BLESSINGS OF RAIN

I came home Saturday to find over 2" of rain in my gauge for the last two days with more drizzle lasting until Sunday. Friday after taking Nancy for a checkup on her shoulder and getting a recommendation on an orthopedic doctor to look at her arthritic hip that is hurting we returned to her house for a special reading event. Her daughter, Vicky, joined us to hear a long time friend, Bob Colehour, alias Bob Lovejoy or Windy Bob read from the cowboy poetry that he has written. I had read one of his booklets that Nancy showed me the first time I visited her house. He had mixed cowboy and civil war poetry in that book. He came from Burleson with a large bag of his stories and poems. He read from novels in progress and some of his great poems. Most are typical cowboy poems with a lot of humor like the two cowboys who fell in love with a madam who pitted them against one another until they were drawing on each other. They then realized what she was doing and shot her.

Nancy read from the historical novel she is writing and Bob gave her some pointers on improving the writing. I used the opportunity to practice reading the Declaration of Independence that I have offered to read for the Cottonwood July 4th celebration. It has a few words that I trip over like sanguinity. I need to practice more, but the content sounds a lot like the current tea party rhetoric.

Driving back Saturday we stopped at New York Hill restaurant at noon and noticed that hummingbirds were feeding. So today I put three feeders out and saw a hummingbird a short time later. I haven't seen any deer for several weeks. I presume the does have their fawns hidden. I have seen some goldfish in the pond but they don't come up to feed.

Today our SS class read more of Joshua and wondered why all of the many names haven't been used to name children. Caleb and Joshua were the only two names of the hundreds that we could relate to. At church I gave the stewardship talk and explained how our church is different from the many that have a drive with pledges and develop their budgets from the pledge cards. Our position is that you come to church to worship God. One way you worship is with your tithes and what you give of all that God has given you is between you and God. We then have the responsibility to spend those gifts responsibly. So we often fall behind on the budget but the Lord seems to provide for our needs in other months. Some appreciated knowing a little of our history.

Tonight Nancy taught me how to play Phase10. After Ashley mentioned it in her blog about her trip to Romania and I had never heard of the game, Nancy brought her deck and tonight she let me win the first game. It was close all the way. I was embarrassed that I couldn't shuffle the cards. I used to do it well and even had some card tricks but too much time playing solitaire on the computer has ruined my card dealing skills.