Struggling for direction

I have been asked by several people if I am enjoying retirement. I am, but with a caveat. I am still struggling to find the time to do all the computer related items I used to squeeze into a normal workday, checking account balances, making doctor calls, writing, paying the bills, etc. Somehow all the time spent in the desk chair at the computer seems unproductive when compared to the multitude of projects I have been able to work – some to completion. So, by the time I feel free to do all those electronic chores the day is usually far spent. 

Perhaps next week that will change somewhat. Next Thursday I will be starting to work at the creation Evidence Museum two days per week. I have not worked out all the details, but I feel certain everything will fall into place as I move forward into that role. It is one of those ready-fire-aim circumstances when we step out by faith and let God fill in all the details we did not know needed attention before we started.

Victoria is in one of those circumstances right now. We were rejoicing Tuesday that she was able to find an apartment, a studio apartment, that would accept her dogs. The management even waived the pet deposit to simplify her signing the month-to-month lease. It is not an inexpensive space. The rent is $1050/month for the very small space. It can be compared to having a kitchenette (stove, refrigerator, microwave and sink and cabinets) and a full bathroom tucked into her bedroom. Where she will go from here is not yet known, but she has a place of her own, such as it is.

I am told that she is spending one more night with Nana and Papa Shipe before she commits herself to the apartment. So far, this has been a tough week for her, but all in all, it has been a blessed week. So many at our church, as well as all of us in her immediate family, have been earnestly praying for her as she has met a few difficult challenges and seen her way through each of them. She is not settled yet, but she has a starting point, and she has some onsite help and council. 

I have spent my time this week focused on the container. The walls are painted and now I am working on leveling and repairing the floor so it too can be painted. Mama and I have gone back and forth on what to do with the floor, but sealing and painting it is probably the best option for now. That has proven an unexpected challenge. I ordered a quart of a certain oil-based paint many months ago and decided to apply it to the floor at the far end of the container. It looked beautiful, so Mama and I looked for more of that brand and color of paint. We searched high and low, but none was available. The next best thing was to match the color with a different brand of paint but no one in Decatur had anything comparable. Mama and I finally went to the Sherman Williams store and bought their brand that would match the color and use we needed. It was not cheap. In fact, it was kind of expensive, but it will work, and I am confident we will get what we need out of the purchase. I hope to have the repair to the floor done – some deep gouges in the wood – and be ready to paint the floor next Monday.

My goal is to have the shelving we purchased for the container assembled and placed before I go to Glen Rose Thursday. With that plan in mind, Mama has been aggressively organizing her craft supplies in the house to be ready to fill those shelves once they are in place. That has always been our plan, but it has been a long time in coming. Mama has been very patient with me.

Meanwhile, in-between working on the garden and completing the fence in the back yard, Norman has been sorting through his tools, which are currently filling our barn in preparation for a yard sale this weekend. Mama and I have donated to the cause. Selling scrap, hauling junk and selling his tools is the only income he has had this month. At this point he is very motivated to reassign ownership of all the stuff he has accumulated over the years. He has cleaned out one storage unit locally but has another unit completely full. 

Along with what is currently filling our barn, I have begun to wonder how he accumulated all he has. I realize the accumulation happened over time, but the money spent to obtain all this stuff must have been significant. Certainly, far more than he will recoup in a yard sale. Yet here we are praying wholeheartedly that he attracts a crowd willing to trade their cash for his abundance of stuff.

I think secretly Grandpa would like his barn back so we can buy some cows. 

Fast review, a new garden, a new direction

Since I last wrote, Mama and I have traveled to Honduras and back, plowed and planted a large garden (with Grandpa and Norman’s help) and watched Victoria leave home to start a new life in Florida. Bear in mind, we have only been home for about two weeks. So much happened in Honduras, it is always difficult to summarize. Since Mama and I have been part of the Come Away Conference in Iglesia El Faro for four or five years, we are familiar with most of the attendees each year. Mama and I help where we can during the conference because it makes it more fun to be there when we can support the hosts. The conference is a huge blessing to Mama since it is conducted entirely in English. 

This year we added Marta and John Espinos to our growing friends list. He is native Honduran. She is a Brooklyn Hispanic. They met and married while he was in the states but when he got spiritually convicted about being illegally in the US, he turned himself in to the authorities and was deported. That was five years ago. So during the past five years, Marta will travel to Honduras for a few weeks every other month and return to the United States to continue working here. They are hoping to get John legal entry to the United Stated this year. They were a lot of fun to be around.

We had a great time with Nate, Cori and the kids. We always do. We spent a few days at the beach early in our time there. Since there were not seashells to collect where we stayed, Mama and the kids collected sticks and rocks. I had to figure out a way to get the twelve to fifteen pounds of rocks into our luggage for the return trip, but we made it. I cannot fault Mama for the extra weight in our suitcases, I bought about twenty pounds of leather we had to trim to fit into the largest suitcase. We also had to carry back forty pounds of coffee. Twenty for us and twenty for Victoria. 

Grandpa and Norman had plowed the garden while we were traveling, but renting a large tiller (one that fits on the back of the tractor) to finish working the soil before we could use our normal sized tiller to finish preparing the ground to plant. Renting the tiller seemed straight forward, but the first one they brought home was unusable. It had been broken by some previous renter. Norman and Grandpa had to take that one back to the dealer – over an hour away – and then go to a second location for that dealer to get a working tiller. Five hours in all to return the broken tiller and get home with the working one. But it eventually worker out.

Last Friday we planted six long rows of potatoes, three short rows of onions, six cabbage and six broccoli plants. We will plant more over the next few weeks and eventually fill the entire garden bit the weather is a bit unpredictable this time of year to get too far ahead of ourselves. I am more hopeful of a harvest this year because of the change in location of our garden. 

This morning at 4 am, Victoria loaded up the dogs and headed to Florida. The trip seems to have gone off without a hitch; however, the extended stay hotel where she booked her stay in Pensacola turned out to be extremely disappointing. The room required an additional daily pet charge on top of the money already fronted to a two week stay and the room was filthy. Victoria fussed to the desk clerk and finally asked for cleaning supplies to try and clean the room to an acceptable standard. She has since sent us several pictures of the dirt she cleaned out of the tub and off the bathroom floor. She told us the dogs are whining and laying with their noses at the bottom of the entry door. I guess they prefer the smell of the hallway to that of the room. 

Tomorrow Victoria is looking at an apartment she could possibly rent for a year while she looks around for a permanent home and at a potential mobile home to purchase. We will wait to see how all that works out, but she is safely in Pensacola and has a few days before she is scheduled to start working at the Walmart in Pace, where she transferred to. 

Knowing she is not coming back home is a little saddening, but Mama and I are prayerfully supporting her new direction in life. As long as the Lord is in it, all things will work together for her good and His glory. 

That is His promise to us – and to Victoria.

Another scare, major upgrades, tentative plans

We had a bit of a scare Thursday morning with Grandpa. It was apparent that he was not doing well by just talking to him. He was having obvious trouble breathing even lying down in bed. Mama was extremely concerned and began to speculate about the need to reschedule our trip to Honduras. That angst followed us through the entire morning until about noon when, Grandpa got out of bed, dressed himself, and joined Mama and Norman in the living room. it was well into the evening before he felt like eating anything and then, he asked only for a piece of toast with jelly. He was not despondent and overly concerned, but he did share with Mama and Norman that he had not felt that poorly in many months. 

As he began to move around, he began to feel better. Better enough that he and Norman went on several small jaunts to get some little things for Grandma. Today, he seemed improved. His breathing was better but still difficult. The swelling in his right ankle and calf have lessened noticeably. We have cautioned Grandpa to keep his feet elevated – especially when he is lying in bed. Since we have several recliners in the house, he is able to elevate his feet somewhat as he sits in the living room. It is not optimum, but it is better than letting his feet dangle for hours. 

We are on a very short timeline with Grandpa, but he is in good humor. As Mama talked with an elderly friend from church about Grandpa, Mama made it sound as if Grandpa was knocking at death’s door without realizing how much in despair she sounded, she had pronounced him ready for hospice. It gave the impression that we were watching for him to take his last breath. 

When Mama got off the phone with our concerned friend, she realized just how desperate she sounded and apologized to Grandpa who has heard both sides of the entire conversation since he was in the living room with Mama and Mama does all her phone conversing on speaker. Grandpa just laughed and assured Mama he had enjoyed the conversation. He told Mama playfully, “I didn’t know I was that bad off.” 

In the container, I have continued working on the windows. I have completed trimming them windows inside and outside. Yesterday, I took a heat gun and dried the seal at the top of the window enclosure, scraped off the caulking that had separated from the metal container wall and applied a liberal coating of roofing tar to seal the gap thoroughly.

Since the caulking had held out about 95% of the water, the roofing tar will cover over the working seal and reseal the leaking areas. Each window took be about forty-five minutes to treat, but today, as it rained, I got to see if the time had been well spent. It seems to have done the trick. There are no leaks that I could find today. I got to observe the rain from inside the container for several hours because I was completing the trim on the last window and then sanding the cedar trim on all the windows. 

Tomorrow, we will finish up the wall trim, finish up the base trim, finish up the ceiling trim and do all the last of the caulking needed to seal any air gaps. Hopefully, with the heater I bought, I will be able to begin putting the urethane on the cedar trim and paint the walls. I assembled and tested the propane heater this evening and it should be just what we need.

To paint, we need the interior above seventy-five degrees. I believe we can get that done. The ambient temperature is forecast to be sixty degrees Monday. All we will have left is to treat and seal the floor. We are so close now. 

Mama and I will still continue packing for our trip to Honduras with our eye carefully on Grandpa. One true philosopher stated many years ago, “Life is what happens while you are making plans.” James 4:15 cautions us to always consider God’s will in our plan, “For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” 

So, with our heart set toward God and our eyes cautiously observing Grandpa, Mama and I will continue to follow through on our plans to go to Honduras. 

Proverbs 27:15, scrap, job hunting

In the container, I thought I had only one leak on the four windows, but as I worked on putting cedar windowsills on the windows today, I discovered that three of the four windows have little leaks coming from the top sill of the windows – where the frame is cut into the side of the container. I got to discover all the leaks because it rained through the day. Not a heavy rain but a steady drizzle. Enough to give me a steady drip on two of the four windows and a steady trickle of water into the container on the fourth. 

Oh, well. It should be an easy fix and since tomorrow and Thursday are forecast to be dry, I will get to apply the remedy soon. Friday is forecast to be a rainy day, so I will get to test my fix and see if I chose wisely. If I did the battle is over. If I did not, we will try something else to seal the tops of the windows. But I felt confident enough in getting the leaks stopped, that I went ahead and did all the windowsills. Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will start trimming out the windows. I plan to do the trim in cedar as well. I will take some pictures when I am further along, but Mama and I are very pleased with the look of the windowsills I completed today. 

The barely leaking frames reminded me of a verse in Proverbs where a continual drip is compared to a contentious woman. I guess Solomon would know about dealing with a contentious woman. Since he had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, I am sure not all of the one thousand women in his life were sweetness and demure humility all the time. Get that many women in one kingdom competing for the attention of a single man and there is bound to be drama. Thank God I have only Mama. One is enough.

Don’t get me wrong, Grandma and Victoria are still in the house with me and Mama, but Grandma tries to get along and Victoria tries to disappear. When she is thinking with some measure of clarity, Grandma is easy enough to share our home with. When her meds take over, there are some interesting and difficult moments. Those are few and manageable. Grandpa is a huge help in the difficult times. As for Victoria, it is not easy to tell that she is home most times. She largely keeps to herself and her interactions with us, when she does come out to join the larger group, are mostly fun. I say that with a bit of sarcasm, because I spend most of my time by myself – working on the container or farm projects or working on the computer. Mama always knows where to find me, so I suppose she is happy with my absence from the confab. 

Norman and Grandpa picked up all the metal pipe and roofing scraps stacked in various locations across the property. They gathered up all the baling wire I had wound and hung over fence posts or stacked in bundles near where we feed out the wire-tied bales of hay. They salvaged all the small pieces of rolled fencing, barbed wire and chopped up cattle panels and accumulated all that scrap into the dump trailer Norman is borrowing. That large dump trailer is now overflowing. Norman put together a heap of copper lines and wire, brass pipe and fittings and aluminum wire fragments I have been saving for just such a time as this. These were kept apart from the other metal scrap. They will be sold separately. 

I have resisted the task of compiling all these items because I have only a utility trailer to haul the refuse to the scrap yard. With the utility trailer, I would have had to handle all those items a minimum of two times. Once to get them onto the trailer and once more to get them off the trailer at the scrap yard. With the dump trailer, the handling was minimized. The items had only to be loaded then dumped at the scrap yard. 

This cleanup was not necessarily benevolent on Norman’s part, but it works out well for me and Mama. Norman desperately needs money and selling scrap is one way to get a few dollars. I am more than happy to donate all this scrap to his cause. Please pray for Norman as he looks for steady work. Finding a good job is not as easy as some make it out to be, but he is earnest in his quest. He wants to stay close to Grandma and Grandpa. That is wise. 

I am confident God will lead him in the way he needs to go – if Norman will allow God to do so. 

Above freezing, a new restaurant, a possibility

For the past several nights the temperatures have been above freezing. That is a welcome relief to me and Mama. I suppose it is welcome to our flocks and herds as well, but it is difficult to tell just how much the cold affects them. In simple terms, from our point of view, it is easier to provide drinking water to the chickens, pigs and goats when the water containers do not freeze overnight. Praise the Lord! 

Winter is not over by any means, but we will enjoy the non-freezing nights for as long as we can get them. I have hesitated to hook up the hoses, but I will probably do that tomorrow. I have hesitated because along with the warmer weather, we are getting a long stretch of rainy days. Hooking up the hoses then means dragging them through the wet, sometimes muddy, ground. When that happens, everything gets a little nasty, so I have continued to carry water from the yard hydrant to the chickens and pigs, leaving the coiled-up hoses on standby. 

Mama and I took Victoria out for her birthday dinner this afternoon. Victoria was sick on her birthday, so we waited until she was feeling better on her day off. For the next two weeks, she has only Monday’s off. Her heart was set on Thai food, but the restaurant she most favored is closed on Mondays. So, she had to find an alternative. Boy, did she find a great one! The tiny restaurant is located in Denton, almost on the campus of the University North Texas. It sits less than a block from the University cafeteria. 

The menu was not huge, but the selections offered a breadth of foods we were familiar with because of Andrew and his family and because of Mrs. Happy, a Korean woman in our church in New Jersey, who was a Thai food connoisseur.  Many of the foods overlap in those two cultures, but the Thai way of preparing those familiar dishes in slightly different. Each of us, Mama, Victoria and I, enjoyed what we selected, and what we sampled from each other’s selections. 

The portions were large enough to get each of us comfortably full, but the only part of the three meals we brought home was the broth from the Spicy Ramen Soup I ate. I had to eat a couple pieces of chicken from the dish Victoria ordered, but Mama, who ordered a “tray meal” from the menu was able to clean her plate on her own. Prices were good. My soup cost less than a meal at Braum’s, which is one of the cheapest places in Decatur to eat a burger right now. We will be going back, especially since it is so close and easy to get to. It may be our new favorite. Mama will let me know at some point if that is the case, and I will be ready to agree.

Saturday afternoon, Mama, Norman and I made the trip to Lewisville to look at an RV. We debated back and forth, but finally made the decision to make the drive. When we found the RV that Norman had found online, we were quickly ready to walk away. It was in poor condition for the price being asked. The seller was texting back and forth with Mama, so Mama let him know we were going to pass on the initial RV. When he responded, he let Mama know that in the same row of RVs for sale, there was a second RV of the same type (a toy-hauler) we should look at. That one was far better. The setup was exactly what Mama, and I are looking for. It was even equipped with a queen-sized bed in the garage part that was mounted on rails. The bed could be raised to the ceiling to open space in the garage then lowered back down when needed. That was a surprise bonus. 

Mama quickly made an offer. The seller made a counteroffer. His price is a little too high and we are not in a hurry to buy just yet. Mama told the seller we would contact him when we get back from Honduras – mid-February – to see if the RV was still waiting on a buyer. At that point, we may be in a better situation to negotiate and get a lower price if we are still interested. The seller wished us well but offered no further comment. 

I was contacted by Energy Worldnet today. They forwarded some forms to me for me to look over as well as to acquaint me with the process of working in a contracted capacity. I let them know that I will not be available until March, but the wheels are set in motion to begin working on some courses for my old employer. It is something we talked about before I left, but I was not sure if they really needed me to help. 

It would be fun to take on that role. 

Mostly easy, pre-packing, temporary packing, repurposing, exploring

Today was a lazy day, sort of. It was cold and very windy outside, so we all spent as little time outside as possible. Mama and I did our normal feeding in the morning, but I did not work in the container at all today. I am letting Norman take the lead on trimming out the windows inside the container and I did not want to alarm him by starting a project he has promised to take on. I was still hurting badly from yesterday, so I needed a day to recuperate anyway.

Since we were inside for the morning, Mama and I got out the suitcases we plan to use for our trip to Honduras and began to pack those suitcases. As we did so, the anxiety of all we have accumulated to haul to Cori began to abate. We have been easily able to fit everything we need to take into two large suitcases and two carryon suitcases. Cori alerted Mama that there is more to come which is more important to carry with us than anything we have in our possession, but with the space left in the two large suitcases, I cannot foresee a problem. As far as meeting the weight limit for the suitcases, we are well under the allotment at this point. That may not remain true as we finalize everything, but we are ahead of the game for now. 

Later in the day, Mama emptied a cabinet in the dining room that she and Norman are going to prep for paint. As Mama packed the little tea sets and pitchers that have set in that cabinet for almost fifteen years, I began to wonder once again, why we are hanging onto these unused, and potentially unusable, fragile items. The tea sets and pitchers are beautiful, and I am sure they have some value, but they have very little value to us. Keeping them in the cabinet has preserved them and kept them clean, but they will almost certainly never be used. Having to take the time and care to handle all the little cups, saucers and pitchers was a reminder of how much we have that we simply do not need. Finding ways to get rid of or sell such items is a challenge – which is why Mama and I have never pursued that. It may be time for us to try again.

Norman and I split some more firewood from a tree we had cut up earlier in the week. Since it was very cold today, we started a fire in the fireplace early this morning and will keep it going for the next few days and nights. We split the extra wood, not because we needed it, but because rain is forecast from Sunday through the week next week. It seemed a shame to let the wood we cut for splitting get soaked when we had a chance to split it and bring it in. So, we will have plenty of firewood for this little cold snap. 

I do not know why we did not think of this before, but Norman showed Mama a picture on Pinterest of someone using an old crock pot as a heated waterer for their chickens. Mama and I just threw out a crockpot we had had for years because the ceramic insert was seriously cracked. Fortunately, Norman has three old crockpots in storage, and he gifted Mama two of them to use in the coop. That is far better than paying a high price for a company engineered heated chicken waterer. I need to buy two short extension cords to place the pots somewhere other than under the roost – where the water will get contaminated with poop – so I will make that purchase tomorrow morning after bus calling and put the not so fancy heated waterers in service tomorrow afternoon. 

Early tomorrow afternoon, Mama, Norman and I are going to look at a toy hauler RV for sale. That is, if it is still available. Mama and I have talked about purchasing an RV for some, but there was not really a need to part with that much money unnecessarily. Now, with me praying about spending at least one night per week in Glen Rose, owning an RV has some merit. Timing is the issue. We are not obligated to buy this VR, but it would be prudent to begin searching for one so we can determine what we need and want when the time is right. 

I am still undecided about how to handle the schedule I will need to meet when I do start doing research at the Creation Evidence Museum, but I have until the first week of March to pray about it. 

It will be interesting to see how God works it out. I just need to stay out of His way. 

Window completion, bonfires, Candy

Maybe I am too much of an optimist, but the completion of the exterior enclosure of the windows on the container took a bit longer than I had anticipated. To frame, trim, caulk and seal the windows took me about three hours per window. The good part is that the windows are uniform and the frames they are mounted in are uniform, so the size of the wood on the fronts, sides and tops was fairly uniform. I had to shave, shim and fill differently on each window, but the wood I cut in bulk was close to fitting each respective space, but that is the way things always work out with trim work. What made all this a challenge was the corrugated sides of the container the windows were fit into. 

To seal below the windows took a bit of work, but I have done all I know to do to get the windows sealed against the rain. They will be tested in the coming days. Hence, the urgency in completing the work today. Fortunately, the day today was perfect. It was the only day that we are forecast to be above fifty degrees for a long stretch of days. So, I did not quit until I was done. Even still, the foam I applied to seal underneath the windows to fill the openings where the corrugated sides provided a large void did not fully cure in the ambient temperatures the day offered. The temperature in the morning is predicted to be twenty degrees. We will not see fifty plus degrees until next Tuesday. Hopefully, I will not have to dig out the uncured foam sealant and try again in warmer weather. At least as warm as February in North Texas can offer. 

Meanwhile, Grandpa burned one of the smaller plies of trash and limbs that he and Norman have piled in various locations across our property. I counted twelve such piles which will all be burned eventually. The one Grandpa started with was the smallest. It burned for about four hours. I imagine the larger stacks will burn all day and most of a night once we set them alight – one at a time - through the Winter. That will actually be fun. I did not get to participate in the small bonfire today, but I hope to make time for those larger ones in the near future. 

Mama spent most of the afternoon in Decatur working on her Sunday School classroom while Grandma went to the beauty shop to get a perm. Her second in a promised string of trims and perms planned for every other week. We will see how long the ritual lasts. Grandma is a little hard to please, especially since she seems to remember that a perms used to cost twenty-five dollars. The cost is triple that today. Before they left to make the appointment, Grandma was adamant that there would be no tip offered to the beautician. I did not ask if she followed through on that. 

Late yesterday evening we were told that Mama’s Aunt Candy passed away. She had spent about a day on life support while her children discussed a path forward in her care. Once the family took her off life support, her struggle ended quickly. By her own testimony, Candy was ready to go Home. She was Grandma’s baby sister, only eighteen months older than Mama. Candy as a late in life baby for Mama’s Grandma Lawrence. Candy had nieces and nephews that were older than her. It was always an interesting dynamic. Please keep Candy’s children in your prayers. A few of them do not know the Lord. For them such a loss is difficult to bear. For those of us who know the Lord, it is a celebration, a respite, a release from suffering and sin. Our day will be her soon. 

Trace has been very helpful in keeping us informed on all the events happening now that Candy has gone home. We will not be going down to Florida for any of the services even though Grandma feels compelled to try to make an appearance. Such travel is outside of her ability whether we try to fly her over or make the two-day road trip each way. Grandma swears she is up to it, but she clearly is not. Another of those times that our mind is making promises our bodies cannot keep. I certainly fit into that category more and more. 

We had a blessing today in that there was no damage to the well apparatus in the barn lot well house. I discovered the day before yesterday that the lines had frozen sometime during the near zero temperatures we had experienced for several days. The lines did not seem frozen hard but there was no way to tell until I warmed the wellhouse sufficiently to repressure the tank on the well and test the lines. I bought a thermometer to put in the wellhouse so I could monitor the temperature and ensure we keep the enclosure above freezing. I warmed the wellhouse overnight and pressure tested the lines this afternoon. All is well. Praise the Lord!

We will still have to haul water to all our animals for a couple more days because of the persistent cold, but we got to use the yard hydrant behind the coop today for the first time in over a week. That will be the only time we will use that hydrant this week. 

Warmer, wetter weather is forecast for next week. That will be welcome relief.