October 21

It is not quite 7:30 a.m. and the sun is still below the horizon.  The eastern sky has that odd yellowish whiteness that it gets on a cloudless sunrise.  There are no clouds to paint with gold and crimson, just a blank sky that in the process of changing from black to blue goes through this strange stage of vanilla. It looks like another beautiful day instore!  How strange the weather has been.  This year is the 3^rd rainiest in history and this October is the driest in history.  Until the first of October, we had not gone
14 days without precipitation all year! The Midwest has been stuck in what the weatherman called an Omega Pattern.  The jet stream had dropped so low over us that it looked like the Greek letter, omega.  And it kept any new weather systems from coming into the area.  Those who know the weather in the Midwest, know that it normally changes rapidly and wildly.

We’ve been babysitting the last couple of days.  Yesterday Rori spent a lot of time sitting on my lap (or more correctly, climbing all over me).  That is unusual for her.  She’s usually WAY too busy to be slowed down like that.  When Charlotte got home from school, she sat on my lap while I read to her.  She had brought home a book from school about a little girl and her invisible unicorn, Goldielicious.  Then we played a couple of board games while waiting for Daddy to come home.

We decided to save a little on our usual pie eating at Village Inn.  Normally, on Wednesdays, we order coffee or tea and get a free slice of pie.  My tip is usually larger than the final bill. (The wait staff LOVE us)  This month we’ve dug a little deeper into the bank account than I like.  So rather than give up our Wednesday treat all together, we just ordered one slice of pie (and got the second one free) to
go. 

About 7:30 last night I remembered that I was supposed to have gone to a committee meeting at church at 7:00.  Opps!

When I was in at the heart doctor’s earlier this month, I mentioned that I had had an episode of pain in my left arm.  It wasn’t severe and it didn’t last long.  However, it presented itself the same way the heart attack did a little over a year ago. Tomorrow I go to the doctor’s for a stress test on my heart. Because the arthritis in my feet makes it difficult to walk for long distances, they are going to do a chemical stress test.  As I understand it, they will start an IV and inject one chemical and do and EKG to get a baseline.  Then they will inject something else and do another EKG.  I believe that they will do this several times to determine how strong the heart muscle is.  The idea that they are trying to come as close to triggering a heart attack as possible makes me a little nervous.  Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of “House” on TV.

I have no plans for today and I’m just waiting for my bride to awake.  I get the same feeling that I did as a kid when I had to wait for my best friend to be able to come out and play!