Here we are at the very last Saturday of January 2022 as it is the 26th

 TERRY

Really nothing new to say about Terry.  She is awake, eating a breakfast sandwich and watching the Saturday news.  Yes, you are right, one day at a time.

OK so I KNOW it will be a special day.  By 8:00 AM I had enjoyed: AMYLU links that are Paleo, No Antibiotics, no nitrites and gluten-free, 2 cage free brown eggs and a whole wheat piece of toast.  Now it really does not get much better than that!!!  AND of course I indulged in a hot pot of FP coffee.  Now IF anyone can start their day in a better way let me know!!!

Just for "old times sake" I enjoyed my FP in a Ball glass pint jar this morning.  One could ask themselves what do you mean by that?  Well often when we were in harvest Mom would drive to the field with an afternoon lunch.  It would always be homemade bread maybe with homemade jelly etc on it but she always brought a pint jar of coffee for Dad.  AND it had to be a Ball jar I think.  I could never understand WHY Dad enjoyed hot coffee on a warm afternoon.  AND I promise it was NOT the instant kind that they often drank later in life.  So this morning I went into the garage where I keep my empty washed jam jars and retrieved one just for old times!  I agree it sounds like my life is not very interesting if one has to use a Ball jar to drink coffee to remember the "good times"!!!

Well if one really wants the truth my life is very good now days but it is not exciting for sure.  I will not get into the details but just believe.

I am kind of on a forced rest from tennis.  No tennis yesterday and none until Tuesday.  Karl, who often puts me in a few days a week, is on a ski trip and then one of the days the courts were full so I got placed on overflow.  I could play this morning as there are 2 courts where guys just show up but I usually choose not to play on Saturday.

I am not sure WHY I ordered this but it came in the mail a few days ago.  As one could guess in our society today you could order a pack of 4 and they were free!  Well why not get some free stuff?  Actually I thought it would be good to have just in case.  But then I did think that maybe by buying into that I became one of the ???????? people in our country.  I will NOT explain what the ? means but maybe some can figure it out.

Well it was a BIG day on Wednesday as I received another royalty check for the sales of my book.  I know, it does not really bring me much closer to my goal of $1,000,000, but it sure is fun to get them AND I usually get maybe 3 a year.  They come every quarter but sometime the sales lag!!!  With a big smile I put the money into the bank rather than spent it at Starbucks!!!  I probably missed the boat as I think it would have covered about 8 trips to the coffee shop.  As I write I think to myself I have not stopped at a coffee shop for a long long time maybe a year or so.  Well when you have daily homemade FP really who needs Starbucks?

As we head towards the end of February and start looking towards March I tend to peel back the memories and think about the creek that flowed through our pasture.  It came from the hills to the south and went through our pasture and into the lake a half mile north of us. It would not be unusual to wake up on a late March or early April morning and have the creek all of a sudden flowing way over it's banks and sometimes over the bridge near our place.  The fence that ran along side the creek but about 20 some feet away would often be covered with a foot or so of flowing water.  It would remain that way for several days and then resort to being normal.  The more snow we got in the winter the higher the creek would be and the longer it would stay high.  I still can remember coming downtime stairs and hearing Dad say "the creek is running".  I would run outside and head north of the house to where our summer outhouse stood and there to the north our pasture would be covered in a river that was 50+ feet wide.  In a normal year the creek would continue to run maybe until mid summer and then after that there would be parts of it that would have water in it but the flow would stop.  Many hours of fun was had along the creek playing in the water, seeing perch that did not get back to the lake etc.  

I am trying to think of a theme for a 2023 calendar but as of yet have come up with nothing.  Of course I can always use family pictures but then there must be other ideas that would be good as well.  As I think about it I also admit that I miss family.  Even though there were ups and downs with good times and not so good it seems as I get a bit older I miss ALL of it.  From Mom's kind words to Dad's loud laugh AND I may add also to the not so good things--they all are missed.  Sometimes when I get up on a Sunday and get ready for church I almost look for those old brown shoes that Mom would often polish on Saturday night so I could kind of look good on Sunday.  Funny, I could look all over for them NOW and not spot them!  AND as I say that I need to mention that for all the love Mom gave and all the work she did I do not think she got the credit she deserved.  I say that even though she called me a terrible son when I took Dad to Briton SD to retake his drivers test!!!

I will end this morning by saying that Terry is holding her own in most ways.  Even when she may call me from the bedroom for the 20th time that day I still love her.  

The FP is finished so I will sign off for the day.  I may get on the bike and go see who is playing tennis this morning.