Winter is Near

Hey, Y'all,

From the looks of the weather outside and from what the newscasters are reporting, November weather is finally here. I know we are going to miss the mild days that we have been enjoying here in East Tennessee over the past few weeks. This is a very quiet morning. I was up at 7:15, and stitching for about an hour on Will's quilt. It has 36 squares, each with a flower on it, and I am hand stitching around each flower. So far I have done 4 of them since Monday, and had already done 6 of them before I started working on the quilt after my summer's illness. So there are 26 to go, including the square I am working on now. It takes a good day's work to do one, so, guess I won't get it finished for Christmas. Hmmmm.

GRAMPS (UPDATE)

Well, Gramps lately has begun talking about buying a car and getting a job. He seems to think that he is capable of working an all day job, and driving again. He also believes that he just recently retired, even though it has been 21 years since he taught school. He believs that it has only been a couple of weeks since he worked at a job in a wholesale warehouse when it was actually at least 47 or 48 years ago. He, of course, is not thinking rationally. I believe he would be happy to be living back at the assisted living facility if I were there with him. I am just not ready to do that yet.

I asked him if he would be interested in standing at the door of Wal-mart and saying "welcome to walmart" and he said, "no, I can't stand up that long". He seems to think he could work at a local brickyard that was in operation over 20 years ago. He said he had been offered a job there by one of the other teachers whose family owned the brickyard. Of course, this offer was made before he retired, and it is no longer in business. It keeps me busy thinking of replies to make to ward off his ideas.

He says some really amusing things sometimes, and every once in a while his former wit still comes shining through. He has a difficult time of getting out of his covers to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I will give him encouragement sometimes like, "keep moving, keep moving". He will ask me which way to the bathroom and I will say, "just head for the light". (we keep a night light on in the bathroom and we can see the light from it in our doorway. Well, the other night I was saying, "keep moving, honey, keep moving". He said, "I don't need a cheerleader!" ha I just had to laugh to myself.

I recently put a small end table beside my bed, and placed a touch lamp on it so that when he needs to get up or get back in bed, I can turn it on with a simple touch. Of course, I am always awakened when he gets up. He really gives his bed covers a rough time of it, too, and they never stay tucked in at the end of the bed. He wraps up in them and becomes entangled in them.

RICHARD (PAM'S HUSBAND)

The other night, we got a call from our niece, Donna, that her sister, Pam, had just taken her husband, Richard, to the emergency room at Jefferson City, with a heart attack. They then took him by Lifestar Helicopter service to the St. Mary's hospital in Knoxville. At Knoxville they immediately took him into surgery and using angioplasty, removed blockage from one of his arteries which had 100% blockage, placed him on a ventilator, and as I understand it, he was still on ventilator last night, and had been running a fever of 104, but it had come down to 102. Please pray for him, and I will keep you updated. He still has blockage in another artery of 75%, and they will probably do another angioplasty on that one when he becomss stabilized. Thanks for your prayers.

THANKSGIVING INVITATION

Well, on Thursday, we went up to Terrace Estates around 4:30 to have Thanksgiving supper with a lot of people who had been invited (as we were) also. It was wonderful to see so many of the people we had met in August and had become friends with. The whole driveway was filled with cars, and when we saw how many people were there, I realized that they had a big job on their hands to feed them all. I think there must have been close to 200 people fed that evening and all were served within an hour's time! Tables had been set up in both the dining hall and in the living room area. It was amazing.

MOVIE DAY

Yesterday (Saturday) was movie day, and instead of going out to eat, I decided to take dinner to eat at Imazo's. I stopped at the Cracker Barrel and picked up chicken salad sandwiches, and stopped at Food City and picked up some apple danishes for dessert. Imazo made a pot of coffee and we sat down at her dining room table and had lunch. She and Mae started talking about they needed some groceries, and had no way to get them, so I said, "I'll just take you all to get groceries and Dub can stay here and watch television. We can see the movie next week." Mae said, "I don't think I want to go, I am too tired today to go. I can stay here with Dub and watch the movie with him".

So while Imazo made out her list of what to get, I went in and set up the movie for them to watch (being the media expert - the only one who knows how to set it up- among them). Well, they are both hard of hearing and so I set the sound to where I thought they could both hear it. Imazo and I left then to go to the grocery store. When we got back, I discovered that, yes, they could both hear it and it was too loud. They couldn't find the control to turn it down, and it was about to drive them nuts. Imazo's remote doesn't work, so they couldn't use that. Poor people, what a revoltin' development that was!

Well, that is about it for today. Gramps (aka Dub) is just up, and it is time to see to his needs. There is a full, (really full) basket of laundry to fold and put away, too, along with a cake to bake for tomorrow's supper with the neighbors. I am making Potato soup and baking cornbread muffins to eat with it. Dessert will be a simple sheet cake of german chocolate with cream cheese frosting. (Ice cream to go with it if wished for). Tomorrow, I will be picking up the turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner which Laurie my neighbor will be roasting for our shared dinner on Thursday.

This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for today. Much love to each of you. Bye for now. More later.