This was a very productive day. Started out with bible study. We had a very lively discussion on God's promise to make the path level. He speaks of leveling the mountains and straightening the paths and filling in the gorges for us. We decided that the Jewish people of the time did not understand that the straight way was to heaven, not necessarily and probably not to Israel itself. Perhaps they still don't. Perhaps we don't. Tom Keyes pointed out that Israel is withdrawing from some of the territories that they finally agree they should not be in. It would be nice, he said, that if instead of bulldozing the homes in the areas they vacate, would leave them standing for the reoccupying citizens. We were really hot today anyway.

By the way, please say special prayers for my friends, Dan and Shirley Moioffer's son, David who has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that has attacked his liver. The only treatment right now is steroids which present their own set of problems but he will try. Anyway, please pray, this is a hard one.

I stopped at Mother's after Bible Study. We had a nice visit. She reminded me that tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day. Do you celebrate it? We did when we were young and my boys got visits from St. Nick too.

She told me a story. When she was a little girl and their family lived on a farm, she saw St. Nick. He came during the evening, a big man with a heavy old black coat made of animal hides and carrying a whip. He came into the kitchen where everybody was sitting around the kitchen table. There was the Bowser Family, Grandma, Grandpa, Mother, probably Uncle Noel and Uncle George AND a hired hand (they always had supper with the families they worked for.) He came in and started asking questions of everybody. He finally asked the hired hand if he said his prayers at night. The hired hand laughed and said that he never prayed. With that St. Nick took his whip and started beating that hired hand across the back and drove him right out the door. Scared Mother half to death. I could tell that the memory was still there.

She says that she knows NOW that "St. Nick" was one of their neighbors who did this every year, dressed up in the old carriage robes that people wore those days in the winter. But what good did that do then.

Poor little people, what we put them through. Bobbie told me that she never liked clowns. They scared her as a kid. She figured there was something suspicious with a grown person who dressed up like that and acted so silly.

After that I had lunch with my friend Beth in downtown Plymouth. We had soup. They had a chicken chili that was REALLY good.

Dick and I went to Sheboygan Falls to the Bemis store to buy a new toilet seat for our bathroom. It broke. Would you believe? We decided to do it quickly before one of us accidentally sat on it and pinched our bottoms or worse. Years ago, when I was young and Jacquie and I rented a house from Ron and Doris in Costa Mesa, I owned an old Chevy. Those old cars had chrome strip on them and the chrome strip on my car at the front fender was bent. Jacquie and her cousin Linda and I were going into the garage off the alley and when we pulled the garage door open, for some reason, I jumped back too fast and impaled the tip of that chrome strip in my right gluteus maximus. It was NOT good. When we checked it Jacquie and Linda decided that we had better get it checked. It took something like five stitches. I remember the doctor saying, that he and the nurses would not tell anybody. I told him that with Jacquie and Linda out there in the waiting room laughing their heads off, that his promise would not keep it off the streets.

I finished off the day with the last meeting of Rhine Plymouth that I have to take minutes for. They gave me a pin that says Rhine Plymouth Field and Stream - Secretary Four Straight. Wasn't that a sweet thing to do? They are a great group of people.

Have a great Tuesday. I get to stay home and decorate the tree.

Love

Mary