An - ti - ci - pa - tion Or Antici ----- pation

   It all depends on whether you're thinking of the ketchup commercial or the Rocky Horror Picture Show pronunciation
   Christmas Eve. Anticipation Day. That day that lasts forever when you're a kid. Tomorrow is Christmas. In 2 days I get my PET scan. In 3 days I get results from my PET scan.
   If you see me and I don't seem in the holiday spirit, it might be because I've got that on my mind.
   On the other hand, I've got whiskers on my chin. And I hope that's all that's growing after the chemo and radiation. My weight has been holding steady. It still burns my tongue when I eat something spicy. But it's the Christmas Season, so I can't pass something up just because it might burn me. 

   I finished the baby quilt my Mom had been working on when she got sick. It took me a while to decide to do it. Even longer to get the work done. My quilting skills ain't the greatest. But I've started another baby quilt. It's partially pieced together and partially decorative stitched. It's not going to be pretty, but it's a start. An experiment you might say.
   Either way, if you have a second, could you pray that my PET scan comes back cancer free and I can resume a somewhat normal life. That would be a great Christmas Present. Of course, the Greatest Christmas Present 🎁 was Jesus Christ. 
   That's the guy Christmas is named after. He told us to love one another. He was passing along a message from his Father.

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🎄Merry Christmas From Me and Mine to You and Yourn, Merry Christmas .🎅 

 ✞  Jesus is the Reason for the Season! ✞

Wait. What does that mean?

   "Keep Christ in Christmas."
   You probably hear it from someone. And it sounds good. If you are a Christian, you may have even made the comment yourself. But why limit Him?
   If we're Christians, Christ is always in our lives. Hopefully always in our thoughts and actions, too. Otherwise we're not being really good at that whole Christlike thing.
   Jesus said we were supposed to love our neighbors. He even explained who our neighbor is. Sometimes, though, it's hard to love them. I'll give you an example:
   We used to rent/work a small farm near us. We had cows in a pasture there. One nice cold December day the weekend before Christmas I
When I was probably 12 or 13 Daddy sends me to put hay out for the cows. That Ford tractor with a weather break wasn't too bad, but it wasn't as comfortable as one with a cab would have been.

Or staying in the house reading a book (which is where I would have prefered to be). But I put on enough layers of clothes to stay warm. I put out hay for the cows at home. Then I go put out a couple off bales at the old house. One more to go. I pick up a bale and head there, annnnnnd as I get close I can see the cows aren't in the pasture. They're in the field where we had had soybeans.😕 I drive out in the field and get their attention and they follow the tractor with the hay bale into the pasture. But now I've got to find where the cows got out. They hadn't gone out through the gate we just came through, cause I had to open it. I can see the other gate that's close by and it's closed. But now I need to find where the cows got out.

   So I get off of the tractor and start walking around the field checking the fence. I was dressed for riding on the tractor with the weatherbreak. NOT walking around trying to find out where the idiot cows had gotten out. 😒  I've walked about ½ of the fence and I get to the gate at the back. Nope, it's still closed. I'm getting cold now, those rubber overshoes

I'm wearing aren't real good for walking, the wind is picking up; Christmas spirit is waning away from. I keep walking and ¾ of the way around  I can see where there is a cedar tree laying in the pasture. There hasn't been a storm to blow a tree over. 🤔 I get to the tree and I was right. That wasn't blown down by a storm. It was cut down with an ax. 🙁 and THEN, they cut the top out of it. They cut down a 20' tall tree so they could cut 5 or 6 foot off the top.

They used a bow saw for that. I know because they left it laying by the tree. I walk a little further and found the other gate into the field. It was a wire gate

that we never used. They had opened it, drove into the field, stole a 🎄 and drove out leaving the gate laying on the ground in the field. 😡 I closed the gate back, walked to the tractor carrying the bowsaw, and practicing my cussing. 
   I didn't have any Christmas spirit in me at that moment. I probably didn't have any Christ in me either. But I recovered enough for when we went Christmas Caroling the next night. 
   I got home and told Daddy the whole story. He said they probably needed it more than we did. I said something about they could have closed the gate. He told me that only reason there was a gate there was because somebody had cut the wire to go in and cut a tree for Christmas a few years before. He had made the "gate" in rain and sleet and was going to fix it right when the weather was better. 
Anyway
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To Quilt, or Not To Quilt

   That is the question... Whether tis nobler to create a fabric work of art (or at least functionality). Or something like that, I memorized Shakespeare's soliloquys just enough to get the grade.
   I know me. Too well. I know how I am. My wife knows how I am. She makes fun of me because I will try to get the patterns to match when I wrap Christmas presents.
   If I can get the pattern to match where the paper meets, I'm ecstatic.
   If i took up patchwork quilting, I'd probably use way to too much material. Making the patterns match.

   The way the patterns match up on the left and right are very pleasing to me. But the top and bottom, drive me nuts. At least when I'm looking at it from an artistic viewpoint. The ones on the left are slightly off, but that's okay. 

   Whether or not the patterns match exactly, it still accomplishes its goal. It makes a comfortable cover at night. 

   I have no idea how old this quilt is, I'm not even sure whether or not it's one my mother made or somebody else made it and I just wound up with it. 

  I do know one thing, if I took up quilting in a serious way. I'd have to get a sewing machine. At least for piecing the tops together. 

Decisions

Decisions

   I asked the other day if y'all found me uninteresting now. I know I don't post as much, and it's probably not as interesting as it was before.  But this is why I asked:

   I guess it's not as interesting, or maybe I just lost peoples interest. But I've dropped from 140 views per post down to 37. But I appreciate all the people that are still reading.

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Did You Feel That?

   So, there's been a little shaky stuff going on. There always is. It's New Madrid's fault. Around here, it's always New Madrid's fault. The top left picture shows earthquake activity around here.  The Yellow Dots are earthquakes in the past 6 months. The Orange Dots are earthquakes in the past week. Three Red Dots are earthquakes in the last 24 hours. It has to be at least a .5 to register as a dot, I think.

   Then I'm zooming in towards the 2 dots in the middle of the river in the bottom right picture. The Orange Dot is a 3.0 that happened last night (Wednesday at 7:55 PM). The Red Dot is a 2.6 that happened this afternoon (Thursday at 2:54 PM Thanksgiving Day)

   If you're not familiar with local history, Reelfoot Lake was formed by a series of large earthquakes in the winter of 1811-1812. It's estimated that those quakes were 7.0-8.1. If you're curious, a 7.0 is 10000 times bigger that a 3.0. And it's 1000000 times stronger (energy released). 

   I just want to note, I didn't feel the quake last night or the one this afternoon. I'm not in danger of winding up at the bottom of a lake in the near future. That is unless I forget to turn the light on when I go to bed or I leave the toilet seat up in the middle of the night😕.

   That orange dot close to where it says my home, that was a 2.3 quake about 2.2 miles away Sunday afternoon. I wasn't at home and didn't feel it.

   The dogs feel them. They go nuts. They'll be standing in the yard barking and looking in the direction of where the earthquake was centered. When the dogs are barking and all looking in one direction and there's no visible reason, I can usually check CERI

And look at the seismograms. You can see the squiggles. 
    What do the squiggles look like you may ask? If so, I'll be glad to show you:

   The picture on the left is the 3.0, the picture on the right is the 2.6. The blue squiggles on the right, are activity that's not significant enough to be considered an occurrence (below .5). It may be earth movement, it may be a freight train, it may be a semi-truck. I don't know exactly where the sensors are located. 

Anyways.

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Oh, I Forgot

   I mentioned that I had gotten flower bulbs. Lowe's had them on clearance. I love Lowe's clearance. I got this

   36 Hyacinths 158 Tulips🌷 173 Daffodils

362 bulbs. That's how many I planted the first time in the yard. Then I planted 200 more around the sign at Cool Springs Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Then I planted another 284 at the house.  I went back and counted. I planted some things I've never planted before. Allium. Ranunculus. Frittilaria. Paperwhites. Dutch Iris. 

   I still have 50 more Ranunculus to plant here in front of the house. Hopefully, I'll get it done. Sooner or later.

   When they bloom, it's going to be an explosion of color. Not all was one time, hopefully more like a chain reaction of color. 

   Crocus should be first. If I remember correctly there should be 80 of them at the house. 

   I really feel like I'm doing great. But I'm curious about something. When I was posting updates every day, I would have 120 views a day. But now, I get 60 to 70. Have I become less interesting? 

   And another thing. When we moved in here there was a camper shell that the previous tenant had had. It was laying in the back yard. I decided to turn it into a dog house. It took me a couple of days and a lot of sore muscles.

Anyway.....

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Happy Thanksgiving!

🦃

🍗

23 Months

  In the time between my last posts I've gotten some new stuff. Shoes and socks and flower bulbs.
   I needed some socks because the socks I had before cancer treatment don't fit well. My foot didn't change sizes but my calves are smaller so my socks don't fit right. I was in Gimme a $5 and in one of their bins was a package with 4 pairs of bamboo socks. Some people have posted about how soft and comfortable bamboo socks are and since there were 4 pairs in the package I figured that I couldn't go wrong. If they were as great as I'd been told, I was getting 4 pairs of bamboo socks for $5? If they weren't that good, I've only wasted $5.
   Turns out, they are that good. But I missed out on one detail, they have toes. I've never had a pair of socks that had toes before, is not that bad. Just takes a little longer to put my socks on.

   
    But back to the title, 23 months.That's how long it's been since I got a new pair of shoes. But the pair I've been wearing when I worked outside were falling apart. 
   I was looking at the website that carries the size I wear. Just to see if I could find something affordable. Note I said WEBSITE. Not websites. It's hard to find anybody that carries Size 9 5E. 
   When I was young, Thomas Pate said I was the hardest kid to fit he had ever seen.
Getting to be an adult didn't make it any better.  But the website had a clearance section. But they didn't have my size. 
   So I decided to check Amazon. WHOA. They had a style close to what I had looked at priced $32-$109. So I put my size in and voila, they had MY size for $33. From one company. I guess they are discontinuing carrying that brand. Then I search some more and they have another style in my size priced $19-$99. Can I get lucky again? Almost. $23. SCORE!

   To help explain how hard it is to find my size. Basically, there are only 3 companies that  I'm aware of that make shoes in 5E width. The solution that shoe salesmen suggest is to get a bigger size. That usually means getting a size 10½ or 11. 
   That's kind of like telling a woman that since they don't have a bra size 36D that she should just get a 40B. The cup size is the same, but it's not going to fit right.
   But anyhow, I got new shoes. And saved money.
  On the health side of things, I still don't make much saliva. So I have to drink a lot when I'm eating. And spicy foods burn my tongue. Other than that, I think I'm doing great.

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THABSLAPWAQL

   Tilting Head A Bit Sideways Like A Puppy With A Quizzical Look.
   The video is what the Doctor used on me. He sprayed some stuff to numb my throat. Then he put some gel on that scope to slide it up my nostrils to get a look inside my throat. The Doctor said my throat looked great. He said my neck looked great. My weight is holding steady. 
   Personally, I think it would have been better if he had sprayed the numbing stuff up my nose, too. Or at least put some of the numbing lubricant up my nose before he stuck that in.  Maybe put on some soft music, lit some candles, gotten me drunk beforehand. Something.
   Now we just have to wait about 5 more weeks until I have my PET scan. December 26. The day after Christmas. Then December 27 I go back to get my results. 
  If anybody wanted to get me a Christmas Present I would love to have a job. Or a car. Or This. Or This. The second one has a lot more features and would be really great if I decide to keep on with what I've been doing. I'd really be happy with any sewing machine that works. 
   While I've been getting treatment and waiting to get a clearance that in cancer free I've been working on a quilt. I've discovered I don't have the sewing skills my mother had. I knew I didn't, but I've been reminded several times. I've also stuck myself with a needle. A LOT.
   I've been working off and on to finish a baby quilt. It was the last one my mother was working on before she got sick and wound up in the hospital and nursing home before she died. I've gotten it about ¾ done but I have sewn in one of the labels she had

 She had done about ¼ of the quilting and I've done a lot. I'm not real consistent with the size of my stitches. But I do my best. I'll get it finished sooner or later.
   I've had a request from Zeke to make him a quilt for graduation. Mama made one for the older children. 
   She made a lot of quilts in her life. Quilts for some of my cousins when they got married. Quilts for people when they wee having babies. Lots of baby quilts
   I'll never have the skill Mom had, but I do want to try some. And like her, I haven't finished this one, but I've already started on another one. 
   Anyway. 
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❤