Raymond and I are going to Farmer's Market this morning!

I don't know just when I will be back to report. I am taking my camera so as to snap a photo or two. He is coming around nine. He is staying to my son Gary's house who lives on Thomas and 56th Street, so that is quite a ways. I also talked to my son Dan who said he would stop by on Tuesday to check out my booboo with the RedBox dvd which I 'jammed' into the dvd player and lost somewhere in the TV. It is no wonder sons don't get back to their mothers when they have to hear stuff like that. Son Dan just got back from a trip to Los Vegas to 'reunion' with some navy buddies. From the photos on FB, looked like they were having one heck of a good time.
I am up very early, before six, have showered and washed my hair, and I am going to Circle K early so I can take the paper by Doc's before Raymond comes. He is wistful about seeing him, but I told him in his decrepit state of mind, all the focus would have to be on him, and I am probably only going to see Raymond a couple of times before he leaves for Austin, so I am not willing to share with Doc, I am sorry. Raymond will celebrate one year of complete sobriety very soon and I don't want to inflict Doc on him who is still indulging after 50 years of alcoholism. He's not even ready to be 'helped'.
I went for a walk around noon yesterday only to hear that one of the feistier residents had thrown a god dawful fit over the left over bread from the poor people's food not being distributed fairly last time. The guy who told me about it said you would have thought he was going to starve right to death if he did not get some of that bread. Who knows, he might have thought he would, since I know him to be one of a number who cannot handle their finances well enough to keep from running out of food oftentimes before the end of the month. I heard him say once that he and and his partner had only 14 beef patties to last them a week, so they would not starve, at least. People who have experienced hunger, lived in shelters, had to beg for food, tend to panic and get very emotional at the prospect of missing out on free food. It is just the way of that world.
The informant also told me that the guy who was returned to us too soon by the police is gone again for a longer stay in a psych ward to see if he cannot be reconditioned, so he can stay in here. This has worked for quite a few residents I know of. A guy on my floor who landed in here after 16 years on the streets, I guess got tired of not being able to connect in a rational manner to all these people around him, so he started calling attention to himself with sudden insults and small attacks. But after three weeks in the psych ward, at least, he has been fine ever since. He is still not connecting to people with much sense, but at least he is peaceful and we can live with that. 16 years on the streets and apparently not connecting much at all has been too much for him to overcome. But he is resigned to his limitations and so are we.
I told my informant who I don't see very often either that I had had to give up going out to the patio as that situation was so open ended we had to deal with one big fit after another. It finally got too much for me, I said, and I had to stop going out there. As I joked to Doc too many people were behaving as though they should be locked in cages instead of walking around loose!
I still don't know what I am going to do to get back some people contact, but I am thinking about it. I can't just read, go to movies, and walk among strangers all the time, using only the Internet to communicate. I like person to person connections, too, but I suppose that is one of the areas where many fail in this world.
The young are not being raised with much people contact and daily discussion. So they don't have the yen for it that I do, and are not willing to do it very much. I know just about how much contact my kids can tolerate. Pushing them to do more is not an option most of the time. I do as much connecting to my sisters as they or their husbands can tolerate. We have a family web site we have put too good use for a number of years now where we can all connect even though a number of us live in different states. But that is still not the same thing as face to face contact.
I am always looking for better ways for that to happen. Raymond is a great communicator, so he is in demand wherever he goes just because of his availability and stamina. I know how much this kind of person is needed in the world, so I send him on his way whenever he comes here with my blessings. The next time he comes it will probably be in late spring on his way back to Utah for the summer. He was busy setting up musical dates and so on before he left. My son Dan sticks to the job he has he says because his boss is agreeable with him taking the summer off because business slows down to go to find other more creative, fun things to do in Utah.
I accepted my destiny to become partially disabled at a young age and to live among the poor which my father had a great deal of trouble accepting. I also accept the spirits in my life with their communications and thoughts in preparation for joining them in the not too distant future. I just recently connected up to my dad for discussion, after many years of feeling estranged from him and not wanting to talk to him.

DAD: I hope I can live up to your idea of a good spirit contact. I wondered if you would ever forgive me for our disagreements and recognize me as your dad again, even when you got over here.
GERRY: It took a long time to build any trust.
DAD: I did not believe in a hereafter in the first place, so it took a long time for me to work through the madness that causes.
GERRY: So what does your hereafter consist of now?
DAD: Well, I communicate with my daughter, LaRae, and a few others. I have actually spent a lot of years in what would look very much like an insane asylum to you, filled with a lot of people having the same trouble believing in a hereafter as I did. People come to see you and ask you how you are doing. But what you are doing is trying to put together the kind of hereafter you can live with. I was able to see my brothers and talk to them. I had a few in the asylum I guess you would call 'buddies' and some workers you would probably call helpers, nurses, doctors. When LaRae came to see me I had to be introduced and told she was my daughter, and now she has told me that my other daughters will soon be coming to talk to me, so don't I want to get ready for them. I asked her how I could get ready. She said, oh talk about them, try to remember them, so you can meet them and greet them just as you did me.
GERRY: You mean you were not sane when LaRae died? She was sick a long time, three years.
DAD: Oh yes, I knew about that. I left the hospital from time to time and visited her down there as I knew she was coming. I was there for her when she died as they told me it would be a good thing if I was among the first ones she saw. It would calm her down, but then of course she was out of it for a long time, too, because she did not believe in a hereafter either. I hated to see her overcome with the same sickness I had, but it is catching, can go from father to daughter, like an infection.
GERRY: An infection of the mind?
DAD: Yes, she was not immune to it.
GERRY: This is all very interesting, but I have to leave soon, so I can get ready to see Raymond. I will talk to you again, Dad. I hope you will forgive me for rushing off.
DAD: Of course. I am going to leave it up to you as to when you want to talk to me. Don't expect much, but I am better than I was!