I’m here just twiddling my thumbs until it is time to take Kate to her hair appointment. She only is going for a wash and set and haircut. It takes about 45 minutes. While she is in there I will run to Walgreens and pick up her prescription then go back to the salon and wait. After that we plan to go to the new “Nellies North” restaurant that is on the way home and have some brunch. 

Today is an excessive heat day, I will keep my butt inside to the maximum extent possible. No way do either I or Kate need to be out working in the yard or much of anything else. We may run up to the farm market between Owensville and Princeton and get some corn and maybe some other veggies. Then I’d like to run into Princeton and drop off a Walmart bag full of bottle caps for recycle. It takes us about a year to collect enough to take up there. 99% of it is caps from Kate’s water bottles. She goes through a lot of bottles of Desani. It is amazing how much even bottled water has gone up. Not so long ago I was paying maybe $4.00 a case and now it is almost double that unless I can get it on sale. 

I’ve been working on my song that I’m playing at church on July 21st. It is called “Until Then”, by Stuart Hamelin. It is tough getting the lungs and lips reconditioned to do a song. But, I wanted to do one to celebrate turning 80 just to prove to myself that I can still do it. And, without trying to brag —- I think I do a good job. Although I’m a far cry from the trumpet player I once was. It brings back memories of when I was in high school. I had a five piece combo I called The Personalities” and we would play for weddings, bar mitzvas, and high school reunions. There would always seem to be “that old guy” that wanted to play my trumpet to show he “still had it” from his own glory days. And the only song they ever knew was “When the Saints Go Marching In”, and they were always terrible. I don’t want to “be that guy”, so I’m practicing. Maybe I will hang up my horn when I finish this one. 

Time to take my lady do and what we need to do. I pray you have a blessed day. Peace. 

 Good afternoon  on this 24th day of June, 2024. It’s a warm one for sure; nothing but sunshine and a generous amount of humidity out there but tomorrow is supposed to be worse before the rain comes in. Ms. Kate and I had to go to to the doctor’s office for her to have her INR blood test done. Then we stopped over at Schnuck’s grocery store so I could pick up a few things that we were out of. From there we decided to drive across the paring lot to Sonic for a quick bite of lunch. Sonic is a good little chain “car-hop” type of drive-in restaurant. 

So —- yes, we are home from vacation. All of the family members have made it safely back to their homes and life begins again. I spent two years planning this vacation and you know the hassles we went through at the last moment with the rental company declaring bankruptcy in January and changing the location we were to stay in. I must say though, —— the place we ended up in was just “over the top” in every way. It was a $2.4 million mansion; 8 bedrooms, nine baths, gigantic pool. I can’t imagine us ever staying in such a place again but it was a great “once in a life time” adventure. 

Most of the family was able to come. Josh and his family were not able to make it because great-grandson Jacob was graduating from High school. Grandson Jon is involved in Real Estate classes to get his license and could not make it and Granddaughter Lauren has a new position in her job and has no vacation time but other than that, the 17 of us had a wonderful time

We are all looking forward to 2026 and our next reunion. We plan to head back to Pigeon Forge, TN next time if I can find a home big enough. I’ve already begun research and while there are places big enough for all of us —- elevators are few and far between. 

So, that’s it for today. I hope you are finding a place in which to stay cool. Peace. 

 Good morning from Frankfort, KY.  It’s 0700 and I am on vacation; so why am I up??? Well, it’s because I’m sitting here surrounded by love. Ms. Kate and three out of four of my wonderful daughters are sitting here with conversations going 100mph! I’m in love. I’m not sure if Heather is up yet or maybe she is out on a 5K walk. She does that. 

After all of the worry and trouble that we went through getting into the our vacation place, I must say that this place is over the top fantastic. I have never been in a place like this opulent. We are walking ourselves silly getting from one end of the house to the other. It’s become a joke asking where is this person or where is that person. It doesn’t do any good to “holler’ for them because they couldn’t hear you anyway. 

Several of the family spent the afternoon and evening in the pool. It was a perfect day for it and is going to be a perfect day for it again today. I think the kids all have different things on their agenda for this week but I don’t know what they are. I personally don’t plan to do anything except sit here and listen to the the kids come and go and maybe read my new Stephen King novel. We have two of the great grandchildren boys here. One of them turned 14 today and we will have a birthday party for him this evening. 

I had a wonderful time with one of them last evening. The house has a Baby Grand piano in the living room and “Bug” runs his fingers up and down the keyboard  every time he walks through.. Last night he asked me if I would play a song with him and of course I said “yes”. Well, all he knew was the couple of notes from the “Halloween” movie but we tinkered with that for a bit. Then I asked him if he wanted to actually learn a tune and we taught him to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” He has a natural talent and his parents need to follow up on that and see if it develops into something. I have offered them one of my pianos. All they have to do is come and get it. 

So that’s it for this vacation Monday. Have a blessed week. Peace. 

 No, I’m not dead, and no, I haven’t forgotten how to write.  And no, I haven’t quit blogging; —- I just haven’t taken the time to actually sit down and write something. It’s not that I have been overly busy, —- I well, just didn’t feel like doing it. So I thought today I might catch you up on my boring life. 

We’re still dealing with some wound care for Ms. Kate. It doesn’t amount to a lot. We are basically down to a “large band-aid” type of dressing. She still has a very minor amount of draining but it is enough to be a inconvenience. So we change it once a day. She still has had Home Health visits but I they are going to re-evaluate her need for that on Friday and I suspect they will release her. That is a good thing. 

Since I have last written, our roofing contractor has come and totally finished up the last thing that he needed to do. He has been paid and we can now put the storm totally behind us. I finally got the insurance settlement check back from the mortgage company so I could deposit it. It took them six weeks and countless calls from me to get them to endorse the check and send it back. That was the last thing I had to do with that; so, another stress is gone. 

Saturday we are heading to Frankfort, KY for our vacation. We actually check into the rental estate on Sunday. I think I told you all about the hassles and headaches we had with that project. But it has all worked out and the entire family is excited. Ms. Kate and I have stuff laid out to put in suitcases and I already have stuff in the car. I will relax as soon and I get through the Estate security gate and know that it really is happening. 

Between Ms. Kate’s multiple health issues, a wind storm laying a tree on our home, dealing with cleanup and repairs from the storm, dealing with incompetency at the mortgage company, and dealing with the vacation rental issues: ——- my stress level since February had been off the chart. When I get to the Rental Estate the first thing I am going to do is say a prayer of gratitude to God for keeping me fairly calm and sane through all of this and then I’m going to have a tall cold beer and sit beside the pool and relax, and listen to the glorious voices of my family as they chatter and laugh and share love.  

I will try not to wait so long until my next entry. Peace. 

 Happy June 1st. Do we realize that in 30 days this year will be half gone??? It’s kind of hard to believe. And so far, 2024 has been a year that has kept us pretty stressed out. I’m hoping most of our drama is pretty well over. That leads me up to an update on Ms. Kate for you. We are very pleased with her progress. I am still changing dressing every day but the “leakage” is very minimal. The dressing is hardly wet after 24 hours of being on. We see an end to the whole thing very soon. All praise to God that this process may be coming to an end. I’ll be the first to admit that I have not been very patient with it and have stressed and stressed over it all. Jesus addressed this kind of behavior on many occasions but —- letting go of a situation is so very hard isn’t it?

Kate’s health is just one of our stress items these days. I told you that my insurance company sent me a good settlement for the damage that we had form the April 1st storm and Kate and I endorsed the check and then had to send it to our mortgage company because they were also an addressee on the check. I needed to send the check to them so they could send me back a check addressed only to me & Kate. Well, it has been a month since I sent them the check and they still have not returned my money to me. They have continual asked for paperwork that I see no reason for them to need. I finally faxed them a 14 page document last week which is the entire USAA file on my case. So, we are still waiting on them to “review it” and send us our money. It is so frustrating. But again —- I need to stop stressing and let God handle it. 

But if that wasn’t enough —- we are leaving for vacation in two weeks and have contracted, and rented a beautiful really large home for all of the family to come in for a family reunion. We learned last week that that company we rented the house from has declared bankruptcy and they lost the place that we were supposed to rent. So, they sent us confirmation for a different home and have delayed our check-in date by one day. And —- it’s in a different city!!!!!! So, I have been dealing with all of this for about ten days now. Granted, if the “new place” actually comes to fruition —- it is a over they top fantastic place; —— but, all we can do is hope that we don’t show up at the door with 17 people and find out it was a scam. So, again —- turning it all over to God is tough!!  

That’s all I got!  Have a blessed weekend. Peace.