We gather together

We gathered together yesterday for an early Thanksgiving. We, meaning Shelley and Eric and both extended families. Shelley really out did herself, as usual. The house and offerings were amazing. It was so very Martha, if you know what I mean. So much work. She is going to need to sleep for a week in order to just break even on the stress scale.

Eric's mom and dad and all five siblings, along with three spouses (and one spouses mom) and five nieces (plus one boyfriend) were there. Of course Shelley and Eric's own two daughters, their spouses and a precious grandchild were also there. It was a regular Stuewe family reunion. Let me do the math. That makes 22.

Then there were Richard and I, two more of our children and one of their spouse, and two of our other grandchildren. That makes seven Morenos (besides Shelley and her immediate family), for a total of 31(Shelley and Eric had not yet been counted). That is a lot of people in any house.

Shelley cooked up a storm. Everyone else brought food. We all ate our fill and took home enough for a couple meals besides. Four out of town family members were also staying with us. Occasions like this happen about two or three times a year. They are usually at Shelley's simply because she has the most space. But once in awhile they are here.

It is nice to go out somewhere for festivities. It is also nice to have folks over. I just enjoy getting together one in awhile, certainly not every other week though. It would wear me out and I don't recover that quickly any more. Maybe I am getting old?

I have reason to believe I am getting old. First my body has about given out. Now I wonder about my brain. I asked my sister last week if she could locate and send a digital copy of a certain old photo. In amongst the boxes of stored "stuff" I am going through. I found the photo I wanted a copy of. Sorry sis, I will send you a digital copy. I had all but forgotten that mom had given me several old photos a few years before she died.

Richard was feeling pretty good yesterday, with the exception of a sore foot. It has been bothering him for about a week now, I'm not sure what is wrong, but he can hardly bear weight on it. Guess we are both getting old. Old or not. We will continue to gather together to praise God for each other and for His many blessings as long as we are able. Have a bountiful and blessed Thanksgiving out there.

The comforts of home

Home, this simple four letter word brings different images to mind for different people. Home can be described as a special place, a town or a single house filled with those things that trigger pleasant memories of the past, or even a group of people who have traditions in common. For me it is all three. Home is Oregon, the house I have called home for nearly 40 years, the family that I love, and too many memories to wrap my mind around.

We are all most comfortable around familiar people, places, and things. The welcoming front door, a crackling fire on the hearth, background chatter of friends and loved ones, a good cup of coffee and a cushy old chair. All these evoke thoughts of what we call home.

The preparation for a big gathering fosters excitement, even when the primary feast is not at your house. It can also be stressful if we forget priorities. Ask yourself, "is the house safe? Will anyone get sick or injured from being here". If you can reasonably answer no, you're half way there. Yes, it is important to have a clean house, well relatively clean. The bathroom needs to be scrubbed. But just as important is that care be taken to make everyone feel at home. It is not really important that everything be perfect. At least I don't think so. After all, if you are too worn out to feel at ease with your guests, they will know it and be uncomfortable. So I am sweeping and mopping floors. I am cleaning bathrooms. I am making sure clean sheets are on the guest beds. I am picking up clutter. Beyond that, I don't think it really matters. Who cares if my desk isn't completely empty or that some of the boxes of stuff I am in the middle of going through are in sight in the rec-room? We will eat till we are full. We will enjoy putting our feet up and reminiscing. We will probably watch a DVD or two. Yes, we will discuss politics and religion and we will be sad when it is time to say good by.

The comforts of home will still be here the next time family or friends come round. The comforts of home are, after all, making everyone who comes through your front door feel welcome and at ease. Most of that feeling is the attitude you display. So take a deep breath. De-stress and prioritize. No one will think less of you should some of the laundry not get folded. This is home, not the Grand Ritz Hotel.

God has blessed me

For several months now, I have been asking God to keep me from infection. You see, I had what I truly believed to be a crack in one of my brittle teeth. Why hadn't I gone to the dentist immediately? In short, money. Our car needed work. We had a huge medication bill. Money around here is tight.

My first annual annuity payment came in in early October. It covered both of those other needs, but almost nothing was left. Property taxes and 6 month's worth of car insurance were due this month. We have a savings account that annually covers those two items. So when everything else was paid, I called the dentist.

Yesterday I had a day and a half. In the morning my annual physical revealed that I am in very good health. My cholesterol is a little high, but not enough to be concerned about. Because I have reached 70, I no longer require a pap smear. Seems that the risk of cervical cancer actually diminish as you get older. That is a perk. In the afternoon, I saw my dentist. While I had visions of a root canal and cap, he could find absolutely nothing wrong with the tooth in question. Thank you Lord. We can actually pay utilities, fill the car with gas, and cover all those other routine expenses without dipping into what is left of savings. We can also take a short trip in December.

Seems our son-in-law in Germany has a conference in British Columbia the second week of December. He plans on slipping down to Seattle afterward for a couple days. Our daughter Amy went on-line and rented a vacation home for a few days. It was cheaper than a hotel and large enough for us and him. So we will be putting together a Christmas package to send home and delivering it there. Thank you Lord for you love, your provision. We are truly blessed.

God's provision & His timing

How often I have wondered why, when, how, and if. Why did this or that happen? When is it going to be done? How will I ever pay for it? If it is intended at all.

Several months ago my car started acting up. It made this horrible sound when it first started up. So I took it in to a mechanic. He looked under the hood and listened to it run. Then he said he didn't think it was in the engine, sounded more like the muffler. I could make an appointment to have it looked at more carefully. OK, if it seemed to be the muffler, I would take it to a muffler shop. The guy there also looked and listened, saying it was a faulty baffle in the muffler. It was OK to to drive, provided I didn't take it too far out of town. He gave me an estimate of $265 to fix the problem. Basically a new muffler.

Right about that same time we received a backlog (6 mths worth) of medical bills from the VA. They hadn't billed us earlier because we had over-paid in a previous year and the only way they could bill us was to rectify their books. Basically they needed to cut us a check for about $30 before their computer would generate a bill. So they did, and we have been playing catchup since.

On September 30 I turned 70 1/2. By law, I have now to draw 1/20th of my IRA savings. So last week the first annual payment arrived in the mail. So I paid off the last of the VA bill and took my car into AAMCO (by now the transmission was acting sluggish) to have the transmission fluid checked. I had had the oil changed and the other fluids changed about a month ago, but they didn't check this fluid. AAMCO offered to run a computer diagnostic free of charge, so I took the car in yesterday. The diagnostic indicated that the transmission is fine. The culprit seems to be the catalytic converter. It is partially clogged and putting pressure on those baffles. I will take the car back in on Tuesday afternoon for servicing. They will run another diagnostic before I bring it home.

In the Lord's time, all things work together. Money, diagnosis/service, and medical bills all came together. It has to be His provision, His timing. Thank you Lord.

up & at ehm

Up again early, 5:00 am. Nice to have a few silent moments to sit in the dark and nurse a cup of hot coffee. Time to reflect on the day's schedule and to talk to the Lord without any distractions.

Today Richard has a 10:00 physical therapy session. It is nice to get this sort of appointment out of the way early. We will stop on the way home to pick up a few items from the grocery store, milk and the like. Then I will pick the remainder of the concord grapes, wash and juice them when we get home. Not having to stop before processing to keep an appointment will make the day flow a little smoother.

I finished all the tomatoes and am working on pears now. Most of the pears will end up in the dehydrator for snack food. I discovered a large number of canned pears last week that had been hiding on a top shelf in my storage area. I think I am going to designate those top shelves for empty jars and other true storage only. They are too tall and deep for me to see what's there without standing on a step stool.

I hear my honey getting up, so need to get off here. We are out of milk so will fix something with eggs for breakfast. Maybe some French toast using gluten free bread and coconut milk? Could be interesting.

Jet lag

OK, it isn't really jet lag, but it sure feels like it. I have endured that strange phenomenon enough times it know it's symptoms. I can't seem to catch up with sleep, need to nap at all hours of the day, can't really concentrate for any length of time, head ache, etc. I know what the problem(s) is/are. First of all the weather is in transition and the barometric pressure is changing. Along with that it is cooler and days are shorter, resulting in an urge to hibernate. Secondly, I stayed up several hours beyond my normal bedtime the other day in order to finish processing salsa. It really threw my body clock out of whack. Hence, mock jet lag. I have a couple dozen more jars of pears and tomato something to work up before I can put away the canner, but this not too frequent task will soon be complete. Then I can get back to cleaning, sorting, etc.

I have been asked more than once why I can. I have resources for food. But I have canned since I was a child. I remember canning with my mom during WWII. We lived in the NW where food is everywhere then too. We canned everything from fruit to salmon. We raised pigs and had a large vegetable garden. My dad hunted and brought home wild rabbit and deer. Most of the meet was either canned or placed in a smoke house to cure. Preserving God's summer and fall bounty for use during less productive seasons was a way of life.

Richard grew up on a produce farm in Arizona. Fresh fruit and vegetables were available year round. Still I found myself canning. Not so much canning and perhaps not the same things, but still it was something I did. There it was more using extra ripe fruit to make preserves or drying it for portable snacks. When we moved back up to the NW, earlier training picked in again. We were feeding 7 people on money that just did not seem to go around. So I kept 1,000 jars filled each year. Four teenage kids go through a lot of food.

There have been years more recently when my canning has been limited to a few jars of tomatoes and maybe some green beans. Last year, because of my health, I didn't can at all. Well, I did manage to preserve a couple jars of sun dried tomatoes from plants set in the garden before my accident. But this year I found I had absolutely no tomatoes on my storage shelves and most of my jars sat empty. On top of that I had access to so much fresh food through a variety of resources. I just could not stand any of it going to waste.

Why do I can? I can because I can. I can because I can not stand good food going to waste. I can because I am in the habit of canning, it is a family tradition. I can because I enjoy the process of canning. I can because I love seeing all those full jars on the shelf, it is a confirmation of God's blessing on my life and His provision in both times of plenty and times of little.

Uhh

This fall has been much busier and exhausting than I had planned. I am making progress on the storage areas in the basement. These areas include several very large closeted sheves used to store canned goods, canning equipment, and misc. other items used on an occasional basis. During the years when all the kids were at home those shelves housed over 1,000 jars of produce. These were routinely used during those months when fresh produce was either out of season or too high to purchase. I haven't canned more than a couple dozen jars of produce a year for the past several years. But this year I have both the jars, the time, and the produce. Some produce we have from our garden. Some comes from friends and family, and still more from another resource. So I am canning again. Not a tremendous amount, but enough to wear me out.

The selves are filling up as I clean them. I am making salsa this afternoon (after bible study) from tomatoes gathered at a relative of a relative's garden yesterday morning. I picked pears at friend's home on Friday of last week and will can and dry them as they ripen. I was given coconut milk and re-processed it with the help of my daughter Shelley yesterday afternoon. I have already canned over 50 jars of tomatoes, 20 of green beans, 15 summer squash/tomatoes/onion mix and several other smaller amounts of beets, apple sauce, etc. Is that the end of it? I have no idea. We are happy to have the resources for food that have come our way, especially now that there are high medical and other critical bills. The Lord is good. He always provides.