Now Playing: MY DAD

I have finally been able to figure out how to get to my Dad's blog that has been so precious to me and all of our family. I don't think he would have wanted me to mess with his blog, or even post this, but sorry Dad I am. 

I want to tell the world about the person that I knew. I won't make this blog about me - because it isn't. It is about my Dad. I just want to have my say.  Stay tuned.

 Leighann - the oldest child of 3 

Rain, rain, go away come so other month. Houston is like Bangladesh during the monsoon season. I has rained some every day for the last 36 days. It has rained so much that my tomato plant in its raised bed drowned. I picked all 22 tomatoes and put them on my window sill to ripen. Some of the smaller ones went from green to rotten without ever passing through red. I have an appointment with my cardiologist tomorrow, my GP Tuesday, my Gut dr on Wednesday, and oncologist on Thursday. Friday is free the Monday I see the doc at southern dental for another try at fitting my lower plate. I never thought I would be this involved with doctors.

I have done little here except mingle with friends, work on jigsaw puzzles and sleep. My DVR is full of shows I have recorded but I am too antsy to set and watch them. Mostly my DirectTV, while I am awake, stays tuned to the "Beautiful Instrumental" music channel. Even the Sudoku puzzles have lost their charm.

Tonight I happened to be watching a Buster Keaton on TCM and was introduced to an adorable silent animation video called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore". Click on the picture below to access the Youtube Video.

You must know by now that I am a book lover from early childhood.

Congrats to younger daughter but I do not want to tempt fate by disclosing too much.

I hope my Austin Grandson knows his friend has gone on to another and better life. It is so hard to let them go. I love you Case and your sisters also. My hands tremble and jerk so badly that it has taken me 2 hours to type just this short entry.

Love to all. Tomorrow will be better.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Oops! I forgot to write an entry Sunday so this Monday morning I will write and post date it for Sunday. Yes Sonny the computer will allow and even help you lie about time and place. Sunday morning I had Blue Bonnet nuked sausage in grilled mustard spread wheat bread and water. Yes water. I think the stuff here has what Ponce de Leon was looking for. Then I worked on the 9th floor lobby puzzle for a couple hours and rode down to chapel with ladies from my floor. The preacher man (PM) is the most compelling and interesting preacher I have ever heard. He always, always, ties the old and new testament readings to our time and US. When he starts to preach all the old lady gossiping, and old men also, stop and we all pay close attention. Today from the old he related the story about God directing Samuel to pick out the king to replace Saul. I have never given much thought to the process but PM remarked that David was probably even too young to participate in the planned sacrifice of a red heifer. He was so young that he was assigned to watch the sheep. PM told us the important point was that despite all the humans likely suspecting God would pick the eldest son of Jesse because he looked "good" God choose David because he say into people's hearts and minds. And David pleased God. So! PM then semi chastised us and himself for our human frailty of trying to decide what God would do. God will do what God will do. Trust God for he sees all time.

Geek point! That observation is perfectly in line with some of the latest theories about time being an illusion. Nothing we do can change the future or the past. That is some or all part of the multiverse idea floating amongst theoreticians. If God can see the future then the future must be set or else the future would be constantly changing and just be a blur. Such observations are pointless to us as we have to do today what we need to do today.

The new testament was about JC parable about the Father's kingdom being like a sower. The sower scatters the seed and knows not how to make the seed or even direst it to grow. That is all in God's charge. The PM told us the parable was likely a Hebrew joke because it does not have the smallest seed nor does it grow big enough to roost birds because the farmers would destroy the plant in its youth because it is a weed.

After chapel Ras and I took a 3 hour nap. Then I cooked dinner: stuffed pork chop in a bag and an ear of truly roasted corn plus sauerkraut. After dinner he insisted on playing bird and armadillo. He played for 30 minutes then threw up. I cleaned the mess and then coated his front paws with Vaseline. Shortly thereafter he had a heroic BM and danced around the room. Nap. I got up at 11 pm and took vital signs and went to work on puzzle. We finally got all the edges complete and in the right order. I found 11 pieces on the floor and left a note reminding the puzzlers to check the floor from time to time. Many wear dangly bracelets that can accidently drag pieces off the edge of the table.

Monday morning I am going to hound the auto shop until they finish my car and demand a discount to cover cost of transportation.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

My cousin Joy called today. When I finally had a chance to talk to her she told me her dad JV Robertson had died Wednesday morning. He was 93 and his wife had died 3 years earlier. I had a suspicion the news would be bad since I had thought of uncle JV all day Wednesday. I told several people here about Jonly Vonly. I will call my brother and sisters to tell them when the funeral is and where. Now all that generation of Robertsons of Cement are gone. We are the next generation in the long line to the eternal dark.

For dinner tonight I prepared "Venison Cornbread Bake". It was quite good but the batch is too huge for me. I will try to parcel it out amongst the cloud niners. This is the way it looked when I took it out of the oven.

I should have drained the liquid before putting the thing in the oven. And this how it looked after plating my serving. Note the classy place mat under the plate and the artsy way I scattered the portion upon the plate

Yesday I drove up and down our hallway in an attempt to determine if the new batteries gave me enough range to ride the scooter to Walmart and back. Google say the distance is 2.6 miles. The scooter indicator had only lost 1 light out of 10 after riding it 6 miles in the hallway. I went to bed determined to go to Walmart at first light. When I got down to street level this morning (at the crack of 11 am) I found the weather was too hot for me and the direct sunlight was too much to endure. So no Walmart until I get my car back. I want to get soil admendments and acidifier for my garden patch. The tomato plant cannot extract needed nutrients from so alkaline soil. Instead I scooter across Clarewood to the Mercado and bought a gallon of vinegar. I poured the gallon around the root zone of the tomato plant. Saturday I will water lightly in an attempt to push the acid further into the root zone.

My conversion of the elevator lobby scenic painting to a jigsaw puzzle has been well received. I am not happy however because the pieces are too small. I also picked my first pod of Okra. All three plants are adrift with blooms.

Ground Venison and Cornbread Bake
1 pound ground venison
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crushed
3/4 cup Pace Picante Sauce
1 can (about 8 ounces) tomato sauce

1 can (about 16 ounces) whole kernel corn, drained
2 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese (about 1/2 cup)
1 package (about 8 ounces) corn muffin mix (Jiffy)

1.Cook the venison and oregano in a 10 or 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until the venison is well browned, stirring often to break up the meat. Pour off any fat.

2.Stir the picante sauce, tomato sauce and corn in the skillet. Cook until the mixture is hot and bubbling. Stir in the cheese. Pour the venison mixture into a 2-quart shallow baking dish.

3.Mix the corn muffin mix according to the package directions. Spread the batter over the venison mixture.


4.Bake at 375°F. for 25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Still no car. The mechanic assured me this morning that it would be ready in 2 days. For the last 2 weeks the ETA has been "two days". I called a taxi this morning to take me to my old Kroger pharmacy for furosemide. I also bought 4 slices of beef liver for liver and onions. And Fancy Feast. Oh yeah must not forget the cat food. I called Enterprise after shopping hoping to rent a car. Still no rentals due to all the flood damaged cars. I need transportation and I cannot afford taxis. Round trip today was $57. I was going to make ground venison & cornbread bake for dinner but forgot to buy Picante sauce and a can of whole kernel corn. Tomorrow I will scooter over to the Mercado and get those items.

I also need to find cooking instructions for smothered liver and onions. That is it for today.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Dinner tonight was simple. The first tomato from my tomato plant after transplanting into a raised bed in the Clarewood garden spot quartered and cored plus some abomination called a chicken melt. The less said about that the better. Just the list of chemicals made me queasy.

The tomato was not quite as tart as expected but then the soil is very very alkaline.

Tomorrow I will take a taxi over to get my bottom denture refitted. From there I hope to get/rent a car so that I can run some long delayed errands. The transmission shop has yet to finish my car. I am going to scratch them off my list of preferred mechanics. Also I have moved my prescriptions back to my original pharmacy. The Wagreens I had moved to turned out to be lousy in customer service, hostile to questions and unable to fill my prescriptions upon demand. Now I know why their pharmacy has so few customers waiting at the checkout window.

That is all I have to say about today. See you on down the road.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

As I feared I did not get my car back today. The guy keeps coming up with seemingly plausible reasons why the car is not ready. Well mostly plausible but when he claimed the fake moon landings had run the USA short of creative parts manager I just laughed and hung up. Maybe tomorrow or the twelve of never.< my lack of a car and my unwillingless to obligate myself to some woman here has driven me to existing off on-hand frozen foods. According to my self imposed diet I had been loosing about a pound a week.One can control calories and nutrition when one cooks for oneself. But.. the frozen food people pack in the calories and additives so that one almost becomes addicted and eats too much. To wit: this past week I gained over 3 pounds.

Rascal and I slept most of the day in 2 hour "naps".. He to avoid the pangs of hunger due to no "Fancy Feast Elegant Medley" and I to avoid the mound of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and the over-pissed cat litter box. If I don't clean it at least every two days he rebels and pees on the tile floor next to the litter box. And that is all I have to say on that.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

A U.K. gerontologist claims that the first person to be able to avoid the illnesses of old age and to live indefinitely has probably already been born.

Cambridge PhD alum, author and chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation Aubrey de Grey believes that the first person to live to be 1,000 is already walking the planet.

But he tells Vice's Motherboard website that true immortality is probably out of the question. "The first thing I want to do is get rid of the use of this word 'immortality,' because it's enormously damaging. It is not just wrong; it is damaging," said de Grey. "It means zero risk of death from any cause-whereas I just work on one particular cause of death, namely aging."

He said he's already working on therapies that could take people aged 60 years and rejuvenate them enough so they won't be biologically 60 again until they are actually 90.

Let me apologize for neglecting this for so long. The last month or so I have been so busy meeting new people and relearning old Robertson blarney techniques I have been too exhausted to take time to work up an entry before plunging into bed at 2 am, waking at 4 am for pills, and then sleeping until noon. Then repeating the cycle next day. Also my car has been in shop getting a transmission transplant and I have been forced to explore neighborhood stores on the electric scooter. The batteries were so old I was limited to 100 yards before needing a recharge. That changed last week when I finally found enough money to buy replacement batteries during a sale. Normally the two would have been $125. I got them on sale for $59 plus $14 for shipping.

Yesterday I went exploring the shopping mall that used to be Sharpstown. Today it is de Plaza de Americas. I first though the place was a large $ store. Eventually I realized the whole shopping mall is loaded with upscale clothing, electronic, and etc stores. I cannot wait to take my Austin family for a tour. I have been spreading the word about the mall to all here at Clarewood. For some reason very few have ever visited the mall. I felt like a tourist in Wonderland.

Last night I harvested my first ripe tomato from my little garden flat.

The thing is just over 2 and a half inches in diameter. Tomorrow it will be in my salad. I measured the pH of the soil and discovered it is as alkaline as concrete. That explains the pale green dry look of the leaves. When I get my car back I am going to buy a large bag of compost and soil acidifiers from the nearest nursery.

Saturday I went to the birthday party for a woman who is 99. She had a Dixieland Jazz band playing music. She danced with some of the guests. I hope to be able to set upright and not piss on myself at 99.

Today I finished making chicken and dumplings. This time I chopped up carrots, Yukon gold potatoes, red bell pepper and a Jicama into the chicken broth in which I had simmered two chicken breasts to falling off the bone tender. I then simmered the vegetable/broth until the carrots were fork tender. I then used a hand mixer until most of the vegetables were broken into small chunks. For the dumpling I rolled out canned "exploding" biscuits to 1/8 inch thickness and stamped out dumplings in the shape of Texas. I dropped those into the boiling broth and let them puff up. Returned to simmer and added back the shredded chicken. After an hour simmering to meld flavors I dished up a big bowl. Then another and another. I had thought the carrots were a mistake but the chicken dumpling soup turned out very good. Everything is good here for me but Rascal is unhappy. The lack of a car has made it impossible to get to the grocery stores that sell his particular favorite "Fancy Feast Elegant Medleys" Florentine Collection and he has decided to only eat cooked shrimp and then only enough to survive. He has lost about a pound since starting the "hunger strike".

I will set aside an hour each day after dinner to write an entry.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

"The song in my heart has been displaced by the keening of a desolate wind through the bombed out ruins of my life."

Sorry for the bitterness and anguish of those lines. Let me explain and also account for the lapse since my last entry. Though I am surrounded by wonderful people who care for me and take much interest in my being I am lonely beyond despair. I have an adoring cat who this moment is sleeping on my right foot with his fore feet wrapped around my ankle. Rascal has kept me as sane as possible yet... And yet my every waking moment is consumed, increasingly so, by the absence of my wife Carolyn. I know the old wisdom that says the pain will diminish but mine has not. A couple of days after planting my little garden space Rascal and I decided we really, really wanted some good old greasy original (HaHa) formula KFC chicken breast. BTW where are the nipples on those things? As I was driving to the KFC on Westheimer Rd a feeling of aloneness stole up and over me. As I sat waiting to make a left turn into their parking lot I realized "I'll be doing this the rest of my life without her!" Since that time I have tried to fill every waking moment with mind numbing worked. Last night shortly after Rascal and I had bedded down I realized I was not gonna sleep. I got up, dressed, got in my car and headed south on I59/I69. Around about Edna I turned onto hwy 111 toward Yoakum. I stopped near the end of "City of Hochheim Road" and waited for the moon to rise. I somewhat found a sense of peace and lack of turmoil. Caro and I used to spend a lot of time in our early years watching the full moon rise and set. I was surprised while writing to realize that route was the one we followed from our apartment in Austin to our old homes in Markham. And I drove that route innumerable times returning to Caro from my stupid time in San Marcos at Southwest Texas College.
On the way back to Houston early this morning I thought I heard a voice saying "Do not fret, she is safe with me. Your time will end soon enough."

Rascal roused when I walked in and went back to sleep. Just now he woke and told me he was hungry. So I am off to fix us some kind of breakfast/lunch. I do need to make a grocery run.

In other news: April 19 planted okra, kohlrabi, and kale seeds in garden space sowed kohlrabi and kale. Planted 6 holes of okra. The soil is lousy. After all the rains it looks like hard pack dirt of west Texas. I had to use a lot of force to break the surface crust for weeding.

A week later I transplanted my tomato plant to the garden space. It looks wilted every day. After the season I am going to add a lot of compost and organic matter and maybe sand to break up the soil.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 

"For each adult 200 lbs flour, 75 lbs bacon, 30 lbs of pilot bread, 10 lbs rice, 25 lbs of sugar, 1/2 bushel to a bushel of dried beans, 1 bushel of dried fruit, 2 lbs of saleratus, 10 lbs of salt, 1/2 bushel of cornmeal, 5 lbs of coffee, 2 lbs of tea, 1 /2 bushel of corn parched and ground, a keg of vinegar, and assorted medicines. They also brought a cast iron Dutch oven and skillet as well as a small sheet-iron stove and boiler that could be used inside the wagon when rain or strong winds made outside cooking impractical. Added to that was a pair of 10 gallon kegs for water, to be fashioned on each side of the wagon, a churn, cups, and plates of tinware, and tools. And in addition they would walk all the way. "

This is an average packing list for the pioneers headed west from St. Louis and other jump off points. The excerpt was taken from "Comstock Lode" by Louis Lamour.

I ate dinner very late tonight. I got involved in a free ranging talk with 3 to 6 women from my floor. I had stopped in the elevator lobby on the way back to my room after getting my mail. I intended to stay just long enough to complete the outer edges of a new 100 piece puzzle. Then one by one floor mates stopped to talk. Two hours later the puzzle was finished and I had a gaggle of women around me listening to my stories. Apparently they find me humorous. I saw several making notes as I talked. Such attention can certainly inflate one's self worth. As a result I did not have time to cook a meal so I went to my pantry. I packet of something fell out as I opened the door. It was a packet of "Aloo Palak" it claimed to be ready after 1 minute in the microwave. When I slit the top for a vent I got a good smell. It smelled delicious. Aloo Palak is an Indian cuisine item made from "Hearty Potatoes & Spinach Simmered with Onions, Tomatoes & spices. The picture on the pack makes it look hearty and edible.

When I poured the mess out onto my plate I was so revolted by its nasty greenness. It looked like stewed grass. But I was hungry and had sworn to try new things before the long sleep.

I did not get to grocery shop today because of the almost continuous rainfall.

It is time for my final round of pills and blood pressure reading before bed.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.