Pain is...

The sun just peaking over a layer of fog two days ago.

9/17/12 Monday

          The pain is…well back to normal. I was going to say gone but that wouldn’t be true. I can now do what I could do before whatever it was happened in my back. Pain is still a daily part of life but now it is manageable pain that I can push through and get things done. It slows me down and that remains a source of frustration as I look at all the things that need to be done. There are watermelons to harvest and I just spent 4 hours on the tractor mowing tumbleweeds along with the rye and wheat grain that I was never able to harvest. I didn’t mow all the wheat down as I am still hoping that Cherie’s sister will find time to mail me the scythe her son said I can have. But I am fast running out of time for that and the weeds growing in the midst of the wheat will make any effort to harvest a painstaking one.

          We were blessed with a decent amount of rain and that will be both a blessing and a curse as it will motivate the weeds to further their steady march at taking over. But I will be able to do some plowing as we prepare for spring planting already. Without moisture the soil is rock hard and a plow blade will just scrape along the top after it gets past the depth I was able to break up with a disc. I had to make three passes, lowering the plow blade a few inches each time to create a decent furrow and if I lowered it too far the wheels of the tractor would just spin, unable to pull the plow blade through the dirt.

          There is much mowing I need to do with the regular lawn mower but because I have been unable to get to it for the 3 or 4 weeks my back had me laid up the grass and weeds are over knee high. That will be a challenge to say the least. We still don’t have a truck that runs. Now that I can move again we will be able to work on that. I need to remove the radiator from the one truck and take it to Auto Zone. They will send it out and see if the radiator is bad  and the reason the transmission filled with water. If so then they will be responsible to fix it, though that might require some pushing. We will see.

          I had hoped to move the diesel truck to in front of the garage, where it would be closer to tools and electricity I need for the welder. Had set up railroad ties to drive the truck on, hoping I could get one more start out of that chewed up flywheel, but it was not to be. So I must jack the truck up where it is and carefully place railroad ties underneath each side and then run an extension cord to where it is. Then begins the long process of welding on each tooth of the flywheel and grinding it to shape by hand. I suspect the hardest part will be the fact that I must weld above me so all the sparks will fall on me as I go.

The third truck we have is the one the transmission finally gave out after I nursed it along on first and third gear for almost 2 years. There was a guy we know in Toledo who had promised to send me a transmission for it, because he rebuilds them for a living. But we have learned that promises are often empty words uttered to impress others. Oh well. Of course I am disappointed, especially after this individual talked about his conversion to Christianity, but such is the way of things. I will always hope for the best and give others a chance to shine for it is better to give them that hope.

It’s Tuesday now. I never finished yesterday’s post but that is not unusual for me. There are always distractions and things that must get done. It’s almost 4:00 PM now and I just came in from trying to pick watermelons. My back is better but certainly not up to speed. It is much harder not having a pickup to drive along and throw the melons in. Instead I must pull a wagon, that has a tire which goes flat in minutes, through the freshly disced sand. I picked maybe 8 melons before the pain got too high to handle. Then pulling the wagon back with 40 pounds of melons through the soft sand required some fortitude. Now I am lying in bed writing in this journal. I had planned on going to the jail but must put that off till tomorrow.

Speaking of jail, I put the word out that I needed some bibles and it now looks like I will have a few hundred. That is a good problem as we can go through twenty a week as people come and go. This way I am covered for quite a while.

I will be heading out to a 4 day Kairos event at the prison in Lamesa soon. After that there is another Kairos in Fort Stockton that I have the privilege of being a part of. I would certainly appreciate your prayers for these events. They are certainly spiritual battlegrounds where we fight for the souls of many who have participated in the dark side of life.

I am pretty tired right now. While I am asking for prayers please pray for the senior we care for who fell and broke her wrist. She seems to be pretty depressed and discouraged though I have only been able to talk to her once. Her arm is not just in a cast but they have all kinds of screws going into her bones to keep everything from moving as her bones knit back together. It is hard for an independent woman to face the possibility of losing some of that independence. I am concerned about some who might try to take advantage of her and her situation so pray about that too.

The other senior we help is doing much better now. She had been really sick with some kind of lung infection but we were able to visit the other day and I got to mow her lawn. It was really bad because I had been laid up for so long and unable to get to it. It’s sad to know that some unscrupulous salesman had taken advantage of her and sold her an annuity that was really bad. She put in $80,000 and now there is only $30,000 in value left and the promised guaranteed monthly payment isn’t what she was told it would be. From what I’ve heard this is not unusual and there is a lot of companies focusing their attention on senior citizens with these bad investments.

I’ll get this posted now for if I don’t I will be distracted and you may not hear from me again for another week or two. 

Here's our empty chair. Loved Clint's speech at the Republican convention and an empty chair is a good picture regarding the president we have.