Our girl, Abby, is  holding her own.  She is still in a medically-induced coma so there’s not much to tell about  the extent of her head trauma yet.  We are waiting for more time to pass and for her to heal enough to wake up. Her friend, Taylor, has been in a lot of pain from her broken pelvis and leg, but her head injury is less.  She will require surgery once she is strong enough. 

For you praying folks out there. One of my students Abby , a 7th grade girl, and her friend Taylor were in a serious accident last night.  They were riding a 4-wheeler when they came up a trail onto a road and were hit by a car. They were thrown from the 4-wheeler. Both were airlifted to a major hospital nearby. Abby suffered head trauma and several broken bones.  They have her in ICU and are sedating her to keep the pressure in her brain from reaching dangerous levels. Both have some broken bones.  Abby has a broken collarbone, ankle, and some skull fractures.  Taylor has a broken pelvis and leg and I think something else, but I didn’t get to talk to her parents. 

Please pray for these girls and their families and friends. When I went to the hospital late last night, 7 or 8 of Abby’s friends were there with their families.  We filled the waiting room and hall. Taylor’s family recently moved here from California so in addition to this situation, they are far from friends and family, too. Several from our group talked to them and prayed with them, but I know they must have felt alone. We are so grateful that the girls are alive, and we are praying there will be no permanent damage from this accident. Thanks for joining us in your prayers!

This idea, while a good one most of the time, can definitely be taken too far. Here is an example of too much tolerance. This nest is in the upper left corner of Nick’s  garage door at his warehouse. It probably measures close to 8 inches across.  As you see, the nest in inhabited with red wasps, a type known for their aggressive nature. His approach is, as long as they don’t sting him, they can stay.  He pulls open the door.  They all swarm around nervously while he stands very still.  When they calm down, he goes in and gets what he needs.  Then he pulls the door shut and they swarm again.  He calmly walks away.  So far, no stings. So they live in “peace” with each other. Me, I stay in the van!

I’ll tell you what.  “Be here now” is way too easy for me.  I remember a time when it was some goal to achieve.  To live in the moment.  The problem with that is that if you live only in this moment some important things can be neglected!!  It pays to plan and to keep an up-to-date calendar.  So several weeks ago in the midst of the first week of a new school year, a runaway dog, a Kolache Festival and a dying cat, my grandson Kevin had his seventh birthday. It tiptoed past without a sound.  I have always mixed up the month he was born and keep thinking it is October. Once those wrong dates get established, it is almost impossible to shake them!!  At least it is for me

So, Kevin, I’ll share our anniversary with you this year. Next year (hopefully) I’ll have it together.  Happy Birthday!!
A little late.

     

Sorry the picture is a bit grainy.  Xanga wouldn’t let me upload the larger file. It looks better in print!

Oh my goodness!  How frustrating bookkeeping can be!!  Nick and I are working together on organizing receipts from a big job he did over the past three months. His technique: go through every item on every invoice to make absolutely sure that every piece was used for this job.  My technique: all the invoices from that time period are for that job.  Add them together for a total.  Needless to say, we have problems finding a compromise.  We are making headway though.  I hope soon we’ll have a total so we can be friends once more!

Mercifully, our neighbor is having A/C problems and has come to rescue us from each other.  Maybe a bout of working with a machine will settle his nerves and some computer time will settle mine. 

Another weekend, another adventure.  Our daughter came home this weekend from college.  She and her friend went to a concert in Austin on Friday night before coming home. This weekend is the ACL (Austin City Limits) music fest. They made an evening of it, dinner and the concert, then hanging out a bit before coming home. We heard how it went the next morning over breakfast.  That day they went shopping before her friend headed back.  Celina stayed on because we were going to the Sufjan Stevens concert together that night. 

It was definitely a “ladies night out”.  Celina has learned of a great Italian restaurant on South Congress. I had my first taste of gnocchi,  potato pasta.  We even got a very (way too) rich desert that we both only tasted.  On to the concert!  We parked a few blocks away from the theater so we could walk down 6th Street.  6th Street is the happening place in Austin on the weekends.  The street is blockaded, and people are everywhere, mostly college kids and young adults. Every bar has a stage with loud live music, in addition the the sidewalk musicians, some even with amps, and every block has at least one pizza place that sells by the slice. Celina doesn’t hang out there, but she wanted me to see it since it was so near our concert.  We had really good seats for the relatively inexpensive upper balcony.  It was really a great concert. He is an amazing musician, and his band was unbelievable.  There were 6 violins, 2 cellos, 2 trumpets and a trombone. One trumper player had a bugle, too. There were also two guitar/pianists/backup singers. Each did all three. Sufjan played the guitar, piano and the banjo as well as singing. His banjo playing is not anything like traditional. He strums chords after he has tuned it in a strange, almost discordant way.  The drummer included a big gong, too.  During the conclusion of several songs, Sufjan rang a handful of silver bells as the musicians played.  Altogether, it made a unique sound that had layers of melodies and harmonies.  It was full of texture and subtleties. The audience was surpidingly silent during each song and exploded with applause as they ended. 

Between the opening band and Sufjan, Celina and I went out to see the CDs and T-shirts. On the way we ran into several of my former students. That was hilarious!  They looked genuinely shocked!  One even asked, “Huh, have you heard Sufjan’s music before?” “Well, yes!”  Honestly, did they think I’d buy tickets for someone I had never heard before?  I guess that kid considered the concert exclusively for the young and cool! Celina and I laughed the rest of the evening about it!!  

So after the concert we took another tour of 6th Street at midnight. It was busy, but not as weird as I would have imagined.  I was grateful for the police on horses and bicycles though.  I’ll have to put pictures up once I get copies from Celina. You know, I never knew until I had my own that kids could grow up to be such great friends!

In the busy-ness of animal crises, I skipped mentioning our Kolache Festival day.  Saturday, we went to the Kolache Festival and got to spend time with our granddaughters, our daughter-in-law, Nicole and Celina with her college friends.  It was a perfect day.  The weather was warm, but not hot and there were clouds most of the day.  We just enjoyed ourselves walking around looking at booths and tasting the food.  I fell in love with a litter of weimaraner puppies. Some were spotted and some solid.  They were selling “puppy kisses” for a dollar to help the animal shelter.  We gladly donated and passed the puppies around.  We went to a quilt show and cooled off in the middle of the day and later got our stone ground blue corn.  It is delicious!!  We went to Nicole’s and talked with the kids.  Nick lay down for a nap almost immediately.  I visited with Hannah until I suddenly felt so tired.  When I told her, she offered her bed.  “Come on, Grammy.  I’ll get you a blanket.”  I think I was asleep before she left the room.  We woke up and had a delicious supper before heading home.  I think my happiest days have been spent with Nick and the family!  They are all so precious to me!

Some days start like a game of hide and go seek.  “Ready or not, here I come!”  As one old cowboy told me about not getting enough sleep one night, ” It sure didn’t take long to spend the night.”  Well, my night was spent far too fast last night. We didn’t get to bed until nearly midnight, and Nick woke up at 4:00 worrying about his business. We’ve both been up since and school starts for me in an hour.  I don’t feel like I am ready at all!!

Well, our cat died tonight. She came in Sunday night suddenly weak and thin.  She was a rather elusive animal, shy and independent.  We saw her in the mornings and evenings when she came inside to eat and visit.  She preferred the wilds of the woods behind our house. She always reminded me of a befriended wild animal rather than a domesticated one. So Sunday when we realized she was so thin, we tried to coax her into staying in for the night. She insisted on returning to her own place wherever that was.  We let her go rather sadly for we knew that possibly we wouldn’t see her again.  She didn’t come back Monday morning, but last night she made her way back. This time she wanted to stay. 

She slept next to her dog friend Juneau and in the morning she still wanted to stay inside.  We left her with food and water although she refused both. This afternoon I had a teacher’s meeting and then an open house at the school.  I called Nick at 5:30 to get some supper. I also asked if he would check on her. I had been concerned and praying all day.  After bringing food, he went home and called to say she was really weak.  While I talked to parents, he sat for two hours holding and petting her, keeping her from feeling alone. He gave me a ride home, and we found her lying on the towel where he had gently laid her down when he left. She looked like she had simply gone to sleep.  We will miss her terribly and her gentle, wild-animal ways.  I don’t know if I will ever have another cat after her, and I’ve never felt this way before.

I was in the same classroom I am in now, and my desk was in the same place.  That might not be so strange except that I moved to a different room the next year and just moved back this summer.  I had a boy in my room who had been off epilepsy medicine for only a few months. His mother had warned me that if he should get stressed, it was likely that he would have a seizure. I don’t know if I would have responded much differently anyway, but his condition definitely affected my need to remain calm.  I remember telling the kids that we really didn’t know enough to make an opinion about what had just happened.  Some were saying that we were at war. I told them that it might be only a group and not a nation that was behind the attacks.

Some teachers set up a TV to watch the coverage. I had no desire to bring the pain and horror any closer than it was already.  My granddaughter who wears hearing aids had the same reaction.  She turned them off.  We had a school assembly.  Some students had no real idea of the magnitude of destruction and death.  They had been numbed by movies and special effects.  There were others who sobbed quietly, understanding that for many life would never be the same, realizing that those bodies in the windows were fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. I think eventually we all cried as it sunk in. 

We had an assembly today to commemorate those who died and those whose lives were shattered when the buildings came down. We had a video clip of children who spoke of losing a parent.  We also had a former soldier, a paramedic, firefighter, policeman, and a father who worked in finances.  Each spoke of the sacrifices made that day and of the strange twists of ordinary life that can suddenly bring unexpected change.  I am sure many of those kids in our assembly hugged their parents a little longer tonight.  Life is so precious, and we tend to see our blessings as ordinary, not realizing how valuable the moments are until they are suddenly snatched away.