My Thoughts

After watching the national news this morning I feel compelled to comment on one of the lead stories. Pat Robertson, a well known evangelist, stated during his show, "700 Club", if your spouse has Alzheimers disease it is a cause for divorce. I could not disagree more with that statement which sent shock waves through the Christian and disability world.

When you marry part of the vows state, "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health forsakeing all others until death do us part." This indicates a long term, committed relationship, not until something goes wrong. Alzheimers is not an easy thing to go through, watching your loved one go down hill. In being transparent my family and I went through a loved one having dementia twenty years ago so, yes, I know what it is like. My mother didn't have Alzheimers in the classic sense. She had a condition known as "older age hydrocephalas" which had the same effect. We watched as she lost her mental faculties over a number of years until she collapsed, was finally diagnosed, and went non responsive for several months. This was a journey of a year and a half until she passed away. Did my father see this as a reason to leave her? Absolutely not!! He stood by her until the end. Yes, she was in a nursing home but it was because neither he nor I could care for her for several reasons. Not to get her out of the way. We made the decisions about her care, but Daddy made the arrangements.

It is not a large leap to see this could happen with disabled children or others. Rather then careing for them put them in an institution and sign away parental rights. It breaks my heart to read about parents aborting their children when they find the child will not be"normal".

In keeping with transparency, I am multiply disabled. I was born with Turners Syndrome, a form of dwarfism and have some of the complications it brings. I have severe hearing loss, glaucoma, diabetes and the list goes on. The list of medications I take is not short, but not as long as other, and some of them are not cheap. They keep me as healthy as possible and able to be with my grandchildren. I am thankful for my husband of thirty one years who has stood by me as these things have come along as we have grown older. There are times when my frustration about thing has gotten the best of me and I have snapped at him when it wasn't warranted. I apologize, but once out, like feathers in the wind, the words cannot be taken back. I am thankful for his patience over the years on many fronts.

Mr. Robertson, I pray you will rethink your position on this. Scripture states we are all "fearfullly and wonderfully made." We are "knit in our mothers womb". We are are precious in his sight and have contributions to make.

It Has Been An Interesting Week in My New Hometown

It is now midweek and time to assess the past few days. Things are starting to dry out a little from the rain which has been drenching parts of middle Tennessee. We had been watching the weather reports on Tropical Storm Lee as it came up through the Gulf of Mexico. The previous weekend of major Hurricane Irene had stayed far away from us but went over some relatives of ours. Thankfully they were spared any major damage and avoided injury. The rain started coming down in earnest on Sunday, really just pouring down. Our niece drove down from Kentucky in it so her trip took quite a bit longer than usual and boy, did her car get washed....free of charge. The temperatures crashed down into the seventies from the previous day high of near one hundred degrees. By the time the storms arrived it was now considered a Tropical Depression, but still packing somewhat of a wallop.

We had a great time with our niece, son, daughter in law, and grandchildren in spite of the fact we were not able to grill the hamburgers outside because of the weather. We enjoyed good conversation and were able to show our "new" house to Bethany. The only downer was the fact we ended up with water in the basement through the floor drain. We got out the mops and cleaned up deciding that if there were water in the morning we were calling the roto-rooter man inspite of the fact it would be a holiday, which usually means paying alot of extra money.

Sure enough there was water in the morning, Labor Day, so the Roto-Rooter man was called. He arrived several hours later and did clean the pipes but told us the problem was not in the house. It was the device attached to the house, known as a sewage pump, which is kind of like a giant garbage disposal. I guess it makes sure the "stuff", makes it from the house to the pipes down at the road. That made things the county's responsibility to fix. Therefore the bill for the Roto-Rooter mans service lower than it might have been. The man from the county was here and quickly fixed the problem on the pump. YAHOO!!! We shouldn't get a bill on that count. Hopefully we won't be dealing with water in the basement for a long time. He also told us the device on the outside of the house to tell us there is a problem with the pump isn't reliable. At least we know what to watch for now.

Tuesday came and it was time to go to the eye doctor to find out if the drops prescribed for my glaucoma are doing their job. I didn't have to take Ter to work so I could have the car because we still had the rental car from having the exhaust manifold on the TrailBlazer replaced. Not a cheap repair but still glad to have it done. That took a little off of me for the day. I left with what I thought was more than adequate time to make it to the doctor. Through several things, includeing a stop for gas, I ended up being about twenty minutes late. I was extremely thankful they still were able to work me in for the needed test. The results were good, the pressure in my eyes has come down nicely so my sight will be protected. I have lost some peripheral vision and see halos around lights but am very thankful the problem was found and is being controlled. The day ended with a trip to a neighboring town to look for a second vehicle which will make life so much easier. I will be able to take care of things while Ter is at work without the hassle of having to drive him to and pick him up from work. We looked at a couple of little pick up trucks and I think Ter's interest was piqued, which is good. It has been an interesting week so far and we will see what God brings for the rest of it.

Whew, Things Are Settling Down

I am sitting here at the kitchen table doing my first bit of writing on my new computer. It has Wi-Fi capabilities so I can work anywhere in the house...or go out on the front porch,deck, or patio. The computer was part of my birthday present and is greatly appreciated. It is also time to reflect on the past little over a month while getting settled.

Moving day, of course, was hectic with getting things out of Pat and Myla's, the storage facility, and getting them moved the fifty some miles to the "new" house. The essential things were put away while the rest was put in the garage and basement for later sorting. The day was made more memorable by the fact the grandkids spent the first night in the house with us. Now we could make arrangements for our things to come down from Michigan. Thank God for dear church friends who loaded the truck, a twenty eight foot trailer, mostly full to come down. Things didn't quite work out as originally planned but the company we hired got our things down here in good shape. Some friends came and helped with the unloading which included a dip in the pool. The weather was almost one hundred degrees with high humidity. The unloading went quickly. While the men were unloading, I went to a nearby town and purchased our new washer and dryer along with, unexpectedly, a new over the range microwave. It was discovered while moving in the one in place would do everything except warm food...not good. Things are now down to where final decisions will have to be made on things to donate, toss, or eventually have a sale.

The next step was to get our drivers licenses. Getting mine turned into an all day affair. My first stop at a license bureau was totally unfruitful as this office didn't handle out of state license transfers. The next stop showed I had forgotten my birth certificate to go along with my old license (you are required to have two proofs of identity) so a forty mile round trip back to Fairview was in order. While home I decided to grab our copy of the warranty deed to the house with the way things had been going. It was a good thing I did as you are also required two pieces of proof of ownership of property. I still ended up having to sign an affidavit stateing we actually lived at the address in Fairview because our copy of the warranty deed wasn't certified. I was about to the end of things when I flunked the vision test. I think more to the fact I misunderstood the gentlemans directions than my recently diagnosed glaucoma. This made for a seventy mile round trip to the eye doctor to get a form made out. With my third stop at this office, and over one hundred miles on the car, I walked out with my prize....a drivers license!! After all the hubbub I had Ter drive home because I was just plain worn out.

Things are settling more into a routine, which I prefer, and becoming more familiar. I am slowly learning the area. We are beginning to get established in a church. We have seen some interesting things here like buzzards hopping around the pool area then flying up to fence posts to look in the house at us which was a little disconcerting. We also found a baby snake in the pool filter when cleaning it...thank goodness it was a baby. Who knows what else God has for us here in Tennessee

Whew, what a week!

Well, we are home again in Tennessee after an extremely busy week. It started off over the weekend with us joining our friends doing some minstrel type playing and singing in Smithville, Tennessee. We had asked our friends if we could park our travel trailer at their house until we get into our "new" house. They quickly agreed and we were to join them for a cookout. They called and asked if we could come a day early and join them at the music festival in their new home town....and bring our instruments. Ok, we did. The trailer is safely at their home and off we went to the festival. What we did was walk around the town with our instruments stopping in three locations to play and sing. It was a real hoot with people taking our pictures and singing along with us. The last place was in the middle of an intersection downtown, yes, the road was blocked off for the festival so we were safe from the possibility of being run over if people didn't like our playing! We started playing and singing going into the old favorite, "I've Been Working On The Railroad". Some small children began dancing to our music with the encouragement of their parents. That was fun. We kept going and on a couple of the numbers we had the adults clogging (dancing) their hearts out. Wow, that was something to see. We had a ball and I'd do it again in a heartbeat....with one lesson learned. Don't bother with your instument case, just carry your instrument, you'll have less to contend with while walking around.
Wednesday rolled around and it was time to leave for Michigan to sign the papers selling our farm. The trip north was smooth with one exception of running into major construction along the freeway. They were resurfaceing and it ended up taking us two hours to get ten or fifteen miles. Can you say, "Make sure you have brought along things to do if you are the passenger?" Although things were made interesting by the fact my phone rang twice....once to handle paying for one of my medicines. I ended up putting it on the wrong piece of plastic and had to call them back to get it changed over. Wow, what technology has brought us! Taking care of things while going down the road! Then the phone rang again. This time it was a doctors office wanting to set an appointment for after we return from our trip. I'm glad I could put the time and date into my phone so I wouldn't forget it. The rest of the trip was pretty quiet, thank goodness.
We arrived in Michigan in time to drop off the trailer we had rented to haul some more things back to Tennessee. Then it was off to sign the final papers for the farm. It was an emotional time. The farm is in excellent hands and will remain in the farming industry. We've known the family for years both as friends and working with them in business matters. They are already working on putting up a new barn and building a HUGE pit for either "grey" water or the odiferous stuff. I can't imagine the size of the hole. We immediately went to the bank to deposit the check for the farm. I think we held on to it for a whole fifteen minutes!
Then it was back to the farm to pack up what was left of our things. We packed, threw out, and donated for the next two days. I did work in a good lunch with my very best friend, Mary, along with closing out one of our bank accounts to move our new bank. We managed to condense things quite a bit, but still have alot of things to come down. We will more than likely do more donateing and selling of things once they are down here. We had a quick cookout with Ter's side of the family on Saturday afternoon. We truly appreciate the fact Ter's sister and family stuck around to help with packing and took some things to find new homes for. We finally pulled out to start heading back about seven o'clock, we had hoped to pull out around five but kept finding things that needed to be done. We said "Good Bye" to our former neighbors and headed out. We did make it almost to where we normally stop for the night, Anderson, Indiana. I actually slept until eight o'clock Sunday morning which is really late for me. We took our time eating breakfast and then completed the trip back. This time not running into the horrific back up due to contruction. All in all an extremely full week, but a good one.

Time has moved on....

It is now July and we have been here in Tennessee since April. Things have kind of gotten into a routine. Although, things should be changing soon. We will be closing on the sale of the farm very shortly and hopefully moving into our "new" home. Yes, we settled on a house to buy and are moving forward on being able to move in. It is a comfort we will be able to buy the house outright, no mortgage, which is a blessing. It is also a blessing we had a ready buyer for the farm in the wonderful people who have been renting the land for over forty years.
We hadn't had much success looking at houses on our own when our daughter in law suggested someone she knows from college who is in real estate. We spent one afternoon with her looking at houses and settled on one. It is pretty much everything on one level, which is nice for me, with a huge master bedroom and two other bedrooms. One for an office and one for guests. Off the kitchen/dining area are double doors which open out onto a deck, patio, and pool. Especially the pool sounds good right now with the summer heat being on. It will be great exercise. The kitchen is a nice size and the living area is a good size.
Right now Ter and our son are scheming on how to hook up a laundry area upstairs so I won't have to haul laundry up and down steps. This will be cheaper than installing an elevator which they were first discussing. We will probably turn the downstairs into a rec/exercise room. It has been fun going furniture and appliance shopping. We are learning the stores with Pat and Myla's help. We are deciding on a few things now.
One huge advantage to the location of the house is it will avoid the horrendous traffic which Ter battles now to get to work. I love downtown Nashville, but it is better to avoid rush hour times where the freeway can become a parking lot...or close to it with the slow moving vehicles backed up sometimes for miles. I have driven in the rush hour traffic and the thought of the day is be patient, and don't try any quick moves. The area where we are planning to settle is a growing town, but they want to maintain their rural atmosphere. That is ok with me! I will be happy to start really getting settled here in Tennessee. I do like it here. Oh, by the way, the house does have a huge magnolia tree in the front yard.

Finally Calming Down a Bit

We are starting our third week in our new location, Tennessee. Things have settled down quite a bit. The month before we pulled out was kind of a blur. It started out with getting a phone call that Ter's job would be ending as of March 25th...Oh no, here we go again thinking back to 2003 and that not memorable time.
Ter's boss told him he could search for a new position within the company. That lead to his being hired for a new position in Tennessee, in fact Nashville. We would be near the "kids" and foster grandkids.Of course we were ecstatic about not having to go on unemployment but there was alot of work to do and the company would have preferred us down there in two weeks!!! Our moving plans suddenly got moved up by a year or more! The speed changed from regular to "let's make the jump into hyperspace", as they would say in Star Wars. We did manage to talk the company into a couple of extra weeks before starting down in the Nashville office but it was still no where near enough time to get the farm sold, house packed and everything else. We worked ourselves into a frenzy trying to get things done.
Thank God for friends who helped us. One dear friend has offered to move us down here at near to no cost. He happens to be a professional mover so we got lots of packing tips. We discovered how much stuff we had accumulated over seventeen years of living in the same house. Things were packed, donated, given away and we pretty much filled a dumpster. There was still plenty to accomplish when we had to pull out. A couple of nights before pulling leaving, a dear family from church pulled in and helped with packing for a couple of hours. Some more left with them and more things were put into boxes. We are so thankful for these friends, we can't express it enough. One of these friends came and helped in spite of waiting to have major back surgery and not being able to lift anything. She did what she could, bless her so large, giving heart.
One last bit of excitement when we went to pull out....Ter hit the key to start the TrailBlazer and it was dead! Absolutely nothing happened. Oh Great!!!! It was quickly diagnosed as a dead battery. Our dear neighbors gave Ter a ride to Costco for a new source of power for the car and we were finally on our way. Really the trip down was pretty uneventful, and thankfully so. As always we had to pull over at a Cracker Barrel for at least one meal. A tradition we keep up when we have been coming down here. I don't know how much we will do it now we are becoming residents. We arrived at the "kids" where we'll be for a little while until we find our own house.
It definitely has been a little adjustment to living with eight people in one house, especially four small children. We are learning and things have calmed down in our lives. We've been out looking at the outside of houses and have decided on a couple we are going to look at the inside to see if they are to our liking. It is different here in the south. We went to a fish restaurant last week and they actually had alligator on the menu. Neither of us was brave enough to order it, though. Give me a little time on that one, sports fans. I'm told alligator tastes like chicken but has a chewier texture.
Things were a whirlwind but God definitely blessed. Our plans were moved up in timeframe considerably, but I believe things will work out. God does promise to bless us and things work to His Good. He is in control.

We're Grandpa and Grandma!!!

These last few weeks have been a very interesting and exciting time. We had received a phone call from our son and daughter in law asking us if we had any of his stuff left over from when he was a baby and toddler. They were going to be taking in a sibling group of four kids, ages six to six months as foster children. My goodness!!! What a huge influx of little ones for them. Of course we said yes and began planning a trip to Tennessee to deliver the things. We were elated for the children arriving but then other thoughts began to enter our minds.
These included, “What will they have the kids call us, they are not a permanent part of the family?” “Will the kids take to us?” We were finally able to leave on our trip after some delays because of a doctor appointment and subsequent having to find the medication I needed. Ah yes, lesson learned? Never assume you will have a quick and simple doctors check up in going the day you are supposed to leave! We pulled out several hours later than we had planned, but it worked out. We arrived at our hotel around 9:00 after a great supper at Cracker Barrel, a stop made every trip.
We woke up the next morning, had breakfast at the hotel, and then hit the road again. Rather than driving straight down to Smyrna, Tennessee, we took a side trip to Owensboro, Kentucky to visit the International Bluegrass Music Museum. We had read about it several places and our curiosity had been piqued to see what was there. It was a great couple of hours walking around looking at instruments played by the early founders of this interesting genre of music which in some quarters is growing in popularity. The time ended with us buying some souvenirs, of course, and being invited to hang around for the music session, known as a jam, a couple of hours later. Unfortunately, we had promised to be in Smyrna at a certain time so it was “On The Road Again”, as Willie Nelson would sing. I’m sure the museum is a place we will visit again.
We finally arrived and met the children as they were having some supper, pizza, always a favorite. Pat asked me to take the four or five year old to wash her hands. As I got her started on the task, she looked at me and said, “Are you Grandma”? Oh my, what to answer? I really didn’t know what to say. I gave her a neutral answer at that point and we went out to play and read books. The grandkids were really excited about the two boxes of books we had brought along to give them. In talking with Myla after she got home the question of what to have the kids all us was settled. We were Grandpa and Grandma….WOW. The emotions were indescribable to hear those words spoken to us. All weekend it was Grandpa this, Grandma that and it was wonderful! Reading books to them, playing, just soaking it all up. Saturday morning we awoke to the sounds of the baby waking up, talking to herself and zipping around the crib. I got up and went across the hall and saw three little faces poking out of the other bedroom. I said, “Oh, come on, you can get up.” Soon our bedroom was filled with children, toys and books. My goodness!! We were more than happy to let our “kids” sleep in a little bit and entertain the grandkids. A busy day ensued and ended with us taking care of the grandkids so the “kids” could have an evening to themselves…you think we minded much? Not really.
The next day we all went to Chuck E. Cheeses for lunch and a little “burn off some energy” time for the grandkids. What fun it was for all of us. We traveled back to Smyrna and reluctantly said, “Good bye”, with lots of hugs from everybody. We pulled out to head for home. Was it a full weekend, yes! Was it tiring, again, yes! Was it worth the trip? You bet your life! We love these children as though they are a permanent part of the family. They were created by God and deserve His best and we will be the best Grandparents we know how to be for them. The love of children is one of the best things you can have in this world.