Treasure Claimed

My last post talked about finding an envelope of money at a local business we frequent, almost daily. The day after finding the money I returned to see if the money has been claimed by it's rightful owner. It had not. I then inquired as to how long they would hold it--five days, according to the Operations Manager. I told them I would be back on the 5th (of March).

I returned on the 5th and was shuffled around the store to several people until I talked to the Manager. I explained what happened the previous Thursday (March 1st). I described in detail the envelope and its contests to him, he went to the place it was stored, opened the drawer and surprisingly he presented it to me, thanked me for turning the money in AND shook my hand.

I really have mixed feeling concerning this found treasure. I'm excited, but I'm sad for the person that lost their money. However, I'm not free to spend this money, it's going into the savings, but the Lord is moving on my heart for it to be used for His Kingdom.

FOUND TREASURE

Yesterday I was in the midst of cleaning house, which evolved into cleaning our closets. Then the cleaning task turned into an attemtp to create more space in my closet. When we moved into this house in 1976 our closets were so spacious. Perhaps the reason might have been, we didn't have very many clothes back then. We could fit all our clothes in those two closets. Now we have to move our clothes as the seasons change to a closet upstaris.

In the process of working on the closet, I decided I needed something from Wal-Mart to make the space more efficient. However, I never made it to Wal-Mart I detoured to another business establishment, which will remain unnamed, to make my purchase.

I ran into one of the sons of our beloved builder, Homer. We chatted for a few minutes to get caught up on family news, then made my way to the cash register. Do they still call the checkout computer a cash register?. I stepped up to pay for my items and I found an envelope with a nice amount of cash in it. When I saw it I immediately knew it contained money--cash money. It was kinda plump, it just looked like it had money in it. Sure enough, cold hard cash. I counted it, put it back in the envelope and called the clerk. I told her I had found the money and presented it to her for the rightful owner to claim. However, before turning it over the the lady I placed one of our business cards in the envelope with my name written on it (Hubby's was printed on the card) with a handwritten note stating, "I'm the person that found your money." I put the card in the envelope in hopes the rightful owner will call me just to say, "thank you". I can assure you I am checking back today to see if anyone has made claim to the money.

Most people would question me as to why I turned the money in. Well, there is a principle of sowing and reaping and I want to sow seeds of honesty, expecting to reap a harvest of honesty. You cannot sow seeds of dishonesty and expect to reap honesty. Put it another way, what goes around, comes around.

OSCAR--King of Tidewater

OSCAR

Being the cat people we are, over the past 40 years of marriage we have housed (cats don't have owners) numerous cats. Some of them for short periods of time, other for years, but Oscar is the King of Tidewater (the name of our house). We have had him longer than any other kitty. Those before him were, Tittle, Mandy (she presented us with five kittens), Smokey (one of the kittens), Minnie Mouse the House Mouse (she belonged to the neighbors and they moved off and took her with them--it broke our hearts), Buster (he's the one I prayed for and he "magically" appeared coming up the driveway one day), Twinkie (really lived next door), Boo (Twinkie's brother), Eric Rudolph (we couldn't catch him), Molly (she brought us Sweet Pea and Oscar), Emmie Sweet Pea and finally Oscar Snuggles.

Oscar and Sweet Pea were Molly's kittens born somewhere out in the wild. We adopted Molly, but knew she had kittens. We looked for them a week, going from door to door in the neighborhood around us, leaving our business cards to call us if they found two little kittens and walking every inch of our yard and our next door neighbor's yard. I finally prayed and asked the Lord to move on Molly's heart to bring her kittens to us. GUESS WHAT? She did. She brought both of them into the kitchen and dropped them on our kitchen rug. Sweet Pea arrived first, on Sunday evening, Oscar arrived the next morning. They were raised in the bottom of the linen closet in our back hallway.

We had Molly almost a year, but Hubby found her on the right-of-way at the road, she must have been hit. It was awful. Molly was a sweet, gentle kitty.

We had Sweet Pea 11 years, but Hubby found her down by the sidewalk in the backyard. Apparently, dogs killed her, because she was old and fat and couldn't run. This crushed both of us. She was one of our two babies. Do you ever get over losing something that has put such deep foot prints into your heart? No, but the pain is easier.

Oscar, King of Tidewater will be 13 years old in August 2007. He is certainly King, he has a routine and keeps us on it well. Only lately, he wants to go out in the late evening, causing us to get up during the night to see if he's back on the porch wanting in. We don't want to leave him out all night, because it is too cold, especially for an old gent like him. He has favorite places to sleep, mostly our bed, but he will take his place in the basket on the bay window in the kitchen. He especially likes the basket in early spring when the sun rotates back around from the south and shines in that window in the mornings. He will actually follow the sun from the rug, to the basket during the morning hours. He wants people food to eat, but we try to keep him on real cat food. We learned a hard lesson with Buster, all he wanted was people tuna, and as a result died with kidney disease from all that tuna. Oscar gets those little toasted bits of dry food at any time, as we keep several bowl out for him, but his favorite canned cat food is the disgusting chopped sardines. Yuk! I hold my breath when I open that stuff. HE LOVES IT! He has us trained well. I suppose that's another reason his paw prints are so deeply imprinted on our hearts. King Oscar, we do love you.

The Mustang

Can you have a mid-life crisis when you are on the edge of being a senior citizen? Seems as though that happened to us. In 2002, we were in the middle of operating our own business, which was a very new experience for us. Hubby had lost his job at age 55 after working at the same company for 36 years and The Little Woman was recovering from total hip replacement and preparing to retire having worked for the government for 35 years. We got the wild idea to buy us a Mustang. At the time we both were driving mini vans. Hubby had his '95 Voyager for work and I had my '91 Caravan. In fact, I still have my '91 van, we refer to her as "Old Faithful". That's a another story for another day. We knew we wanted a GT and it had to be a five-speed. No automatic for us, that's a sissy car!

After looking and searching we found what we wanted. So in November 2002, we purchased our mid-life crisis car. It has been almost as much fun as our Yamaha Waverunners. However, with the Mustang we can enjoy it all year, not just in the summer, as was the case with the Waverunners. We only drive this vehicle 34 miles per week--17 miles to and from church. This drives our niece crazy!!!! If we exceed the 37 miles per week, then we have to park the GT for a week or two.

The Mustang was needing new tires. We can't just go buy new tires, Hubby has to do all the research as to what brand tires, size, width, etc. In the process he mentioned this to a friend at church that is a Mustang enthusiast. This guy owns seven Mustangs--yes, seven (7, VII) Mustangs. They range from early models (60's type) being restored to a new beautiful 2006. Wouldn't you know it, he had a set of new rims and tires he wanted to sell. I thought we needed new tires! Why do we need rims?! For reasons, known only to God, Hubby decides those rims are a must as well.

So, Saturday morning we are off to get the new rims. I have to admit, they look cool. The new rims also require new lug nuts, after all, you can't have those old ugly, rusted, lug nuts from the old rims, so we were off to The Summit (I don't even know how to describe the Summit, other than they sell all kind of car parts for restoration of any type of vehicle). The new lug nuts are nice and shinny and they also have locks for each wheel. Why do you have to lock your wheels? I guess that's a discussion for another time.

Titanic Exhibit

Yesterday we went down to the Atlanta Civic Center to see the Titanic exhibit. A bit pricey, but well worth it. We spent almost three hours in there looking at the articles recovered from the Titanic.

The White Star Line's R.M.S. Titanic sailed from England and France on it's maiden voyage to the United States on April 10, 1912. However, late on April 14, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. Over 1500 people lost their lives. There were 700 that survived, but most of the life boats were only half full, because most of the passengers thought the Titanic was unsinkable.

Items recovered ranged from dishes, bottles, leather bag, shoe, jars (toothpaste jar), razor, shaving brush, pieces of the ship, jewelery, money, both paper and metal, documents, leather case with cigarettes, silverware, bell off the ship, a large piece of coal and other parts of the ship. There was also a recreated 1st Class room, which was quite nice, and a 3rd Class room, accompanied with the sound they would have experienced. It was very noisy from the roar of the ship's engines.

As we entered the exhibit we were handed a Board Pass. Each one was a duplicate of the boarding pass issued to one of the passengers on the ship. It reflected where the passenger was sailing from, their name, age, where they were from and who was accompanying them, the class they were traveling, where they were traveling to, the reason and a passenger fact about that individual. At the end of the exhibit there was a huge list of names on the wall, separated by class--1st Class, 2nd Class or 3rd Class, further separated by survived or lost.

Both our passengers were lost. It was very interesting to note that the largest number of passengers that survived were 1st Class passengers and the larges number of passenger lost were in 3rd Class. Just an observation.

The Little Woman's passenger was sailing form Southhampton (England). Her name was Mrs. Wilhelm Strom (Elna Matilda Persson). She was 29 years old, from Indiana Harbor, IN, accompanied by Selma (daughter, 2 years old) and Ernst Ulrik Persson (brother). They were traveling in 3rd Class to Indiana Harbor, Indiana. They had been visiting relatives at Julita farm, Sodermanland, Sweden. A few days before Elna planned to leave Sweden, her daughter Selma badly scalded her hand. This forced them to cancel their originally scheduled trip and book passage on Titanic. While on board, Selma had to visit the Ship's doctor every day.

Hubby's passenger was sailing from Cherbourg (France). His name was Mr. Engelhart Cornelius Ostby, age 65, from Providence, Rhode Island, accompanied by Helene Ragnhild Ostgy (daughter). They were traveling 1st Class to Providence, Rhode Island. Every year since 1906, Engelhart and Helene traveled to Europe together. A very successful jeweler, Engelhart made an annual trip to Europe to see what other jewelers were doing. In 1912, he and Helene also took a vacation through Southern Europe and Egypt. Engelhart's jewelry shop, Ostby & Barton, was the largest producer of gold rings in the world.

This was a very sobering exhibit. Well worth the money and time.


These are the two boarding passes given to us as we entered the exhibit.

Happy New Year

Busy New Year!

The New Year has started off rather busy! We always have the routine things like hair cuts, grocery shopping and duties around the house, but we have added a couple of activities. We attended the orientation in order to use the Senior Citizens Center, just down the road about one and one-half mile. It is a beautiful facility, with an indoor swimming pool, weight room, computer room, game room (pool), and a cafeteria. We want to use the swimming pool and weight room (maybe). However, this week has been so busy we haven't made it down ther yet, but next week looks like we might make it.

The Australians Are Taking Over

We have hosted the Job Family all the way from Australia. They are close friends the Fox family, our friends from church. (See the Fox Family blog link.)

The Jobs arrived Tuesday evening and departed this morning on their way to Disney World. We don't understand the attraction to that mouse! They spent most of their waking hours with the Fox family. We had a wonderful time hosting them, the fellowship was a treasure.

Thursday evening they all were here for supper (southern and Australian for dinner). We had homemade chilli and cornbread and Steph Fox brought sticky date pudding. It is wonderful. Strickly an Australian dessert. It's cake like with a caramel sauce over the top with a scoop of ice cream on the side. Yum yum!

Here are a few photos from the week.

The Job Family--left to right

Candice, Sue (Mom), Mark, Rod (Dad), Peter.

We decided if we can beat them, we'll join them.

Recovering From Christmas

Well, the dust has almost settled from all the activities surrounding Christmas. The candles have been removed from the front windows, but they are still awaiting to be moved out to the attic for proper storage. Our tiny Christmas tree has to be covered and placed out in the attic as well. Actually, The Little Woman had this tree made for Hubby's Mom while she was in the nursing home. I'm not saying we are ready for the nursing home! We are just recycling the tree. Have you ever noticed the older you get the smaller the Christmas tree seems to get? When we moved into this house 30 years ago (12/22/1976), our first Christmas tree was huge. At that time we could accommodate a huge tree, because we didn't have any furniture in the den. Now, we are wall-to-wall furniture and there really isn't a place for a tree without rearranging the room. We aren't going to start rearranging the furniture after 30 years. Everything is pretty much the same, "some things never change", to quote a dear friend.







I've included a photo of "Tidewater". That's the name of our house, taken from the Tidewater area of Virginia. We love Colonial Williamsburg, so when we built our house we thought it appropriate to name it for the area of Virginia we so love and enjoy.

We are currently working on moving our garden spot. As a result, we have had 14 skinny Virginia pines and one huge pine removed and the stumps ground. This has left us with all these mounds of dirt and holes that have to be filled. Our friend David M. is going to bring over his great tractor and push all the dirt where it needs to be, then all the hard work begins. We have to prepare the soil before planting in the spring, but we want to turn all the bugs and worms up so they will, hopefully find other ground. All the hard work is worth the wonderful yield. Take a look a some of the greenbeans from last year's garden. We have Hubby weighing the pick of the day. We only harvested about 88 lbs. of greenbeans last year. We didn't have enough rain.

Until next time...