What a hoot!

Yes, it's been a very long time since we've posted anything. With my mother's illness and death, we've just been too busy and too distraught to feel like posting. Anyway, I thought a touch of levity would be a good way to ease back in.

Here's a photo that Kelly had saved showing her grandmother in the infamous Hooters t-shirt. This story got lots of laughs at both the visitation and the funeral, so I'll tell it briefly here.

Mama had gone somewhere out of town with the Yarberrys. It was time to eat. Steve pointed out a Hooters Restaurant, said that since she collected owls, that would be a good place to stop. He thought his joke would be pretty funny once they got inside and she saw how the waitresses were attired. He just wanted to see the look on her face and then they'd leave. But she said, "Well, we're here, we might as well eat." According to Mama's version of the story, it was Steve who insisted that they leave. When Steve told it at the funeral, he said she wanted to leave. I'm going with her version! Besides, she told me that those poor girls just looked "pitiful."

Table Rock Lake, June 25-28, 2009

Leslie & I drove down to Table Rock Lake for a long weekend of doing nothing, relaxing, swimming, & sunning. And did I mention doing nothing? That was the best part. We stayed at Vacation Lane Resort, in #2, which is the middle story in the first photo. All of the deck was ours, just as #1 right above was in the summer of 2007. This was a 1-bedroom apartment with a kitchen, bathroom, dining area, sofa bed, TV, and Jacuzzi. The deck faces the lake, so in the mornings & evenings we would take our meals out there. We didn't eat at a restaurant but once the whole time. The rest of the time we ate what we brought.

We used the pool the first afternoon we were there, and I got enough sun to turn me red for the rest of the trip. On Friday we went down to the boat dock on the lake and swam and sat and read. On Saturday we went down in the late morning and floated on our new floaties for a couple of hours. It was great!

Leslie's oldest friend Richie Poe and his family live in Harrison, Arkansas. We had contacted Richie before leaving, saying we would like to visit with them while we were so close to Harrison. Richie responded by reserving a table for us at Big Cedar Lodge at the Devil's Pool restaurant, for 7:00 Saturday night. We spent 3 hours eating and visiting with them. The two photos you see of them were taken out on the porch just outside the Registration building.

Big Cedar reminds us a lot of Tan-Tar-A, except more upscale than even Tan-Tar-A. No wonder people want to go there. Anyway, back to Richie and Becky. They have two daughters, 21 and 19, who are students at Harding. Richie is a dentist and has been in practice for years in Harrison. Though Becky has a nursing license and a real estate license, her passion is staying at home to raise their daughters, and she also volunteers at their church, creating curriculum.

Richie has been an elder in his church for going on a couple of years now, so we shared war stories about church leadership.

It was good to see Richie & Becky, and we look forward to more visits with them in the future.

We will be going back down to Vacation Lane Resort in the middle of August. Hannah will join us this time, and hopefully Kelly can come down, too.

Now we are back home and have to get back into the routine. But we had time to recharge our batteries, and we should be better able to go back to the mundane things of life for another month.

A Rage for Order

Dale here. The past four days I have been out in the new garage, trying to put finishing touches on a reorganization that will have all I need out in the garage, for yardwork and for woodworking. I bought a very good industrial-strength workbench from Sam's and pegboard from a local lumber store. I have also ordered a 50-piece set of pegboard hooks from Amazon.com, which will come in Tuesday of next week. I moved the radial arm saw out of the basement workshop and reassembled it in the garage. Today I also bought a shop-vac that hangs on the wall. Eventually all my power tools will be out here, as well as hand tools. Once I clear out the workshop downstairs, which is going to take several days, I will need to decide what to do with the empty space.

The tall black pole on the right side of the garage in the corner is a bike rack. When winter comes I will suspend the bikes off the floor on the rack.

In case you were wondering, there is still plenty of room to park the truck.

We'll see how long it takes to turn this order into chaos again.

Sweet potato cuties

I was checking in a new art magazine today and was struck by the similarity between the Holy Infant and our own precious babe. Noel may not have a halo, but he does have his holy sweet potatoes.

Hickory Hills Cookout with Old Friends

Kerry came by tonight and picked us up, with Beth & Twila also in the big SUV--Kerry's soccer mom vehicle--and drove us to Bill & Charlotte's home in Hickory Hills, where Bill & Charlotte hosted a hot dog cookout for us all. We spent a nice evening eating hot dogs, brownies, and roasted marshmallows, then sitting around in the house and chatting. In the photo above are Beth & Twila.

Charlotte & Bill, our hosts

Above: The old friends. It's hard to imagine these two young ladies being in their 40's now. You would never know it.

Bill & Charlotte's house has been damaged by the hurricane force wind storm we had about 3 weeks ago. A tree crushed an outbuilding, and the roof of their house was damaged. Their back yard had pile of cut up limbs and tree trunks. We feel fortunate not to have had more damage than we did.

Anyway, it was a very nice evening. We are going to make plans to visit Boston within a year. We hear that Beth is a great tour guide.

Weekend Projects

Here's a project that we are proud of. Here's Leslie standing next to yet another of her brilliant ideas: a new trellis designed to hide some of the ugliness of the garage apartment next door. Leslie bought two trellis panels that she felt would complement the trellises on the garage, or come close enough. But they were two...well, separate. So she found some rectangular molding in the workroom downstairs and cut 6 pieces to join the two panels. Then she thought she could use the leftover to create a vertical piece in the middle of the two. It looks like it was sold that way. After painting with the gray stain we used on the garage and letting it dry out overnight, she fastened it to the fence and voila! a nice Oriental-style trellis for training vines to run on.

Meanwhile, I built steps to the alley with leftover hexagonal flagstones, so now it's easier to get down to empty the trash. It involved a lot of digging and dirt work.

We had two great days for working, even with the mid-afternoon rain shower we had on Saturday. Maybe we can actually rest on Memorial Day.

Later on today we will be picked up by Kerry Gilb, who's in for a weekend visit, and be taken to a backyard hotdog cookout, where we will see Beth Fullerton, who's also in for a visit. It will be good for Dale to see Beth, whose wedding was the first he performed on New Year's Day, 1996. Just last Saturday he performed his 6th wedding.

Saturday in the Park

Dale had the pleasure of officiating at a wedding on May 16. Jill Halbach, one of his former students and one of my part-time employees at the Post Library, married Adam Boswell at Cunningham Park. It was a very sweet wedding with lots of personal touches due to the creativity of Jill.
Adam collects rubber ducks, so ducks figured prominently in the wedding festivities. Paula, who works in the library, made the delicious cakes. Jill was up all night preparing food for the reception. Everything was wonderful.

Jill made her bouquet--a lovely assortment of flowers crafted from duct tape.

She walked down the aisle, which was formed by pinwheels stuck into the ground.

The ceremony was briefly interrupted by the arrival of a helicopter at St. John's Hospital.

Here are the Merry Boswells taking their vows. They decided their original plan to promise faithfulness until "worms eat your face" was a tad disrespectful for the seriousness of the commitment.

Spring 2009

It's so exciting to see how everything looks in its second year. Also nice not to have to kill ourselves working in the yard every spare minute. I just wish we had some time to enjoy it now before it gets hot.

Girlfriends' Day

I needed a nice, relaxing Saturday after the trauma that was Friday. BTW, the anointing (see following posting) was just 1 of 3 disasters that transpired on Friday.

Anyway, Saturday was Mt. Hope's 2nd annual Girlfriends' Day. I didn't go last year, but after hearing how great it was, I decided I couldn't miss this one. And I wanted to take someone special with me, so I invited my friend Marian Kelly to go as my guest. She didn't have any idea what she was getting into, but she graciously accepted, and we had a swell time. There were lots of fun activities, most of which involved chocolate, so what's not to like about that?!

We took a cake decorating class, so here I am making chocolate curls.

We both got dermabrasion facials, courtesy of the White Rhino.

Here's Marian proudly showing off the card she made.

The Anointing with Oil

OK, so here it is Friday night, the end of the work week, and I am sitting at the dinner table with a nice meal of roasted salmon and eggplant with salad that Leslie has fixed. I start to pump up the spray olive oil bottle so that we can spray olive oil on our salad, when it blows up. With a force greater than a champagne bottle, the top hits the ceiling, the bottom blows out, my dinner plate breaks, I suffer a small cut on a finger, which starts to bleed, and olive oil sprays 360 degrees around the table, on my shirt and on the walls and anything in its way. And the olive oil puddles up on the table. Look at the pictures below to see the results.
And of course it got over my shirt at table-top height. I am fortunate not to have had my face over the spray bottle. I would be in the emergency room now instead of writing this. It was like a gun blast, really. Olive oil was everywhere. Leslie put the plate and the bottle on the table after the fact so that you could see what happened to them.

Pretty interesting, huh? Thank God I lived to tell the tale.

And that's how we began our kick-back Friday night.

SSSSSSSunday

Yesterday I (Leslie) went out to water some potted plants when I discovered this on the porch. I hurried to get a camera, and by the time I got back, he was already slithering away. Too bad Kelly wasn't here--she would have picked it up and wrapped it around her neck. Although after her boa constrictor encounter, this one would have looked like a worm.

Some levity

Happy Wild Sock Day! Today everyone in the library wore wild socks, so I accessorized my wild socks with some wild sandals. After the last 3 stressful weeks, I treated myself to the morning off and spent it working out in the yard in the glorious spring weather. Cleared out a lot of dead stuff so that the happy new growth could get out. Then I cleaned up and rode my bike to work for the first time this season. Dale rode his yesterday, so I was jealous. We're all so ready for spring!

Catching up

Dale and I with Brent and Judy Moore, our awesome clinicians at the spring dance. In one short weekend, we fell in love with these beautiful people.
Brent and Judy dancing. They are the most elegant dancers we've ever seen. Judy was a June Taylor Dancer.

The last month has been a blur--especially the last 2 weeks. We'd been frantically tying up all the loose ends getting ready for our annual spring dance. Brent and Judy Moore, awesome teachers/cuers/choreographers from Knoxville TN came to do our dance. They are high level dancers, so they were really slumming to come help us out. But they were wonderful. They stayed at our house, and we really enjoyed having them and getting to know them a bit. We found that we have a lot in common.

But I'm jumping the gun. First I have to record what transpired before that memorable weekend. On Feb. 26, my (Leslie's) mom started coming down with asthma, which, as usual, quickly turned into bronchitis. She goes through this several times a year. The following Monday at 2:00 p.m., I took her to Urgent Care, where the doctor discovered she had pneumonia as well as testing positive for flu. He called the hospital to set up admission there. We went straight to Freeman, where we waited in ER until midnight, when they finally got her into a room. The next 8 days were a blur of pain and illness, plus dealing with heart and kidney failure. They put her in isolation after the first day, which was a good thing because she had a private room.

Meanwhile, we were still having to do all the prep for the weekend dance. I was at the hospital all week, but I was able to finish up the programs, email them to the printer, and get that job completed. Everyone else pitched in help with the decorations, since I couldn't. We didn't think we would be able to go to the dance, but I emailed Mike and Sarah and asked them to come for the weekend to stay with Mama. They graciously agreed, so we got to dance after all. Plus it allowed us to host the Moores at our house as planned. We were exhausted physically and emotionally going into the weekend, but we felt like we needed the getaway. Besides, we'd been planning and looking forward to the weekend for an entire year, and we selfishly didn't want to give it up. We regret that we weren't able to host the Moores the way we'd intended, but they were ideal guests who didn't need any pampering.

Freeman released my mom on Tuesday of this week because, I suppose, they couldn't do anything else for her. But she is completely helpless and can't be left alone. So I had to take off most of the week to care for her. It seems she's even weaker now that she's at home. We've had to move in with her to take care of her. One of us runs home briefly each day to pick up mail, newspaper, and another change of clothes.

As a result of all this, it finally caught up with me yesterday. Mama had suffered miserably with nausea all morning. I made several calls and got a prescription for nausea called into Mays. I gave them long enough to fill it, but when I went to pick it up, the clerk said it couldn't be filled without "a doctor's prior authorization." I just stood there in shock. I said, "Well, what does THAT mean? It was the doctor who called it in." She just shrugged. I said the doctor's office was closed until Monday, so what was I supposed to do. She shrugged again. I started crying, said my mom was really sick and needed it NOW. She shrugged. Then a superior came over, said they could fill it but couldn't file it on insurance. I said I didn't care, just let me have it. So I sat there crying harder while they filled it, then went out to the car and had a complete meltdown. Of course, I had to compose myself before I went back to the house--couldn't let my mom see me like that.

I'll stop my pity-party now and sign off. Hopefully the next post will be more upbeat.

40th Anniversary

We just passed a milestone--40 years ago on February 8, 1969, we had our first date. I was a freshman and Dale was a junior at Harding College (University now) in Searcy, Ark. He'd been stalking me on campus for a while, and I thought he was a creep. After he broke up with his girlfriend back in St. Louis, he started making his move on me. He asked me to go to the campus movie on Saturday night. It was Cat Ballou, and he paid all of 50c on me. I don't really have much recollection of the date. I think I went just because I didn't want to stay in my dorm room alone yet another Saturday night. I wasn't much impressed with the hot-shot from St. Louis who tried to impress me by showing me his gallery of girl photos in his wallet--I guess to show me what a great catch he was. Later, when he told me he was on the Dean's list for his grade point, I didn't believe him. He just didn't seem like the studious type. He had to show me his name on the list before I'd believe him.

The photo above shows us in the library studying. That's what our early dates consisted of--studying at the library, doing laundry at the campus laundromat, going to the campus movies. We had neither cars nor money, so we just hung out and got to know each other. At Harding, once you go out on 2 or 3 dates, everyone thinks of you as engaged, so then you're off-limits. I always tease Dale that he scared off all the decent boys, so I was stuck with him. I don't really believe that. I believe that God had a plan for me (for us) . Good thing, as neither of us had made very good choices on our own.

I am thankful for that first date, which led to a second, and a third, and eventually to falling in love. It's been a good life. We've weathered the ups and downs by the grace of God. As Kelly said, it's a good thing we made it past that first date, otherwise there would be no Kelly and Hannah, Dom or Noel. Isn't life interesting?!

In a stew

This has been such a crazy week that I'm just now getting around to posting the latest. On Saturday, Jan. 17, we hosted a stew social for the English faculty & significant others chez Simpson. I fixed Brunswick stew for the carnivores and minestrone for the vegetarians. Our guests brought desserts, which were awesome. Graham, husband of Hilary, played his guitar. I hope everyone had a good time. We certainly did. With all the budget cuts, hiring freezes, etc. at the University, it was nice to get away from all that and just have fun. Here are a few photos of the event.