Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Tuesday Treasures and a Good Report From Louis Dean's Primary Care Doctor

 It's hard to believe that July is nearly over.
How does time go by so fast?
I think the older we get - the faster time goes.


Tabitha burrowed herself under a cover on our bed the other day.


I guess she was chilly since I had the AC on.

Monday was a good 'at home' day and I did some weed pulling, watering and dead heading my flowers.
Our life has slowed down to a fraction of what we used to do. We visited nursing homes and Reaoma, Lillian, June and others in the past several years, not to mention all the years we had Friday's with Mother.
After Louis Dean was diagnosed with vascular demention and Alzheimer's disease, I scaled our life back to where we spend most of our time together at home or at the ranch.
While we no longer go out to visit and entertain others with Louis Dean playing guitar and singing, we do invite our friends and family to join us here at home.

We have been friends with our neighbors across the street for years and have grown closer as time goes by. We have watched their children grow up and embrace their careers - the son is a pharmacist and the daughter a school counselor. The family is precious to us.
Their home country is Bangladesh and Tarannum brought lunch for us yesterday.


Chicken Biryani!
It was delicious and tasted every bit as good as it smelled!

Tuesday Treasures with Brenda was an excellent day!


I love this camo purse!


Brenda found this Chico dress but the sleeves hit her wrong - so in my basket it went!


Brenda also found this comfy top that I will wear often!


She also found this brand new with tags Chico dress!!
What can I say? Brenda has an eye for quality!


Everyone needs a basic black dress and this another Chico Brenda found in my size.


I love the spring wreath and have packed it away for next year. I will have forgotten it by then and be surprised to see it!
I am changing things out here and there and the two laundry signs replaced two 'I love Lucy' signs which I will give to granddaughter Chandy.


Last night I based in a second painting for my dear friend in Finland, Jutta!
This is the photograph she took.


I have based it in and will be working on it as well as the one I started the other day for Jutta.

I set my alarm for 7:00 this morning.
We had a 9:30 appointment with Louis Dean's primary care doctor.
I made our next appointment in six months for late afternoon.
When the nurse said she had an 8:15 opening, I said, "No, thank you!"


He received a good report! 
Weight and vitals have all been consistent.
His A1C for diabetes is staying at 6.1 so he's good there .
His doctor graduated from Abilene Christian University and Louis Dean attended there when it was a high school. He wore a purple shirt in honor of that!

We shopped Aldi  after our appointment and then ate a bite of lunch and took naps since we were up so early!

We picked up our second pond liner after we got up from our naps.


Louis Dean loves a good project and this is going to be great!


He wants to make a fish pond.


Maybe one pond for goldfish and the other one for koi.


Louis Dean does well when he has a project.
But some of his projects are a challenge for me.
As in redoing the flooring in his music room.
There are no words to accurately to describe his room.
But it is his happy place and he loves it!

There's never a dull day or even a dull moment with my life with Louis Dean!!

Monday, July 21, 2025

Children in the Closet....Chapter 24

 Chapter 24

We spent the weekend at the motel rooms Summer rented for us that was just up the street from our house. We were trying to figure out what to do next. Thankfully, we had complete insurance coverage on the house including content replacement costs- meaning we could replace our losses at whatever the replacement cost would be rather than at the current cash value of what had burned.
We contacted our insurance company and were give a voucher to purchase what things we needed immediately. While Jesse and I had a suitcase each full of clothes and our toiletries plus personal items, Summer and Junior got out of the house in the clothes they were wearing. When we went back in on Sunday to survey the situation, they gathered up some clothing and things to take to the laundry. They reeked of smoke even after the first washing so everything had to be washed 2-3 times.
Summer had a hard time emotionally going back to the house so she took her brother shopping and to do the laundry while Jesse and I went back to see the full damage in the day light. Even so, we needed flashlights to see the rooms because of the boarded-up windows.
The contents were counted a total loss. Still, we had to make an inventory that listed every single item that was inside, when and where we bought it and the price to replace it. I had no idea what a long painful job that would be.
The firemen had been thoughtful as well as efficient in fighting our house fire. While the flames literally devoured the living room, foyer, dining room and sewing room, kitchen and den, the intense heat destroyed the rest. It was hard to look at melted masses and try to decide what it had been. Where possible, the fireman had closed the doors to rooms not in flames so that their high-pressure water hoses wouldn’t cause further damage. It was because of this I was able to save some family photos and mementos. 
We left the house that day realizing the entire interior would have to be stripped down to the rafters and redone and that would take a while. But for now, we had to regroup and find a place to stay.
Summer had no way of knowing that the motel up the street was a known place for drug dealers and not the family kind of place she thought it was. Jesse went out to where all the new hotels were around the relatively new DFW airport and booked a double room for us. We checked out of the motel and into the new one on Sunday night. Our real work of recovery started the next day.

Summer went to work Monday morning and Jesse met with the insurance adjusters while Junior and I went over to the house to begin the inventory. He took a spiral notebook and a pen and started the inventory of his room while I did the same in the kitchen. Things were still visible in the bedrooms – just damaged by heat and smoke. In the kitchen I took a stick and stirred up the debris in the floor trying to remember what we had and to think what a damaged item had been. Things were so misshaped and warped it was hard to identify anything. We couldn’t begin clearing out all the burned rumble until we had at least a rudimentary list of the contents.
You could only stay in the dark smelly house for so long before going outside to sit in the green grass and breathe in the fresh air. It was still early enough that summer to have pleasant days before the intense Texas heat arrived. It was while I was resting in the front yard, my sister Lanita pulled up to the curb and began unloading several boxes of cleaning supplies and snack foods. She and her husband owned a neighborhood grocery store and I teased her by saying she used the day’s profit to shop for us.
Jesse would go to work and I would go to the house and do inventory every day for over a week. On the weekends, friends and church members would come over and help us. At last, we had a basic list of what was in each room and we could finish it all up later. Now we could concentrate on the next stage – cleaning it all out and rebuilding. For this we had to wait for the insurance adjuster. Once he was finished inspecting everything, we were free to get a dumpster and start hauling all of our charred belongings out to it.
I couldn’t handle the stress of going to the house on a daily basis so I had what I called ‘Clean’ days and ‘Dirty’ days. On the Clean days, I would go shopping. When you lose everything in a house fire you must replace a vast number of things in a short amount of time. We all needed clothes, and even though I tried to salvage as much from our closets as I could, we still needed to replace quite a bit just for the time being. Jesse’s closet was in the hall and everything he had burned completely up.
On the dirty days, I would go through everything we were hauling out to see if there was anything I could salvage and redeem. The heat had been so intense that even the dishes I thought I could save would break so easily. It was really dirty work and we would go back to the hotel every evening after working until late at night, all filthy with smoke and black with the ashes we’d sifted through. I left a note in the dirty bathtub one day explaining that our house had burned and that’s why the shower was always so dirty when they came to clean the rooms. It was embarrassing for me so I bought a can of Comet to clean the tub myself but Jesse had a fit and said NO.
Our last week in the hotel, we treated all the people who had come to help us with the inventory to a big dinner in the restaurant downstairs before we all went up to our suite to spent a few hours doing more work on the inventory. This was a nightmare of a job to do so all the help was much appreciated. Someone brought a big stack of catalogs for us to find items that matched what we had lost. We had to just estimate where and when we bought things

Jesse negotiated with the insurance company and, instead of staying on at an expensive hotel, he arranged for us to rent a fully furnished apartment close to our house. This made it easier for us and less expensive for the insurance company. Jesse’s work had slowed down to the point that he acted as the contractor to rebuild the house and hired sub-contractors to do the plumbing and electrical work.
Summer continued to have trouble coming back to the burned house even as it was being cleared out and the rebuilding began. She wanted to help so she took on the meals for us. We would work so long every night that the fast-food places would be closed by the time we stopped to eat. Summer made sure she picked up dinner for us and, after moving into the apartment, she was responsible for buying the groceries and preparing easy sandwich meals.
One late afternoon she arrived at the house with a bag of dinner things for us to eat at the picnic table in the back yard. She came in and couldn’t see anyone, and called out but no answer.  Finally, she went out in the back yard and saw my purse hanging on the branch of a tree. There was no clean place to set anything inside so I would hang things wherever I could. When she saw my purse, she nearly freaked out. She thought the Rapture had happened because we were all gone and she was afraid she had been left behind! In reality, we were really tired and thirsty and a friend had taken us down to the 7-11 to get a bag of ice and some cold drinks!
It was a long, exhausting, hot summer as we worked steadily on the house. Thankfully, the insurance money was more than enough for all we needed to do. I love wallpaper and had even papered all of our closets and pantry – and the insurance adjusters gave us credit for all of that.  I did most of the painting and all of the wallpapering while Jesse put in windows and did the carpentry work. We both worked hard and often long into the nights.
On the weekends, Jr and Summer would put doors on saw horses and paint or stain them with Jesse yelling at them for not doing it right. It didn’t seem to matter to him that the neighbors could hear him. Indeed, Doug and Reaoma would stand outside and watch him berate us and he never acted like they were even there. Some days were easier than others but every day was stressful.
On Tuesday, August 2nd, 1983 we began to move back into our home just 52 days after the house fire - the same length of time it took Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Looking back, it was not quite ready to live in yet since we had no furniture. We slept on the floor for the first 5 nights because the mattresses we had ordered were delayed in shipping. Still, I was home and that’s where I wanted to be. 
We all went to a huge warehouse sale at Haverty’s Furniture – Jesse, Summer, Jr and I – and bought an entire house of furnishings. I picked out a living room sofa and coffee and end tables and Summer sat on it until a salesman came to write it up. It took hours to select everything we needed but we did it! I had been shopping on my ‘clean days’ buying up linens and dishes and pots and pans. It was overwhelming at times to refurnish everything as quickly as possible but I was determined to get it done and get it done fast!
Since all the furniture was brand new, I tried to find as many accessories as possible at thrift stores so the house wouldn’t look like a department store. I hung all manner of things up on the walls including empty frames in the living room and hats in the den. I had this sense of urgency to ‘dress’ the rooms back up. Because I was in such a hurry to get all the finishing up done, I did a lot of the trim work myself. Never mind that I didn’t know what I was doing. We bought the fake wood trim and a table saw and I learned to miter the corners and trim out doors and floors and ceilings. When I couldn’t get the corners right in my bathroom, I made pretty bows to go with the wallpaper and hung them in the corners.
While I worked inside, Jesse painted the outside a blue color and Jr kept the yard up. By the end of the month everything looked so much better. Best of all, there was not one hint of smoke smell! We were told that’s the last thing you get rid of but Jesse had sprayed every single board that remained in the house with Kiltz before he started rebuilding. The only time I would get the faintest whiff of smoke was when I opened the foyer closet fast. There must have been a board up in the attic that missed being coated with Kiltz. Within a year that smell was gone, too.
While the house had taken up all of Jesse’s time, Summer and Jr had been doing the bus ministry visitation on Saturday mornings so he could continue the work. Now he went back to visiting the bus kids and riding the bus on Sundays. I decided to take a break and not return to the bus ministry. We continued to go to church all that summer but I was relieved not to have the extra burden of seeing Jesse treat the bus children with such kindness and their parents with what appeared to be genuine compassion and then treat us with such scorn and downright hostility. I simply could not understand how this could be. It was as he were two completely different men.
By the end of September, the house was, once again, a comfortable home. Jr was in high school and Summer was working and all had seemingly returned to normal. Jesse was still a difficult man to live with and we walked on eggshells trying not to upset our lives. It was obvious to me that we had all been through a literal trial by fire and yet nothing had changed in the way Jesse treated us.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

My Knight in Shining Overalls......

The last few months I have been sleeping late - as in 10:00 or 11:00!
He was waiting patiently for me to wake up and, once he heard me rustling, he brought me coffee in bed.
 

Isn't he the cutest thing??


He was so sweet and even brought a tiny cup of cream so I could add as much as I wanted.


Louuis Dean even chose this beautiful cup handpainted by Janice Phillips in 1985.
What a good way to start the weekend!

I wrote 1,500 words in chapter 44 yesterday. I'm finally picking up some speed.


I finished Samuel's Cowboy Santa from last year...
Still have a few more touches to make and then glaze it with Liquin after it's dry.


I think I've finally found the Santa I want to paint for this year.
It will be a smaller painting thank I usually do but I'm excited to get started on it next week.


I also started a painting for my dear friend, Jutta, in Finland.
I've based it all in and next week I'll match up the blues from the photo to the canvas.


I bought this canvas while out thrifting - only the feathers were grey - and I decided to jazz them up with some pretty colors.


I'm happy to say that Tabitha has not escaped lately.
I've developed a trick! I take a plastic tub lid with me, and when I come in, I crack the door open and put the lid in front of me to keep her from running out between my legs!
So far it's worked perfectly!

Ilene came down for our Saturday night movie!


Last week I made cocktails and they tasted awful so this week it was chilled water and iced tea!


I made a pasta salad.....


...and a fruit bowl with popcorn at intermission.


This was Ilene's first time to see a Bond movie with Daniel Craig.
She quit watching the Bond films after Sean Connery!

It was two hours and eighteen minutes and action all the way.
We were both exhausted but it was fun!
Next week we will watch something warm and cozy!

I watched Fellowship church online before I made brunch for us.


Have y'all tried any of the recipes you see on Facebook?
Amber gave me a really good non stick pan and I tried my hand at a breakfast taco....
only I didn't have salsa. Will be stocking up on that soon!
Anyway, you crack an egg and top it with grated cheese and a few slices of ham - or bacon!
Press a tortilla down on top and cook it a couple minutes.
Flip it over and brown the other side. Slide it off and fold in half.

It's been a slow easy Sunday with naps, movies and resting in general.


I'm finishing up with my journal entry and Louis Dean is outside watering.
So far we have only had one 100* day but there's probably going to be another one this week. 
I water the back after my coffee in the mornings and he does the front at night.
Tomorrow we will go to Home Depot and pick up the second pond liner and by the end of the week, Louis Dean may well have our new ponds up and running.
Do any of y'all have fish ponds? We had fish once in our kitchen pond but I accidently electrocuted them. I had lights strung around it and a broken bulb fell in the pond. Same thing happened to a frog in the back pond by the gazebo. No lights around the ponds anymore.





Thursday, July 17, 2025

This and That at the Chapmans....

 

Monday was 50% off day at Teaxs Giant so Brenda and swapped out and did our thrifting then to take advantage of the sale.

It was like a big party and the check out lines went up and down and around aisles!
I bought several Christmas gifts so I can't show you all my treasures!
Can you spy Brenda in the line??

I came home and worked on the Cowboy Santa that I started for Samuel last year.
I've lots of progress and think I will finish it tonight.
Louis Dean takes long soaking baths instead of showers so he was in the tub while I was painting.
I went in to check on him and his bathwater was dark!


He was totally out of bath products and thought this bottle might be an oil or something.
Just a rinse and no harm done and I'm glad it wasn't coffee grounds!
We are still waiting for our plumber to repair the bathroom sink.
LD kept forgetting and used it so I put a fat pillow in it!
That pillow is now soaking wet!


It was a trying day and we were both in bed before 9:00!

On Tuesday we picked up the pond liner we had ordered - thinking it was the same size as our kitchen pond.


It was half the size so after Louis Dean told me, "Houston, we have a problem!" I said, "No, we don't! I'll order another one and it will be even more interesting!"

Before we came home I stopped at Walmart and spent over $100 on bath products!
We bought oils, bubbles, salts and all manner of good things!
Now he has choices!


Wednesday we had a visit with his neurologist and it was good.
His vitals were fine and he hasn't lost much ground in the last six months.
He weighs a healthy 203 pounds and he charmed and laughed with Dr. Shadad and she complimented both of us and said we were doing everything right!
Her sweet nurse assistant is such a dear and she took this pic of us.
Even the other patients in the waiting room were friendly and I said 'God bless you' in Spanish to a lady and her daughter and they both said 'Amen.' I know only a little Spanish from my homeschooling days but I was able to tell them my name and it happened to be the daughter's name, as well.

We came home and had lunch before we left again - this time to take my 1983 Bernia sewing machine in to be repaired. Hopefully, they can fix it! It's so old you can't even buy parts for it so we will see.
That machine and I go way back.
After my house burned in June of 1983, we went to the Texas State Fair in the fall and I bought that Bernia plus a Vita Mix plus an organ.
The Vita Mix lasted a long time but they could not repair it when a small part wore out.
Good grief. This was like 10+ years ago and I decided not to invest in another one.
I put the organ on the curb in the last year or so and hope someone picked it up and is enjoying it now.


My extra treat was stopping at Hobby Lobby on our way home.


Two charcuterie plates made supper for us.


Patton was our movie of choice and I am grateful it wasn't another John Wayne.
Just saying.

Today has been a keeper of home kind of day - my favorite!


I love the Rosemary infused olive oil from Aldi and used the very last of it the other night on roasted veggies. I decided to refill the bottle by making my own.
I stripped several stems of rosemary and simmered them in Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
I starined out the rosemary and dried it and poured the olive oil in my bottle and added a sprig of fresh rosemary to it.


To the dried rosemary pieces, I added sea salt and Win! WIN!!


Today's lunch.
We usually eat one good meal a day and snacks or appetizers later.

You know, the dreading of doing something is worse that the doing of it!


Louis Dean is a veteran and put himself and Ellen, his beloved first wife, through college on the GI Bill.
He's never signed up for benefits and I have felt the need to to do so - just in case we need the VA's help later. It's been well over a year since I thought about doing it and yet I kept putting it off.
My neighbor, Stephanie, encouraged me at the start and then Sherry researched and printed off the forms for me.


At last all is filled out and ready to go in the mail!!

Texas summer heat is on its way!


Our Texas sage bushes are beautiful but only one of them is blooming.
That's supposed to signal a change in the weather.


We are loving our sunflowers!


And our yellow trumpet vines.


I planted zinnias from seed and am so excited they grew!


I took these pics this afternoon.
Louis Dean is a happy man and loves his room.
He piddles and arranges music and plays music and keeps himself totally entertained!

Right now he is outside watering the front.
I watered the back and came in to add my words to the photos of tonight's journal entry.


Thank you, Lord for all your blessings!