She's home

5/8/07 Tuesday
She’s home. Tired and emotionally exhausted but home and happy to be here. Worried a little as I drove to pick her up because I could see the lightning shows from what looked like two thunderstorms. When I got to the airport and looked on the flight monitor I saw it was fine. Sat down in the waiting area in my black dress pants (the ones I can finally fit in) and black shirt with the somewhat bright tie, holding the dozen roses I was lucky to get and waited. Finally folks started coming around the corner and I saw the prettiest face in the world (Ok, I’m just a little biased) break into a smile as she saw me. You could see the toll this trip took on her and her first words were “It’s good to be home”. Ya know there were hugs and kisses but mostly she was tired and wanted to get to the house. She started going through mail and doing things around the house so I had to tell her it could wait and get some sleep.

That’s all I’m gonna write for now. It rained good so I’m going to pull up weeds while the grounds muddy and they come up easy. One of the things Cherie said was “The weeds are so big”. Suckers grow quick when there is rain out here.
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I guess it didn’t rain as much as I thought. Must have gone all around us as there were plenty of big puddles of water just a half mile down the road. The earth is dry where the garden is. I still pulled weeds. Started a new pile for compost. Will get more goat crap (I suppose I should use a nicer word but crap types out quick and isn’t as bad as the other four letter word. Feces just doesn’t have a ring to it) from Kevin’s place to greatly enhance the compost.

Cherie came out after a bit and I gave her a tour of the garden to show her how things have come up and grown over the sixteen days she’s been gone. God I love watching her face as the wonder shows with each new discovery. Showed her the new flowers that came out after she left. They are the ones I have a picture of a few posts ago. Kind of look like a small sunflower. She was ecstatic over how the sunflower seeds have come up. I showed her how I made a bed around the mailbox knowing she would love it. She did. You know, I’ve got this love thing pretty bad. It hasn’t died down any over the three years we’ve been together. Don’t think it ever will.

Cherie brought back some seeds with her so I showed how I had prepared the beds that line our stone walk leading to the front door. Won’t use that as an entrance for some time. The first room, the one that had been a porch and closed in, stinks really bad. There is the reek of mildew but the smell of Skittles pee on top of it makes the assault on the nostrils a one, two, punch. Bam. I will go out there with a bucket of bleach and wash it all down. The mildew will be a big problem as it is in the walls and probably there is mold also. We are considering taking the walls out and returning it to being a porch.

Cherie has started opening up about what she saw and experienced while up in Toledo. The word “sad” just isn’t enough to cover it. There is a burden of sorrow and frustration on her shoulders now. Just so much that is not good and will only get worse if changes are not made. Mom is stuck on her “I’ll wait for God’s will” thing that has been the reason nothing has changed. She will sit on her hands waiting for some magical heavenly intervention instead of doing what she knows needs to be done. At least I hope she knows. Her response to all the work Cherie and Connie have done and the alternative they showed mom and dad was to say “Pray for God’s will”. So folks, pray for God’s will and that His hand be on this whole situation. There is much I want to say but will respect Cherie’s wishes not to get into it. I’ll probably get in trouble just for this but if she asks I’ll remove it.

Just like my horny toad buddy here things can be prickly when you get into it

It’s great to have her home. She’s as happy and relieved to be home as I am to have her here. Just getting away from what breaks her heart is a big help though that doesn’t mean it goes away. Nuff said.
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The rains came. Just for you readers who are not familiar with West Texas’s version of rain I suppose I should describe it for you. I mean rain is rain wherever you go it just comes down a bit harder here than we were used to up north. The weather guys on TV reported three and a half inches in one hour. That is flat unheard of in Toledo. An inch of rain in the course of a day is news up there. There is a reason that many streets are designed to do double duty as drainage ditches. Three to four inches of rain in one hour is a chunk of water real quick.

Flash flood warnings are standard fare here in West Tex and on the maps they show on television they cover large areas consisting of hundreds of miles covering many counties. You can be many miles from where a storm is unloading everything it has and it could even be dry and sunny but all that water has to go somewhere. The land has natural drainage ditches carved out over the eons that are commonly named “Draws”. The danger is that out of the blue a wall of water can come screaming down from a deluge miles away. Now you Texas natives bear with this northern city boy and feel free to correct me of any misconceptions, I’m just putting pieces together. On the way to Kevin’s place (where I get my goat crap) I go across Mustang Draw and it has a flood gauge in the middle that goes to something like six or seven feet. Can’t really remember exact but it’s up there. So the storm has blown over and the sun is coming out. The tail end of this sucker is where it got real windy, much worse than during the deluge. And the wind changed directions also.

Unfortunately I heard Cherie call from the living room “Bob, come here quick and look at this”. I came quick and she showed me where water is bubbling up at the base board. The wall is dry and there was nothing leaking from the window despite it being decrepit and the wind blowing through. Now I have another puzzle to solve. Where is the water coming from? Looking along the baseboard on the north wall this showed on I can see damage from many previous encroachments of water. Not a good sign. It’s an old house with old problems that were never fixed or may have never been noticed. All part of the package.

Cherie is going into Midland now that things are clearing up. She has to get her medicine and can get it at Walmart so I don’t have to worry about her running into flood waters. Walmart is right off the interstate. Think I’ll post this and go look up some more bible verses on holiness. I’m pretty slow but keep plugging away, sometimes. As long as I don’t forget I do. Anyway, see ya next time.