To the lake

Member of our church has a boat that can hold twelve people so we're going to hold church services on a lake this Sunday. It's a house church and twelve is the normal attendance. Wife is feeling good enough to go. She's been working the last two days and is getting stronger. It should be fun.

Getting Back To Normal

We had a pretty busy weekend. Took wife and daughter to see Harry Potter and a nice lunch at Fudruckers and we went to church yesterday. Wife is starting to walk more and can stay up longer as long as the painkillers are working. She has a tendency to wait too long before taking them and they take longer to kick in.
She's going to work tomorrow half time and we'll see if she's up to going back on Wednesday.
I want to thank all who have offered their prayers and special thoughts through this time in our lives.

Slow going

Wife feels good one day, get up and walks around the house, sits in the living room and the next day she's exhausted and has trouble getting out of bed. The doctor said she'd have good days and bad days and she is. The progress is slow, but healing is happening and there should be more good days than bad days coming up.
Convention got together some meals for us and our freezer is full. Many thanks to those who shared their generosity with us.

Slow Recovery

Wife is home and she's feeling better today than yesterday. It's going to be a challenge for me to keep her from trying to do too much. She doesn't like lying in bed with nothing to do. She's doing word searches, working on her plastic canvas and we started watching all the Beauty and The Beast tv episodes on the Wii.

All's Well

Surgery went well, did lapro so she should be home tomorrow.

Delayed

Surgeon couldn't fit wife's in to the schedule today, she'll have surgery in the morning. If he can do laproscopic her recovery time will be much quicker. The extra day of antibiotics should help. She was feeling much better and needed the pain meds less than yesterday.

It May Be Dry Here, But For Me It's Raining.

Yesterday our van's transmission died, son found a car from a friend on the cheap so he has a ride to work. The van will have to sit until hell freezes over or I find a few thousand dollars to fix it.
Wife had heartburn all last night and nothing helped. It got worse and I took her to the emergency room. EKG was fine so they did an ultrasound and found gall stones. They admitted her and she's talking to a surgeon in the morning. Insurance is good, but the 20% it doesn't pay has me scared. Daughter's hospital stay last year forced me into bankruptcy and retirement. Not much of a safety net left.

Poetry

I'm posting the poems of Mary Prescott at my Captain's Log blog.

Beaulah Colorado

Blogger friend and fellow curmudgeon One Fly posted that Michael Martin Murphey donated the easement on 120 acres in Beaulah, Co to the consevancy district.
It's amazing what memories that brought back.
My maternal grandparents owned a small cabin in Beaulah. The road curved around a hill and there was a bridge over a small creek. The pink stucco cabin was on the inside of the curve. It had a large main room with couch, chairs and book shelves on the wall on one side and on the other was a sink, wood burning stove, table and chairs. There was a bedroom past that and the back door. Behind and a ways off was an outhouse. It did have electricity. The book shelves were full of reader's digest, coronet and national geographic magazines, misc. books and lots of reader's digest condensed books. When you went there it was for peace, quiet and reading. Lake Isabel is not far away and lots of times we'd spend the night at the cabin and go fishing at the lake.
Between the cabin and the creek were willow trees. Grandpa had some long butcher knives and gave one to Bruce and one to me. We attacked those poor willows and made bows & arrows. The willow branches were too flexible to make much of a bow and the arrows never sailed very far. On the other side of the road was a hill with a flag on top. We would always have to climb the mountain (when your 7 years old just about anything is a mountain) and reach the flag.
We lived in Pueblo then and it was only a forty five minute drive to get away from the heat of town and relax for a weekend. Grandpa's brother, Frank, lived in a beat up trailer there for a few years and we (Bruce and I) would hike up to his trailer to say hi whenever we were there. Frank was moved out of his trailer and put in a retired journalists home in Colorado Springs. Mom took us to visit him once before he died.
A rancher there would rent out horses for riding and I remember Dad would have Bruce in front of him and I'd be in front of Mom as we went horse back riding. It was a big deal when they let Bruce ride alone. We moved down to Albuquerque before they thought I was big enough for that priveledge.
Perhaps the singular memory of Beaulah was a labor day weekend. We drove up on Friday night in the rain. The plan was to go fishing on Saturday and Sunday at Lake Isabel. Mom woke up and started trying to make a fire in the wood burning stove, but filled the cabin up with smoke. Dad got up and looked out the window to see four inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down.
We ate breakfast and as there wasn't much else to do while hoping the snow would let up and perhaps we could get some fishing in on Sunday we sat around the wood burning stove. Either Mom or Dad chose a book named Pioneer Go Home by Richard P. Powell. They took turnes reading it aloud. Around noon the wood was giving out and Dad went out to get more coming back with a bucket of coal. By late afternoon they decided the fishing trip was a bust and we went back home.
This event was burned onto all our memories particularly that book. By chance we found it was made into a movie but renamed Follow That Dream starring Elvis Presley.
We moved down here. The Record Music Company in Pueblo fell victim to discount stores and Grandpa sold the building and the cabin. When Mom and Dad went back for class reunions they found that the cabin had been leveled, cleaned up and restricted for habitation not to contaminate the stream. My fondest memories before the age of ten are about Beaulah.

poetry

I came across a book of poems from this lady and found I like them. Thought I'd share some.

Mary Newmarch Prescott, American author and sister of Harriet Prescott Spofford, was born in Calais, Maine, August 2, 1849, the daughter of Joseph Prescott and his wife Sarah Bridges. Her parents removed to Derry and afterwards to Newburyport, Massachusetts. Mary was educated chiefly at home by her mother and sister. Her first story was written as a school composition, but was sent to Harper's Magazine and accepted. After that she wrote many poems and short stories which were published in various magazines. She died at the home of her sister, Mrs. Spofford, at Deer Island, Amesbury, Maine, June 14, 1888.

POEMS

MARY NEWMARCH PRESCOTT

OVER A GRAVE

Though underneath the silent clod

Thy body rests—thy soul with God

Doth mount on wings of prayer and praise

To swell the measure of thy days.

Even though the grass is tall and green,

That grows thy heart and mine between.

Even though thy face be hid from me.

My Father's will I clearly see.

Dad through time

Fathers day makes us stop and reflect on the role our Dad's played in our lives.
There are various fazes as we grow up. I remember Dad when I was little and him running after Bruce and I after he told to run and how surprised we were how quick he caught us. When he stopped being taller than us and we fought over whose socks were whose. Teaching for a few weeks across the hall from each other, that was special time. Staning out in the yard talking while he watered his flowers and shrubs. Seeing the look on his face when he held his grandchildren. Some things can never be forgotten.

Good news

The last two messages from the hospice nurse in Milford have said that Mother-in-law is eating, gained two pounds, sitting up and aware of things and had a hair cut. Didn't think she'd make it to her 92nd birthday.

Real reality

Vivian Norris has an interesting article at Huffpo today. Being a teacher and writer I watch documentaries and channels like Nat Geo, History, Bio, stuff that my wife huffs and puffs about. She's much happier with her daytime drama. Norris is afraid filmmakers will stop doing docs because large corporations hit them with law suits. In my mind the more the corps fight them the more interest they generate and more people watch them. My fear is that documentaries will die because no one wants to watch them anymore. Escaping into the oblivion of explosions, car chases, body dismemberments, who cares about "real" reality?

Documentaries can be wonderful ways to lose ourselves in reality, not virtual reality, not reality tv, but "real" reality; they are not only enjoyable to watch, but because they are based on these facts, force us to question when we are fed lies. Good documentary filmmaking preserves our common human accomplishments and documents the natural world and ways of life (which in some cases sadly is disappearing. See a great doc about disappearing cowboys and shepherds in Montana called Sweetwater).

The phrase that Norris uses caught my eye: "real" reality. My things have gotten complicated when we have to distinguish which type of reality we're talking about.

Latest Novel

An asteroid hits Wyoming in 1965 and an oil company's computers predict that Yellowstone a super volcano already thousands of years overdue will erupt in 50 to 70 years wiping out all life on the planet.
James Eastman, president of the company decides to come up with a plan for "When it hits the fan."
This is a multigenerational story covering the last fifty years and how technology if used properly could save billions of lives should a catastrophy like this happen.
Part 1 covers 1948 to 1976. Part 2 is in the works.

Now available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobles and smaswords.com. For $2.99

At Smashwords if you put in the coupon PA52R it's free for thirty days.


All coupons for the other stories at smashwords have expired.
I've looked at all the different formats at smashwords and have found pdf to be the best.

greetings from Nebraska

Visiting with Brother-in-law and family. Mother-in-law is not long for this life. Sister-in-law reading to her grandchildren.


Milford is a sleepy little town 25 miles from Lincoln.

They've been getting lots of rain, the really bad weather has been south of them.

Everyone seems to have beautiful flower gardens. They're waiting for warmer weather for the vegetable gardens.

Another prophet with egg on face

What about the Bible saying that no one knows the date and time do these idiots not get?
It's so easy for someone trying to make a name for themselves and attract non-thinking groupies to dream up a doomsday scenario and rake in the money.
Living a Christian life is a committment. Cheap Grace and sitting around waiting for the sky to fall in is only delusion.

Good Deal

To all friends and family who have given me advice and support over the years, here's my gift to you. Click on this link to my page at Smashwords.com and look at my list of books available. I have dropped the price of all short stories to 0.00. That right Free, and what's more you don't need a special app like Kindle or Nook to download the story.

I've reduced the price on my anthologies and novel, but here's the deal. You can download them for free too. Here's how you do it:

For Human Sacrifices when you go to "check out" put in coupon code PA52R (not case specific).

For Flash Stories: Married Love coupon code is RR26Q

For Flash Stories: Erotica coupon code is UY58W

For Erotic Flash Stories 3 coupon code is XF25Q

Have some time to read? What are you waiting for?

The Coupons are only good through June 6, 2011.

Touching words

Good friend at Private Buffoon posted his touching eulogy for his wife he delivered at her funeral last Wednesday.

About Bloody Time

I haven't been able to post in some time due to a mix up with Javascript.
I've published three short stories, three anthologies and one novel at Amazon.com, Barnesandnobles.com and smashwords.com.
Optimus is now at Amazon for $9.99 and at publishamerica.com for $27.99. I don't think PA wants to sell many e-books.
The other books are under Patrick Prescott:
Human Sacrifices $8.99 e-book only
A story about a young woman confronting a demon that feeds on the pain and suffering all around her. She's facing an abusive fundamentalist husband that fights to keep her from divorcing him, starting a teaching career and getting on with her life trying to reach her students and keep them out of the mouth of Mal, the demon she sees in the trees outside her window.
This story has the three things you should never talk about at a party: Sex, religion and politics.
Short Stories:
Bona Dea $.99 at Kindle and Nook, Bona Dea Redux at smashwords (long story)
A lonely security guard's spirit touches the spirit of a goddess that has been trapped in an eagle for hundreds of years. The goddess slowly comes back to life through Steve and his friends to start providing the world with love and happiness again.
Wife Quest $.99 e-book available at the sites listed above.
John Fletcher is a young knight helping escort is leige lord on a tour of his estates stopping at numerous other castles to find the Lord's son and daughters spouses. Set in 1190 England this story explores the different social classes and marriage customs of the middle ages.
Woman on the Beach $.99 e-book
A woman is distraught on a beach and lets her cover slip exposing her to all present. A family with small children and the man who has told her he's taken employment out of state. This story lets the reader understand the viewpoint of all involved in a chance encounter.
Anthologies:
For years I would select a picture from the internet at first describing it in exact detail as an exercise for my summer writing. Quickly the description turned into flash stories (1,000 words or less) telling a story about the picture. The three short stories above started off as flash stories and the story grew. The remaing stories have been compiled into three anthologies.
Flash Stories: Married Love $4.99 e-book
All of these stories deal with marriage in all it's stages from newly weds to divorce, remarriage, mature marriages, loss and grief, fights, making up and many more phases.
Flash Stories: Erotica $4.99 e-book
My stories here are discriptions of the people involved and how they wind up in bed and it's aftermath. Nudity is described, but not the sex act itself. I leave that up to the reader's experience and imagination. Erotica not pornography got it?
Erotic Flash Stories 3 e-book $3.99

Sad State of Glorieta

There is one place in New Mexico that has a special place in my heart it's the Baptist Encampment at Glorieta. I can remember trips up there from age 10 on. I met my wife there on a church retreat. Penni was married there and her ashes are strewn there around her memorial bench in the prayer gardens.
When I was in high school in summers the place would be wall to wall kids all summer long. The chuck wagon had waits of thirty minutes or more. The huge dining hall was always full. The chapel was standing room only.
When we went to spread Penni's ashes in June we were the only ones in the chuck wagon at noon. The place was a ghost town. There was a wedding taking place in the prayer garden, but it was a Catholic wedding. I've seen more nuns at New Mexico hall the last few times I've been there than preachers. It's truly sad.
To me this is holy ground. There's something peculiar when humans get tied to land. They get rather proprietary. Look at all the fighting in a small sliver of land between Egypt and Turkey for thousands of years with everyone claiming it as holy ground.
This recalls a time where I thought Glorieta had been violated.
I was teaching in a middle school. APS set aside money for teacher collaborations from their training budget. The principle let those who wanted meet for a Friday night and all day Saturday meeting at Glorieta. When we got up there and in our rooms that evening everyone immediately decided to drive to Santa Fe for a drink. No problem. I had no illusions about them being good Baptists. It was the next day as we were in conference rooms and most of them started smoking.
There is no smoking at Glorieta period. Not even outdoors. This was in the early 80's and I wasn't tenured so I bit my tongue and didn't say anything, but it still rankles to this day that they would defile a building built, maintained and owned through the tithes of Baptists. You'd think teachers would have better respect than that.
I remember that every time I hear on the news Native Americans claiming certain mountains here as sacred grounds to keep development out. Even I have sacred ground that I feel touchy about even if the Southern Baptist Convention has all but abandoned it.