In the eleventh hour I was reprieved.  Late yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from my attorney telling me that the case against me had been dropped: No further explanation was given.  Of course I still have to pay my attorney – I remain convinced that the main purpose of this was simply to hurt me by making me spend money.  I won’t complain about not having to go to court to defend my blog though.

When Carol and I decided to marry, the best solution we could find for housing was a big house with three levels of western exposure.  It is not easy finding a house with bedrooms for eight kids so I can’t complain.  Actually I am learning to like the house.  Carol has done a good job of making it feel like home.  There are still adjustments to make – like learning to deal with hotter temperatures in the summer and colder temperatures in the winter: we tried keeping the temperature where we were comfortable in our other houses, and now we are suffering shock from our utility bill.  It is a really good thing that we were gone for a week this past month or we would really, really be hurting.  I am certainly ready for the moderate temperatures that come with autumn.

I keep paying the bills and hoping for an eventual break, but when I step back and think about it, it is unlikely that the break will ever come.  I expected it would be costly to house, feed, clothe, and entertain 10 people and now I am seeing the reality of it.  I fear that it is worse than I expected, but I don’t have any fears about being able to provide.  Somehow there is always enough money -- just enough, but enough. 

One sleepless night not long ago I wrote an outline for a story that I found compelling.  I wonder if I am motivated enough to flesh it out – everyone knows that becoming an author can provide a lucrative income, but it takes the right combination of creativity, motivation, and writing skill.  I am motivated to create stories, but I am not sure I am ready to work at it.  Part of the problem is that I am very aware of the work that is involved and of the odds against that work ever paying off.  Right now I have a family that needs me and writing would take time and energy away from things that are important to me.  Right now it does not seem worth the gamble.

I guess I will continue to pay a tithe of my money and trust that God will continue to open the windows of heaven and pour me out a blessing.  Ahhh, I can’t write that without recognizing how wonderful it would be to have writing support my family.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to skip to the rewards without going through the uncertainty or the work?

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Annie Wilkes has been at it again.  She started making my life difficult by calling over and over to a lady here at work.  This would not have been a problem for me except that it is my job to run the phone system here and when the calls became harassing, it became my job to stop them.

Annie, at first, was in India so it was relatively easy to block her calls (as well as the calls from most of the continent of India, but we don’t get a lot of callers from there anyway.  Then the calls started coming from here locally, and it became more difficult to block them (and more concerning to the lady who was being called).  Eventually Annie returned to India, but continued to try to find ways around my blocks.  Occasionally she was successful – as anyone who is motivated enough will be.

Eventually I had enough blocks in place that Annie was stopped from calling, but of course any time I block a number I have to provide a way to report that blocked number if it ever becomes necessary to take calls from it again.  This is bad because the way to report that number is to call me directly.  When Annie could not call to speak to her ‘friend’, she began calling me. 

Someone, trying to protect their co-worker, made my job more difficult because they told Annie that her friend had been fired because of all the calls Annie was making.  Now Annie feels so much remorse for harassing this lady that she feels she must harass me – begging me to make sure that we hire this lady back.  It has been lovely but today I sent Annie’s fifth call down to our Security Officer.  I hope that the calls will quit now; it was exciting to match wits with Annie at first, but now she has become tedious.

It is the end of the month tomorrow.  I wrote earlier about an event that happens at the end of the month, and now that day is upon me.  I can’t get over how silly it all is to be dragged into court like this – just because someone thinks that maybe someday I might say something bad about them.  That is really the only reason I can see for this whole thing but I welcome any input you readers might have.

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Carol told me Friday evening that she wanted me out of the house. 

OK, did you panic like my fishing buddy’s wife did?  She thought Carol wanted me out of the house permanently, but actually she only wanted me to get out and do something for myself; she wanted me out of the house, but in a good way.  I am glad that she pushed me to leave because there were certainly plenty of things that really needed doing.  I often put the things I want to do to at the bottom of the pile and I imagine myself a better person for it.  Carol really meant it when she said she wanted me out of the house, and further she told me that when I came home I was not to fix the sprinklers or to mow the lawn.  I should listen to my health-care-professional when she tells me to do something… as it was I listened only to half of what she said. 

I called Sheriff Taylor and I told him that he would be doing me a real favor if he would go fishing with me.  It took a bit of talking, but in the end he agreed (it really did not take much talking).  We had a separate impetus for going other than Carol looking after my health and that is that the rules for fishing in Mayberry have recently changed:  Where before land owners claimed ownership for streams and rivers running through their property, now all waters are open for fishing, hunting, hiking, boating – anything that uses the water that runs over private land is allowed as long as you stay in the water.  This is bad news for land owners who kept the rivers running over their land as their private fishing preserve, but it is wonderful news for people like me who don’t own river land but who salivate as we drive past the beautiful waters that until last week were closed to us.

Rivers in Mayberry are relatively small – you can’t fit a big river on a stage I guess.  Regardless of their size, they still hold fish.  I fished a lot more in past years than I have recently because the demands of life keep crowding out leisure activities, and I found Saturday that I was not alone in this because the last time Sheriff Taylor went fishing was three years ago and was with me.  Both of us were a bit rusty.

Despite being rusty my casting was a thing of beauty.  I did not loose a fly to a snag all day and I was often able to drop my fly right up against the bank and in the corners created by logs, rocks or bushes.  If you can’t tell, I was pleased with the way I was casting despite the time off from fishing.  Setting a hook is another story and I am not very pleased with my ability at this.  I fished dry-fly at first because that is my favorite kind of fishing (it takes a better cast to make a dry fly look good to a fish), but it was not very productive with the heat we have been having, so I reluctantly switched to a set of nymphs.  When you are fishing with a strike indicator and two separate hooks on your line your cast often becomes more of a lob.  Since the hooks sink and bounce against the rocks as they drift downstream, a delicate cast where the fly drifts softly to the surface is not needed.  To me, wet-fly is just not as much fun.  That is not to say it is any easier than dry, and it will take me a while to re-learn what makes a fish look different than when the hooks bouncing over rocks.  I missed several opportunities because I was out of practice.  On the occasions when I was actually able to get a fish on, I suffered miserably from silly mistakes that allowed each and every fish to escape.  Again part of this comes from being unsure of what is happening down under the water – retrieving a fly requires a different movement from the pole than setting a hook does, and retrieving when a fish has a hook in his mouth results in a hook that is not set well, while setting a hook when no fish is there results in tangled lines.

Despite my inability to land a single fish, I had a wonderful day out.  Sheriff Taylor was also having a frustrating time of things, so we left the river a little earlier than we might have if we had been better able to land fish.  I got home in plenty of time to mow lawns and fix sprinklers, or so I thought.

Living in Mayberry gives us opportunities that are in many ways unique, so Carol and I had a chance to go see the Osmond’s.  It has been long enough since our families competed in the ‘family entertainment’ market that I could actually enjoy seeing them together again.  Of course my sprinkler repair went long so Carol and I did not get to leave the house as early as we had hoped (and Carol was waiting for me), but traffic was light and we actually arrived early.  It was a wonderful evening, but a good portion of the enjoyment was a result of the company I was with.  Carol makes life fun.

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My Mother-in-law wanted to be added as a character in this blog, but I forgot the name she requested I use for her.  I guess that is best as all the characters here are fictional anyway… right?  I find it funny that she wanted to be included even though she has never read it.  I really like my in-laws, but then, liking my in-laws is nothing new; I liked my last set of in-laws too.

It has been quiet here in the Brady Neighborhood.  I believe we are in ‘summer reruns’ now.  This means that anything I would write about has probably been said before and I would rather be off-air than tedious.  The summer heat is oppressive and more so because we were so recently in the cooler climate of the Monterey Bay.  My palsy is also to blame in part for the lack of recent activity but unfortunately the palsy shows no sign of loosening the death-grip it has on the left side of my face.

A death grip… I like the imagery of that because the left side of my face is basically dead to me.  Although it feels sensations like pain, heat, and cold, it will not respond to even the most focused command.  The doctor is not pleased with my lack of progress and suggests I am doing too much and that I need to rest more.  I remind him that it is impossible that I am doing too much – after all, I only have a job and 8 kids – so there must be another reason my recovery is so slow.  The problem is that the longer I go without recovery, the more severe the lasting effects are likely to be.  I am ready to be done with this palsy.

Despite the morose sound of the above, I have remained fairly up beat and happy this past month.  I am sure that being a newly wed helps with this – I am certain I am still in the state of bliss so common to newly weds – but I believe that there is more to it.  You see, I am pleased with the decisions I have made and the direction that I have pointed my life!  I admit that learning to be a parent to teen-aged children has not always been pleasant for me (mostly because I continue to do stupid things), but I hope to learn to manage even this eventually.  Although the learning curve is a steep one, I think I am keeping up… but perhaps the kids would have a different view of this.

I really don’t know where life will take me, but I continue to plan and prepare as if I really had a say in things, and I continue to look forward to the future with Carol.  Every day I become more convinced that I could not have found anyone better and I am glad that she chose me.  Carol says that she decided I was the man she wanted after our third date (I remember our first and second dates, but I can’t remember the third – but don’t tell on me), and that she knew she was going to marry me.  I tease her (I tease her too much, especially because she is not used to a constant tease like me) that I never really had a choice in the matter after date #3.  For me, the real ‘wow – this woman is incredible’ moment did not come until somewhat later.

In fact, I will share some personal history – if Carol strips it off the blog, I will understand.  If she does strip it, reading this will be a reward for everyone who reads early:

Carol and I had been dating for only a little while when Carol asked me to accompany her to a formal dance that she was chaperoning.  If you have just read the above you will understand why she would ask me on a date a month in advance, but at the time I did not understand.  I was not sure at the time that we would still be dating in a month, but I expected that Carol would tire of me before then rather than that I would not be still interested in her. 

As the date got closer, I became convinced that it was going to be a wonderful evening and I began really looking forward to it.  When the day finally came and I picked up Carol, she was wearing a beautiful dark green formal dress that flattered her immensely.  I blame the dress, but perhaps it had more to do with the forethought I had given the evening, but I was hooked.  We were supposed to be there to patrol the dark corners, but I spent the evening looking for the dark corners for my own purposes.  It was unfortunate that I was unable to put my nefarious plans into play at the dance, but I certainly let her know of my attraction when I dropped her off at her house.

And so that Green Dress resolved our problems:  Carol was beginning to wonder if I were capable of having romantic feelings for her (her ex was devoid of feeling), and I was dating so many different women that I was not eager limit my options until I was absolutely sure I knew what I wanted.  I learned later that it took Carol all day of shopping with her sister to find just the right dress to jump-start my attentions.

I should probably not let those two go shopping anymore or I won’t have any say in anything…

   *  *

All is well.  I have not fallen off the face of the earth or decided the life of a recluse – living in a hole on the coast of the Monterey Bay – is the life for me.  Life has been busy and the Blog has suffered but it is my mantra “see to the important things first”.  The important things have been getting done.

The 10 of us had a wonderful vacation on the Monterey Bay that will be a memory generator for the rest of our lives.  This area is important to me because my Grandmother has a beach house there and I was excited to share this with my family.  I was prepared for a trip that was a lot of work for me and a lot of fun for the kids but the trip was better than I expected and the work required of me was less than I thought.

That does not mean that everything went smoothly or that there were not conflicts along the way because there were plenty.  It is funny that at 42 years old I can still behave badly but I occasionally prove that potential with action.  Fortunately I have a wife that loves me.  I find I can accept correction from her when I would not accept it from anyone else and I attribute this willingness to the knowledge of her love for me.  I have a temper that is still not completely tamed.

The beaches were wonderful, the weather pleasant, and everything was so green.  It was a treat to spend a week in that costal climate before returning to the dry summer heat of the desert.  My palsy seemed to respond well to the relaxing atmosphere and my palsied eye even made a few stray tears giving hope that I might truly be on the path to recovery.  My face drooped less, but I still had no muscular control of half of my face and fought a continual battle with dry eye and eye infection.  I can not think of a better place to spend time recovering. 

I am back to work this week, and some of the progress has been given back.  When I am at work I am working so I end up with a droopy face and an eyeball that is on fire from dryness.  Wearing a patch helps (I fit right in while wearing the patch on vacation – It is part of the Oakland Raiders costume), but when I wear the patch I get eye strain and headaches.  I find it is best to wear the patch for an hour or two and then remove it for a couple of hours.  This way I end up with a sore eye and a minor headache – the middle of the road so to speak.

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