Just an update

Hi everyone! I've actually had a busy week. I had several job interviews for different companies. Now I'm waiting to hear back. Hope you all are well!

Snuffy's

My interview went really well. It is now in God's hands. We went out to celebrate at Snuffy's in Abilene. The food was excellent and so was the service. My husband loved the coffee. I added 4 creamers and 3 sugars before I could drink it. But we will definitely go back some day. I will keep you posted on the job. Hope everyone is having a great day!

Job Interview

 I have a job interview Monday at 9am. Please pray for me! Thanks!

Rest in Peace, O Men of God

I found out yesterday that Russ Dizdar passed away in the last couple days. While researching that, I found out that Rob Skiba passed away within the last couple weeks. Very, very dark news indeed. Both these men have made a spiritual impact in my life at various times and it is horribly sad news that they are no longer with us. 

This is a you-tube video that discusses both of them and their ministry. I have not listened to the whole thing yet but just wanted to get this post up. As Vox Day posted on his blog recently, "the spiritual war has gone hot."

Please pray for the families of these men. Pray for all the men you know who have dedicated their lives to the work of the ministry - that they can have hedges of protection around their lives and their families are safe from the attacks of the adversary.

You may need to start the video from the beginning.

Things to do while you wait

As I walk the dog in the morning I think about what I should write about on my blog. I don't want to write just for the sake of posting something. I want it to matter, to be important to whomever may be reading it. Sometimes I'm just posting stuff so my parents know we are doing okay and getting out of the house once in a while. It saves minutes on my phone.

We currently don't have an income. That would normally bother me, but I have been on this road before and trust the Lord to make sure that our bills get paid and we have food to eat. I'm applying for jobs but I trust God on the outcome. I try not to write about the state of the country too much or the insanity of everything these days. Which is why I don't always write everyday. I spend a lot of time researching on line and have seen many doom and gloom dates come and go without incident. But it is impossible not to see the signs of the times everywhere.

Strangely, I find a lot of inspiration and hope in the daily sermons posted on tonyevans.org. Right before my back went out last week the sermon was titled, “Never give up.” This morning it was called “Praying for Change” and it was a sermon he had done 30 years ago. But God changes not and the things he talked about were exactly what I needed to hear today. He was talking about the book of Nehemiah and how God had placed Nehemiah right where he needed to be to accomplish God's will. The way Tony described it, it was like Nehemiah didn't even realize how being the king's cup-bearer made it possible to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. It made me think about where God has placed me. Smack dab in the center of the country, far away from any borders, in the middle of no-where.

So while I wait for answers, I have a nice little routine I set for myself. Get up early, have coffee, make breakfast, do the dishes, walk the dog. I pray a lot about the state of our country and what the future holds. I take things one day at a time, trusting the Father has a plan for us that will be revealed in due time.

Message from Patriot Nurse

I wanted to post this video from Patriot Nurse because I believe it is a powerful message for our times. You can find the rest of her videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePatriotNurse/videos

Buckeye Avenue

It is starting to get very cold in the mornings. I had to bundle up to take the dog for a walk. She likes the cold and spent several minutes sniffing before doing her business. Luckily the sun came up while we were walking and I started to warm up. It ended up being a beautiful day.

Buckeye Avenue is the main drag through Abilene. Everything you need is on that road including the Post Office. There are American flags flying on every other light pole. Several mansions line both sides and sometimes there are tours. If you take a right on 1^st street, you will reach the Leopold mansion. The man who bought it was in the newspaper last week. He bought it because he thought it looked like the Addams family mansion. He is having a tour there on Halloween night from 6pm – 10pm. I think I will skip it.

Buckeye Avenue is sometimes called Eisenhower. The Eisenhower presidential library is on that road as well as car washes, churches and dollar stores. What use to be the world's largest spur is there, but I guess there is a bigger spur somewhere else now. It is pretty rusty at the moment.

I drive this way a couple times a week, when I go to the store or check the mail. There is no such thing as traffic in this town. Maybe six cars at any given time. It is peaceful here.

Family Buffet

It was a good morning. I made breakfast, did the dishes, walked the dog and did a load of laundry. I was at the spot on the list where I would have to start doing stuff I don't really like to do. As I was contemplating getting out the vacuum, my husband said suddenly, “Let's go do something. I want to get out of the house.”

Music to my ears. So I spent some time looking online for things to do in the area. They do have a nice dinner train trip you can do on Saturday nights. There were some other day time train trips. One was a train trip from Abilene to Enterprise with a tour of Enterprise and lunch. We kind of laughed about that one. We already drove to Enterprise one day last week. (It is about 5 miles down the road from I-70). It really wasn't anything to write home about.

There are a lot of museums around. There is the greyhound museum in Abilene and the racing car museum in Chapman, plus several in other towns. My husband can't do a lot of walking so that kind of rules out museums. Although we still want to go watch greyhound racing when the season opens up again.

Somehow the conversation turned to Chinese buffets. There use to be one in Abilene but the phone number doesn't work and their last post on their facebook page was in 2017. We found one in Junction City. I called them to make sure they were still open and that they were still a buffet. “Yes! Family buffet!” the man said on the phone. He sounded pretty authentic.

We drove to Junction City and had a nice lunch at a real chinese buffet. All the buffet's in Oregon are closed now because everyone there is afraid of germs. Not here in Kansas, we can still have yummy buffets here. Plus, all the stores and restaurants have signs on the front doors, saying, masks required, but everyone just ignores them and no one wears masks. I love it.

We were super-full driving home. That about covers dinner as well.

Storms

Thunder woke me up in the middle of the night. I opened my bedroom shade so I could watch the lightning. I really love a good thunder and lightning storm. When you see the lightning flash you are supposed to count, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, until you hear the thunder. That is to tell you how many miles away the storm is. It was about four one-thousands away from us.

This was the most rainfall we have had since we have been in Kansas. In Oregon it rains all the time so you get used to it. I love the sound of the rain on the roof. I was tempted to wake up my husband so he could watch the storm with me. He loves a good lightning and thunder storm too. But I decided to let him sleep. I will tell him about it in the morning.

I laid on the bed and watched the storm for about 20 minutes. The sound of the rain on the roof lulled me back to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and the storm was still raging. I smiled and rolled back over. It was a good night's sleep.

Junction City

 

With my back fully healed – we set out for another road trip adventure. Junction City is only 13 miles away from us and is a lot closer than Salina (for those who don't know, it is pronounced Sa-LIE-na). My husband's phone has been dying a slow death and it was time to replace it. Plus, he wanted a phone with a local Kansas number.

We found the store easily enough and bought a phone. We hadn't eaten breakfast yet and both of us were starving. We decided to go out to breakfast at a restaurant that happened to be located right next to the store. I ordered the “Eggs in a Blanket” which was what we use to call growing up, “Gypsy Eyes”. It is an egg cooked in the middle of a piece of toast. I like mine with ketchup and my husband thinks I'm insane. My dad use to make the best gypsy eyes and as far as I am concerned – he is still reigning champion.

Afterwards, we drove around town, looking at all the cute neighborhoods and old school businesses. We found a thrift store and I was able to unload my two bags of shoes. Overall – we loved Junction City. It is so close that we foresee many trips there again in our future.

We drove past a war memorial with an arc of Baal prominently featured. One of these days we will stop there and read what the plaque says and who sponsored it. I was a little surprised to see it there.

On the drive, my husband and I were discussing the fact that neither one of us has any desire now to move to Texas. Texas is under attack with the border issues and other things. Kansas seems fairly unscathed although I believe they are poisoning the water supply in Wichita. All in all, we are very happy here and glad that God picked us a good spot.

Update

 Just wanted to thank everyone for all their prayers. My back is doing much better today. Love you!

Under Attack

Sometimes, it doesn't matter how many lists you make.

I had been having little back spasms all week. I just kept doing the things I had to do: walk the dog, do the grocery shopping, doing laundry.

Yesterday morning my back had finally had enough. It went into major spasms. I could hardly walk or stand without intense pain. It lasted all through the night and into the morning. I had no choice but to stay in bed and let it rest until it relaxed. It's doing better now, but it was pretty bad. I'm going to continue to take it easy. Please pray for my back. Thanks!

The List

It was a very busy day. My husband has a list of things he wants to get done. We ran errands this morning and got 4 things done including getting a PO Box. When he got home he was disappointed that only one of the four was written down on his list. He likes to cross things off. 

The next thing on the list was taking out the old fridge. That took several hours. In the end, it was my husband and I – plus a kid that works at the park – that got the fridge out of the space and out of the RV. He was a super nice kid that helped us and even took the fridge away with his little Cushman flatbed. My husband was very happy to cross that off his list. He says that is the hardest one on the list and the rest should be relatively easy. 

I have my own list. I cross things off and add to it daily. Now that I have a PO Box I am ready to update my resume. I have folders that I keep important papers in. Somehow, I do not have a single copy of my resume (which is very unusual for me.) That is Okay, I thought, I have a copy in my email. I went to my email and downloaded a copy. It is in Word and I don't have Word on my computer. That is Okay, I thought, I have an old copy of Microsoft office from 2003 I can put on my computer. I knew right where to find it. I opened up the case, no disc. Really? How long have a carried around an empty case?! Years? Decades? Luckily, I can still see my old resume but I can't copy and paste the information. I will have to reset it manually. I add it to the list for tomorrow. 

Starting over

 The day is planned by circumstances. My husband had to buy a new water hose because we had a leak and spent the morning fixing it. He wasn't up for going to Chapman and getting a Post Office box. That is the plan for tomorrow.

Because our fridge is so small, I have to go to the store almost daily. It's not so bad, everything is fresh that way. 

I heard this song by Chris Stapleton called, "Starting Over" on the way back from the store. It reminded me of this trip we are on and I thought you would like it too.

Cornhole

Cornhole is big here in Kansas. We see signs for tournaments often as we have been exploring. No one really agrees on the origin of either the name or game. It is considered to be the most popular lawn game in the country. It is played by throwing bags full of corn onto a board with a hole in it. It is 3 points if it goes in the hole and 1 point if it lands on the board.

Gary Ferguson from Tennessee won the 2021 American Cornhole Organization's championship this year earning him the title, “King of Cornhole”.

My husband and I can't help but laugh every time we hear the word Cornhole. I guess we are kind of twisted.

We have been enjoying the local wildlife. There are brown bunnies with white cottony tails. They have grasshoppers that turn into butterflies and then back into grasshoppers again. We walked over to the spot we are going to be moving to. It's the best spot in the park. It has a nice view, no neighbors and right next to the laundry room. We have to wait until November 2^nd to move there. I guess we will be staying where we are until then. 

Please wait here

The Lord is so merciful in His dealings with me. I think I should be doing something. Update my resume, look for a job, hit the ground running. The Lord is showing me that I need to wait. Wait on Him and find out what direction He wants me to go. There are plenty of things to take care of while I wait. I can't update my resume until we move into our permanent spot. Until then, I just need to chill.

It's a quiet day. We have coffee and spinach omelet's for breakfast, then wash the dishes afterwards. I take the dog for a walk. The day is overcast but still warm. I decide to do some laundry with my new laundry basket. I guess it doesn't matter what state you are in, someone inevitably takes your laundry out of the washer before your alarm goes off and piles them on top of the dryer. I really hate that. It's a 24 hour laundry room. I may start doing my laundry at 3am. My laundry basket is awesome by the way.

I cleaned out the bottom of my bedroom closet and have two bags of shoes to take to the thrift store. There are 3 thrift stores in Junction City, so we are going to take a trip over there sometime next week.

We eat like kings here. My husband made Kansas City strip steaks and grilled baby red potatoes for dinner. What is the difference between a New York strip steak and a Kansas City strip steak? Nothing. The Kansas City strip steak is less pretentious. For the sake of argument our steaks did not have a bone attached. Just a little trivia.

I asked my husband if he wanted to go to Junction City tomorrow. He said, “Let's wait and see what tomorrow brings.” Lol. He doesn't know anything about what I've written in this blog post. I'll take that as a confirmation. Wait and see.

Side Quest: Chapman

My mom used to tell me that when I was a child, I hated summer. I craved the structure of school. She's not wrong about me. Even as an adult, I like to have a plan. Something more important to look forward to than if I should have some coffee or take a nap at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

So, this morning my husband and I decided to drive over to Chapman and explore. We had done some research last night on line and had a basic plan. Check out the town, get some groceries, and see if they have decent tacos at the local Mexican restaurant. In our Texas version of this trip we were going on a quest to find the best taco in Texas. Well, so far we've had tacos twice. Not sure they know much about tacos in Kansas. It may not be their fault. I'm sure their tacos are pretty good to the average person. But my husband makes THE best tacos around. He cooks white onion in with the ground beef and adds cilantro, lime juice, cumin and lots of other spices. It is beyond yummy. Possibly glorious might be a fitting word for it. I may just be spoiled. Having had the best taco meat in the world makes it hard to be an unbiased judge of restaurant tacos.

My husband thought the tacos at the restaurant were good. I shrugged. “Maybe we should keep the RV and turn it into a taco truck?” I said to him, “Once they had your taco meat – they would never want anything else.”

My husband smiled. “Let's tuck that idea away. We'll revisit it once we get settled.”

Chapman was a cute town. They are all Irish and proud of it. There are four-leaf clovers on everything. My husband is Irish – right down to his leprechaun tattoo. We were surprised they had a 24-hour fitness place right as you come into town. My husband thought he would see what the cost is – he would like to start working out again.

There was a little brick hardware store downtown. I said, “let's go in. I need a laundry basket. I doubt they will have one – but let's go check.” Sure enough! They did have one. A nice sturdy one for five dollars plus tax. I don't think I've ever owned such a sturdy laundry basket before. They also had garden hoses on the roll – cut to whatever length you want. Appliances, kitchen gadgets, nuts, bolts and even pet supplies. They even had recliners on sale. Great store. It was built a little like a maze and the worker guy followed us at a distance. Maybe he thought we were going to pocket some tools if he didn't keep an eye on us. He did help us find the laundry baskets. I think in the end he was a little disappointed that was the only thing we bought since we spent a good half an hour looking at everything. Lol!

I bought a local paper from the grocery store and read through it when I got home. Only one help wanted ad – for a school bus driver. Yeah, I don't think so. Not for me. I did find out that there is a farmer's market tomorrow at the RV park that we are currently living at. We will check it out. Until then – time to update my resume.