Last day of March (ramblings)

Well, I'm still feeling just as grumpy as I did yesterday, so I've decided this must be how I process fear, or maybe my anger at the mess we're all in:  The most interesting things I do from one day to another are: (1)walking in the pasture with the dog, (2) planning the noon meals, and (3) watching one episode of West Wing with Cliff at some point each day.  I have to force myself to update my blog now.  Blogging seems so inconsequential in the vast scheme of things.  But if I'm still alive in ten years, I will want to look back and see how I dealt with the pandemic.  I doubt anybody else will read it when I'm gone; my kids and grandkids don't care much about how the previous generations of their relatives coped with life.  I love the stories from my family's past, but you can't pass that on to anyone else.

Today there is no meal planning to be done because I made tuna-noodle casserole yesterday; it makes four generous servings, so we'll finish that up today with whatever vegetable I'm in the mood for.  I especially look forward to the home-made oatmeal cookies we'll have for dessert.  That's become my favorite cookie recipe.  When they're gone, I'm going to make a mayonnaise cake.  I'm fairly sure my mom made it a time or two when I was a child, but in Cliff's family, that was the only chocolate cake his mom ever made.  His Aunt Gertrude made it all her life, too.  I asked Cliff what kind of icing they put on it; turns out his mom didn't use icing, just served it up as is.    

I have to stop thinking about food, I'm starving!  I am not on a diet, but while I'm taking these four pills a day for my stomach, I may as well be.  I don't eat much between meals anyway, but now I can't, at all:  The pill is to be taken on an empty stomach, at least two hours before the next meal and an hour or two after the previous meal. This means there really aren't a lot of times I can eat between meals.  I have to keep the stomach empty while the stuff does its magic.  And by the way, it does seem to be working.  I'm not taking omeprazole at all now, and my stomach hasn't been on fire for days.  I just passed the halfway point with Sucralfate, so I'll be on the four-pills-daily regimen for awhile yet.  Meanwhile, my weight is staying in a good place.
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OK, I ran out of blathering earlier, so I found a movie to watch that was surprisingly good, considering it was made 98 years ago in 1922:  Nanook of the North.  It's the first documentary movie ever made, although they didn't call it that; I doubt if the word documentary was even in existence back then.  Cliff and I were just going to watch it a few minutes out of curiosity, but it was so interesting we watched it all.  It was entertaining, to say the least; and we learned some things.  I recorded it on Turner Classic Movies, not knowing it wasn't a "talkie".  
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We ate dinner after our movie.  Now I'm thinking about calling Nuts and Bolts in Lexington to see whether they have topsoil and compost.  If they do, I'm going to ask if they will come out to our car, take my money, bring back my change, yada yada yada.  That'll give us a little ride.  Even Gabe can go.

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Nuts and Bolts phone doesn't even ring when I call it.  There's a store in Odessa too, and their phone doesn't ring either.  Maybe they had to shut down.  With no way to get topsoil and compost, Gabe and I went to the valley in the woods for some peace and quiet; we no sooner got there and had the blanket spread out when some punk on a four-wheeler decided to go back and forth a dozen times, right behind the place.  Bad timing on my part, I suppose.  I let Gabe off-leash, since it's pretty easy to keep track of him down in the big canyon.  I enjoyed laying on my back looking up at the trees against the blue sky while he spent time sniffing everything he could.

Watch how well Gabe comes when I call him.  Unfortunately, he comes so well because he knows I have some chunks of cooked chicken.

The birth of a song

Cliff and I moved to the property where we now live in May of 1975, so we've been here awhile.  There was one period of two and one-half years, though, when we moved south of Oak Grove to a double-wide, and rented out the old house on our property.  It was one of many sidetracks we've traveled in my lifetime.  One thing we got out of the experience was the knowledge that we liked Wellington much better than we had realized; it wasn't long after we moved back that I wrote a song about the town and its people; one line in the song lyric says, "I left once, but I won't again."

However, our interlude during the time we were back at Oak Grove wasn't a bad experience.  For one thing, this non-driver hit the jackpot as far as her church life went, because it was only a short walk from our house to the Oak Grove Bible Church... probably the equivalent of a city block.  I could go to church any time I wanted, without begging for a ride from somebody!  I'd not known anything about the Bible church as a denomination, but I soon figured out it was similar to the Baptist church; I'm not a Baptist, but I'm comfortable in a Baptist church.  This, by the way, has little to do with the song that came to me on a gloomy Sunday afternoon in November.  I'm just setting the scene here.  My children were 12 and 14, I suppose, and Cliff worked at the Country Butcher Shop.

Our son often kept a radio playing when he went to bed; this was before he graduated to Ozzie Osborn and AD/DC, and still listened to country.  One night I was waiting for sleep and heard what at the time seemed like the loveliest melody I'd ever heard coming from his radio.  Later it would be a hit for Janie Fricke, but this must have been the first time I'd paid attention to it.  It was a typical country song, a woman feeling sorry for herself because her man was leaving her.  For some reason, the first line in the song kept going over and over in my head, where Janie sings, "Your bags are packed and waiting by the door."  I used the exact tune of that line to start a God-song I wrote on a gloomy Sunday.  I didn't steal the tune of her whole song, only those first notes of the verses.

November is usually a depressing month for me:  Not as much now, but back then, winter was hard to get through financially.  Christmas is approaching, propane tanks have to be filled, taxes are due.  For some reason, in my Bible reading on that day, I had come across Hebrews 13:8:  Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.  It settled in my head for some reason around the same time as that country song was haunting me.  I began to get the idea for a song:  So on that Sunday afternoon, I went into our bedroom, shut the door, and, still thinking about that Bible verse, began writing down words.  As I strummed the guitar, the beginning notes of Janie Fricke's song just jumped onto the first words of my new song and seemed perfect.

The other day when Gabe and I were walking, I thought about the song and decided to sing it right there in the woods.  This isn't an uncommon occurrence, by the way, although I don't normally record myself.  But I was thinking about what the world is going through and realized this song I wrote years ago could help me weather the storm.  I'm hesitant about sharing it with the world for several reasons, but I believe the words to the song have a message for believers at this difficult time.

So here it is, with my voice full of imperfections.  Maybe the song isn't even that good, but it gives me goosebumps when I sing it.  I've always thought the right voice could really do it justice.  I don't believe I'll need to put the lyrics here, because without the guitar, the words seem very clear.  Don't judge the song by my voice, but by the words.