Myrtle Beach
I haven’t been feeling too well the last few days. Seems, I have a cold, or the flu, I dunno which. All I know is that it has sure put a damper on my daily enthusiasm. Jerilyn (Dr. Mom) has been doing her best, pumping all sorts of medicine into me, and some of them help me feel a little better. I guess it’s something you have to tough out for a few days. I have been very fortunate. It has been 3-4 years since I have had any problems during the winter months, except with the occasional bout of Vertigo. I’m guessing that in a day or two I will be back to normal.
We are currently having a brick mason chip out and replace some of the cement between the bricks on our three stoops. It seems, that as the house as aged, a lot of the cement disappeared. It has been replaced and hopefully will last another 30 years. There is always some maintenance needed on a home. I guess that is something everyone has to get use to.
The caulking of the bathtub mentioned in last weeks WOW has been completed. I am not an accomplished caulker, but it does look good based on my meager abilities. I hope it is a long time before I have to do it again. I worry too much about getting things right and sometimes the more you fiddle with things the worse they get.
Gladys hurt her back again the other day and is back in Assisted Living and probably headed for the Health Care unit of her retirement community. She goes to see the doctor tomorrow (2/19) and will probably need an operation like the two she had several months ago. They shoot some gell in between her vertibrae and then shoot in some glue to hold it in place. It has worked well in the past. At 89, we expect to see this happen on a continual basis. We pray for her every day.
Sometimes, I walk around worrying about something and am unable to put my finger on exactly what it is I’m worrying about. I pause for a few minutes and struggle to figure out what is bothering me. Most of the time I am unable to do so. Maybe we are allocated so many “worrying minutes†per day and regardless of what we do we cannot escape having to “belly-up†to the Worrying Bar and do our share of worrying. The trick is to figure out how to minimize our “worry†allocation. Thusly, I have decided to only worry about those things that I have any control over (should eliminate about 80% of my worries). From that point I can handle the rest (dream on!).
My trip to watch the University of Virginia basketball game last week was fun. On the way up to Charlottesville (on I64) we ran into a lot of ice on the road about 18 miles from our destination. The car immediately in front of me spun out at about 60 mph and landed in the wooded median. From that point on we crept along at 3-4 mph and arrived at the game about half-way thru the first half. The trip home was safe and uneventful. If you should need tickets for any type of sporting event go online to www.stubhub.com . It was refreshing to be in the midst of 5000 young people shouting, cheering and jumping up and down with huge speakers blaring and lights flashing all over the place. It’s almost like going to the doctor and getting a “youth†shot. I left the stadium feeling renewed and refreshed. I gotta do that more often.
Jerilyn and I are looking forward to our trip, with our friends Don & Louise, to Myrtle Beach on March 9th . We have made this an annual event. One of the things I look forward to is Don & I heading off to the cigar shop and buying a $5 cigar and setting outside on the park bench, smoking away. I haven’t had a cigar since our trip there last year and I need a cigar badly. The girls get a lot of shopping in and Don & I just wonder around looking at this, that and the other. Last year we took a side trip to Charleston, SC and enjoyed it very much. Louise is our trip coordinator and does a very good job at it. She is very good at planning the different things we do while we are there. I think every group needs someone like her, don’t you? To make things even better, she is a registered nurse and so if I get a piece of fried chicken stuck in my throat I don’t hafta worry. I wonder if Don and Jerilyn know the Heimlich maneuver.
It’s time for me to get serious about filing our income tax return. All I can say is that Tax Cut had better be as good as Turbo Tax, although at half price it may not be. Time for me to close this newsletter and start to work.
You can find my blog at: http://tommyhale.blogspot.com/ or my pictures at: http://bipolar66.smugmug.com I have added some new pics to Smugmug if you are interested.
I hope you’re enjoying whatever season it is in your part of the world. Thanks for reading my weekly missive.
Tommy
“Paradise is here or nowhere: You must take your joy with you, or you will never find it.” ….O.S. Marden
