After the Weekend

Southern Illinois University Carbondale softball Salukis did it again. They won all five games in the Fort Myers tournament down in Florida. They have won their last l0 games We are so proud of them. Fun finding out on Facebook that granddaughter Erin went swimming and had dinner on the beach down there this chilly weekend. They will play at home against Kentucky at noon Saturday and Wright State at 4. On Sunday they will face Purdue at 3 and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville at 5.

University of Georgia softball lost their first game to Oklahoma State and our son Gerry is having a hard time getting over that loss. They are now 14-1, so obviously I did not manage to teach this assistant coach that it is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. Although in all honesty, he is very concerned about how they play the game. Like the head coach, he wants excellence, and they are getting it from their players. Megan Wiggins, whom some think is the best collegiate softball player in the United States, was named this morning at Southeastern Conference Player of the Week. She is definitely fun to watch.

Georgia’s last game at the Cathedral City Classic was Saturday evening against ESPN’s number one ranked Arizona and was much anticipated as the two first-ranked teams faced each other. We were getting bored and frustrated watching a very slow Game Tracker Saturday evening when a phone call from Katherine alerted us to a website with a radio announcer. Since the announcer kept talking to someone in the box and telling us he could not see because his vision was blocked by the umpire, this proved a cure for boredom. By the time he had answered someone’s question with “I don’t know,” multiple times, I was hysterical laughing. Of course the fact that the Georgia Dawgs shut Arizona down 8-0 in the fifth inning also worked against boredom.

Sunday morning I fixed chicken breasts ready to be popped into the over when I returned from church and experimented with orange zest and other additions for flavor. After lunch and a quick clean-up of the kitchen, I went to Katherine’s for the afternoon. I was hoping Gerald, who had trouble sleeping the night before, would catch up on his rest in his recliner. (He is awaiting a new sleep mask because he seems to have developed an allergy to his old one, which sets his face to itching. That is not inductive to good sleep.) We both ended up at Marion Second Baptist that evening, where our friend Wendell Garrison is serving and then were home for a bowl of soup at the kitchen table together.

I went to bed at 11:30 last night after first falling asleep in my chair reading. I heard some hard winds along with the rain before I fell back asleep, but didn’t think much about it. We are grateful for the rains we’ve been receiving that have filled our lake to its overflow limit. This morning on Facebook, I learned people in our village were scared and hoping the Methodist Church would open the storm shelter there. The village was spared but evidently some of our neighbors between our farm and the village had some roof damage.

So did my sister and husband in Amarillo, Texas. My brother-in-law, his son-in-law, and his grandson were repairing that roof on their next door rental house when my sister called to see how we were since she’d heard about the high winds here. She was not complaining, however, since just north of them many people lost homes to a fire fanned by 70 mile per hour winds. Everyone had to be evacuated as the fires would jump across roadways rapidly and time for getting out was limited. People did not know until today if their homes was among the 27 that burned. For safety’s sake, residents were not given passes to return to their smoldering neighborhoods until today. The ones whose houses remain are sleeping without electricity tonight, but they recognize they are the lucky ones.

A migrating flock of little ducks with white-feathered bellies have joined our larger more colorful ones at the lake. This morning I stood at our bedroom window when I arose and watched two of the little ducks disappear under the water for what seemed a long time, and then resurface. It was a peaceful beginning to a new week before I faced the troubled world. With all this dangerous weather in so many places, the deaths of several in our community, the serious illnesses of family and friends, and the horror of what is happening in Libya, it is difficult to enjoy the peaceful surroundings here at the farm. The little visiting ducks certainly help.