Journal - Father's Day

So yesterday was Father’s day. I hope all you Fathers out there had a great day.

My day was pretty good.. Before we left for church, Adam gave me a t-shirt that he bought with his own money. It’s a black shirt with all of the Marvel Comics superheroes on it. I was an avid collector of comic books for quite a few years so the t-shirt is pretty awesome.

After church we stopped by Walmart to look at dehumidifiers. We really need one for the basement, it’s so damp down there and keeps getting moldy. Walmart was all out of them. The lady said a lot of people have been buying them lately but they had some more coming in on a truck later in the day. Joni will have to look again when she does the shopping on Tuesday.

After Walmart, we stopped and picked up some lunch at Taco John’s. I hadn’t had Taco John's since coming back to Nebraska last year and I've really been wanting to. Since it was my choice yesterday, that's what I picked. We brought the food home and ate here.

After we ate, we drove into Gibbon to Mom’s house to borrow a mop bucket. We needed that for the basement which we are giving a thorough cleaning. We sat around Mom's for a while talking about the house she’s buying. This will be the first house she’s owned so she’s pretty excited about it. The rest of the family is pretty excited too.

It was about three o’clock when we got home from Mom’s and just as we were walking in the door my phone rang. It was Brenna calling to say happy Father’s day. I have to admit, I didn't think she would, although I was secretly hoping for an email or aFacebook message. A phone call was even better.

After that, I had to get to work on the basement. Saturday I had pulled everything out of the storage room down there. So Yesterday I scrubbed the walls and floor with bleach. Joni did some research and found out that bleach or vinegar are the best things for mold, and I sure didn’t want the whole basement smelling like vinegar. I couldn’t put the stuff back in the room afterward because the floor wouldn't dry. I ended up letting it sit overnight. Joni says it's dry today so everything can go back in there now. Then it will be time to tackle the main room which is pretty big.

After all that, I took a shower and relaxed for a while. Then I played my sax. I haven't done that for several weeks and it sure felt good.

Shortly before we went to bed, it looked like it was going to storm, but we only heard a few distant rumbles of thunder and then it cleared up. During the night we ended up getting two storms. The first was small, but the second one, at around four-thirty, was pretty loud. I still have some light perception in one eye so I can see the lightning flashes. It was going like a strobe light. The thunder was very loud and the wind came up pretty hard. I think I heard a little bit of hail too but not bad. I was pretty tired, though, and I fell asleep even though the storm was pretty loud. I like thunderstorms at night, just like blizzards, but I can do without the wind.

Psalms 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

Dream Diary - Comic Books

Sunday night I dreamed about comic books. I was In some department store, I don’t know what store it was. There was a whole aisle of comic books, like the magazine aisle, but all comic books. I walked down the aisle, looking at the comics longingly. I wanted to buy some but I knew I couldn't really afford it. Finally, I decided that it wouldn't hurt to just buy a few. I started picking some up, Spider-Man and Captain America. When I had about five or six in my hands, I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t even be able to read them because I'm blind. I was going to put them back, but I decided to go ahead and get them and just save them until I could see again.

Have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming and you could control it? I’ve never achieved dream control myself, and I’m not sure I even believe in that, but I think I had something similar in this dream. At one point, I noticed there were no Batman comics. As soon as I thought about Batman, I lookd a little further down the aisle and there they were. After that I thought about X-men comics. I turned around and there they were, right behind me.

I used to collect comic books. From 1990 until about 2000 I collected quite a lot of them, I have several boxes of them in the basement. I hope they’re not all damp and moldy. I finally had to give up collecting them because I couldn’t afford it anymore.

This reminds me of another dream I had a while back. I thought I had written about that one too, but didn’t find it. In that one, I was at a shopping mall. There was a comic book store in the mall and I was standing outside it, looking in. On one side of the store was kind of a stage area. It had three rows of stools in tiers. Sitting on the stools, were people dressed up like super-heroes. There were probably a couple dozen of them. It was like one of those window displays you sometimes see with live people instead of mannequins. They weren’t acting like mannequins though, they were moving a little and talking to each other. A guy named Rodney Heyen was there, also looking in. Rodney went to my high school although he was several years older than me. He had a younger brother who was in my grade. Anyway, Rodney started to say “It’s like being,” and I finished the sentence for him, “at a zoo.” We had the same thought and laughed about that.

Comic books are one thing I really miss since going blind. All the sophisticated technology in the world won’t help me enjoy my comics again. I think that feeling was reflected in that second dream, standing outside the store, looking in. And in the first dream as well, wanting to buy the comics, but knowing I wouldn't be able to enjoy them even if I did buy them. And another dream where I could see, but in my mind I knew I was blind. I wonder how long it will be before I really am blind in my dreams.

Well, maybe someday I’ll be able to read my comic books again. Just one more thing to look forward to.

John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."