TERRY
As I write it is 8:50. Terry woke about 7:15 and now is again sleeping with the paper on her chest. She asked me if I had some pain kind of rub as her back was bothering her. She said I could finish eating first but now she is sleeping again. She had kind of a tough day yesterday. I know it gets difficult to lie in bed day after day not able to do much. For the most part she seems content but there are times when she just plain gets to the point where she has a difficult time. We will see how she is when she wakes up again. I will get some pain gel to see if that helps.
Well I have tennis at 10:30 this morning. With the chill in the air the 10:30 is a good time. Usually one would like to play at 9:00 but today the later time is fine. As I write it is 50 so that is better than the last couple days when at this time of the morning it was in the mid or low 40s. AND of course this is a ND farm boy saying we have cold temps here in Naples when way way back in the mid 50s walking to school when is was in the 20s or colder was not an issue!!! Well those overshoes and earflaps kept one warm, right? Oh and those mittens too. I never could understand why we had mittens and Dad had gloves!!!
I had the last of the South Bend backyard eggs today and enjoyed it greatly. I am guessing you can tell which is the best! The white of the egg from SB is even clearer than the store bought egg. Not sure what I can do now that the SB eggs are all gone. Maybe I need to give Liam a call to see HOW he set up his little chicken farm in their backyard. As I think about it Naples just may have an ordinance against chickens in the backyard!!! I do think Liam can NOT have any roosters.
I enjoyed my second coffee that Cynthia sent for my birthday. Each bag is enough for about a FP pot. I would give this a 5 as well. That is out of a possible 10. I am guessing that most if not all may be in the 4-6 range. Why, well it looks like many may have hints of flavors that I am not used to in my coffee. Is it a matter of me not liking it, NO. It is fun and I am so glad to have it. I can hardly wait for the next one to taste it. BUT I admit I am not used to having the taste of cotton candy grape etc in my coffee. Would I order more of the coffee? Not really but it is so fun to taste the different ones and each morning I look forward to what is it going to be today?
I have enjoyed seeing Mom and Dad every day on my calendar. I am sure I did not appreciate them enough when I was still living at home and even into my adult life. At times I think back at the 70s and 80s and wish I had visited them more often. I know, there were boys playing soccer and basketball but still I do wish I had taken more weekends to visit Mom and Dad. But maybe I made up for it by being such a very good boy when I was at home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As one can see taken from my book, chapter 44. In the summer of 1959 I was in for a new experience. Dave and Dad were often like oil and water so to speak. So finally Dave decided he needed some space so he got a summer job near Kulm where Janet/John and Glorine/Ronald were living. John, Ronald and Glorine all were teaching and Janet was a stay at home mom. But the story was this. Dave needed to spread his wings AND at the same time earn some money so off he went and left the farming to ME. I say that but that was not all that important. What was important is I had nobody to spend time with. The way we farmed left a lot of time to do other things. One morning I decided just to stay in bed and contemplate what I wanted to do that day. I knew Dad had not given me any idea as to what I needed to do as he usually did that the night before. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 8:30 and about that time I heard the car start and leave so I knew Dad was going some place. As I headed downstairs I tried to think of what I may want to do with the day IF Dad was gone most of it. Mom met me at the bottom of the stairs and said Dad was headed to Fargo as he needed some things for his photography and then he might stop and visit Joan/Ron. I thought that was kind of an early time to leave but then I said to myself, "maybe he did not want to spend time with me today OR maybe he just needed to be alone". Mom was good enough to ask me if I would like some eggs and we had some deer meet in the fridge. YES, FOR SURE! As I sat at the table and gazed out the west window all of a sudden a thought came to mind. Mom's clothes line was west of the house but right beside it on the south was the "ugly" of the yard. Many years ago, before I could remember, we had a hog building and it was right there kind of between the house and the barn. I had no idea what had happened but now all that was left was the entire cement floor and foundation which was an eye sore at best. Weeds had grown up in the cracks and all around so there, kind of in the middle of our yard was this thing that tainted the entire farmstead at least in my mind. I thought to myself that it would be a great idea IF that were gone. As I finished my venison and eggs I asked Mom, "Would you like that awful cement foundation gone?" She replied in a casual manner something like this, "That would sure be nice but I don't think Dad has any interest in this place looking nice!" Well that was all I needed to get me going on perhaps the most fun project I ever did on the farm. I did not even ask Dad what he thought OR if I could do it. I just made up my mind that I was going to clean up that mess just for Mom so when she looked out the window to the west it would look nice.
Over the next month or more whenever I had time I would get the sledge hammer, put the front end loader on the "M" tractor and work on the project. Finally near the end of July I finished. All the cement had been broken up and either loaded on the the rock wagon to be thrown onto the rock pile east of the farm or with the huge pieces I would somehow get a chain around them and drag it to the rock pile. Finally on a Saturday afternoon when Dad was gone I put the scoop on the back of the Ford tractor and drove over and over and over the area so it was nice and smooth. I would say the area was about 20 X 30. I proudly went into the house and asked Mom to look west. She was so pleased. Of course I had NO way to plant grass but over time weeds and grass grew and I made sure it got mowed. That was a summer to remember and it started just because Dave spread his wings and I was left at home. At the time I understood why Dave did that and I did not think any ill of him for being gone those last two summers he was in high school. But when he built the guitar and gave it to me he said he always felt badly about leaving me alone on the farm and the guitar was a way of giving back to me!
Enough for today. I have my sample of coffee from Cynthia, #2 sample.
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