Oct. 23-Oct. 30

From a sunny, fall day in MO,

We have had a rather busy week. We had annual flu shots last Tuesday at the local county health center. On Wednesday I spent a long time with Dr. Metry. He was quite patient with all my questions and decided that the first course of action was to get my sleep habits corrected - so am now on Ambien at night. I have now slept through five nights in a row without having more than a half/hour of sleep interruption - and absolutely NO naps in the daytime although I struggled on Saturday. It is amazing how much better I feel. I have actually picked up a book to read - now just need to start walking again. I see him again in early December and will have bloodwork done the latter part of January - for a comparison.

We saw our local high school football team play on Friday evening. It was really a lovely evening and all three bands - 7th, 8th, and high school - performed at half-time.

Jim has been doing a lot of fishing this past week. He borrowed John's two-man boat and made a couple of outings with it. Today he is fishing at Dr. Eden's. He has created himself a cushioned seat from two or three cushions (he is not to let his left hip be level with or below his left knee) so I am sure he is in "hog" heaven.

Yesterday we made a quick trip to the Kansas City area. Jim needed something at Cabela's and then we worked our way back by way of the Barnes and Noble at Zona Rosa, O'Charley's for lunch, Target, and then Kohl's. At the latter we spotted Eva, Mary W., and Dana and daughter, Cholie. We were back in town by about 3:00 and I joined Helen, Pat, Peggy, and later Mary W. for dessert at Washington Street.

Our travel plans to Austin have changed as Doug called on Saturday a.m. to indicate he was off (the whole company closes down) the week of Thanksgiving and maybe we could come down then - we didn't need a second invititation. I made a few phone calls and changed kennel reservations as well as our motel reservations - so all seems well on this end - also needed to change a haircut appointment.

Our former neighbors to the north have moved out and the new neighbors are busy moving in. I think they have three pre-school age children (including a set of twins.) I saw Mary L. this a.m. at HyVee and she indicated the young couple moving into her home (two houses south of us) also have three young children.

We have purchased Halloween goodies - pretzels, raisins, etc (probably won't thrill the tricksters).

One thing I forgot to mention was an outing I took with Pat this past Friday. She is interested in decorating some gourds and had found on the internet a place near Arrow Rock that raises gourds. She had run off a Yahoo map and we set off for what turned out to be a very circuitious (spelling) trip. The map put us on lots of gravel roads - lots of left turns - then lots of right turns - and probably ended up taking us a good 20 miles out of way, but eventually when we thought we were probably lost - we called and were within about a mile of the place.

I have never seen so many gourds in my life! If you can imagine the typical size of a trailer behind an 18 wheeler - then imagine wood flats being on the ground, wire mesh around the wood flats to a height of maybe 3 feet, and then gourds piled on top of the wood flats - not necessarily in all areas to a height of 3 feet, but close. When you first pull in to the farm - what I have described is multiplied by three - then upon looking around and being shown around - more gourds are in the shed and there are still three smaller piles in an another area. There are gourds of all descriptions from large to egg size. One kind is called a snake gourd and he had lots of these as well. I was intrigued by what is called apple gourds as well as the egg gourds. The gourds are allowed to "age" out of doors and this is a year or two year process. The prices were also very low - maybe $1 per large gourd and multiples of small gourds for $1.

Be safe.
B.