dressing miriam

Miriam has always had good taste in clothes.

She would wear them with grace and dignity, but we are in a different era now.

Before we go to church she asks: What do you want me to wear.

Now women’s clothing has always been an interesting subject for me, but I was not terribly good at it, nor needed to be, but now it is different.

So we get out skirts and jackets and look for tops the right color. She has lost a bit of weight (since I started cooking, which is not a good recommendation), and some of the clothes she wore some years ago fit again.

At this age fashion has no meaning, and some of her outfits have too much shoulder pads perhaps, but do you know what, I don’t mind.

Today I found a very nice wine colored suit, and a frilly blouse to go with it. Black lingerie and shoes, with wine colored hose.

She will look nice and I will be glad (as always) to have her on my arm.

I love you Miriam.

boards

I am a collector.

Not coins or t-bills or barbie dolls, but of boards!

“Dave, I have 5 2 by 4 by 20s that I did not use, could you use them?”

Of course I can, some time, maybe, perhaps.

So I stack lumber. I am ready to build. At least I have the boards!

Tolstoy asked the question: “How much land does a man need?” How much lumber does a retired coot need?

As in Tolstoy’s story, maybe a lot less than you might think.

finite energy

I have a good friend who is building a large home and airplane complex.

He was about 65 when he began. First he built a 40 by 80 airplane hanger. I forgot to say that the house and hanger are along the side of an Air-Park not far from where I live. They are side by side.

Any way he built this huge hanger pretty much by himself. He is big and strong and it went well, but it took him 3 or 4 years. Then he began the house.

He is a great craftsman and a consummate perfectionist, so everything is done very carefully. The property comes complete with geothermal hot water to for heat, but not cold water for drinking. If you want cool water to grout with you fill buckets and let them cool to room temperature.

He has back up systems for everything, and sometimes back up for the backup system.

But there is a downside.

He is about 75 now. His legendary strength is not so strong any more. Fourteen hour days have reduced to 5 or 6 hour days. He and his wife (who is a great helper) plod along getting prodigious amounts of work done.

But this is a big house with a LOT of time eating details.

A while back while visiting with them after church, I found out that he had put down about a thousand feet of ceramic tile in the entry, kitchen and hall areas. Did a decent job of it too. Wife said she was grouting the tile, but it would probably take her all summer to get it done. I asked what she was using for tools and she said she was using a 1” putty knife.

So I offered to come out and “show her” how to grout tile, a LOT faster. So Miriam and I spent a short day and did ⅔ of the grouting. We went back and finished later.

Now she has the summer for other things.

Miriam asked him if sometimes he wished he had never started such a big project. He nodded his head.

So I think about all of this. They still have at least 2 more years to go on the house. The kicker is that when it is finished it will be sold and they will go live closer to a daughter. He does not fly any more and his airplane is for sale.

An old friend once said to me (I was in my early 60’s at the time) to get my “heavy lifting” done by the time I was 70, it is harder after that.

Hmm. We only have so much strength and as we age that strength is finite, sadly reduced by age. I wonder, often, what I should be putting my time and effort onto now?

And as I think about it I go back to my art studio to think it over.

Or I take a nap.

my new ipod

For fathers day, one of my wonderful daughters gave me a gift certificate to an electronics store. Now, my daughters are generous and wonderful, but hardly wealthy, so the gift did not have a lot of zeroes.

So I began thinking about what I might get. My ancient TV will soon be obsolete, but maybe that is alright! And there was not enough to buy a new plasma screen, so I kept thinking.

Then it dawned and I got a green iPod, the little inexpensive one.

Wow what a wonder it has been.

Since it does not have a screen, I load it each day with what I want to listen to, and change if as often as I wish.


But the biggest thing has been that I have been able to download books from the net and spend my time listening to books. There is no shortage of books, but most have a charge, some small and some high on recent releases.

LibriVox.org has been a wonderful source of recorded books that are in the public domain, which means they include a lot of the old masterpieces.

I have listened to half a dozen books so far. Some old favorites, and some that I should have read but did not. Right now I am mostly through with Melville’s Typee and when I am finished I will go for his Moby Dick, a book I have not touched since early college.

And maybe I will listen to Mozart opera for a few days, or Iris Dement!

ahh september

Wow that was a fast and busy summer.

Miriam is going very well. She is fun to be with and we enjoy each others company. She has given up on cooking, which is quite amazing in itself, but she continues to be good at clean up, and I mean real good! I take her with me wherever I go, and she is patient with me.

Mostly we stayed home this summer, only went camping once with one more trip scheduled. One grandson came up for a few days and we took him camping. The price of gas and the budget says we stay home much of the time.

I continue to work on the refurbishing of our church. Last year we remodeled the entire front of the sanctuary, with me doing the majority of the work. Since then we have redone the narthex and and wood base in the hall. I still have bulletin boards to make and one more bathroom to tile.

Today I spray lacquer on the base that will go along the wall in the long halls. The light colored wood base replaces rather ugly rubber base that was put in when the church was new in the '60's.

The church was built at a time when glass was a favorite material. There was a total of six windows, each 5 by 8 feet in the front of the church. In the time I was head deacon I replaced 3 of those due to vandalism. At $500 a pop I balked at the last breakage and eventually replaced all of that plate glass with double glass, but where the original window was huge, now each window has 5 smaller pieces of glass, the total cost ⅔ as much as that huge hunk of plate. It looks good, I am assured.

But all of this winding down. I have a specific list of things to finish, and when it is done I am too. This year I gave up the head deacon post, though I kept my bible study group, which I have lead for most of my adult life.

Anyway, the fresh corn was wonderful, the tomatoes delicious and the string beans were marvelous.

But now fall comes.

Thanks for being patient.