August Filling Up and Rushing By

I woke up this morning to a gentle rain. I need to go out on the deck and see how much we received so I can tell Gerald when we talk on the phone. He is in Texas.
Less than six weeks ago, Gerald helped granddaughter Erin move her huge sectional couch from the little house in Cambria to her new quarters nearer Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she worked. I was emotionally prepared to be involved with her 2012-13 softball games there, and I liked thinking about the lovely new duplex she would share with another young woman professional. And I knew I would continue to enjoy her drop-in visits to Woodsong.

But life has a way of jarring us from what we expect. Erin had an offer from Denton, Texas, to become an assistant softball coach at North Texas University and she could not refuse this advancement. Suddenly she had to make a great many changes in a very short time. Her SIUC coach was wonderful and very supportive, and Erin quickly found another young woman to take her place sub-leasing the duplex. That did involve quickly moving her stuff to a storage building behind so this person could move in immediately and also putting that huge couch out on the sidewalk in hopes someone else might use it. Because the new renter had a pit bull and Sadie does not like pit bulls since she had been attacked by one, Sadie came to visit us this past week. And Erin stayed here when she returned from finding an apartment at Denton. Now she and Sadie must adjust once again to new quarters.

Because we have friends in the Denton area that Gerald has been wanting to visit, he could not refrain from saying he wished he could help Erin move and visit with his buddies down there. I am not sure he meant it, but that is how he became involved helping her load the U-Haul and taking it down to Denton behind his pickup. They made the trip in one long day and had her moved in so she spent the first night in her new apartment. The next day Gerald was breakfasting with his good friend Bobby Sanders and that afternoon he and Erin were able to attend Bobby’s birthday party. This afternoon he is visiting at a nearby town with Don and Helen Ruth Dillow. I can tell he is having a good time, and I was relieved that Erin had help moving in. I wonder if anyone ever picked up the couch from the sidewalk.

I was thrilled to have Leslie and Mike stop in Friday night on their way up to Freeport for a reception for friends in Leslie’s hometown. They had to be back at work this morning in Nashville, so they couldn’t stop on their return trip. (Mike sometimes has a 4:30 a.m. client. I wonder if he did this morning.)

Friday evening Gerald and I had picked up a friend from a Marion retirement center and gone down to Anna for supper. One of his classmates phones us with an invitation to this annual gathering of Wolf Lake classmates. We knew we’d be home before Mike and Les arrived from the drive up from Nashville after work, and so at the kitchen table over 10 p.m. cold cuts and deviled eggs and peaches from a local orchard, I loved hearing about Leslie’s new job at a music publishing company. And I knew I must learn more about the recent break-in at their duplex which caused Leslie to describe the “ransackage” on Facebook. I was relieved to find out that Mike had renter’s insurance for them, and they had a call on the way up that the police had already arrested one of the three suspects. So maybe their misfortunate will prevent many future ransackages for other Nashville residents.

Before I went to bed, I fixed a pot of coffee for the next morning with the special blend Erin had brought me as a souvenir when she returned from a tournament in Hawaii. She and I enjoyed our last visit together over Saturday morning coffee, and I confessed how very sad I was about her leaving even though I was happy for her new opportunity. Gerald and Erin were both long gone before Mike and Leslie woke up at a more decent time for a Saturday morning. Leslie and I had another visiting time over our coffee while Mike conscientiously ran into the gym before their 6-7 hour trip up to Freeport. I actually left before they did that morning as I had signed up to go to a preview of a new Sunday School curriculum in Marion that I was interested in. Yes, I drank another cup of coffee there. I caught up on my sleep that afternoon.

Yesterday I taught our Young Adult Sunday School class, but left before the worship service to go to Katherine’s since I knew she had not secured an aide for yesterday. We visited and later watched TV including Tangles, a Walt Disney production of the Repunzel fairy tale. The music was good and the visuals pleasing. I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching a children’s story. Sam is all smiles these days because he received his learner’s permit to drive, and spending time at the wheel with his dad telling him to slow down is now one of his favorite activities.

I came home, ate a late night supper, and tumbled into bed and slept for nine hours. The first thing I had to do this morning was to call our classmate friend who had left two phone messages on Sunday worrying if she might have dropped her billfold in our car Friday night. It was after l0 when I heard her message and I knew the billfold was not in the car, but I went out and looked anyhow so I could tell her I looked. But I felt it was too late to call her back for fear she was in bed.

One of her messages mentioned a black purse, and I remembered she had carried a light beige purse. I was aware of the purse because when we arrived to pick her up, she was in a dither about lost keys to her apartment inside the center. When they were finally located, they were in her black purse. She had changed to the beige one and she had forgotten to take the keys to the new purse.

So I was hoping my telling her that her billfold was probably in her beige purse would solve her problem. In the meantime, however, people there at the center had helped her look and someone had found the billfold, she said. The bad news was that she had put it up and could not remember where she put it. So she was looking again. Usually when I lose something, I look for it for a reasonable time (whatever that is) and then force myself to stop looking. I figure that the lost object will eventually show up on its own. That usually works, so that was all the encouragement I could give her.

She has always been one of my most admired acquaintances and she has achieved so much despite many disadvantages and problems that life threw at her. Watching her handle her present disability with grace and good judgment increases my strong admiration for her, but touches my heartstrings.

My only other item on my agenda today was to call my brother and sister because I have failed to do that recently. Before I made the first call, my sister called me and we had a long catch-up session. Before I called my brother, our cousin Kenny from California phoned to tell us about the death of one of our mutual cousins out there. He would later call our cousin Leonard in Michigan, and he called me back to give me the address of another cousin’s widow. He asked me to call Rosemary and Jim to let them know, so I had sad news to share when I called Jim for our long catch-up phone visit. Then I called Rosemary and talked to her again. Except to walk down the lane with Jake to retrieve the mail and the newspaper, that is about all I have accomplished today. Usually Gerald walks down every morning to get the newspaper and it is on the breakfast table when I wake up. Jake always bounces along with him as he did with me today, but I know he will be happy when Gerald, his best friend, returns.