Morning…that is a beautiful snowy photo up there! And Happy Birthday JO!!! ♥️
Chas we cover you in prayer this morning, knowing our Lord is with you and yours ♥️
Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday, Jo ♡♡♡♡
You got the best birthday present of all by being back in PNG. I am still marveling over that really good happening for 2021. May you have a supercalifragilistically blessed year and accomplish much for God in His kingdom building work.
I posted this in the night on yesterday’s thread:
“Good evening, Jo. I hoped I would see you here. I had a rude awakening. Our city has those crazed street racers who take over an area and now they have descended into my area. When I went to the P.O. box at the mall on Saturday I saw all the dark rubber circles all over the parking lot. The lawlessness and disorderly conduct! I can not imagine how loud it was for those living closer than we do.”
We used to have a temporary, DIY-run race track down at the port in a no-man’s land area, but it went away when the port needed the area for more container and terminal-related use. It was started by a guy named Big Willie (who lived on the next block over from my mom at the time). He was a regular public speaker at the port board meetings for years.
He’s gone now, but some of his pals have tried to lobby the port for some kind of permanent track so the activity could have a legitimate outlet off of city streets. I haven’t heard from those guys in a while, though, I think they finally dropped the effort.
So I tuned into the Super Bowl last night and was completely bored. Was that just a nothing game, or what? They’re usually a little more interesting than that.
As a young bachelor in the late 60s and early 70s, the golden age of the car, my father was a drag racer. He did street racing, or so say those who knew him. He hasn’t denied the street racing, but generally recalls going to such DIY tracks as DJ speaks off, where souped up cars showed off, and racing in odd locations, such as aling the bluffs of the nearest Great Lake where he was once stuck in the sand all night. You wouldn’t think it of such a responsible and respectable man as he is now.
I was asked more than once at work if I was going to watch the game. Now, football is like watching paint dry to me, but nurses shouldn’t express personal opinions to clients. So I just said I would still be working then, which was perfectly true.
So my car is still working. The vibration was caused by ice buildup causing the rear wheel guard to rub against the tires, so, as I suspected, it was the result of the back of the car getting buried in the snow drift.
You’re right, DJ. As a KC fan, I would not have been as disappointed in a loss if they had kept it close. Yes, they had 2 starting offensive linemen out, but the coaches could have adjusted the play calls to fit the situation. And the defensive penalties killed their chances.
Many cars get ice build up in the wheel wells that will shake the car terribly. The first time this happened to us, we thought something terrible was wrong with the car. Of course, we are often driving on snow and slush.
Glad it wasn’t something worse, roscuro. I remember that happening to me as a college student. I didn’t even turn the car around, but drove right back home. I was so shook up. It could have been so much worse if there had been another car coming towards you or, as you said, the snow bank had not stopped your car.
Janice that is scary! When we drove through MO this past Fall we found ourselves in a “fast and furious” episode on the interstate. It was scary and one false move by the 20 or so cars involved would have been devastating to all on the road. I hope to never see that again!
So thankful you and your car are ok Roscuro…an unsettling moment for you I am sure….
I don’t enjoy football on any given day but the NFL will never get my viewership…after all that has transpired this past year we are pretty much a non sports household at this point….
Roscuro, when my husband was young and healthy he was quite the athlete. He has told specific stories that show him to have been good at baseball, golf, bowling, and basketball. I knew he watched international football (“soccer” to Americans) and college basketball, and we watch Cubs baseball together sometimes. I grew up with five brothers and of course a father, but only one of those brothers had any interest in sports and we didn’t have a TV. (And only as an adult, in quite recent years, did I find out that one brother played anything beyond pick-up basketball and tennis. I knew he played tennis at the park down the street and was the best in the sport in college. Apparently in junior high he also played soccer and another sport or two, but family didn’t go to his games and I never knew that. He was seven years older than me.)
I was happy that American football wasn’t among the sports he watches, because it’s a sport I don’t understand and I know a lot of women whose husbands watch a lot of football, and I didn’t want the TV on that much. This season IU football has done really well–not perfectly, but it’s a sport that usually they do badly–and he has watched their games. But most years he doesn’t watch the Superbowl and he has little interest in it most years. I’ve only been to one Superbowl party in my life, and everyone else at the party was leaving at halftime–quite to the shock of the hosts–and as a single woman who didn’t really care about football, I would have stayed if other people stayed, but it seemed kind of odd to stay and have it just be the host family and me (and I didn’t really know the host family all that well), so I went ahead and left too.
My husband’s sports stories, showing him to excel in several sports when he was young:
Baseball: in Little League he once did a one-person triple play, at second base I think: he caught the ball in the air, putting the batter out; he stepped on the bag, meaning the runner who had left second base was out; and then he tagged the runner attempting to run to second. He was also a pretty good pitcher.
In golf, I don’t know numbers or anything like that, but he enjoyed the game (he stopped playing once he was married with a child, as not being a good way to spend money) and he was good enough that he once got a hole in one; we have the ball.
In bowling, he was not officially on a team, but he worked at a bank that had a team. He “worked the system” and played every week: He was very good at it, and his numbers were helpful enough to be an asset to any team that included him, so each week he got asked to substitute for someone, and thus played every week without having to pay the fees that it would have taken to play for the team officially. (The substitute didn’t have to pay the court fees; the player needing the substitute did.)
Basketball was his real love, though. He shot hoops in the driveway after school every day, and resented being made to take piano lessons and practice the piano for the time it took away from basketball. He wanted to be tall enough to play, though genetically that seemed unlikely, since his dad wasn’t very tall. But God gave him his desire . . . sort of. He ended up being six-three, but no matter how much he worked out, he doesn’t have a frame that could bulk up. He was tall enough to play, but not strong enough to play in college, and he says now God probably used that, because otherwise he likely could have been good enough for a college scholarship and that could have been a real distraction for him. (Not that he thinks it’s wrong to have a college scholarship, but just he understands God’s providence and thinks that wouldn’t have been good for him.) His dad was a principal, and several years my husband attended schools where his dad taught. By junior high he was taller than his father. He loves telling the story of the faculty vs. student basketball game where his dad was guarding him, he dunked over his father’s head, and the student crowd went wild seeing a student dunk over the principal. 🙂
JO’s BD is about over. Happy what’s left.
Elvera is asleep. I don’t know if she’s resting. I spend lots of time just sitting beside her. But I can’t tell if she is aware of anything. She moans sometime.
I think basketball is the only sport I’m just flat-out not interested in, probably because my dad never liked it very much so I never learned much about it — my uncle who lived nearby loved basketball, though, so we’d have the Lakers on TV or the radio whenever he came over.
Baseball has always been my far-and-away favorite. But I also enjoy football (though I’m not a serious follower of it; but I learned the rules as a kid so can follow it easily — which makes it watchable for me still) and ice hockey.
My cousin was in Little League and I remember when his little dog followed him all the way to a game down the street once and then ran out onto the field in the middle of the game. Coach wasn’t amused. “WHOSE DOG IS THAT?”
They had baseball talent “scouts” hanging out at their games from time to time, along with my cousin’s dog.
I grew up listening to baseball and basketball games on the radio. My dad was not a football fan. We even had a basketball hoop in our yard but not in a place for playing the game. It was just for shooting hoops. We played HORSE many times.
I had a hoop in my backyard, too — it was anchored to the top pole of the swing set, all a bit rickety. And it was in a grassy, dirt area in the far back of the yard (the north 40 my dad always called it).
Sports weren’t really a big thing in my house. My dad watched or didn’t. It was more like background noise. I married into a family of Alabama fans. Then I decided to marry again, and my ex-husband told me,” Kimberley. You have really messed up. He’s a bigger Alabama fan than I am”. Yep, G I know what. He is also a pro-football fan. I don’t complain to much. He told me that before we were married and asked that in the Fall I let him watch it and the other three seasons we can do whatever I want. I am perfectly happy to go read a book.
Thanks for the birthday wishes. Please pray as I have been asked to sub in grade one today. I know the kids but have to figure out the rest.
After having me for dinner last night, my friends told me that they had gotten permission to loan me the car in their driveway. So nice. It, of course belongs to someone who is gone. I had been praying for a vehicle. With all the rain and I can’t go out in the evening without a car. to say nothing about all of the things I always need to carry to school.
God is good.
I have been struggling with trying to download the agenda for this evening’s church team meeting. I guess I will be there without it. I feel frustrated by this. It’s just another Covid problem. Also waiting for a tax client to bring their work by. I suppose I should go get my mask so I will have it handy.
Chas – Although we don’t really know how much a person in that condition can hear, it is often thought, as some have mentioned, that a part of them way down deep inside can indeed hear us speak to them. For a Christian, it could be their spirit that does the hearing.
When my dad went into a coma the night before he died, my mom talked to him about things that had happened in their marriage and family throughout the years. Even if Dad hadn’t really heard her, it was comforting for her to do that.
When that time came for my mom, the night before she died, when she was in a coma, I whispered to her to turn to Jesus. Right after I said that, she gave a little groan-like sound. I would like to believe that that was not a coincidence in timing, but that she was somehow responding in her spirit.
Our hoop was also above a grassy surface, so it wasn’t any good for developing dribbling skills. Occasionally, if the youth group of the tiny church rented a gym, we played informal basketball, though floor hockey was more popular (and more fun). Our mother taught us to throw a baseball and use a mitt and swing a bat, and a few informal games were played over the years with homeschooling groups or the youth group. We could all skate but only occasionally did we play shinny (informal ice hockey), as we preferred just skating on our frozen swamp. We had a soccer ball and a football but never used them. Our father listened to the hockey game, and sometimes watched it while visiting our grandparents. Only for a brief period during our teens, did pro sports become a theme of conversation, as dear friend and relative and Youngest became fans of the nearest pro hockey team, and even then, they were very idiosyncratic fans, being more arts and crafts with a tinge of nerd than actual sports enthusiasts. Interest dwindled after a few seasons and sports was again rendered of no importance in our lives.
I was once a very fast runner, and might have been good at track and field if I had attended scjool. But asthma pretty much took all interest out of sports for me. Even the brief occasions when I played sports informally, I generally ended it by having to drop out and take my inhaler. Hiking and skating didn’t trigger my asthma, so I preferred those two things. In our teens years, we loved to go on long nature hikes with our dear friend and relative, and talk of everything under the sun, finding new routes through forests, over streams, around swamps, and up steep bluffs, which we liked to scale with our fingers and toes. In the winter, we skated for ours on the long frozen stretches of swamp in our forest, often well after dark by starlight or moonlight. I associate physical activity with nature, so going to a gym or sports stadium/arena is antithetical to my concept of exercise.
Roscuro, I can’t imagine exercising in a gym either. In Chicago I had free access to a gym, and except for going swimming once or twice, I never ever used it. I wanted to get into walking (which I did do after I moved), and in Chicago too much of the year isn’t conducive to outside exercise, but I’d look at that walking track and just see a boring track above a basketball court, and had no motivation at all to go on it. I think if I had a treadmill or an exercise bike set up with a book to read, I might use it, but not simply a gym or a track.
Chas, seconding what Kizzie said, often when people come out of comas, they know everything that has been going on in their “absence,” because they have heard all the conversations going on around them.
The day my father-in-law died,we went to the hospital to visit him, and then my husband needed to go down the hall for some medical needs of his own (an appointment in a different department on the same floor) and one daughter and I elected to go with him. (Our younger daughter was working.) While we were down the hall, we got the call he was dying (we had been expecting his death at any time for several days), and we needed to go quickly. So we rushed back down the hall and into his room, where my husband’s sister and her husband, and my mother-in-law, were present. Dad’s eyes were closed, and none of us knows whether he was actually still alive. But my husband took his other hand (Mom had one) and leaned over him, and quoted passages of Scripture about Christ’s love for his own. Our younger daughter had been called, but hadn’t arrived yet, so when the nurse poked her head in to ask if we wanted her to check vital signs, we told her no, please wait. Whether he was still alive to hear his son “sending him” with Scripture, we don’t know, but it was such a tender time either way. I’d like to think God let him linger enough for those last few moments with his wife and his son holding his hands while his son recited Scripture, but I really just don’t know.
We were always encouraged to talk to the patients…just to let them know they were not alone. It was some of the sweetest moments I spent with the patients. One of my patients “Sally” wanted me to talk to her as she was fading away…turns out she had three daughters and their names were exactly the same as my sisters and the one who was my age was not Nancy but Linda. Her daughters were our exact ages. She wanted to hear all about my childhood, my parents, my friends, my faith. Her daughters were on their way to be with her but she just needed a “daughter” right then…and I seemed to fit the bill 😊 I held her hand and chatted away….she smiled.
The nurses on the floor always told me the hearing was the last to go…(we were taught that in our CNA class as well)….so I should conduct myself as though the patient heard every sound, every word spoken.
I agree that I prefer being outside for walking, etc., but I gained an appreciation for gym-style apparatus as aids during physical therapy. There are some things that are just so helpful to strengthening certain muscle groups.
I sit with her a lot. I also talk to her some, reminding her that I love her. She grunts occasionally, but that’s all from her. Lots of people come to sit with her, LindaS (dil) and granddaughter come often.
I also have lots of hired help. I am not doing this alone.
As fr sports- I never learned how to play basketball. Our nearest hoop was on a dirt court and since I had dust allergies, I couldn’t participate. At school the concrete court was not in my grade’s part of the playground until 5th grade. By then, most of the boys had developed the skills I lacked, so they would laugh me off the court. I preferred football since that was what we played in my neighborhood, though we played in the street most of the time.
Not bad as far as parody’s go. Recently a band called Disturbed did a remake of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. This vid is a Covid themed parody of the remake.
We had our Zoom church meeting and the Pastor said today was his first full day back after Covid. He said it was really bad and he did not know what shape he would be in if he had not gotten that infusion. It was a non eventful meeting which I suppose is good.
I like watching basketball if I know someone in the game. One of my grandson’s plays and I have seen videos of his baskets. It was a very short season, however, with Covid considerations.
He and his three siblings also play soccer; sometimes for more than one team at a time.
Other grands played soccer, softball, track and field, wrestling and baseball. This would keep us busy, except for Covid.
We only had one play hockey and that was when he was around five. I still laugh when I remember him yelling at us to notice that he was next to the puck and waiting to swing the hockey stick to make sure we were watching him. He moved to a warmer climate after that and never played again.
My husband has never cared to watch any sport except golf. The only time we have a sports channel on is if one of the son-in-laws is here to watch. Needless to say that hasn’t happened in over a year.
I never did a lot of sports. We did have a big enough field area to play baseball with the neighborhood kids. I also did a lot of recreational skating, swimming and games of tag etc.
AJ- Those parodies are pretty good. The one by Disturbed does sound like the cover they did a few years back. It was rather dark sounding. That song has always had a haunting feel to it.
Just as I was getting ready to dress for school I got the call saying we were off because of road conditions. With 400+ miles of rural, gravel roads that drift over with snow, it’s not surprising. Got yesterday off also. The students won’t want to do much tomorrow with 4 days off in a row.
Wandering Views 
Good morning AJ, et. al.
We are still here.
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Morning…that is a beautiful snowy photo up there! And Happy Birthday JO!!! ♥️
Chas we cover you in prayer this morning, knowing our Lord is with you and yours ♥️
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Good morning everyone!
Happy Birthday Jo.
I’m glad you are still here Chas
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Good morning. It is dark. Little girl and I are up to greet the day.
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Still dark but little girl had enough of greeting the day and went back to bed without a tear.
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Good morning, and I know it’s Monday because the garbage truck has done the duty of the day. The sun shines brightly on this frosty morning.
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Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday, Jo ♡♡♡♡
You got the best birthday present of all by being back in PNG. I am still marveling over that really good happening for 2021. May you have a supercalifragilistically blessed year and accomplish much for God in His kingdom building work.
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I posted this in the night on yesterday’s thread:
“Good evening, Jo. I hoped I would see you here. I had a rude awakening. Our city has those crazed street racers who take over an area and now they have descended into my area. When I went to the P.O. box at the mall on Saturday I saw all the dark rubber circles all over the parking lot. The lawlessness and disorderly conduct! I can not imagine how loud it was for those living closer than we do.”
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And an article about it:
https://www.ajc.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-how-bad-is-atlanta-street-racing-put-the-vehicles-in-jail/2EK24R3Q3FDZPJ2B4SQKH2YTTQ/
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Good morning and happy birthday Jo.
We used to have a temporary, DIY-run race track down at the port in a no-man’s land area, but it went away when the port needed the area for more container and terminal-related use. It was started by a guy named Big Willie (who lived on the next block over from my mom at the time). He was a regular public speaker at the port board meetings for years.
He’s gone now, but some of his pals have tried to lobby the port for some kind of permanent track so the activity could have a legitimate outlet off of city streets. I haven’t heard from those guys in a while, though, I think they finally dropped the effort.
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So I tuned into the Super Bowl last night and was completely bored. Was that just a nothing game, or what? They’re usually a little more interesting than that.
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As a young bachelor in the late 60s and early 70s, the golden age of the car, my father was a drag racer. He did street racing, or so say those who knew him. He hasn’t denied the street racing, but generally recalls going to such DIY tracks as DJ speaks off, where souped up cars showed off, and racing in odd locations, such as aling the bluffs of the nearest Great Lake where he was once stuck in the sand all night. You wouldn’t think it of such a responsible and respectable man as he is now.
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I was asked more than once at work if I was going to watch the game. Now, football is like watching paint dry to me, but nurses shouldn’t express personal opinions to clients. So I just said I would still be working then, which was perfectly true.
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Happy birthday, Jo! I hope you either had one, or are going to have one, I’m not sure which it is.
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Happy birthday, Jo! I’m so happy you got your hymn sing.
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Bonne Anniversaire to Jo
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Happy birthday, Jo!
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I enjoy a good football game. But when one team essentially collapses and never manages to get it together after that, it’s not much of a contest.
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So my car is still working. The vibration was caused by ice buildup causing the rear wheel guard to rub against the tires, so, as I suspected, it was the result of the back of the car getting buried in the snow drift.
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You’re right, DJ. As a KC fan, I would not have been as disappointed in a loss if they had kept it close. Yes, they had 2 starting offensive linemen out, but the coaches could have adjusted the play calls to fit the situation. And the defensive penalties killed their chances.
It not only was boring, it was disgusting.
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Many cars get ice build up in the wheel wells that will shake the car terribly. The first time this happened to us, we thought something terrible was wrong with the car. Of course, we are often driving on snow and slush.
Glad it wasn’t something worse, roscuro. I remember that happening to me as a college student. I didn’t even turn the car around, but drove right back home. I was so shook up. It could have been so much worse if there had been another car coming towards you or, as you said, the snow bank had not stopped your car.
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Janice that is scary! When we drove through MO this past Fall we found ourselves in a “fast and furious” episode on the interstate. It was scary and one false move by the 20 or so cars involved would have been devastating to all on the road. I hope to never see that again!
So thankful you and your car are ok Roscuro…an unsettling moment for you I am sure….
I don’t enjoy football on any given day but the NFL will never get my viewership…after all that has transpired this past year we are pretty much a non sports household at this point….
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Roscuro, when my husband was young and healthy he was quite the athlete. He has told specific stories that show him to have been good at baseball, golf, bowling, and basketball. I knew he watched international football (“soccer” to Americans) and college basketball, and we watch Cubs baseball together sometimes. I grew up with five brothers and of course a father, but only one of those brothers had any interest in sports and we didn’t have a TV. (And only as an adult, in quite recent years, did I find out that one brother played anything beyond pick-up basketball and tennis. I knew he played tennis at the park down the street and was the best in the sport in college. Apparently in junior high he also played soccer and another sport or two, but family didn’t go to his games and I never knew that. He was seven years older than me.)
I was happy that American football wasn’t among the sports he watches, because it’s a sport I don’t understand and I know a lot of women whose husbands watch a lot of football, and I didn’t want the TV on that much. This season IU football has done really well–not perfectly, but it’s a sport that usually they do badly–and he has watched their games. But most years he doesn’t watch the Superbowl and he has little interest in it most years. I’ve only been to one Superbowl party in my life, and everyone else at the party was leaving at halftime–quite to the shock of the hosts–and as a single woman who didn’t really care about football, I would have stayed if other people stayed, but it seemed kind of odd to stay and have it just be the host family and me (and I didn’t really know the host family all that well), so I went ahead and left too.
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My husband’s sports stories, showing him to excel in several sports when he was young:
Baseball: in Little League he once did a one-person triple play, at second base I think: he caught the ball in the air, putting the batter out; he stepped on the bag, meaning the runner who had left second base was out; and then he tagged the runner attempting to run to second. He was also a pretty good pitcher.
In golf, I don’t know numbers or anything like that, but he enjoyed the game (he stopped playing once he was married with a child, as not being a good way to spend money) and he was good enough that he once got a hole in one; we have the ball.
In bowling, he was not officially on a team, but he worked at a bank that had a team. He “worked the system” and played every week: He was very good at it, and his numbers were helpful enough to be an asset to any team that included him, so each week he got asked to substitute for someone, and thus played every week without having to pay the fees that it would have taken to play for the team officially. (The substitute didn’t have to pay the court fees; the player needing the substitute did.)
Basketball was his real love, though. He shot hoops in the driveway after school every day, and resented being made to take piano lessons and practice the piano for the time it took away from basketball. He wanted to be tall enough to play, though genetically that seemed unlikely, since his dad wasn’t very tall. But God gave him his desire . . . sort of. He ended up being six-three, but no matter how much he worked out, he doesn’t have a frame that could bulk up. He was tall enough to play, but not strong enough to play in college, and he says now God probably used that, because otherwise he likely could have been good enough for a college scholarship and that could have been a real distraction for him. (Not that he thinks it’s wrong to have a college scholarship, but just he understands God’s providence and thinks that wouldn’t have been good for him.) His dad was a principal, and several years my husband attended schools where his dad taught. By junior high he was taller than his father. He loves telling the story of the faculty vs. student basketball game where his dad was guarding him, he dunked over his father’s head, and the student crowd went wild seeing a student dunk over the principal. 🙂
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JO’s BD is about over. Happy what’s left.
Elvera is asleep. I don’t know if she’s resting. I spend lots of time just sitting beside her. But I can’t tell if she is aware of anything. She moans sometime.
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I think basketball is the only sport I’m just flat-out not interested in, probably because my dad never liked it very much so I never learned much about it — my uncle who lived nearby loved basketball, though, so we’d have the Lakers on TV or the radio whenever he came over.
Baseball has always been my far-and-away favorite. But I also enjoy football (though I’m not a serious follower of it; but I learned the rules as a kid so can follow it easily — which makes it watchable for me still) and ice hockey.
My cousin was in Little League and I remember when his little dog followed him all the way to a game down the street once and then ran out onto the field in the middle of the game. Coach wasn’t amused. “WHOSE DOG IS THAT?”
They had baseball talent “scouts” hanging out at their games from time to time, along with my cousin’s dog.
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I’ve read and heard that hearing seems to the one sense that stays with us the longest.
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Those who have been in comas have reported saying they were able to hear when all else appeared to be not very functional.
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Which is why reading Scripture, sining psalms, etc, are good choices.
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I grew up listening to baseball and basketball games on the radio. My dad was not a football fan. We even had a basketball hoop in our yard but not in a place for playing the game. It was just for shooting hoops. We played HORSE many times.
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I had a hoop in my backyard, too — it was anchored to the top pole of the swing set, all a bit rickety. And it was in a grassy, dirt area in the far back of the yard (the north 40 my dad always called it).
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The swing set also doubled for playing horse.
Sometimes it was used as just a swing set.
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Sports weren’t really a big thing in my house. My dad watched or didn’t. It was more like background noise. I married into a family of Alabama fans. Then I decided to marry again, and my ex-husband told me,” Kimberley. You have really messed up. He’s a bigger Alabama fan than I am”. Yep, G I know what. He is also a pro-football fan. I don’t complain to much. He told me that before we were married and asked that in the Fall I let him watch it and the other three seasons we can do whatever I want. I am perfectly happy to go read a book.
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Thanks for the birthday wishes. Please pray as I have been asked to sub in grade one today. I know the kids but have to figure out the rest.
After having me for dinner last night, my friends told me that they had gotten permission to loan me the car in their driveway. So nice. It, of course belongs to someone who is gone. I had been praying for a vehicle. With all the rain and I can’t go out in the evening without a car. to say nothing about all of the things I always need to carry to school.
God is good.
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I have been struggling with trying to download the agenda for this evening’s church team meeting. I guess I will be there without it. I feel frustrated by this. It’s just another Covid problem. Also waiting for a tax client to bring their work by. I suppose I should go get my mask so I will have it handy.
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Happy Birthday, Jo! Enjoy first grade. Anybody you know there?
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Happy Birthday, Jo. (Although it’s probably pretty much over where you are by now, isn’t it? Well, I hope it was a happy day.)
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Chas – Although we don’t really know how much a person in that condition can hear, it is often thought, as some have mentioned, that a part of them way down deep inside can indeed hear us speak to them. For a Christian, it could be their spirit that does the hearing.
When my dad went into a coma the night before he died, my mom talked to him about things that had happened in their marriage and family throughout the years. Even if Dad hadn’t really heard her, it was comforting for her to do that.
When that time came for my mom, the night before she died, when she was in a coma, I whispered to her to turn to Jesus. Right after I said that, she gave a little groan-like sound. I would like to believe that that was not a coincidence in timing, but that she was somehow responding in her spirit.
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Our hoop was also above a grassy surface, so it wasn’t any good for developing dribbling skills. Occasionally, if the youth group of the tiny church rented a gym, we played informal basketball, though floor hockey was more popular (and more fun). Our mother taught us to throw a baseball and use a mitt and swing a bat, and a few informal games were played over the years with homeschooling groups or the youth group. We could all skate but only occasionally did we play shinny (informal ice hockey), as we preferred just skating on our frozen swamp. We had a soccer ball and a football but never used them. Our father listened to the hockey game, and sometimes watched it while visiting our grandparents. Only for a brief period during our teens, did pro sports become a theme of conversation, as dear friend and relative and Youngest became fans of the nearest pro hockey team, and even then, they were very idiosyncratic fans, being more arts and crafts with a tinge of nerd than actual sports enthusiasts. Interest dwindled after a few seasons and sports was again rendered of no importance in our lives.
I was once a very fast runner, and might have been good at track and field if I had attended scjool. But asthma pretty much took all interest out of sports for me. Even the brief occasions when I played sports informally, I generally ended it by having to drop out and take my inhaler. Hiking and skating didn’t trigger my asthma, so I preferred those two things. In our teens years, we loved to go on long nature hikes with our dear friend and relative, and talk of everything under the sun, finding new routes through forests, over streams, around swamps, and up steep bluffs, which we liked to scale with our fingers and toes. In the winter, we skated for ours on the long frozen stretches of swamp in our forest, often well after dark by starlight or moonlight. I associate physical activity with nature, so going to a gym or sports stadium/arena is antithetical to my concept of exercise.
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Roscuro, I can’t imagine exercising in a gym either. In Chicago I had free access to a gym, and except for going swimming once or twice, I never ever used it. I wanted to get into walking (which I did do after I moved), and in Chicago too much of the year isn’t conducive to outside exercise, but I’d look at that walking track and just see a boring track above a basketball court, and had no motivation at all to go on it. I think if I had a treadmill or an exercise bike set up with a book to read, I might use it, but not simply a gym or a track.
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Chas, seconding what Kizzie said, often when people come out of comas, they know everything that has been going on in their “absence,” because they have heard all the conversations going on around them.
The day my father-in-law died,we went to the hospital to visit him, and then my husband needed to go down the hall for some medical needs of his own (an appointment in a different department on the same floor) and one daughter and I elected to go with him. (Our younger daughter was working.) While we were down the hall, we got the call he was dying (we had been expecting his death at any time for several days), and we needed to go quickly. So we rushed back down the hall and into his room, where my husband’s sister and her husband, and my mother-in-law, were present. Dad’s eyes were closed, and none of us knows whether he was actually still alive. But my husband took his other hand (Mom had one) and leaned over him, and quoted passages of Scripture about Christ’s love for his own. Our younger daughter had been called, but hadn’t arrived yet, so when the nurse poked her head in to ask if we wanted her to check vital signs, we told her no, please wait. Whether he was still alive to hear his son “sending him” with Scripture, we don’t know, but it was such a tender time either way. I’d like to think God let him linger enough for those last few moments with his wife and his son holding his hands while his son recited Scripture, but I really just don’t know.
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We were always encouraged to talk to the patients…just to let them know they were not alone. It was some of the sweetest moments I spent with the patients. One of my patients “Sally” wanted me to talk to her as she was fading away…turns out she had three daughters and their names were exactly the same as my sisters and the one who was my age was not Nancy but Linda. Her daughters were our exact ages. She wanted to hear all about my childhood, my parents, my friends, my faith. Her daughters were on their way to be with her but she just needed a “daughter” right then…and I seemed to fit the bill 😊 I held her hand and chatted away….she smiled.
The nurses on the floor always told me the hearing was the last to go…(we were taught that in our CNA class as well)….so I should conduct myself as though the patient heard every sound, every word spoken.
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I agree that I prefer being outside for walking, etc., but I gained an appreciation for gym-style apparatus as aids during physical therapy. There are some things that are just so helpful to strengthening certain muscle groups.
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I sit with her a lot. I also talk to her some, reminding her that I love her. She grunts occasionally, but that’s all from her. Lots of people come to sit with her, LindaS (dil) and granddaughter come often.
I also have lots of hired help. I am not doing this alone.
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Oops! I forgot to say Happy Birthday, Jo! It’s still the 8th here, so technically I’m not late.
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As fr sports- I never learned how to play basketball. Our nearest hoop was on a dirt court and since I had dust allergies, I couldn’t participate. At school the concrete court was not in my grade’s part of the playground until 5th grade. By then, most of the boys had developed the skills I lacked, so they would laugh me off the court. I preferred football since that was what we played in my neighborhood, though we played in the street most of the time.
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Not bad as far as parody’s go. Recently a band called Disturbed did a remake of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. This vid is a Covid themed parody of the remake.
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Here’s yet another. This sounds more like the original. :0
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We had our Zoom church meeting and the Pastor said today was his first full day back after Covid. He said it was really bad and he did not know what shape he would be in if he had not gotten that infusion. It was a non eventful meeting which I suppose is good.
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I like watching basketball if I know someone in the game. One of my grandson’s plays and I have seen videos of his baskets. It was a very short season, however, with Covid considerations.
He and his three siblings also play soccer; sometimes for more than one team at a time.
Other grands played soccer, softball, track and field, wrestling and baseball. This would keep us busy, except for Covid.
We only had one play hockey and that was when he was around five. I still laugh when I remember him yelling at us to notice that he was next to the puck and waiting to swing the hockey stick to make sure we were watching him. He moved to a warmer climate after that and never played again.
My husband has never cared to watch any sport except golf. The only time we have a sports channel on is if one of the son-in-laws is here to watch. Needless to say that hasn’t happened in over a year.
I never did a lot of sports. We did have a big enough field area to play baseball with the neighborhood kids. I also did a lot of recreational skating, swimming and games of tag etc.
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Tennis.
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AJ- Those parodies are pretty good. The one by Disturbed does sound like the cover they did a few years back. It was rather dark sounding. That song has always had a haunting feel to it.
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Last yesterday; first this morning.
Just as I was getting ready to dress for school I got the call saying we were off because of road conditions. With 400+ miles of rural, gravel roads that drift over with snow, it’s not surprising. Got yesterday off also. The students won’t want to do much tomorrow with 4 days off in a row.
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