Tag Archives: faith

Letters to Diane – 29

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Dear Diane,

We made it through the 29th without any major issues. Actually, ewe made it without minor issues, too. It’s been a good day.

I just returned from walking Max for the 2nd time today. He’s really such a good little critter and I thank God every day for leading you to him. He’s a blessing, as are you.

Today I’m going to share something Lydia wrote that I really like. It’s mainly about you so it’s relevant, and she said it would be OK to share. This is about her experience at Diane’s memorial service on November 8th.

I quote Lydia

I didn’t think it would hit the way it did. Out of nowhere. Unexpectedly. On some level I should’ve known, it was  my first Christmas without her. But all day we went to church and sang and ate, spent time together laughing and opening gifts. But… But then it was 9:15 and I was sitting in an ugly yellow pew. An ugly yellow pew that wasn’t ugly at all because it was hers.

It was 9:15, in an ugly yellow pew and we were singing some Christmas hymn that was much too high, and then I was crying. He held me. I looked away from the screen with the words and my eye snagged on the candles. All the sudden I was 7 and she was showing my how t hold the wick, when to walk, how fast to walk, where to stop and bow before stepping up in front of His portrait and lighting the candles. Slowly, from left to right.

Then I was 10, it was unreasonably hot outside, but not here, not standing with her amongst the pews strewn with rows of handmade quilts. She remembered to show up early and turn on the AC. I only wanted the soup downstairs, but she made me stop and look at the quilts first.

Then I was 12, my brothers and I trying to shrink while pastor stood with his guitar calling the children forward. We thought we were too old to be considered children. She nudged us out of our seats, told us to snag a candy cane for her.

Then I was 13, standing over the heater again waiting for everyone to show up for choir practice.

16 sitting in the basement eating little sandwiches off of pretty floral trays with her and her friends.

18 and singing, 19 sneaking spiked spiced cider, 22 and chasing the boys through the basement as they giggled and she rolled her eyes, 24 and singing Hosiana next to her. The last time we sang it together.

26. 26 and sitting in the front pew. That ugly yellow pew. In a black dress. Family next to and behind me. Tears streaming, pastor speaking, her picture staring back at me. Pretty yellow flowers next to the candles, as I let her go. Or so I thought.

Because then I was 26. Sitting in an ugly yellow pew on Christmas Eve again, staring at the candles, listening to the hymns with tears streaming as my first Christmas without her passed. The organ was playing and people were singing, but all I could hear was her laugh, her scolding us for running, or standing over the heater while my dress puffed up. All I could see was her smile, her eyes rolling, her face.

Mom sang with the crowd, he held my hand, and I cried.

End Quote

I found this to be quite profound and a tribute to you and a little about how much she loves you. An addendum to her narrative is about the “he” she refers to. I asked and she said it was Jared, her boyfriend. He’s a stellar guy and will one day be a valuable member of the family. Heck, he’s already a family member. I glad you got to meet him before you left us.

Now I must bid you good night. I love you and I miss you.

Jerrie

PS — Here’s another favorite photo of you.

Day 164 – Tuesday – Moving East to Coburg

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Max was cold this morning.

Diane’s wearing his favorite coat because she’s cold, too. It was 29 when I got up this morning. That was outside. Inside it was a numbing 39. You’d think that smart people would leave a heater running through the night, right. Well, I’ve read too many stories about those things catching on fire. As for the propane furnace, they kill people in the night, too. So, we just let thing go natural and deal with it. Besides, once everyone is up the furnace warms it up quickly. That’s true unless you’re me, and you get up 3 hours before Diane, and you really do not want to turn the furnace on until she gets up. That’s not because I’m afraid, honest. It’s because it’s the kind thing to do. The furnace is noisy.

The drive from Highway 101 to I-5 was without incident. We did it at 55 mph most of the way and the bus performed perfectly. Not once on this trip has it overheated. Though I haven’t previously mentioned that issue, it’s been on my mind every step of the way.

We got to Armitage Park in Coburg around noonish. Since we are only staying one night, and we were in a pull-thru, there was no need to unshackle the car from the bus. For some odd reason we may never understand, I did it anyway. We had no plans to go anywhere so it’s perplexing that my mind allowed me to do that. Now I’ll have to put it all back together in the morning.

Max got to play in the dog run for a while and made a couple of new friends. Since I forgot to take my phone with me, a punishable error, I didn’t get any photos. Trust me when I say he got in a few zoomies that he’s been missing since last summer.

We don’t have a view of the southern sky so no satellite connection tonight. We do, however, have access to Netflix, and the Dish DVR for recorded shows. So, we watched old stuff, had a simple supper, then went to bed, anticipating our early arrival home tomorrow.

Only two hours to go.

Day 156 – Monday – Another night in Lodi, CA.

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The village of Petaluma lives on Highway 101 about 100 miles from our current location. That’s a reasonable drive for a day on the road. I know, some of you guys don’t get off the road until you reach the final destination no matter how far it is. Right, Doug?

We used to do that all the time when we wore younger people’s clothes. I think that’s something like a refrain from a Billy Joel song.

Diane’s calculating our next step after reviewing the weather on points north. What she saw totally rules out travel on I-5 through the Siskiyou Pass, so we are going west from Lodi to Highway 101. I may have mentioned that as a possibility yesterday. Today it’s a firm decision.

It’s 1035 now and we must check out of here by 1100 so I need to go outside and unplug everything.

NOTICE: There’s a long pause here caused by the need to visit the Emergency Room.

OK. Change of plans. At this time, it is 1908 hours and it’s been a very busy day. If you can do basic math you will see that it’s been about 8.5 hours since my last entry. So, “what,” you may ask, “happened to make it a busy day?” “Well,” I could respond, “Jerrie fell down and broke his crown and bled all over the parking lot. It could have been worse, but a healthy young nurse provided the help that he got.” Yup,

Here’s what happened.

I took Max for a walk around the park, all the way around, and returned him home so I could prepare the RV for launch to our next objective. As soon as I opened the door, Diane handed me a couple of bags that required me to transport them to the local dumpster.

Being of sound mind I chose to obey to avoid damage to myself.

Max accompanied me, as usual, and we deposited the bags in the dumpster and I turned to my left as I stepped away, and apparently stubbed my toe against one of the parking barriers strategically located near the dumpster.

As a result of my foot striking the parking bumper, I tumbled forward, knowing that a painful landing was forthcoming.

The landing never happened, as far as I could tell, because my next cognitive memory was of me in the RV getting my face washed by the lovely Diane. Apparently, there was a disturbing amount of blood on the left side of my face that was caused by the landing I don’t remember. Yes, I’m missing approximately 40 minutes of time from the fall until I regained consciousness sitting on the toilet in the RV. Although I was bleeding profusely, I retained enough legitimate wherewithal to ask Diane to take a photo to commemorate this onetime event. She took two of them.

You can tell by my smile that all was not right with my face. At this point, I was unaware of the amount of damage the fall had caused. Why else would I be smiling like that?

My memory skipped a little here and my next coherent memory I was outside listening to Diane and Dianne discuss the best course of action to address this catastrophe; call an ambulance, go to the emergency room, or wait until tomorrow to see how bad it really is. A trip to the emergency room won the discussion.

Not knowing where the hospital may be, Dianne led us to the closest one around. Diane led me inside and introduced me to the intake nurse and said the magic words that gets you to the head of the line. She said, “I think he may have had a stroke that caused him to fall.”

Boom! I was in a wheelchair heading down the hall to get a CT scan. Once that was done I was strapped to a gurney and a nurse pasted electrodes all over my chest then connected wires to them randomly to initiate an EKG. I also got an automatic blood pressure cuff and an oximeter. All of this was connected to the equipment behind my head. I learned that if I took the oximeter off, it made a bunch of noise. So, I left it on.

They put an IV in my left arm and a short while later a young lady appeared to fill six tubs with my blood. She took this manually from my right arm. She was very good, and I let her know she was appreciated.

Then I laid on that gurney for the next 4 hours waiting for more info from the doctor or a nurse passing by. During that time my face took on a different look.

Later in the day I discovered a wound on the inside of my left lower lip. It, too, was caused by my fall, I’m sure.

I found this one with my tongue. I’m guess it would really hurt if I got some citrus juice on it so I’m staying away from the oranges.

Now that I’ve shared all of this, I must report that I’m feeling pretty good, all things considered. So our plans to move to Highway 101 at the coast. are back in motion. We leave tomorrow morning for Petaluma. It’s 84 miles away and is supposed to take about 2 hours.

Day 146 – Friday – Route 66

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Diane took Max and me a little bit southwest of Barstow to visit a couple of places that caught her eye. Both are on iconic Route 66. Before going to those places, however, it was unanimous that we stop for lunch. Diane pulled off the road so we could search for a likely place to eat. The only place to pull off the road was to the left because to the right are railroad tracks, lots of them, where trains whiz by going 100’s of mph. Some of the places were within a few miles of us but the one that caught her eye was the Cross Eyed Cow Pizza in Oro Grande. She looked up from her search and saw a sign for that restaurant about 100 feet ahead of us, pointing to the buildings directly in front of us. To get there she had to pull onto Route 66, drive about 50 feet, then turn left into the parking lot behind the buildings.

From the parking area we entered through the back door.

Once inside, the young lady behind the counter told us to take a menu and sit anywhere we wanted. So we did, and studied the menu.

The menu was interesting, with lots of choices, and the area on the right (black on white) was a list of everything that’s on the menu. Interesting. We ordered a 12″ pepperoni pizza and 2 root beer floats. Though the place wasn’t full, it took a long time to get our order. Sadly, I failed to take a picture. The pizza was one of the best we’ve had in years, and we ate it all. The floats were pretty awesome, too.

The booth dividers are adorned with butter knives.

Max watched me take every bite and managed to get a number of little bites for being such a good boy. He spent most of his time laying under the table watching everyone else.

After finishing lunch, we went back to the parking lot where I got these photos.

This was actually the highlight of the day because it was so unexpected. Then we proceeded to the locations Diane had on the calendar.

The first place was called Antique Station. From outside the building looks like a strip mall of sorts where there are numerous individual stores, side by side. But. no matter which entrance you choose, you wind up in one huge store that’s full of an amazing amount of stuff and it’s all well-organized.

The second stop was Elmer Long’s Bottle Tree Ranch. Somehow, Elmer either inherited an unlimited supply of bottles he had no use for, or he drinks a lot and needed to misdirect observers away from that thought, he had a momentary flash of insanity and decided to make a device on which he could stick his various bottles to make them look like trees. These might also be what’s left over from when Elmer built the bottle house in Calico. I doubt it, but who knows? I’m pretty sure Elmer didn’t build that house.

Elmer spent a lot of time building his trees and adding the bottles.

And he has a stockpile of jars and bottles to keep him going for a while.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot Diane spied a white box laying in the gravel that was totally out of place. so she stopped and I retrieved it. Turns out it was an unopened pack of Japanese cigarettes unlike anything I’ve ever seen for sale here in the good old USA. Of man interest to us was the warnings they put on the package. All the writing is in Japanese, but they make it very clear that smoking isn’t good for you. They use pictures.

Kind makes you want to light up, sit back, and relax, right? I’ve done a bunch of research trying to find photos of the pack we found but they just aren’t out there. They do, however, have these.

Very graphic, huh?

Moving on, we joined the crowds on Route 66 and headed east back to Barstow. There actually wasn’t very much traffic, so the trip was very pleasant. We stopped at the Walmart Superstore about a mile from the base so Diane could get some essentials, then got back home in time for this.

Drilling in on this photo reveals what appears to be an airborne tornado. That, or it’s an alien elevator created on demand so they can get from one cloud to another. Isn’t nature interesting?

That’s it.