Successful drop off, Grandpa’s prognosis, bottle babies, Bible blitz

Cori and I were up at 4 am and out of the house on the way to the airport at 4:15 am. I do not know the time she was supposed to fly out this morning, but we had her there in plenty of time. It was interesting to watch the attendant that helped Cori check in scrutinize the COVID report paper. The attendant even called up a list of acceptable tests to verify a negative result and I had to identify the “antigen” test on the list before she went through with the verification to allow Cori to complete check in. It makes me wonder if there is some desperate training in the flight industry because of a customer becoming stranded in a foreign airport because their COVID papers had not been accepted. The result being that no attendant wants to be “that attendant” who allowed a passenger to be boarded only to be denied entry into the country of destination.  

Fortunately, Cori’s heavy bags were checked against her first-class ticket without question. I had handled the bags three time at the point of putting them on the scales at the counter. They really were unusually heavy. The two bags weighed sixty-six and sixty-seven pounds respectively. She was allowed to have up to seventy pounds each. One of the reasons Cori came was to retrieve all the schoolbooks for homeschooling the kids through this year and into next year. To allow for her to have just two heavier baggage, Nate made the tickets first-class tickets. The cost trade off to pay for two heavy bags versus three bags less than fifty pounds was close to the additional cost of the upgrade to first-class. I told Cori, I will have to try to get Mama in first-class sometime. Not just for the nicer accommodations provided in first-class, but to let her pack two bags to seventy pounds. She would love that.

Mama did not go with me this morning. She did not necessarily want to get up too early this morning knowing what lay ahead of her today.  She has been out of the house since 9 am, mostly for a cardiology appointment for Grandpa. This was an important appointment since Grandpa has had so many pains in his chest recently. As related by Mama as she was traveling in the company of Grandma and Grandpa, the appointment went well enough. Grandpa’s diuretic meds have been doubled and he now is being tasked with having nitro pills with him at all times. Those are to be taken at each instance of pain. That is to be done as quickly as possible. Also, as soon as possible, Mama is to schedule Grandpa for an echocardiogram. Other than that, we wait and see how Grandpa feels each day. Sadly, he has admitted to feeling very poorly on most days.

Having finished up the medical and Sam’s errands, Mama I driving to a farm near Leoni – a fellow myotonic goat breeder – in the general vicinity of her morning’s errands. Leoni contacted Mama early this morning with pictures of several bottle babies on her neighbor’s farm. The neighbor is going through a difficult financial time and is not able to properly feed her nanny goats. The nanny goats, in turn, are refusing to feed their little ones. It is a survival tactic common in the animal world to preserve the life of the mommy in the event of a dearth or famine. Thus, the little ones will need to be bottle fed if they are to survive. So, the kids are being sold for a small fee to help the owner of the little farm and at the same time seek a good home for the starving little ones. Mama is only interested in acquiring little does from the available kids – and if the pictures are any ideation, they are beautifully marked little girls. On the positive side, we have enough help to handle the feeding as long as Mama does not overwhelm us with more than two new babies to tend to. Mybe we can handle three, but I would rather just two. With a batch of eggs in the incubator, eight baby ducks in the grow-out box and an additional incubator on the way to the farm, we are going to be flush with baby animals. That is a fun activity we get to participate in at the farm.

Saturday Mama and I are going to help pass out Bibles at the swap meet here in Decatur. It is typically a very well attended event. That event begins today, but I am not able to get involved either today or tomorrow without taking vacation. Mama and I have not spoken about how long we will dedicate to the Bible blitz, but I am looking forward to doing what we can. Of course, we will have to get feeding done before we are free to go Saturday morning, but that should still allow us to be at the booth by 9:15 tomorrow morning.

It remains to be seen if we have bottle babies to feed as an added chore in our morning feeding.