Catching Up

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update. I've been working on my story...can I call it a book yet?...so any extra time I have at home has been devoted to typing that up. We've also had some medical issues to deal with and I seek your prayers on that.

First, my mother-in-law, Zada, fell while traveling in Texas during Memorial Day week and broke her hip in four places, had to have a rod in placed and was finally released from the hospital and able to fly home last week. She is so glad to be home and we've been getting her settled in to her new routine of a wheelchair and walker in a small apartment. She is doing really well adjusting.

Next, my husband, Ken, who developed glaucoma last year, went for a regular check up last week and they sent him to a specialist yesterday. He has lost 85% of his vision in his left eye and it has now spread to his right eye, with a loss of 25% of his vision in that one. He will be having laser eye surgery to help reduce some of the pressure. Of course there is no cure to glaucoma, just meds to help reduce the spread.

My darling son, Adam, who is 15 and has an old truck that he's been having fun working on, decided not to come straight home from the hay field on our farm and went for a little joy ride. Of course, he got caught....without an adult and in a vehicle with a headlight and taillight out, no tags or insurance. The officer could have easily taken his permit away, but instead called me and gave Adam a very stern talking to. I think it helped that the officer realized that Adam was covered in dirt and grease from working on the tractor and in the hay and that he had just passed the end of the family farm (around a 300 arce farm all together). It always helps to through around a good family name in situations like this. The main road (a back woods, county road), runs right through our place with our land on both sides of the road, so we were running a chance of him getting caught between fields....but he was where he wasn't suppose to be.

We have since corrected all the issues with the truck. Adam still drives without an adult...but only to and from the fields. I'm really proud of how hard he has been working this summer. They just finished up a hay job that made over 1600 round bales. He has a beautiful farmer's tan!

Sally has turned one of my lofts into a work shop for her and her friend, Sam, to start making some things to sale on Etsy. They came in last night and now my lofts are completely changed again, but thankfully, they cleaned everything up that they messed up and it looks pretty good. No telling what those two girls will be creating now. We are all in need of a "Rory fix", but she is in Michigan visiting her "real" family. She'll be home this week, so we should be okay till then.

Me....I'm just trying to survive and hold on to this roller coaster God has us on (and that was just last week!). I'm doing the Bible study, Me, Myself & Lies by Jennifer Rothchild and learning so much and becoming more & more aware of how much I do negative self talk to myself. And yes...I spent the weekend glued to the TV watching every Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett special that came on. If something happens to the guys off the original Starsky & Hutch, I'm going to be devastated...all the icons of my growing up years are getting old or dieing. Wonder what they says about me?!

I'm going to share a little tease from my story with you. I sent this to a friend of mine on Friday and she got a little upset that I didn't share more. I can't tell you how much Judy means to me and has been encouraging me with my writing. So enjoy and let me know what you think. I need some constructive criticism or praise...which ever you would like to give.

When Gage woke it was sudden and he reacted out of instinct. He
had killed his pillow before he knew what he was doing.

It took him longer to come to his senses and realize what he had done. He let go of the pillow that he was strangling and watched as the foam tried to reshape itself back into a long rectangle. It couldn't. The pillow was now
hopelessly misshapen where Gage had it in a choke hold. If it had been a
person, their neck would have been snapped.

He tossed the pillow off the bed, aggravated with what he had done. Gage
lay back down and ran his fingers through his hair. He had heard from
other guys how, once they were home from deployment, they would wake up and find that they were choking their wives. Some guys would refuse to sleep in the
same room as their wives for fear of hurting them.
Gage wondered how long it took to be able to sleep without hearing every little sound and reacting in survival mode. He listened to the sounds of the house
wondering what had woken him.

Overhead, he heard the sound of the glass rattling on the fan. He would
have to fix that. He could hear the air conditioner unit and a drip from
the faucet in the bathroom where he didn’t turn the water off all the way.
The window was open so that he could hear the soft crash of the waves to the
shore. But he was used to that sound. Something else had been out of place
and he listened again and was rewarded with just a whisper of a sound that
shouldn’t be in the dark. It sounded like someone running.

He left his bed and went to the window, standing to the side, to look out.
It was a cloudy night with very little moon. He was used to looking at
things at night and nothing seemed out of place. Then he heard it again.
He went to the closet and pulled out a bag of equipment and found his night
scope. Back at the window, he scanned his yard again, seeing everything in
a weird green light. He focused on the bushes and only saw an armadillo
scurrying under one. After satisfying himself that his yard had no intruders, he started scanning the Stann’s house next door.

Nothing out of the ordinary around the pool. There were a couple of floats
that had fallen in the water, but he didn’t think that they would have made the
noise he heard. He couldn’t see closer to the house from where he was
standing so he went to a window that gave him a better vantage point. From
there he could see the deck that came out the main bedroom, which he assumed was Faith’s. He looked again and thought that the door was open.

With a slight panic now, he rescanned their yard and back to the open door. He didn’t see any movement anywhere. Could someone be in the house? He
silently raised the window and was rewarded by the sound coming to him again,
faint, carried on the wind….someone crying. He focused on the door, but
saw no movement. He ran back to his bedroom window and searched the yard.
Faintly he heard two words….please and stop.

It only took a matter of seconds for Gage to retrieve his pistol from the locked drawer next to his bed and run downstairs. He went out the back door and through the gate and stopped again. The sobbing was louder here, but it wasn’t
coming from the house. He lifted the night scope to his eye and scanned
the back yard and then further out, onto the pier.

There he saw something huddled at the end of the pier. He waited, had his
gun at the ready and moved closer. He had stood still long enough for a
fire ant to find his bare foot and bite him, but Gage never reacted to the
instant sting. He inched closer to the edge of the pier.

The huddled form began to move and took the shape of a woman kneeling, looking out over the water with a blanket around her shoulders. Gage lifted the night scope again and determined that it was Faith. He looked back to the house,
but nothing seemed wrong there, just this woman crying in the dark night.
She was talking to herself, or so Gage thought at first. Then the words
came to him more clearly and he realized she was praying.