Even as the night goes unwillingly and it’s darkness clings to the remaining hours not even the fumbling fingers of an old man on a keyboard can withstand lightnesses early arrival. I’ll pay for this later I tell myself but laying claim to these early morning routines allows me the tranquility that only me, the birds, and a few moist worms can enjoy alone for our reprieve.
I have had a hint at the news while waiting for the water to boil for the coffee and I won’t be turning that back on. One of my tasks that awaits me is how to disconnect cable while keeping my landline phone and the internet.
Hope springs eternal is still the mantra with the weather though compared to other parts of our country we really don’t have anything to complain about. Playing with fonts and opening size letters are all I can do to keep my fingers moving. Where did the Tiger go that I had planned to feature in this article. Let me go try and find him.
The title does not say, ‘I woke up this morning, in my van.’ But when I read the sentence the first time my eyes saw “woke up this morning” as it were, filling in the blank space as if that is what it was saying.
“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. The reality of my existence is that my identity, if I ever had one, has dissolved. Goals. Do I have any? I can’t even conceive of the possibility. A purpose? To survive until tomorrow. I open the van’s side doors. It’s warm. I’m in a dirt turnout at the edge of a farmer’s field. Corn. Oh yeah, I’m in Iowa. Where? I have no clue. It takes me a moment to remember where I’m going. East? West? Where am I coming from?“
The passage is a snippet from a book Govt. Cheese by Stephen Pressfield. I sorely want to read it, but he wants $40 for the book.
My wife just paid $6 a bulb for four of them.
Prices are outrageous at this time.
Gas is $4.09 a gallon one day and $4.19 the next. $4.59 a block away.
John and Mary Thomson who have came many more miles than they have traveled. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. But there are those who know and to them…Thank You
I didn’t need the wheelchair for anything other than traveling through the Chicago Botanical Garden. So, I could have gotten out of the chair to take pictures but after about an hour an half I was acclimated to just sitting, I just sat.
We had another friend with us, her name is Angel, and was she ever. Angel arrived in America 6 months ago, she is a post doc graduate at Northwestern University and works as a researcher in the Chemistry Dept. She also attends 1st Presbyterian Church. We sort of have adopted each other in our roles helping her acclimate to America and as social companions as well. Our favorite go to place is Panera Bread which is where we went after our trip to the Gardens. And did I fail to mention, Angel is from India.
Oh, and the 1,000 years reference was for the Bonsai Tree behind us and not for me. I am officially 78 1/2 years old.
An unimaginable amount of books, magazine articles, and pamphlets tell you HOW TO do something. How to dress, cook, and walk like an Egyptian. Not to mention the innumerable posts on Google, Bing, and Benefits.Gov. The world is preoccupied with how to do this, that, and the other. Why aren’t these things taught in schools where we send our kids to learn HOW TO.
On the other hand, there are those of us who, for one reason or another, never finished our formal education and need to research HOW TO do what we didn’t learn in school.
If I were to research where the first HOW TO might be found, I would look in the Bible and discover that God told Adam and Eve HOW TO stay in the Garden by not eating from a particular tree. But this wasn’t just any old tree. No, this was the tree of good and evil. Now we all know there is no quicker way for someone to do something than to be told not to do it. Especially if there is suspense involved.
And who should come along, the Big Bad Wolf. And he huffed, and he puffed and got himself into every children’s book where good and evil existed.
Now what does all this have to do with hopping like a grasshopper?
Not much I’ll guarantee you that. Grasshoppers don’t know much about anything let alone where to go. This way, that way, turn around and back the same way they came from. Whatever strikes their fancy I guess.
But lo, what if that is your fancy? No, not dress like an Egyptian, Hop like a grasshopper from one thing to another with no particular place to go. You’re going to get somewhere alright but it might not be where you had hoped to go.
So it is that I have eight tabs open, all articles that I am incorporating into my pursuit of HOW TO write. Are they going in the same direction, No. They are all the next shiny object of my interest. I have more interest than WANT TOO. That’s all folks, on to my next BIG IDEA.
I went to my 4th Personal Trainer class this past Monday, I went to my 2nd Physical Therapy class today. At issue is my walking and my balance. Heretofore, I couldn’t walk very far and my balance was left suspect after my fall on March 16th.
My personal trainer works with me non-stop for a half hour, and My physical therapist for 45 minutes. Melita, my physical therapist, had me do a routine and wanted 3 sets of 20. On the 3rd set, I asked her if she would take 19. She said, 20. I think she has a greater sense of what I can do and doesn’t accept anything less.
When I got home tonight, I puttered around the apartment for a spell and went outside to the park, where my favorite granddaughter sat on the swings. (She’ll remind me that she is my ONLY granddaughter.) I didn’t think of it and just walked from my porch to the swings. Dale and MaryPat observed me from the 3rd floor of the building and said, “Look at John; he’s walking.” (And without a cane, mind you as well.) Then, I had to acknowledge that this would have been near impossible last week. I was making progress. Suddenly, I experienced confidence that if and when I gain full control of my walking, living might be worth it after all.
If you suffer, and that is what I do, from as many maladies (I won’t name them all, trust me on this) as I do, you begin to decline in hope that you will ever return to any degree of normalcy. And in fact, the abnormal becomes the normal. So when I see a small degree of improvement from what I wasn’t able to do last week to what I can do now. Well, that’s just flatout encouraging.
Borges was going to be a friend of mine. One who would help me on my journey to become a writer and make our way onto the best seller list. But now I see that Borgus is nothing more than a massive mountain taking up space in some regions nestled against the Asiatic Sea.
We are squirreled away in this bunker studying DREAMER TO AUTHOR taught by Jerry Jenkins, author of more books than he has read. Which is what he said. He is also the father of Dallas Jenkins, who brought you THE CHOSEN.
After doing a Grammarly edit on my book FINGERPRINTS OF GOD and sending you (my chosen few) chapters these past few weeks, I have read it in whole. It doesn’t POP. It’s a book of compiled stories but not good storytelling. I need to go back to the drawing board. By investing in Jerry Jenkins’s course, I hope to discover the missing link in my writing and, even more, find a path to a writing career.
On the Home Front, I signed up with a personal coach at the Levy (Senior) Center for 10 sessions to restore some lost physical fitness. I had a recent fall which has had a debilitating consequence on my overall health. Add to this 12 sessions of physical therapy, and before long, they should have Humpty Dumpty back together again.
In the meantime, I will stay in touch periodically and keep you apprised of my progress.
Chicago and Illinois were already a backward city and state it is no wonder they are going to go down the tubes. It’s not the Governor’s or the Mayor’s money they are losing so what do they care. Chicago is not the Windy City for its wind it is for Windbag politicians who talk loud and say nothing. Tyrants!!!
The $1,200 relief payments from the U.S. Treasury will help, but that money will likely go to rent, food, and medicine. The generous unemployment benefits Congress approved will run out at the end of July — right about when many landlords expect people to pay full rent again plus any rent they missed this spring.
The nation is already experiencing modern-day bread lines as Americans flock to food banks after just a few weeks of the massive unemployment spike. On Friday, Dustin Sider, pastor of Fairland Church in the small town of Cleona, Pa., posted a message on Facebook offering 2,700 eggs free to anyone who needed them. A farmer had donated the eggs to the church. Sider figured it would take a few days to get rid of them. Instead, they were gone in 28 minutes.
“I pretty much stood in the parking lot until 5 p.m. and kept telling people, ‘Sorry, we’re all out.’ The cars just kept on coming,” said Sider. “Many said they were laid off.”
As people lose jobs, they stop paying their rent or mortgages, which can lead to eviction and a bad credit rating that drags them down for years. They lose health insurance and possibly their cars. Often, they lose hope. Many economists say this is the scenario the nation needs to avoid, and policymakers could be doing a much better job trying to prevent this.
I feel the saddest in the quiet of these lonely hours. This hurts, and it is painful. Any exercise to make it feel normal is an act of futility. There is too much judgment and too little walking in another man’s shoes. I have spent 20 years in institutions too numerous to mention, and I know desperation and despair; I have spent tortured nights chained to bars and tied up like cattle to a bed on the floor. What does this have to do with what is going on now? Plenty…
It goes without saying that people are desperate and despairing, having lost their jobs and their security, and all they hear ringing in their ears is STAY AT HOME; you are saving lives. What about their lives as they drive in lines of a hundred cars waiting for a handout. DON’T BRING YOUR KIDS TO THE STORE. But she is a single mother without child support because the baby’s dad is out of work and homeless himself. I’m not making this up; I know these people. These are sad and not even the most painful of things. Your mother or father lay dying in ICU, and only the gracious act of an angel holding a sign in the window saying she would stay with him until he passes so he or she would not die alone.
Some people will try to avoid sadness and keep a sense of tranquility. So sad for you. Others will have no choice but to add each day of suffering to a forgone conclusion that soon they, too, will die alone. “There but for the Grace of God go I”, should be the mantle over your doorway.
This is not uplifting, nor do I want it to be. I want you to feel the pain, if it’s even possible for you to do so, I want to rattle the bars of my cell so loudly that somebody will hear and notice the silent cries in the night that echo to nowhere…As I have done so many times before. The End
So my friend has been unemployed for awhile now. We could spend a few articles on this subject but i won’t. Fortunate for him he has a saint of a friend who has let him stay with him until he gets back on his feet. About some time last week he secured a job. He started his first 8pm to 8 am shift last night. OH, did I mention he is working for a weiner making manufacturer? I can only imagine. You know how it is after you have been out of work for awhile and FINALLY get a job. Of course he has to wait the usual two weeks for that first paycheck, but still, your back to work. This morning he sent me a 3 word chat message. “Please shoot me.” So I already said, I can only imagine. I asked him if he could hang in there? He said, “I always hang in there.” And to his credit,. HE DOES. The End
The essence of this lesson for me is that I need to UNDERSTAND that Jesus Christ gives the saints (that’s you and me who believe) the POWER, the very same power that God used to raise Jesus from the dead. PONDER THAT.
Ephesians 1:18-21New International Version
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
That’s about the size of it. Pondering. Facing a week’s worth of activities of this, that, and the other. 10% of it may be necessary. The rest is only to fill the void or the gap between today and the following Monday. The relief I thought I would find from filing the taxes is absent. There is a platitude that says, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” This has been so true in my life before and after.
I have to hop to it now; scheduled activities are fast approaching. See you later.
So now it’s later, and I am adding to an already published post, and it seems I should either know this answer or it’s unimportant. Let’s go with unimportant.
First, we had Physical Therapy with my past therapist, who seems more like a friend than a professional, but I treat her as a professional; and given the task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, she is more than capable and qualified. I just have to do the homework for the exercises she gives me. Doubling up on the workload, we next went to my personal coach, who is tasked with the same goal of putting Humpty together again, but she targets other aspects of my routine. Future weeks will not see me going to both on the same day.
Thomson's Home Emporium 