Choosing Wisely, Please Vote, Anniversary

I have maintained throughout my Christian life that the most difficult decisions are not the ones between right and wrong, but between better and best. It is fairly easy to choose properly if we consider one of the two choices we could make clearly leaning to a sinful outcome. We often know what is wrong and thankfully avoid, by God’s grace, choosing that wrong. 

What challenges us as believers is when, of the choices we are considering, none of them are clearly sinful in and of themselves. Choosing what to eat or drink, where to shop for our basic needs, what route to take when driving to a particular location. That sounds over simplified, but it is not. Depending on the circumstances or the timing, those decisions can be affected in either a positive or a negative way. So, we make as informed a decision as best we can. (And we can certainly pray for guidance in each of those choices.)

More subtle choices that have a profound effect on our lives are choosing the right friends to connect our lives to, or choosing a church to attend with our family, or the schooling we will provide for our children. These are important decisions where we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to choose wisely. (Do we pray about those decisions or just let things evolve on their own hoping the Spirit is guiding us?)

Less in focus is choosing our elected officials. It may not seem connected to our lives in any direct way, but the choices we are about to make in the coming Texas primary are fundamental to the government we will have for several years to come. I bring this up because I have been trying to parse through the noise to help identify the candidates we will pick during this primary runoff. Mama, Grandma, and Grandpa are looking to me for that guidance. I appreciate their trust, and I certainly do not want to violate that trust. 

So, the choice comes down to taking what is available and known about each candidate and making the best choice, especially when there is not really a good choice among the candidates vying for the respective offices. Early voting begins today for the primary election here in Texas. I do not know how the general audience feels about early voting, but we will vote early because it is available to us, and it makes it convenient for us to get Grandma and Grandpa to get to the polls. 

They want to vote, so we make it as easy as possible for them to do so. When we are relegated to one day, in-person voting we will comply. With early voting, the polling station is almost always empty. Rarely have we encountered a crowd. We generally walk into the polling station, present our ID, get our ballot and the code needed to register our vote and go to the voting booth. That is important for Grandma. Anyway, if there is a primary in your area, please vote. Do the best you can to choose wisely, but please go vote. 

Along the same line of thought of choosing wisely, I am really struggling at the moment. In order for Mama and me to keep the farm, I must draw from our saving every month to make up the shortfall in income. I have tried several avenues of earning the required shortfall, but none have proven the right course of action. I have not chosen wisely in any of these attempts to bring in the extra income. Don’t get me wrong, Mama and I are not in danger of losing our farm, but I feel I have less than a year to make some kind of drastic adjustment to our lifestyle to stay financially solvent. Please pray with me about that.

Mama and I are both at the point where selling the farm would be an option. I am physically challenged to do the work by myself so having Grandpa and Norman to do a large portion of the upkeep has been a blessing, but that cannot continue too much longer. Plus, Mama and I would like to downsize and perhaps relocate to Florida, and I would love to provide that for her sooner rather than later. While we both have the health to enjoy such a life. I am finding myself longing for a simpler, less obligated life. I am longing to have Mama to myself for a while, if we can ever work that out. Such an endeavor will be a series of better versus best choices. Pray that Mama and I will be very sensitive to the Holy Spirit in each decision - whenever that time comes. God’s way always produces the best outcomes. Proverbs 10:22 “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.” That’s what I’m looking for.

Today is Grandma and Grandpa’s 64th Anniversary. Kudo’s to them.

Fires, close calls, FBI

Over the past couple weeks Maggie and Brittany have separately shared similar events. In the recent past, Maggie’s oven caught on fire. As I understand from Mama’s story, it was an actual fire that had to be put out. I am not sure of the details, but the situation was corrected without further incident. In Maggie’s apartment living environment, that sort of fire could have been devastating to a lot more families than just hers. 

In a similar incident, Brittany called me on a Sunday morning to ask advice about a burning plastic smell in her house early that morning. She told me she heard a pop and then smelled the unmistakable scent of hot, if not burning, plastic. The furnace seemed to be the culprit so all that was shut down until it could be inspected. There was little she could do but wait. 

It was several days later before I followed up with her, and by that time the furnace had been replaced. The breaker had overheated – the pop she heard – and allowed some of the wiring to also overheat to the point of catching on fire briefly. It self-extinguished so there was no threat to the house, but the overnight temperature following the loss of heating in the house was 5 degrees above zero. Fortunately, her house was above freezing Monday morning, but just barely. It just struck me as a bit odd that both Brittany and Maggie would have experienced those similar events in a short span of time. 

As I stated in past notes, we have been seeing the return of the hogs to our area. They have given us a three- or four-month reprieve, but last night they were back. When Mama and I went out to feed this morning I found that one lone hog had traipsed through the garden to root under a tree at the East end of the garden. The rows of potatoes and onions had been spared. It was a close call.  However, the leaf-covered area just outside of the garden towards the barn lot had been thoroughly searched by a large group of hogs. It looked like Grandpa had plowed it up. In the long run, it is a benefit to us, but we praised the Lord that He steared the hogs away from the garden itself. I put in the posts required for the fence Friday afternoon but was not sure what fencing Norman and Grandpa wanted to attach to those posts. We will erect some kind of fence today. No sense tempting the goodness of God.

Mama and I thoroughly enjoyed church yesterday. I had at least enough voice that people could hear me, but it is not a pleasant voice to listen to at the moment. I have a true pirates voice. Deep, hoarse and gravelly. Most unpleasant. I am under doctors’ orders to try and talk with a normal volume as I speak, but I found out that I still have to force the volume a bit to get enough sound out that I do not have to constantly repeat myself. By the time Mama and I retired for the night, my vocal cords were sore, and my voice was very raspy. I do not think I am much better this morning, but I am a poor judge of that. 

Mama has not complained. She can at least hear me now. It is a bit disheartening to sound the way I do, but I am told it is part of the process.  I just try to bear in mind times in the past when a sore throat or some respiratory ailment changed my voice temporarily. It always returned to normal at some point. I am a bit overanxious to be able to sing again. Right not I cannot even sing softly. Or make any king of musically related sound. Maybe soon.

Mama and I have FBI class tonight (Faith Bible Institute). It is our second time through the classes, but the amount of information covered in the classes is still almost too much to take in, even in our second iteration. Both Mama and I have enjoyed the teaching as we are going through the book of James. What a humbling spiritually and intellectually challenging training it has been so far. We will complete our study in James in our class tonight. I find myself wanting to go back and replay all the hours we have completed and see what more I can get out of the presentations. Galatians is next on our course list, and I am certain it will be just as interesting to do an in-depth study of that Epistle as well, but studying James has blessed us both. Now, if we can just remember even a little of that information. 

We are experiencing a very warm February with nights in the mid-forties and days in the mid-seventies. I am not complaining, it is most pleasant. My concern is that this Spring will be short leading to a long, very hot Summer. No one knows for sure if that will happen, but it looks likely. For the moment, we will enjoy the weather we have been given. 

Hope, Hogs, Visiting, Staying

It seems that after ten or more consecutive years of failed gardening attempts here at the farm, hope springs eternal. Grandpa and Normal once again planted potatoes and onions in the old garden spot just west of the wellhouse. Fifty pounds of potatoes were planted along with about one hundred onion sprigs. I am not sure how this garden will turn out but based on past experience, I do not have high expectations. 

Every year the potatoes and onions have gone into the prepared ground and have looked like they were actually going to thrive and produce a crop for us. And every year the early summer heat, the hogs, the rabbits, the raccoons, the birds, or the bugs have destroyed the plants before any fruit could be realized. But once again, last week, Sunday to be exact, Grandpa and Norman, plowed, tilled and planted the cut potatoes and onion sets. 

Today I will work on setting a fence in place to keep most of the ground critters out of the garden. To facilitate starting the garden Mama is keeping the chickens confined to their respective enclosures through the better part of the day. Letting them out only an hour or so in the evening to forage for a short time before they go back into the coop to roost for the night. At some point, Mama and I will clip the wings on the chickens to keep them from being able to fly over the fence into the garden. Then they can be allowed to roam more freely through the growing season.

All this labor could be for naught, but it keeps Grandpa puttering about. 

There is some urgency to getting the fence in place because we are starting to see signs of the feral hogs on the property once again. Several months ago, Norman and I shot and wounded several on the large hogs. We did not shoot to kill because we wanted them to run off into the woods to die. That seemed to discourage them from foraging on our little property for a while. Now, it would appear, they are back to including our farm in their circuit. 

If we do not fence the garden, they could easily destroy it one night. The hogs travel in groups of twenty or more. Mamas with six to eight babies each are not uncommon. And they grow so fast. At six months the piglets are ready to start reproducing, so keeping the population in check has often been a challenge. Since I do not enjoy shooting the hogs for sport, I have to force myself to kill them out of a sense of preserving our home and property. 

It has been fun having Victoria visit. She, of all our children, interacts with Grandma and Grandpa best. It is her willingness to play along with them in their banter. I tend to get lost in the game, but Victoria seems tuned into the repartee and can make the conversation fun for them, especially Grandpa. As far as conversation goes, Grandpa tends to be reserved. Not so with Victoria. So, her visit has been especially good for him. But also was an encouragement to all our friends and family at church. She, Grandma, and Mama went to the Wednesday night service. I stayed home still recuperating from my surgery. But I got several texts from church family about how good it was to see Victoria once again. 

Victoria will be flying home tomorrow morning. At least that is the plan. Thunderstorms are forecast for our area in the morning, but we will just have to see if that affects her return flight. Her flight is a direct flight, so it is not like a delay would interrupt her travel plans too much. It will be sad to see her go, but we have had a great visit.

Norman was talking about leaving for Florida next week and staying there for a couple months, but those plans seem to have fallen through. I believe it is for the best. Grandpa depends on Norman to keep him involved in the variety of ongoing projects he accumulates. Right now, Grandpa is focused on helping Norman repairing a truck he traded some labor for. It turned out to be a bigger project than either of them realized. As is the case with most of Norman’s projects.

It will be well worth the effort should he and Grandpa succeed on resurrecting the truck, but I am not holding my breath.

Surgery, Traveling, Bible Reading

After having slowly lost my voice over the past year, I finally went back to the ENT to see if there was a remedy. Turns out there is. All I needed was a new doctor to look at my vocal cords. I had the required minor surgery yesterday morning. I am told everything went well, but it is hard to tell based on how my voice now sounds. The doctor reiterated several times to me and Mama that we must “trust the process.” Full recovery may not happen for several more weeks, which is a little disconcerting since we were also told that the gel inserted directly into my vocal cords may be absorbed by the body in only a few months. Six at the most.

The pain from the injection is not at all difficult to bear, but the pain of talking is worse for the moment. I have explicit instructions to speak in a normal voice – no whispering and no shouting. The second of those two admonitions will not be difficult to abide by. The first, speaking in a normal voice, is proving a bit more difficult.

Once I found out that surgery was required, I had originally prayed that I would get the surgery prior to leaving for Honduras. My thinking was that I could spend the time there with a stronger voice as I recovered. I am glad that did not happen. I did just fine whispering to everyone in English and Spanish. Savanna was extremely attentive when she did not have earphones on. 

Mama and I had a wonderful time with Cori, Nate and the kids. We went to the beach in Tela the first day we were there and stayed fairly busy throughout our stay. Mama and Savanna gathered about ten pounds of small rocks from the huge piles on the beach. All of them were taken away from her as we went through security. We were disappointed but not shocked when one of the four agents insisted that we could not take any of the rocks or glassware Mama had in our borrowed checked bag. She was the only one who had an issue with the items, but she persisted until everything had been confiscated. 

Come Away was great. It seems to get better each year. The weather was mild, towards cool. Most of the Hondurans were dressed very warmly. Pleasant morning walks in their neighborhood were one of the daily highlights of their new home. Back on the farm, the weather was extremely cold. 

The ice that kept Norman, Grandma and Grandpa housebound for five days accumulated to the point that the roof of equipment shed attached to the barn collapsed. Norman estimated that there was over five inches of ice sitting on top of the roof. I did not build that roof with that kind of burden in mind. The repair will be difficult but not overly so. That is the only damage we suffered on the farm. Praise the Lord!

Mama and I got back to Texas about 1:30 Friday morning. We were in bed about an hour later and up at six a.m. to take care of our animals. Mama was anxious to see her recently hatched chicks. Needless to say, we took a long nap that afternoon. Saturday was catchup to all the farm and household needs. Sunday was church. Monday was shopping for essentials and a pre-op appointment with our ENT. Tuesday morning, we picked Victoria up at the airport. I have to say, “Thank the Lord” for the online flight apps. Victoria’s flight was delayed twice, and the arrival gate was changed three times before we met her. Those updates got us to the right place at the right time, otherwise I am not sure how things would have worked out.

Yesterday was my surgery. We had to be at the Denton Surgical Center by 6 a.m. and so we were up at 3:45 for me to get cleaned up, showered and shaved before we headed to the surgery center. I slept for several hours after we got home letting the anesthetic ware off and fought severe dizziness for most of the evening. The dizziness was the residual effect of a narcotic based pain medicine I was given before I was told what it was. All in all, it has been a good experience. Though I do not look forward to repeating the surgery on a semiannual basis, if this does restore my voice, I will have to plan accordingly. 

For the first time in our married lives, Mama and I are using the same Bible reading program to read through the Bible this year. It is nice to share ideas and questions with each other as we read the same passages in our Bibles each morning. I highly recommend it. I am not exactly sure why we have not done so before except that I did not like the program Mama used in the past. We had each been using our respective printouts for years. At least since we lived in Amarillo twelve or thirteen years ago. But as we looked over a Bible reading program put out by Victory Baptist Church in Milton, we both were attracted to it and have been using it since the start of the year. 

Good times.

Planning, Norman, Victoria

Mama and I spent about an hour at a friend’s house last night looking at her set up for her freeze dryer and it really augmented our desire to get one. The long discussion with Jan built in Mama’s and my mind an application for a freeze dryer that would allow us to justify the expense. I made the commitment to the Lord, however that I would not buy a freeze dryer until we had the cash set aside for that particular expense. At this moment, we do not have that money in hand, but there is no urgency either. We will continue to pray and see what God will do. It’s exciting to see God work in our lives and to see our prayers answered. We have had a freeze dryer on our prayer list for a while, so maybe we are close to getting one. After last night, it seems far more practical than over the past few weeks. 

One of the issues I have been wrestling with is where we could fit the large appliance. It is not necessarily a quiet appliance to operate and the cycle of freeze drying can be as long as 24 hours. The vacuum pump for the freeze dryer can also generate a good bit of heat, so the placement of the unit needs to take into account that additional temperature in the room where it is placed. 

So, when we got home, Mama and I began to look for a place. I believe we settled on removing a set of upper cabinets from the west wall of the chef’s pantry and setting the freeze dryer on the counter on that wall. That would allow us to run a dedicated circuit to the plug on that wall. That solves two of our problems. Now we need to settle on what size unit we need and focus our prayers on that. 

Today I spent most of the morning finishing up what I had started last night on a course review project for Energy Worldnet. But this morning, Word messed up on me so badly I lost everything I had done the night before. As I reworked the document, Word messed up on me again. I thought I had lost, for a second time, everything I had done. I finally got the bug worked out and got the document review completed and sent off for updating by the author, but that rework took me almost 3 hours to get done. This one revision will open the door for me to do many more projects of this nature for Energy Worldnet. The money that I earn doing this sort of review is not insignificant. It actually pays pretty well just to do course revisions as a subject matter expert. I’m not sure how many courses might be available for me to help with, but at least the door is open. 

Friday afternoon, the Lord began to open up doors for Norman to find enough work to stay here. As of today, that opportunity seems to have expanded quite a bit. As always, with Norman it’s difficult to tell what the outcome may potentially be, but for the moment it looks like there may be enough ongoing work for him to do his renovation, remodeling, landscaping, and handyman work, and earn enough money to more than meet his needs in our general area. If things work out that way, that will be a great relief to Grandpa. And admittedly, it’s a relief to Mama and me as well. It is not what Norman said he wanted, but that seems to be what he has gotten.

Victoria let us know today that she has an interview with Florida Health System for an opening as a pharmacy tech. That is a wonderful answer to prayer. It is only an initial interview, but it is a great opportunity. The interview is set for Thursday next week at 9:30. Please be praying for that to go well. What she is doing now does not suit her physically. It is a huge strain on her knees, back and wrists, but she is doing her best to apply herself to the scope of work she agreed to do for Walmart. She is obviously younger than me but walking over twenty miles per day pulling grocery orders in not an easy daily routine to meet. Then she will go home and take Kira and Kobe for a long walk…at a much more leisurely pace. 

Again, please pray for Victoria. 

Mixed blessings and total blessings

After months of praying for Norman to find a job he could be happy with, our prayers seem to have been answered today. It is not wholly confirmed, but it looks like Norman will be reporting to a crew tasked with building fences around some government facilities. Firstly, in Ft Lauderdale, FL. The pay is good and the per diem is excellent. As I am told today, he will be needed on the job by the first of May. This project is slated to last nine months. That is a mixed blessing because he has been a huge help to us here. We will be sad to see him go, but thrilled that he has this opportunity. 

Grandpa will miss Norman’s constant movement here at the farm. Norman’s drive to keep Grandpa stirred up has had a profound effect on Grandpa health – for the better. It encourages Grandpa and motivates him to be on the move doing what he can to support Norman’s endless schemes to earn a dollar. Grandpa’s finances have taken a bigger hit in supporting Norman than ours have, but everyone is still doing relatively well, other than Norman. He really needs this job.

Mama is concerned that she and Grandpa will not be able to keep up with the garden, but I know otherwise. Mama and Grandpa will do fine with the garden. We will all need help with the harvest when it comes, but the daily tending will give Grandpa something to do. My biggest loss in Norman’s leaving is all the help he has provided with the maintenance and repair of our vehicles. Neither Grandpa nor I can do what he does in that regard. My prayer is that all the required repairs have been accomplished. 

We still have two weeks to get help with trimming and felling trees about the property, loading the trailer with Victoria’s stuff and getting all those items to her when she closes on her house. Two weeks to square away the barn that has been filled with Norman’s stuff and sell off the many extra items he has accumulated. Two weeks to complete the repairs on our backyard fence. Two weeks to set the steel pipe for the shed we are adding to the shop. We will see what we can actually get done, but we have a pretty tight list. 

Honestly, I consider myself six to eight months ahead of where I thought I would be at this time as related to projects that have been finished on the farm. Other than the short list above, Grandpa and I can pick away at the other projects we have planned. Norman’s help has allowed me to rest a bit easier as I spend two days per week at the museum in Glen Rose. 

At the museum today, I was able to define some structures in a couple bone slides that had been used for the polarizing microscopes. I was a little disappointed that the images I was able to capture were not as clear as I would have liked, but I am hoping to learn some techniques to do better on image capture. The folks in the lab are ecstatic with the progress I have made in the past two days. I am pleased, but not a willing to celebrate just yet.  

Our last pregnant doe gave birth as I was driving home today. Mama called me as I was turning onto our road to tell me that she had needed to pull the little girl out of her mommy because the mommy was not able kid without a little help. Mama had been able to get a firm hold on the hooves of the front legs that had showed along with the nose of the kid and pull pretty firmly on the kid. Once that movement starts, it is not difficult for the nanny goat to finish the kidding. I have had to help several times, but this was Mama’s first. Happily, both the nanny goat and her kid are doing well. 

Since Mama had misgendered one of our little ones before she got a good look at the kid, we moved the total count a bit. We now have seven little girls and three little boys. Five of the little ones, three does and two bucklings, are blue. What a blessing.

Tomorrow is our first unencumbered Saturday in three weeks. We have so much to get done. As always, we will do all we can and let the undone things wait until next week. Since I am not teaching any more classes until late in the month, I will have the early part of next week to pick up what is left from tomorrow. 

Retirement is mostly good. God is always good.

Successes

I spent the day in the lab at the Creation Evidence Museum today. During the hours there I was able to get the help I needed. I talked through the issue I have been having with the SEM and it turned out to be a minor mechanical adjustment was needed to realign the beam through the gun. Once that was accomplished the tech had me go through a series of complicated steps to reset the beam alignment on the microscope. The tech was in California but was sitting in front of an identical model of SEM as he guided me through the calibrations. Since we made the adjustments several times in the last hour we talked, I was mostly certain I could reproduce the adjustments when needed.

When I got off the phone with the tech, I placed a bone fragment from a Amargasauras into the sample port and took a look. It turned out that I needed to repeat the adjustments to get the image to display. But I did get an image! None of us looking at the image had a clear idea of what we were seeing in the bone, but it was a magnification of 2,500 times whatever we were looking at. That was exciting. Tomorrow we will make a better sample to look over and really begin exploring. For today, I feel like we made huge progress. 

Taking a step back, it turned out that the problem I was having was a simple fix to something that should not have needed adjustment. The adjustment I had to fumble through was minuscule, but the outcome was grand. No one is sure how the misalignment happened, but it is corrected now. Fortunately, the tech knew what to do to eliminate potential issues one by one until he had the problem isolated. In so doing, I learned a lot. It was a good day.

Meanwhile, Mama and Grandpa went to the cardiologists today and Grandpa got a fair report. He still has an irregular heartbeat but is compensating well enough. So, the treatment he is under will continue as normal. There is not much more we can ask at this time. Grandma, seems to have had a major medical turnaround today. For two days she has confined herself to bed, getting up only for very brief spells which required someone help her make it back to the bed. Today, she is up, laughing and joking and having a great time. We are not sure what happened that made the difference, but I suppose we are glad for it?

On the farm, another of our nanny goats gave birth this evening. Mama has been watching her all day expecting the kidding, but we did not see the little ones until we were headed to Decatur for a visitation for our Pastor’s brother who died Sunday night. When we did spot the new little ones in the goat barn, Mama and I turned around to get a better look before we left the farm. Once again, they are Little Boy Blue offspring. Both of the little ones this time are boys, but that is okay since they will fetch a really good price in the Myotonic market. We have one more nanny yet to kid, but that will happen by this weekend. So far, we have four little girls and four little boys. One of the little girls we were nursing along died Tuesday night.

Our realtor In Lawton has been helping us replace the roof on our property there. I tried for several weeks to contact the insurance agency to get the roof inspected, but the agent that had been helping us, and the only contact I had available, died of cancer. Sad. So, our realtor made the contacts we needed got the roof inspected. The roof was totaled, and we should be receiving a check shortly to cover the expense of that roof repair. Our contractor, who’s become a friend of ours, told us that he would make sure everything fit well within the budget of the roof replacement so we should at least break even on that and end up with the brand-new roof on our property. 

One of the things that he told us specifically about the rental property, one of those praise the Lord moments, was that he was very impressed by the renters, he said the house was immaculate inside and out. That the renters are taking exceptional care of the property, which he rarely sees in his rental properties. So, he was extremely impressed, and we were very pleased, because we’re hoping to sell that house later this year.

God is good!