm expenses or house repairs, although those have certainly been higher than I predicted, but rather it in our frequent trips to Walmart and Sam’s.

When I looked at those numbers I discovered we were spending more than twice our budgeted amount for grocery related items. When I added up the household items Mama buys at Family Dollar, Dollar General and the like, we were nearly in budget but still a bit over in that category. So, when I showed this to Mama last night she was a little surprised but when I told her what we were going to be budgeting for groceries and household items in the very near future, she was very unhappy with those numbers.

Our grocery budget, which we were over by double, will shrink by about thirty percent. But if you do the math, the reality is that the amount spent will shrink by over seventy percent from our current spend levels. Mama’s ready answer was, “There’s no way!” my answer to her, ‘There’s no other way.” I have not found another job yet so I really do not know what the final budgeted numbers are going to be, but I do know there is a big change coming. That change is less than two weeks away. It will be a very big adjustment for Mama.

For Mama’s birthday yesterday I bought her four cards. She was not feeling well Monday night so it gave me the chance to distribute them after I got home from church that night. I put one on the refrigerator, one on the washer, one in her Bible and one in the garage attached to the cage we are raising the chickens in. She called me yesterday morning when she had found the second of two. She called again when she found a third and I told her there was one more. We did not get anything for each other, gift wise, so I wanted to make the most of the little bit of cash I did spend on her.

Victoria is finally better and was able to go to work yesterday. She is off today and is urging Mama to take her to the Cantrell’s house so she can rescue her pup. I advised waiting until Friday to get Kira but I do not know if that will fly. Kim Cantrell says the two are getting along very well. Having Kira there seems to calm Leo - when he is not overcome by the urges of nature from Kira’s present condition.

Be praying for Becky. She called last night and told Mama she is going back to work at Walmart. That is not a bad thing except that she has a very new baby in the home. What set off the alarm bells is that the plan is for Mike to quit his job and stay home with the newborn and the children Becky is currently babysitting. That just sounds wrong – in so many ways.

She also told Mama they are going to church tonight. Pray that God will get a hold of her and Mike’s hearts. We worry for little Bridgette.

Dog news, a pig story, Mama’s birthday

Mama spent the entire day out of the house yesterday. She has been bemoaning the condition of Sam’s coat for a couple months now and yesterday she had the chance to do something about it. Sam and Sasha have adopted a large area to guard – some of which is pretty rough pasture – and because Sam’s coat is pretty knotty and course he picks up briars and thorns that get bound in his coat and wind up causing irritations against his skin. Several of those places have become inflamed and needed to have the hair cut away so they could heal. The poor woman that took on that task deserved a better tip than Mama was able to give her. But whoever she is, she did an amazing job.

This is the second time we have had this done. Each time the groomer has left the face and head pretty well untouched. Last time she left a small tuft at the tip of the tail but this time she took off all the hair up to the ears – even shaving the throat and jaw. He looks skinny and pink right now and is struggling to stay warm in these cooler nights but Mama and Victoria are able to get to the places on his skin that need attention. Hopefully by the time it is really cold he will have regrown all his hair, but he could end up being quite chilly for the next couple weeks.

Right after she got that chore done she packed up Kira and took her to Kim Cantrell’s house so she and Leo could have some time together to hopefully make some puppies. Leo is a full blooded German shepherd. Kira is half German shepherd, half Akita. From that dalliance Victoria is planning to have some little puppies to sell in the very near future.

Mama tells me it was the first time either dog had been in this delicate situation but after some very awkward attempts to figure things out they ended up succeeding. I think she and Kim Cantrell got a pretty big kick out of watching the two of them as they worked their way to understanding what goes where. Mama will be returning to get Kira by the weekend – assuming they have had enough time together. I know Leo will be disappointed to see her go.

It reminded me of a story I heard about a farmer that hauled his sow to a neighbor’s farm so that the neighbor’s boar could breed his sow. He did not have a truck so he used a wheelbarrow for transporting his sow. He returned several days later to retrieve his sow and was assured that the boar had done his duty. The farmer then asked how he would know if the sow was bred or not. “If she rolls in the mud once you get her back in her pen then you will know that she is bred. If not, bring her back and we’ll let them try again.”

The sow did not roll in the mud so the farmer took her back a second and then a third time. After returning the third time with his sow the discouraged farmer asked his wife if she would keep an eye on the sow to see if she would finally roll in the mud. The wife kept a vigil for several hours and finally came to her husband and reported that the sow was not rolling in the mud. “Well, what’s she doing?” he asked. The wife smiled, winked and said, “She’s sitting in the wheelbarrow.”

Mama’s birthday is today but it might not be a very happy one. Both she and Victoria are still not feeling well.

Today is also Chase's birthday.

Coop work, revival meetings

Mama and I had a good weekend. I stared my weekend a little early by taking off Friday.  Between Thursday evening, all day Friday and all day Saturday I managed to get a good start on Mama’s new chicken coop. We need something pretty soon because her chicks are not so little anymore. We had them in a pretty large cage but they are but they are growing so rapidly that we are having to find other cages and spaces for them to give them enough room to grow without being overcrowded.

With that as a plan I took a little coop that we inherited with the purchase of the Chico property and mounted it on a stand so that it would be easier for Mama to take care of. It is a cute little salt-box style prefab coop with a nesting box that extends out the back of the coop. It has a removable tray on the roosting area, little windows and little doors. So there is plenty of access for Mama to clean and service the coop.

We have not moved any of the chickens to the little coop because Mama is still able to carry (with help) the large cage from the garage – where the chicks are placed for the night – to the carport where they spend the day. It will not be too much longer that she will be able to do that because it is getting quite heavy as the chicks continue to grow.

We even have a separate hospital cage that now houses three birds. All three have injuries to their legs that require them to be separated from the flock. But, much to Mama’s great pleasure, all are doing quite well and should be able to return to the general population in a couple more weeks. She views it as her first successful attempt to rescue an injured bird.

What I worked on all day Saturday was the large coop building I wanted to build last year when Grandpa and Mama got the idea of building the little metal building to be used as a coop. It has done well enough but I am happy to finally be building a nicer, more permanent structure. In the new building Mama will be able to raise two separate flocks when needed. She has read that we should not raise our meat chickens with our egg layers – due to differing diet for the different outcomes.

I struggled getting it laid out by myself but finally got the rough out close enough to start digging the holes for the posts I needed to put into the ground. Friday I struggled with the power auger getting only a few inches at best into the very hard ground. So I got each hole as far as I could then filled each with water to soften the ground, reworking each later that evening or the following day.

By Saturday when I finally quit I had all the holes done, posts set and most of the stringers attached to those posts. I have enough lumber from the deck lumber I cleaned to do all the floor joists and the rafters. With revival this week Sunday through Wednesday night followed by FBI on Thursday night and RU on Friday night I will not get more added to the frame until Saturday – unless I take time off later this week.

Sunday morning in Sunday School the evangelist was making a point of how easy it was for us to share photos on our cell phone with complete strangers while we will not share the gospel. He was pretending to share pictures of his horses with me when he said, “This guy could not care less. He’s a city slicker.” That got everybody going. So later that morning I said I knew this was going to be a rough revival for me when the evangelist insults you the very first morning of the meetings.

It has become a recurring theme through the meetings so far.

Mama at the dairy, Fall

We had an interesting experience the other day. When we opened a gallon of the fresh milk we get at Dry Valley Dairy it did not taste good. None of us could tell if it was bad – as in spoiled – or if it was our taste buds so we drank about half the gallon before opening the second gallon we had bought. It had the same slightly off taste – not spoiled but definitely not good. So Mama went back to the dairy yesterday to ask about the milk and see if he would replace the gallons.

As she walked into the office there, which is just off the milking room, the owner was talking to a group of men. As it turned out he was telling them about the bad milk. Here is what happened. One day last week he hired a crew to trim fences and brush hog some places on his farm that had not been tended to that year. The farm was looking like is got a facelift as a result.

But the next morning he was finishing the chilling of the milk from the morning milking and noticed the batch smelled bad. He got a gallon from the pallet he had been filling that morning and opened it to taste it and it seemed okay but just to make sure he opened another – and it was awful. A third gallon was no better. So he dumped the entire batch from the chiller, unfortunately he had put several dozen gallons in the sales cooler already and could not be sure if he had gotten all of them back out to be discarded. Mama ended up getting two of the bad gallons. He replaced those gallons for us.

It seems that the cows had found something in the freshly cut grass and weeds of the cleared fence lines that was not normally part of their foraging in the pastures and whatever that plant was it had strongly flavored the milk. To remedy the situation he put the cows up in his lot and fed them good hay for a couple days and the milk returned to normal. He lost at least two milking’s work of product but that seemed to be the solution.

I suppose the same thing happens to nursing mothers. They eat something that strongly flavors the milk the baby is getting and we would never know it – but that poor baby would. Maybe, if the baby is not seeming to eat well on a particular morning it could be chalked up to the milk being flavored differently than they are used to. There is no good way to tell but it is something to consider.

It was hard to tell that yesterday was the first day of Fall. Mama has decorated accordingly but outside the house it still feels like summer. Days are a bit more mild with highs only into the mid-nineties but things are still and quite warm overall. Very few people I talk to are dreading the coming cool weather; most are lamenting its late return. I am psychologically ready for the cold weather but the farm is still not prepared yet.

Getting water to the animals during freezing conditions remains the biggest priority. We are still a couple months away from that but it will be upon us before we know it. Dust off the jackets, shake out the flannel shirts and start planning for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Ready or not, here it comes.

Work, travel delays, chickens

This is one of those times that I wish I could say that the days were flying by – but it is not. The hours spent at the office are more of an endurance contest than a normal working day. As the company begins to finalize the personnel roster there is an unavoidable shift to the new role assignments even though they are not yet announced. That means that everyone scrutinizes every meeting invite and every email for clues to determine their further participation within their job roles.

There is quite a bit of sensitivity around whether or not you were invited to this meeting or whether or not you were copied on this or that email. Speculations run rampant and new possible scenarios are referenced and cross referenced hourly. But the truth of the situation is that no one will really know their status within the future organization until the announcements are formally made and those of us who are going to be released no longer come to work. I cannot imagine what it is like in some of the larger offices.

On the home front, Mama is feeling better. She is not back to full capacity yet but definitely on the upside of recovery. I did advise her not to spend the day out with Victoria and Erin who have a shopping day planned this afternoon – Victoria would rather go shopping than clean the house with Mama. (That’s how much she dislikes cleaning.) Mama would be better off to continue to rest as much as possible and gather her strength for Friday when she will be watching Erin’s children all day. I will see if she can resist the temptation to tag along.

AS far as Grandma and Grandpa coming home, that is going to be put on hold for another month. It seems – how  unexpected – that something has come up that will keep them in West Virginia for a little longer. The plan now is that they will come down mid-October.  Seth and Norman will tow the trailers as Grandpa drives the car. We will wait to see how solid a plan that is when we get nearer to the time.

You have to understand that any delay will add an additional month to the schedule because Grandma and Grandpa order their lives on the date that his Social Security check is deposited to their bank account. That happens sometime in the middle of the month each month. That is not necessarily a bad thing; it is just the reality of their lives. So anything that holds them up adds an entire month to their schedule.

Mama is very quickly running out of room for the chickens as they grow. Two have been injured so far by getting their lags caught in the wire at the bottom of the cage they are being raised in. There is not much we can do about that without lining the cage with paper – which defeats the purpose of having the wire mesh in the bottom of the cage in the first place. So we are exploring options to give them more space but about the only course of action I have left is to build the chicken coop I have been talking about. Now Mama wants to know how quickly I can have that done.

Probably not quickly enough.

Mama, farm plans, work

Mama is still feeling sickly. She has begun to take some meds to help her deal with the fever and aches but she continues to trade being too hot for being too cold. Normally each morning she and Victoria take the cage the young chickens are housed in out of the garage and place it on saw horses set up under the carport. For the past several days the chickens have stayed put in the garage pooping on my table saw. By the time I get home there is no point in taking the cage out of the garage so I will have a mess to clean up some time later this week.

I inadvertently put Mama on high alert by telling her that I had seen a coyote on our road when I was on my way home yesterday. We have the two big dogs that stay constantly on guard but their focus is the front of the house. They spend the majority of their time running down trucks and cars that come to the gate at the outside edge of our property. They do not seem too concerned about the animals we have in back of the house. But, to their credit, we have not lost any chickens or hogs in the time we have been living at this property.

Now we are seriously talking about getting sheep. With the failed experiment we had with sheep in Bowie we are making preparations to fortify the sheepcote and the pasture we will keep the sheep in to prevent any scavenging by the coyotes we continually hear howling in the distance. It is a risk but there are quite a few people around us that have successfully raised sheep – and do quite well at it.

Grandpa and Norman are poo-pooing the idea before we even get started but the reality of our situation is that we do not have the room for the cattle they so earnestly desire to raise. Nor am I in the market to acquire more land. I need to constrict financially not expand. So given the area I do have available we will try to maximize our land use by minimizing our animal size; at least, that is what we will try.

Having said that, Mama found a rancher in Fredericksburg that she wants to buy a couple bred heifers from in the very near future. We can probably keep three to four heifers on the portion of the property I have set aside for that purpose if I continually supplement their feed. There is not enough grazing for four head and their calves but if we put out hay all year long they will get enough to do fairly well without us having to get more land. Right now we are waiting for prices to come down to a more reasonable level before we buy.

Things at work are getting very interesting. Plans are shifting, org charts are changing from one day to the next as outgoing managers and incoming managers debate the merits of individuals they are considering. From the looks of things, unless there is a specified skill set the cut off age is 50 to 55 for consideration within the new organization. That’s the starting point of discussing individual merit. From there, it is anyone’s guess.

It will be a long couple weeks as we wait.

Birthdays this week, Mama Sick, work

As we enter the last half of month of September there are several birthdates still ahead. Becky’s birthday is today. Nate’s birthday is tomorrow and Mama and Chase’s birthdays come on the 29^th. This always was a busy month for me and Mama.

Speaking of Mama she was sick through the day yesterday. It all started on Saturday evening when she got up from the recliner she was sitting in and complained of being thoroughly chilled. She spent the reminder of the night trying to get warm. By morning she was better but not by much. Through the day yesterday she had short spells of feeling pretty good but the fever always seemed to return. This morning she was fevered again. Hopefully, from here, she will get better quickly but I am not holding too high an expectation for a full recovery today – maybe by Wednesday.

This week is going to be a very hard one for those within ConocoPhillips awaiting confirmation of future employment. This is the week that managers will assign names to roles and fill out their org charts. Those persons whose name does not find a home in a box on the new org chart will be slated for termination through the coming layoff. I am, as far as I know, among that group.

We are awaiting final confirmation, but Grandma and Grandpa have been planning to leave West Virginia on Friday or Saturday this week and come back to Chico. As many of you know we will not make any final preparations until we know they are actually on the road. In ways, it will be nice to have them back in Texas with us. I think Mama is looking forward to getting them back home in spite of the friction that inevitably comes from having parents in the home with their grown children.

Grandpa continues to recover slowly. He is scheduled to see a specialist in Amarillo during the first part of October. Hopefully, he can get some resolution to the questions that still haunt him and Grandma about the underlying cause of his continued weakness and very slow recovery. As it stands right now he has been lead to believe that this is as good as it is going to get and he will have to adapt accordingly. We believe there ia probably a better answer than that, but are not sure.

All the items he accumulated for Victoria’s house while he worked with Norman in West Virginia will be brought down to Texas by Normand and Seth some time later in the month of October. At least, that is the plan right now. Grandpa and Grandma will be driving home in a car that they bought there for their return journey. I have suggested that Mama and I make a run to West Virginia to get one of the trailer loads soon after I am laid off but I have to coordinate that with fixing Grandma and Grandpa Kline’s roof in Chappell Hill and finding employment so we can continue to meet our financial obligations.

It is a time for much prayer.

Selling pigs, injured and recovering, coming home

Mama called me home yesterday about lunchtime because someone was coming to get a couple of the potbelly pigs. She and Victoria had negotiated with someone over Craigslist to sell the pigs for next to nothing and we thought it had fallen through but the boyfriend of the buyer showed up yesterday about 11:30 to load the pigs. Mama insisted that if they take Dottie they had to take Cloe also.

The buyer had his truck backed up to the pig building by the time I got to the house. He was convinced he could pick up the pigs and manhandle them into the large crate he had brought so we got Dottie and Cloe into the building to limit the space they had to maneuver and let him try. I am guessing Dottie weighs close to 80 pounds – probably half the weight of the young man that trying to catch and life them.

It became quickly obvious that that was not going to happen. The pigs did not enjoy being touched by someone they did not know. They rejected wholly the idea of getting picked up. So, needless to say, we did not go for the lifting approach, instead I got the crate out of the truck and positioned it in the opening of the enclosure within the building and eventually both pigs simply walked into the crate. It took three of us to lift the crate into the pickup bed but we got it in and secured without too much additional effort.

Now Mama is down to only one potbelly pig – which is acceptable for the moment but it is one more than we need. Going forward I would not be surprised to find out that she is scheming to get a male to breed Mollie in order to give her a playmate and attempt to capture some revenue. I would prefer to buy a bred regular sow if Mama is determined to see piglets born on the property. At least you can eat them.

For the moment we are considering moving Mollie to a different pen so we can get another set of feeder pigs to raise. I am not opposed to such an idea but I do not want to get too stretched out in either time or feed expenses. I would rather have a few head of sheep than more pigs, but we have not come to a decision yet. There is no particular hurry.

Kobe seems to be recovered from her tragic fall. Actually, she is not using the injured leg fully yet but she is getting around without too much restraint. Victoria and Mama are encouraged. I am ambivalent. I hate as much as they do to see an animal injured in any way but we still have too many inside dogs. Thank God we have such a large house.

Mama’s little chickens are continuing to grow well. We had to remove one from the clutch because it somehow injured its foot and was being trampled by the other chicks. I am still not certain it will survive but we have it in the bird cage by itself as it rests and tries to heal. It does not move about very much and often lays in such a way that we think it has died. But that has not happened yet.

Grandma and Grandpa should be coming back next week. Mama is in the process of getting Gracie’s room ready for them. I think I was told that they will be coming in the car they bought for Grandma with Norman and Seth planning on following later with both trucks and both trailers of materials for Victoria’s house.

We’ll see how that works out.

Accident, here it comes, sleep-over over

If you remember my note from yesterday about taking the dogs to the vet on Bridgeport, I had my doubts about the efficacy of transporting the dogs in the bad of the truck and it turned out that my doubts were justified. Kobe jumped out of the truck shortly after they got started. Fortunately it happened on our road so Mama was not up to full highway speed but it did injure Kobe to the point where she is barely able to move. Mama and Victoria are giving her Ibuprofen for pain and monitoring her progress.

I looked her over this morning as I left the house and she is alert and happy for the attention but I did not get her to move. Based on her movements last night – she was limping pretty badly – I expect she will be very limited in movement this morning. I advised Victoria to get some more pain meds down her as soon as she was up this morning. We will see how she recovers from here but I do not foresee any major complications.

Meanwhile, Kira, who should go into heat this month, continues to get out of the back yard despite our best efforts to keep her in. At some point I am going to replace the fencing, which has surpassed its normal life expectancy – but not right now. For the moment we have to hope we are far enough from any potential suitors to keep her safe from any unwelcome males while Mama and Victoria set up a union with Kim Cantrell’s dog, Leo.

At work yesterday the long awaited announcements on the upper levels of our org structure started coming out. Through the day we got a total of five emails, one of which announced the upper structure for my current organization. It was a bit of a surprise. My current boss is not on the new org chart in much the same way I will not be. His position has been eliminated. Through the next week decisions will be made to flesh out the structure down through the remainder of the organization.

I asked my boss this morning how that was going to work. If I see the org chart and it is obvious I am not on it, will I be met at my office that morning and escorted out of the building? Will the layoffs happen en mass at a scheduled time? Will we all be sitting around for two weeks dreading coming to our last day of work without knowing what day that will actually be? I am relatively well prepared but many of my colleagues are not. Many in the Houston office (500-600 are scheduled to be released from that office) are unsure how to prepare. It is going to be a rough two or three weeks.

We took Gracie and Joseph to church with us last night where they were reunited with their parents. Gracie was very reluctant to give up her room at the house and Joseph was reluctant to give up the easy access to the outdoors that the house offers. It was a sad goodbye for him especially when he was buckled into his parent’s vehicle last night. He cried after Victoria, but only halfheartedly.

For dinner last night Mama and Victoria experimented with one of our bread makers and made pizza dough. It turned out well enough that we will definitely do that again.

Busy house, sleepover, tending to little things

As I got home yesterday afternoon I had to jump right in to help Mama put together two pans of her Mexican Casserole. She was making one to go home with a young lady from our church that had spent the day with Victoria in celebration of her birthday. Her name, by the way, is also Victoria. Visiting Victoria’s mother was having surgery yesterday so Mama wanted to fix something for her family’s dinner. Visiting Victoria enjoyed both the day out of school, the meal being sent home with her and helping our Victoria babysit the Echavarria children. Our Victoria had overbooked herself for the day.

She and Mama picked Victoria up at school fairly early yesterday morning and spent the morning finding her an outfit as a birthday present. Later that day they met Erin Echavarria to get the kids. The rest of the day was spent at home. Luke was struggling with two persons with the same name so he started calling them Victoria 1 and Victoria 2. That was still the case when I got home – and may carry forward to time we spend together at church. We will see tonight.

Gracie and Joseph, I found out a little after I got home, were spending the night with us. Gracie was very excited about the idea. I am told that when her mom arrived to get Luke and to take Victoria 2 home, that Gracie asked her mom if she would like to see “her room”. Erin got a real kick out of that. For the rest of the evening, when we were not outside, Gracie played in her room, on her bed. It was quite entertaining.

Mama had me spend some time getting feeders and waterers hung in various cages for chickens and guineas and since I had to go to the barn to get the wire I also brought back some fencing we had removed from the garden in Bowie to fortify my recovering grape vine against a further attack by Kobe. While I was at that task I also fixed the ground around it, pulling up the invading grass and putting in some prettier topsoil. I followed up the same routine on the blackberry and black raspberry plants I have planted along the back fence. Through this week I will tend to the trees in the back yard and the garden in the same way.

Mama and I went out later in the evening to get gas for her mower. She does need to mow sometime this week but I think the urgency is because Joseph wanted a ride on the mower. I am sure that will happen today. The mowing will more than likely wait until later in the week. I would like to go back to Victoria’s property and get the other half of her little acreage mowed down. But we will see if that happens or not since the forecast is calling for rain that day.

Mama had me leave the truck for her and Victoria today; even though it does not have a/c right now. She and Victoria are going to take Kira and Kobe to the vet in Bridgeport to be weighed so they will prescribe the medicines for the dogs to help us combat fleas. We do not have a flea problem and do not want to get one but the vet will not give the meds without a verified weight for each dog. The next obstacle is to get the meds into the dogs.

Victoria plans on putting the dogs in the bed of the truck. I am not sure how that will work out – especially since they have to travel on 60-70 mph roads to get there. But Victoria is fairly confident that she can make that happen. Time will tell.

I do not want any surprises on that trip because any surprise is likely to be an unhappy one.

Growing things, birthdays, work

I got to see the pigs and the chicks last night for a few minutes before we went to FBI. I am always amazed at how very fast they grow. The pigs have put on fifteen pounds or so; at least the bigger ones have. The smaller one has more than doubled in size since we got her and is better able to compete with the larger ones. I am not sure we will be able to wait until April to take them to market. They may weight over 500 pounds by that time.

It is always fun to watch the chicks grow into mature chickens; to watch their bodies produce feathers as they grow. It’s amazing. Right now they are still pretty cute. They are only just getting their wing feathers but they still look downy over most of their bodies. They have tripled in size which is good because the nights are getting cooler and we need them ready for the cold within a few more weeks.

I took a few minutes to water the trees in the garden and the berry plants yesterday evening. The rest will have to wait until this evening. With the nights cooling off and the dew settling over the plants through the dark hours the plants look les stressed than they have over the past several weeks, but they will still require a lot of attention until the rains return – if they do. The days are still hot but the temperature barely makes it to the high nineties before rapidly cooling for the night.

Mama takes animate things and cares for them while I tend to focus my efforts on the inanimate. It has always worked well for us. She enjoys the character and animation of living things – dogs, pigs, chickens, cows and hopefully soon, sheep and goats. You can easily determine their needs and meet them through a daily routine. I take the seasonal view and look after the trees, bushes and vines. Their changes are subtle and slow but incredibly beautiful; long term commitments with fruitful rewards, seasonal pleasures, lasting year after year.

Mama rushed around yesterday to get packages and cards out for birthdays. This is our birthday month. Catherine used to start us off on the 16^th or 17^th (I am never sure) but now that honor goes to Bridgette on the 11^th. Cori follows on the 18^th. My birthday falls on the 20^th. Rebekah’s on the 21^st. Nate’s birthday is on the 22^nd. Mama and Chase finish out the month with birthdays on the 29^th. It is still a fun month even though we are scattered abroad.

When I lose access to this calendar I am not sure what I am going to do to keep up with the birthdays. I am not going to commit them to memory. That is relegated to Mama and her memory. Somehow we will muddle through but it is one of the conveniences I have grown accustomed to while working for ConocoPhillips over the last thirteen years; one of the many.

I am told that we will continue working through the middle of October but I am not placing too much confidence in that. I have also been told that the layoffs will start in Houston at our main office there and the HR team responsible will work their way outward from there. That is one team I do not want to be a part of. I can only hope I will not have to make the announcements to anyone in my group before I get released.

Again, that is not something I can count on.

Urgent travel, Bridgette, Granddaddy

Thursday and Friday were quite eventful for me and Mama – and for Becky. Becky called Mama on Thursday afternoon while she was at the doctor’s office to tell Mama that they were going to induce her that evening or the following morning. Mama asked to speak to the attending nurse – just in case - and got solid confirmation on the news. So we made plans to get to Hot Springs, AR that evening.

We had to wait on Victoria to get off work because we were taking her car for the trip so we ended up leaving about 7 pm. Both of us had had very little sleep and we could feel it as we drove most of the way in the dark; arriving in Hot Springs a little after 1 a.m. We drove straight to the hospital and went through the emergency room entrance to the OB ward to find Becky.

At that time her contractions were just beginning to intensify and they were not going to induce until around 4:30 so I went to the car, rolled back the seat and went to sleep. Mama joined me a little later but was not there for very long. Becky called her to come back to the room and help her after what Mama tells me was a little less than two hours. In my sleepy state I thought only a few minutes had passed between her getting in the car and Becky’s call. I slept soundly until just before 7 a.m.

When I got to the room a few minutes later the baby had just come and the doctor was stitching Becky up from a very slight tear; or, so I was told. What surprised me most was that Mike, his mother and his sister were in the room through the entire delivery. I cannot remember that happening anywhere else any of our babies or our grandbabies was birthed – even in West Virginia. Mama was there – as she should have been (comforting and coaching Becky) – and was the only active participant other than the doctor and nurses.

Becky was in hard labor less than an hour; complaining the entire time that they did not give her an epidural. She dilated from 2 cm to 10 cm in the course of less than an hour so by the time the nurse checked it was too late for the pain relief. The baby was crowning less than an hour after the nurses final check and the doctor on call was in attendance for less than a half hour. Bridgette weighed 6 pounds even and was nineteen and a half inches long; healthy and beautiful. She appears to be a very good baby – sleeping for long stretches and nursing well every three hours or so. Becky is very blessed.

Becky does very well with the baby. It is surprising to see her as a mommy. We were not terribly impressed with the baby’s father but he is a big step up from Becky’s estranged husband. He appears to be harmless and seems to be interested in the baby’s welfare – and Becky’s by extension. Perhaps, if they do stay together he will grow on us but it was awkward to be around him and his family. We left on Sunday afternoon after a very disappointing morning at church and after taking Becky and Mike to lunch so Mama could snuggle her two day old granddaughter one more time.

On the way home Cori let us know the Granddaddy Davis went home to be with the Lord. She and Nate got to be with Granny as he left this world; not a happy event for those close to the family but not necessarily an overwhelmingly sad event either. He’s home now.

Thank God for a blessed hope.

Rain, raising things, Becky

When I got up yesterday morning I was a little disappointed to see that there was no standing water anywhere. All I could see was that the sidewalks were wet. It was supposed to have rained pretty hard through the night; although I slept through the entire storm. I did not find out until much later that we had gotten an inch of rain. I was surprised because there was so little evidence of it anywhere. All of the rain had soaked into the very parched ground. I believe it has been four weeks since we have had any rain at all so there were cracks in the ground more than an inch wide; plenty of places to hide an inch of rain.

The weather pattern shifting to cooler nights is a welcome change here. The days will continue to be in the nineties but the nights will fall into the fifties at times with the average being the low sixties. Winter will soon be upon us. That is always a welcome change although, once again, I am not totally ready for the cold weather yet; at least not as far as getting water to all of Mama’s animals through any hard, freezing weather.

The thirty baby chicks Mama got recently are growing fast. They are at that awkward stage when they are no longer cut little fluffy chicks but are starting to get their wing feathers which makes them look like some type of missing link. Mama fools with them daily and she tells me they are calming down but I don’t see it yet. As far as noises, next to reptiles, they are about the quietist animal we have raised.

The baby guineas are very noisy cousins by comparison. While we had the guineas at the stage where the chicks are now, we had to darken the garage through the night to get the two of them to be quiet. The older of the two would make something between a chirp and a squawk with the same intense volume as Rosie’s bark. Even when they were relatively quiet we could still hear them at the other end of the house. But that is what they are for – to make noise whenever they feel threatened. They will be our alarm system for the barnyard. I just did not know they got started that early in their development.

Mama and I love to grow things and right now we have our hands full with the chickens, the guineas, the pigs and the calf. Victoria will have her hands full next week when Mama and I will be gone for three days as we go to Hot Springs, AR to see Becky. She is scheduled to be induced on Monday morning and so far we have no idea what to expect because it is difficult to interpret her news about the pregnancy.

The last I heard she was telling Mama that she is at thirty eight weeks but the baby is at thirty five weeks. I am not sure how that works but math was never her strength. For some reason she believes the baby quit growing at week thirty five and if that is true, that is not good news. But with Becky, we can never really be sure. And there is no one close to her to tell us what the doctor may have said.

She called Mama in a panic yesterday to tell her that she had bits of broken glass on the floor and her vacuum was broken and she had a baby coming this morning. (She babysits.)I do not know what she expected Mama to do but Mama told her to call around and see if she could borrow but she told Mama that everyone she knew had broken vacuums too. Mama told her that if she was in a good church, these little problems would be much easier to deal with. She called back late yesterday evening to tell Mama that she had found someone in the volunteer fire department – a lady that continues to invite her go to church with her – was going to lend her a working vacuum cleaner so she could get the glass off of her floor. Her being so isolated is probably our biggest concern; especially after the baby comes.

God supplies so many of our needs through the church family I cannot imagine life without them.

Labor Day weekend updates

Friday around lunchtime Mama and Victoria picked me up at the church so we could leave to go to Chappell Hill to see my Mom and Dad. We left the van at the church so Brittany Wycoff could use it to go back and forth from her work to the farm to tend to the animals. It was a pleasant enough drive to Mom and Dad’s after we got past Ft Worth. It took us almost an hour to cover three or four miles at the junction of the highway from Decatur with I35W. On the way home we took a very different route.

Mom and Dad are not in too bad a shape but they are failing physically in a rapid progression. Dad is having problems with his memory to the point that Mom feels she has to watch over him constantly, providing hour by hour instruction and guidance on even the menial everyday tasks; taking medicines, keeping appointments, signing the checks to pay all the bills. She even has to remind him how to write his name with each check he signs. He told me he has trouble remembering how to make the capital D in his Signature. They are relatively mobile although they do not go far. My siblings near them are getting fatigued in caring for them; in doing the little things that make their failing years more secure; grocery shopping, lawn mowing and small house repairs.

Mama and I will be going down in a few weeks to do some roofing for them. It has been an ongoing project for over a year and Mom is very discouraged about the money she spent on shingles that have sat in their way under the carport for all that time. My brother Danny who was supposed to have done the work has abandoned the project. We did bump into Danny after we took Mom and Dad out to eat right after we got there Friday evening. We talked well into the evening Friday and finally went to bed a little after 10 pm.

I had to borrow the cushion from the small couch they have in one of the front rooms of the house so I could make a pallet beside the double bed in the bedroom where Mama and I were sleeping. After nearly thirty years of sharing a king sized bed it is very difficult to share a normal sized bed. We were all up fairly early the following morning and out the door to go to Rogers, TX to spend the afternoon with Sarah and Fabian, Tim and Janet and all their kids. As an added bonus Chase and Makaila met us over there on their way home from a cruise. We left Sarah and Fabians about 3 pm and got home in time to water the plants, tend to the animals and get set up for Sunday.

Monday we all went to Victoria’s house with Mama’s mower and chewed up some of the tall, very thick grass on her little property. We got half of the property – about an acre – done in the two hours we spent working there. I took the weed eater and tried to clear around obstacles Mama needed to avoid while Victoria worked cleaning out the chicken coop. One more workday like that and we will be able to keep up on a normal basis. Victoria was excited about the effort – even though we did not have time or energy to do it all.

Monday afternoon I took the sink out of the laundry room and prepared it to replace the sink in the kitchen while Mama and Victoria watched Luke, Gracie and Joseph for Erin and Sam. Then on Tuesday morning I took out the very yucky kitchen sink and put the stainless steel one in its place. I ended up calling Lee to replace the supply valves under the sink because I could not connect the pre-plumbed faucet to them.  It took him less than an hour to sweat off the old valves and put on the new ones.

Mama is very happy with the change.