Photo 1; Sleeping Beauty - Miss Jane having a good rest on Mr. John's sofar
Photo 2: Dark pink + dark blue = purple
The renovation at Mr. John’s home is progressing one room at a time. This home will be remembered for the PURPLE master bedroom. The homeowner’s grandson who said that will be his bedroom, had requested a maroon or purplish color on all the walls of that bedroom. SETIO, the organization providing the materials, had advised that they had gallons and gallons of paint at their storage facility and we were free to help ourselves to whatever we needed. As SETIO is quickly running out of funds, we made the decision to attempt to create the color from their assortment of paint rather than buy new paint from Home Depot. After consulting the internet as to how we could make maroon out of the dark pink paint we had to start out with, we began our mixing. With several cups of dark blue paint, we soon had a color which we believed would be passable. The two of us who were painting thought it looked maroon in the pail. However, after it was painted onto the walls, it came out more dark plum than maroon. Our women all LOVE it; none of the (white) men care for it at all. Joe, the grandson, said he was happy with it. The master bedroom has quite a large closet which we painted a dark beige color that really complements the rest of the room - not that anyone will notice when the bifold closet doors are installed…
We were delighted to see Miss Jane back home this week. She was as happy to see us all as we were to have her back! However, when we stopped by Mr. John’s on Friday to see how he was doing and she was not there, he informed us that her family had taken her to a nursing home. This was very disturbing news, as she had appeared to be better than ever upon her return from hospital and we cannot fathom her consenting to being removed from her home. We are still hoping it is not so.
On the instructions of Joe, we painted the second bedroom off-white rather than the light blue requested by Mr. John. In my heart of hearts, I was painting it light blue, as we have become very fond of the old geezer. We are already getting the hint that Mr. John may not be sleeping in this bedroom for long, and that his family may be considering a nursing home for him as well. We know that this would not be his choice, but these are circumstances over which we have no control. We pray that he can continue to enjoy the attention he gets from our being there at least until we leave.
As we were working at the one site, some of our volunteers finished up the soffit and fascia and installed new posts on Miss Louanna’s front porch. On Martin Luther King Day, the children had a holiday from school. As Cheek is a predominantly rural community, many of the families have horses, and they had a visit from one of the grandchildren of the homeowner on his pony.
This week, John’s arthritis in his hands was acting up worse than it ever has before. The knuckles were swollen and he was having trouble flexing his fingers after a night’s sleep. It was time to bring out the unflavored gelatin again. Years ago when he was complaining about arthritis in his hands, an old friend of ours had told us that she had used a tablespoon of unflavored gelatin in her morning coffee to alleviate very bad arthritis. He tried it at that time and found that it worked well. He was skeptical about how helpful it would be this time. He was very surprised to find that after one cup of coffee with the gelatin dissolved, there was a noticeable difference. The swelling went down and although some of the pain remained, it was not nearly as bad. With the plumbing, drywalling and lifting he is required to do on this job, it is very difficult with hands that hurt. We will be “doctoring” his coffee every morning for the foreseeable future! The gelatin has to be softened in a bit of cold water before putting it in the hot coffee.
This weekend, Friday and Saturday, Ford Park was the site of a Hot Hearts Youth Conference. We have never seen so many cars and buses in their HUGE parking lot as there were this weekend for that event. We learned that there were 7,100 youth and chaperones attending this conference and it was a life-changing experience for all. We in our RV’s were quite surprised to realize that we no longer were disturbed by the heavy rock music emanating from the building. It is obviously true that a person can “tune out” noises, such as loud repetitive noise or a train going by.
On Sunday night, there was a rock concert to raise funds for the disaster victims in Haiti. The organizers must have been a bit disappointed at the turnout, as there were not very many cars in the parking lot.
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