Hi Blogsters........ Today Jack and Jill ran away! I had been working at church this morning clearing brush...... When I came home about 11:30am I was hot and tired and came in the house and let out the dogs..... the gate had been left open and I didn't notice.... I drank some water and sat down and went to sleep for about a half an hour. When I awoke I realized the the dogs were no where to be found. Jason and I scurried around the neighborhood and he called animal control (Sandy was shopping!)............ No Jack and Jill............. We decide that they would probably come home unless someone had picked up them.... At 2pm our neighbor across the street called and said they had popped out of the woods and were wanting to leave but they had called there name to keep them close.......... I went to their house, the dogs jumped in the truck..... I gave my neighbor a loaf of bread............. Happy Ending!!!

Here they are resting after their excellent adventure:

Today I had my annual bladder cancer checkup.... this involves a nice chat with my wonderful physician, Dr. Tongco, and an exam described as follows:

Endoscopy of the urinary bladder via the urethra is called cystoscopy. Diagnostic cystoscopy is usually carried out with local anaesthesia. General anaesthesia is sometimes used for operative cystoscopic procedures.

Here is a picture of a the scope used in the procedure: Some people do this without sedation, I did the first time, and since then, the last thing I remember before Dr. T. does the exam is him smiling and telling me see you later.......

Other than a change in medications, this exam went well. So, unless I have problems, I am good to go for another year.

Sandy brought me home and I slept off the sedative..... and haven't done much the rest of the day.... Oh, I did bake bread, it is Friday........... and I have read some of my material for church. This is a day off for me and thanks to Sandy, I do not have to worry about what does or does not get done.

Thank God for good health. Thank God for Dr. Tongco.

I hope your day flowed as freely as mine........... and, take good care of yourself, cheers....

Tomorrow I go for my annual bladder cancer check-up. Today I am pensive. While I have no reason to think I will not have an okay result, I always wonder............

I worked in my garden this morning and then I went to church and sprayed Round Up Pro on some of the grass growing in our parking lot....It is a very large parking lot so I only did as much as I could in about an hour and a half......I like yard work even if it is in the parking lot!

Then I came home and ate lunch and begun reading some material I will be reporting on at a church meeting this Sunday..............I found the following in a book I was reading:

"God, I know that I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I know that I have sinned. But I believe that you can help wipe the slate clean. I believe you sent your son, Jesus, to die on the cross for me, and I accept him now as my Savior and Lord. God, I thank you for drawing me to you, I thank you for your forgiveness, and I thank you for the new life you have begun in me. I believe I am your creation. Amen."

Mathison, John Ed. Treasures of the transformed life: Satisfying your soul's thirst for more, 2006. Abingdon Press, Nashville.

God be with you, and take good care of yourself, cheers, john

From the Garden

I did not know what today had in store for me so I let it unfold on its own..... I started off by going to the gasoline store, then to the Wal-Mart store, then the Lowe's store, and the money store (bank), the bacon-egg-cheese chrissandwich store, the grocery store, another grocery store, home to unload the groceries, the Boones Creek Outdoor Equipment store to buy a trailer for my SCAG, - at this point it got tricky............when we hooked up the trailer the lights did not work...bad ground on my end...so it was off to find a truck fix-up store in Boones Creek which I did. The fellow in this small shop took an hour an half but finally fixed the problem - did I say that he stopped what he was doing to work on my problem and only charged me $25..... it was hot and I had not eaten lunch and I was feeling dizzy so I drank a Pepsi (from the Pepsi machine store ) and it helped.... back to the trailer store, then to the license tag store, and then home at 4PM. I was supposed to meet the chimney sweep at 3 PM but thanks to Jason, he had come and gone and swept the chimney.......... then I was off to church for a finance committee meeting and then to the dinner store and now I am home again, Thank God. So, now I know what the day had in store for me.

Take good care of yourself, cheers

I cut the grass this afternoon, when I came inside at 3:45 my desktop weather channel softwary told me it was 94 degrees F. It has cooled down since then, it is now 91 degrees.... Today I cut all of the grass that I cut....I hire someone for the hard stuff.... He has about a between a quarter and half acre and I have the rest of our two acres - he gets the very steep hills, I get the steep hills and some flat stuff.............. I like doing it - I do not walk and push... I ride.. Today I did the up grass, the middle grass, the flat grass and the yard grass... I am going to write a novel some day called called "Journey to the Middle Grass." It will feature my most beloved of all creatures, the tick.

This morning after a scrumptious breakfast with my friends Dennis and Marie, I shoveled S_ _ _ . Actually, it was cow manure...250 lbs. of it.......... that was not enough, I had to buy and additional 400 lbs. I will be an expert at spreading manure when I am finished - Sandy says I already am and expert at shoting the S _ _ _.... this is an additional talent I have developed over the years.

At noon I helped Dennis install the second gate on the play ground equipment an the day care playground at church. He has a picture, that you can see at Dennis and Marie's blog. Then I came home and cut the grass...........

Yesterday I bought a birdbath for our main garden - here are pictures.........

I haven't put any water in it yet - I am hoping it will rain... However, at 94 degrees, it will just evaporate. I have seen a couple of butterflies checking it out, but the birds are ignoring it until there is water to take a bath... the birds and butterflies will also be in my middle grass novel along with the ticks. Did I say something about spreading S _ _ _?

Okay, Michael Cody's blog about his son, Raleigh, and life got me to thinking about my days in Detroit when I was just a little older than Raleigh.... I just checked Google and discovered that my grade school (that is what we used to call 1 through 8) is not listed.... My high school, Cody High School, still exists.... anyway, Michael made me think of one of my friends, Gerald Hochendoner. In the winter, Gerald and I would ride our bikes to the parks and rec pond that was frozen for ice skating....this was a very large field that was used for flying model airplanes in the summer - soccer wasn't popular then or it would have been used for that in the summer. In the winter, it was flooded and because is below 32 degrees F. in the winter, it froze... The water was no more than knee deep, so you probably would not drown if the ice broke and you fell in - I was cold, I know because that happened to me. Well, in the winter Gerald and I would ride our bikes to the pond and play hockey all day.. The pond was big enough that there was room for skating in circles and figure skating and ice hockey..

There were no boards, there were only approximate boundaries, most of us did not have all the equipment - I had catcher's shin guards instead of hockey shin guards.... we picked teams and played all day long...... We had a lot of imagination.... since I did not start skating until I was 10 instead of 2, I was not the best skater, but I liked to play defense and goalie... we had fun, and there were no adults to tell us how to do it....

In the summer, the ice was not there or we would have played hockey in the summer. However, we still hung out and had fun... we might have been playing some sort of ball on the gravel playground at the elementay school that is no longer in existence..... or we might have been at Geralds home playing chess........... That is the whole point of the story, one particular summer, we played chess every day and every day, expept one, Gerald won and John lost.... and what did I learn, I learned that being freinds and hanging out doing constructive things was the important thing, not wheather or not you win the game... It is about being yourself and liking that person enough to stick to being you instead of trying to be somebody else..

That lesson was not learned the summer I lost to Geradl Hochendoner every day playing chess, but it did teach me humility and to be a good sport!

By the way, I just Googled Gerald Hochendoner, and I might have found a referenc to him.... However, I think I will just stick with my memory....


Thanks for reading, take good care of yourself, cheers, john

Today I paid off the loan on my truck - here is what a paid for truck looks like!!! See the smile?

Do I hear AMEN? eeeehaaaa? Whoha? or do you have a clap (thought I had better not say the clap)................

Hope your day was a success too - God bless you and keep you safe and, as always, take good care of yourself... cheers

Hi I am a Dammit Doll!!

When you think you want to climb the walls,

or stand right up and shout,

here's a little Dammit Doll you cannot do without.

Just grasp it firmly by the legs and find a place to slam it.

And as you whack it's stuffing out yell,

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

Yesterday Sandy and I went to Dennis and Marie's for dinner. We had a great dinner, yummy food, super company.......... We played cards and the women beat the men at Canasta. We played a dice game called Greedy - I lost. The best part of the evening was the company. Dennis and Marie gave me the Dammit Doll and I take it with me everywhere............

Today I helped Dennis install a gate on the playground equipment on the Day Care playground.......... He built the gate and I just helped install it.... He will build another and we will install it one day this week.

Have a great week - and take good care of yourselves, cheers.....