Spencerian Penmanship

I miss my Spencerian penmanship quiet time. Skritch, skritch, skritch

went my oblique angle dip pen across my copy book...with my slow but steady progress in alignment and size even my regular handwriting improved, I've gotten a compliment or two from clerks when I hand over a check. I have enough nibs to last me till the cows come home, and some lovely dip pens.
And the whole series of the Mott Media copybooks. Sometimes I look back through them and can't believe I sat down and took the time to make rows of o's and e's and s's. But each little homemade class is an exercise in stepping back from the technology overload that sometimes overwhelms me.

And one day I'll be back in my own home with space for odd hobbies, and I'll probably look back on this time away from home with some kind of nostalgia.

FIL is on a fairly even keel this week. No huge mountain and valley glucose readings, the insulin shot I give him each morning has really helped in that department. He is up to 3 liters of oxygen as the congestive heart failure kicks in fast gear, he welcomes the loaner wheelchair lift from door to car to store. With the recent heat wave he will give me a call sometime of an afternoon and say "can we go for a ride?". You bet, and off we go. We've found some neat little restaurants, and explored some of the small towns around; Napavine, Onalaska, Winlock. Mostly we just go. We had to go to Lincare and get bigger oxygen bottles!

He wanted to go with MIL and I to get groceries and 'just sit in the car'. I told him he was welcome to do that if he would leave the car running so he had air conditioning. No...he is too frugal for that, so I said "when I take my friend Theresa shopping I push her wheelchair and she pushs the shopping cart". I don't think he grasped to concept until I parked him near the necessity rooms and gave him a note to give to someone to call me if he needed me. Then a light bulb when off, he said "there's a cart, I can push it!". He did great too, wish I had a picture of us weaving and careening through a Wal_Mart Superstore, a real power high.

The funnest thing this week was playing cards with him last night. As his dementia picked up speed this spring I asked all his kids if he'd ever played games with them and they all fell about laughing at the very idea. But last night he asked his usual "what's next, what now?" question and I said we could play cards or dominos...do you know how? He didn't but he was willing to learn so we played War for about an hour and a half. He has trouble recognizing 5's and the Ace standing for 1 made him laugh, he liked having ended up with both Jokers. "Wild card" he'd chortle and roll his eyes. All in all it was good fun and good for his brain; anything with numbers or dates is pretty much beyond him normally.

Anyway, that is life on the farm for now, tomorrow the old chickens will meet the freezer and the little girls will take over. Today I found their first egg. And who knew chickens would or could be affectionate?? They are so cute. These may never make the freezer but that's ok, we don't really need to eat many eggs anyway. I sure won't miss the old red one that breaks the eggs in the nest and gobbles the yolks.

The gold fish are getting big! Four to Five inches long and fat. I bought a little scoop net the other day so I could show you all. And at this size, according to the shops we've been in, our $20.00 investment in 160 gold fish for the pond are now worth $1600.00 retail. Who knew?

Friday Thankies
That Hazel can be jollied
That Gene has learned to laugh
That our Rob will be home in a few hours. Wait 'till he sees the 60 yards of hog fuel I had delivered today...

Golfball talley: 155 gleaned by the electrician assistant this week, for a total so far of 697. Two buckets gone with Electrician who gave me a "no bill, these are enough". Cool!