Living Among the Dead

May 17 - Monday - Partly Cloudy and Windy

Will try and catch you all up on a very busy weekend..

Lou and I each lost a dear friend this week. He lost a friend that attended Charleston school with him and then went into the service together and I lost a very dear first cousin; therefore, visiting a funeral home twice this week has brought a lot of acquaintances front and center and we have certainly enjoyed chatting with many folks. Lou and I were surprised as how many people we each knew from these many individual friendships.

It is sad that the only time we visit with family and friends is at funerals and not family reunions as we did in the past.

I finally got the RV cleaned and ready for our trip this Thursday for a SMART muster. Lou got the oil changed so he has that part ready also.

We went over to work on the RV and found that his apple tree had come down and was laying on the ground, so used the Buick to get it straightened up and secured against any upcoming wind. As we were walking back to the RV we noticed that Lou's suet feeder looked a little disarranged and checking closer, the feeder had been taken down along with the suet feeder, looks like the bear is still traveling.

Sunday we attended church and I was in charge of the scripture readings which went well, we had another baptism and a good attendance in our little rural church. We stopped in town for a quick breakfast and on to our square dance benefit for Relay on Life. We raised almost $600.00 for the benefit. After the square dance we went to the funeral home, so by the time we returned home it was almost 7:00 pm, so had a late dinner.

Today we have spent the entire day working in the cemetery at Whitneyville. Lou volunteers his time and takes great pride in what he does. I love working with him on, it and find there is so much to learn from him on how to straighten a stone and not cause any damage to the original stone. Did you know that you can not use field rock or any type of stone under the monument? I sure didn't we have to did dirt and pack in under. I also found that the monuments are very brittle and you can not rock them back and forth or they will break in two. You can see from the pictures how we improved one monument. We ran the weed eater on half of the cemetery and then I used the broom and swept the grass off and away from each stone. Brion had purchased a new weed eater for Lou and we both used it today, I found I could even start this one and it wasn't as heavy as I thought it would be, so we took turns today. We still have the other half yet to do, but are supposed to have rain for several days, so not sure when we can finish it.

Tomorrow, we have a funeral to attend, and a choral concert tomorrow night, and I must get my house cleaned up and laundry done. We also need to vote.

I might add that we have ordered a new car. We decided we didn't need two new cars, so we have traded in both of our cars and are awaiting the delivery of our new choice. This was a fun endeavor, to come up with what we both wanted, something that we haven't done before, so we made the best of a fun time.