Fillin' Time...

We have had a LOT of rain this year...again. Last year was the rainiest year on record. This year the numbers are matching up about the same. Some people are talking about the Ark Encounter needing to be prepared to help us all float away. Another friend share that this might be Seattle, Kentucky or Georgetown, Washington, it really didn't matter anymore based on the weather. This comment was made on a particularly gray day. This was posted on Facebook and I found it hilarious. A farmer in rural Kentucky has a great sense of humor about it all. The poor farmers are suffering. This is just too much water and, where some should have had one bailing of hay to be ready for feeding in the fall, they have not been able to do that yet. With that in mind, one really appreciates this farmer's good sense of humor about all the rain.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I told Papa on Monday that I would bring him out to my house for a visit if the weather held. I picked him up at 10:30am after doing a grocery run. I drove him on back roads to get to our home. We took Hwy 460 east and found 922 north. We followed that till it ends at 620 and took 620 west to Hwy 25 and then on to our home. Papa enjoyed the ride.

When we got to our home, I had him take his place on the sofa and then I brought him a Dr. McGillicuddy root beer. I retrieved the Opry DVD's set and asked him to pick which on he wanted to watch first. This is where you have to understand that Papa has lost a lot of his reasoning ability. He wanted to be in the car riding. He started to explain that he really didn't care because he doesn't like to watch television. I then again showed him what I was asking him to pick and explained it was his DVD's of old country music. These are the same DVD's he started to show at the nursing home when he could no longer play his guitar. I begrudgingly picked one and I put it in the DVD player and cranked up the sound to a volume he could hear. It didn't take long for him to realize he was listening to music he loved and watching the actual stars perform these numbers. From that point forward he grinned and often said, "I really love this. This is real country music. I used to sing this." Etc., etc., etc. He really enjoyed the afternoon. I brought him a banana to eat and he scarfed that down even though he assured me he didn't want anything to eat, he just wanted to listen to the music. Later I took him some ice cream and a chocolate cookie. Definitely not the balanced meal he would have had at the nursing home but missing one of those will definitely not do him in. I took this picture of Papa having a nice afternoon of old country music.

We finished the fourth DVD at 3:30pm and I packed Papa up and took him back to the nursing home. I assured him we would finish the other DVD's some other day. He had a good day. 

A friend from my Louisiana days posted this map. I had never seen it before and really thought it was cute. 

After depositing Papa, I drove on to meet Claude in Lexington for dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We had a meeting with the stake presidency to review all the changes to the Self-Reliance program and how we would make it work in the Lexington North Stake. It was a good meeting and lasted about an hour and a half.

On the way home we stopped at the Love's Travel Plaza in Sadieville to top off our gas tanks. Gas prices were jumping about 30 cents per gallon again. Sadieville had not done that yet. A man got out of his truck with a bird in his hand. Okay, I have seen lots of animals at gas stations as people travel. They take them out to run and do their thing. But, I honestly don't ever remembering a bird at a gas station before. This was a beautiful pink cockatoo. When the man came out of the store, I just had to tell him how well trained the bird was. It never even tried to fly away. He encouraged me to hold out my arm and this beautiful bird hopped right over to my arm and looked right up into my face. I talked to it and stroked its feathers and you would have thought we were old friends. So cool.

Then he told me he had other birds in his truck. He also had two dogs and his wife! Goodness. He took out a beautiful parrot. Then he said he had a bird that would do tricks. He took out a ladder and a white cockatoo and that bird did some tricks for us. The bird would spread it's wings to be an eagle. It was absolutely delightful and such a fun way to end a long day.

These birds were all rescue birds. They were all headed to Chicago. It was a unique and fun encounter. Clearly this gentleman loves these animals and they love him.