DAD'S DAY 1/83 DO 1362
1. WELL PTL! ON THE INSISTENCE OF MY LITTLE FAMILY HERE & PARTICULARLY MARIA, I'M GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT I DO EVERYDAY all day long & half the night, as they thought you might learn a few little things that would be beneficial as we cover my daily habits & duties & actions & schedule. I hope you will enjoy it as well as profit by it & learn by it & maybe even hear a few new things you haven't heard before. PTL! So here we go: Dad's Day! GBY!
2. FOR SOME REASON OR OTHER THEY THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE GOOD FOR THE NEW FAMILY HISTORY BOOK, called the "Book of Remembrance" or "Family Tree", & I guess it is somewhat historical to tell you about the kind of a day I live day in & day out almost every day of every year, & all the various things I do all day long. Well, this may not be very inspirational but at least it might be edifying & educational & informative & full of little tips & nuggets on things which may be helpful to you in how to apply these different little things in your own daily lives throughout your day.
WAKE UP!
3. FIRST OF ALL I USUALLY WAKE UP EVERY MORNING ANYWHERE FROM 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING UNTIL NOON, depending on what kind of a night I've had the night before. But normally & on the average I usually am awake at dawn & love to watch the sunrise. If I miss that I really feel cheated & have an almost guilt complex about sleeping any longer & wasting the morning away in sleep.
4. HOWEVER I WOULD SAY THAT ON THE AVERAGE I EITHER WAKE &/OR ARISE ABOUT 7 OR 8 O'CLOCK each day, & Mom & I love to watch the view through our window as the daylight dawns or the sun rises or the sun shines brightly already on the scenes of God's beautiful creation below & beyond. We have our bed arranged so that we can see out our window & view the beauties of God's inspiring creation. To me there's hardly anything more inspiring than His Word, than His beautiful gorgeous loving handiwork that He has made for us to enjoy & for our benefit & health & pleasure, His beautiful lovely creations, including you! PTL! GBY!
5. I HAVE YOUR PICTURES USUALLY HANGING BY MY BED &/OR ON MY DESK scattered about me so that I can look at you too for inspiration & see your lovely graceful beautiful forms just the way God made you, & your sweet smiles & shining faces which truly spur me & inspire me to spout the Word for your benefit as well as sometimes spurt some seed as well, when looking at you gets me excited enough! Well anyhow, Mom & I usually wake up fairly early. I often wake a few minutes before her & am quiet, just thinking & praying about the day, & she wakes whenever I stir.
6. NO MATTER HOW QUIETLY I SIT UP AS THOUGH I'M GOING TO GET OUT OF BED, MARIA POPS UP TO ASK ME WHERE I'M GOING! And no matter how quiet I try to be to let her sleep, she right away wants to know if I need any help, what do I want, what do I need, where am I going! It's just almost like she's tied to me with a string or a wire or a radio beam! She always seems to know when I'm going to get up. Even if she's sound asleep, she just hops right out of it & bounces up to help me! GBH! I have to then kiss her & reassure her that I'm fine, "I'm just getting up, I'm going to the toilet, go back to sleep please Dear, don't bother me!" And finally she relaxes & gives up & goes back to sleep. PTL!--Sometimes!
7. YES, I DO NEED QUIET IN THE MORNING. I LIKE MORNINGS TO BE VERY QUIET & ALONE WITH THE LORD. I like to go into my closet & shut the door where I can pray in secret so that my Father which seeth in secret shall reward me with an answer, I trust, whether openly or not. My closet happens to be the bath room, the water closet! Also while I'm making my breakfast I like to be quiet & thinking & praying about the day & its needs, & since I'm very sensitive to noises, I have very sensitive ears, & particularly to strange noises, they'll immediately attract my attention.
8. YOUR EARS ARE CONSTANT WATCHMEN THAT NEVER SLEEP, believe it or not! Night & day they're always listening, & they will automatically wake you up in case they hear any strange or unusual noises! You can sleep through all kinds of noise which is common & customary & usual, the usual noises of the day or night, no matter how loud, you can usually sleep right through them if they're normal & usual. But your ears have a remark able ability to suddenly wake you up in case they hear any strange or unusual noises that do not fit the usual pattern of sounds! So they are your faithful watchmen who never sleep! Not the watchmen on the wall, but the watchmen on your dome. Two of your most important holes, holey holes, are your ears! PTL!
9. THE FIRST PHYSICAL SIGN that she gets that I'm getting ready to get up is that I give a big long stretch & yawn & I put my arms up over my head & stretch out my arms in a position that she knows is an invitation for her to come over & see me. So she quickly snuggles over into my left arm, as I usually sleep on her right side since I'm righthanded & she's lefthanded, which makes a nice combination for a lot of things, particularly things you do in bed. So then I close my left arm about her lovely little head & neck & shoulders & usually it stretches all the way down her graceful curved side & pats her beautiful bottom while we pray & thank the Lord for a good night & His safekeeping & a good night's rest & another beautiful day & opportunity of life & service for the Lord & His children.
10. WE PRAY FOR THE FAMILY & FOR THE CHILDREN & FOR YOU FOLKS the World around & that the Lord will have His will this day & give us strength for it & wisdom & love & faith & all that we need to perform today's task, which is usually feeding you, His sheep, in some way or another. Then having had our little CP, as I put it down in my diary, cuddle & prayer, I sleepily arise & pick up my watch that I have left on the bedside table, spray myself with a little cologne & slip in whatever clothing is suitable for the weather.
WASH & WEAR!
11. ALTHOUGH I HAVE MY FLEEBAG SITTING BESIDE MY BED with everything in it that I own or need or would need should I flee, I really seldom ever even open it! Actually it simply contains a few spare items of street clothes, if I should want to go out on the street in the neighbourhood & take a walk, which we sometimes do. And it's got extra pairs of underwear, even a pair of swimming shorts which I never use anymore since we have a fairly private place to swim which I'll also tell you about later. I did get myself some real lightweight cotton sleeve less undershirts instead of the T-shirts I used to wear in the cold North.
12. ACTUALLY, IN GETTING UP & JUST MOVING AROUND OUR PRIVATE QUARTERS & OUR OWN ROOM, AT FIRST I DIDN'T WEAR ANYTHING! But then to spare my roommate the awful sight as well as finding that no shorts meant increased friction on my bottom when sitting in my study chair, therefore I found that I needed something between me & the outside world to make sure that I wasn't rubbing myself raw sliding in & out & squirming about in my chair as I do most of the day, since most of my work its sedentary & mental work, a great deal of reading & dictating & proofreading & editing etc., etc, etc.
13. SO I FOUND THAT IN HOT WEATHER WEARING AT LEAST A PAIR OF VERY LIGHTWEIGHT COTTON SHORTS around the house as well as in my chair was very comfortable & saved wear & tear on both my bottom & the chair & on the nerves of the people who had to look at me all day. PTL! Hallelujah! Maria's over there protesting that she doesn't mind looking at me. Ahem! (Discovers microphone has automatic volume control.)
14. SO I'M STILL LEARNING HOW TO RECORD using the cute little M-80 micro-radio tape recorder. And we've discovered by the way, since it didn't have its own built-in mike, that you can buy very cute little stereo mikes that plug directly into the microphone socket, a cordless mike that just plugs right in there & very small & just like part of your tape recorder. We just leave ours plugged in & so we now have a complete micro-cassette, not only player & radio but also a recorder & that's what I'm using right now. PTL!
15. ABOUT MY ROBES? WELL, I HAD ELASTIC PUT INTO THE CUFFS OF THE LONG SLEEVES of the robes, because I had a problem that when I am sitting in my chair & usually holding up the book or papers, my forearm is in more or less a vertical position & the sleeves would slide down to my elbows, exposing my bare forearms, & when it's cool or cold, that would be a bit chilling, & of course you only wear a robe when it is cool or cold. So therefore I didn't like this annoying sliding of my sleeves down my arm to my elbow, leaving my bare arms exposed.
16. SO I HAD ONE OF OUR DEAR ANGELIC SEAMSTRESSES ON THE STAFF HERE, GOD BLESS'R, PUT SOME ELASTIC IN THE CUFFS, just small little elastic ribbons sewn into the hem of the cuff, so that it keeps my robe cuffs snug, not too tight but snugly, around my wrists so they'll stay right there no matter what position my arm is in. I've found that even when eating this is very handy, because my long full sleeves of a robe were frequently dipping into the food as I reached across the table for this or that. But now with these elastics in the cuff they stay put & nice & close to my arm & are not always sagging into the food on a boarding house reach across the table!--Ha!
17. ON COOLER WINTER MORNINGS I SLIP ON A ROBE, just enough to keep me comfortable while I get up & go to the bathroom in the cool morning air, which I do, heading directly straight for the toilet where I have my morning meditations on the world news, the newspaper, while I'm having my daily function of elimination commonly known as a BM or a bowel movement, which with me is just as regular as clockwork every morning as soon as I get up, with very rare exceptions.
REGULARITY!
18. I BELIEVE THAT'S ONE REASON FOR MY GOOD HEALTH--I TAKE CARE OF MY BODY that the Lord has given me, the temple of His Spirit, & try to be good to it & not abuse it. As even the apostle said, "No man ever yet hated his own body" (Eph.5:29), & most of us treat it with a lot of tender loving care. You may not love it & some of you may not even like yours or the way it looks, but at least you're usually pretty good to it, & at least for the Lord's sake & His work's sake we certainly need to take care of it & be good to it & make sure we live with fairly regular habits & schedule.
19. BECAUSE REGULARITY IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ASSETS OF GOOD HEALTH as dear Dr. Koger used to teach me from the time I was a lad. To have a regular time of sleep & a fairly regular get up time & a regular time of elimination, regular meal time etc. is very necessary for good health. Now mine vary occasionally but, as you're going to see as I outline my day for you, my normal schedule is fairly regular, usually the same hours. Oddly enough, if the schedule starts a bit earlier or even later the schedule is still the same in length & in timing & distance between meals & length of sleep etc.
20. I'VE FOUND FOR EXAMPLE THAT NO MATTER WHAT MY SLEEP SCHEDULE MAY BE, whether I only get three or four hours a night or I get ten or eleven on some rare occasions, or I get a nap or a couple naps during the day, a ten-minute nap to a two-hour nap, whatever it happens to be, if any nap at all, when averaging up my average day & night's total length of sleep, it averages out almost invariably over a period of days to almost exactly seven or eight hours of sleep per day. So PTL!
21. REGULARITY IS A GREAT BLESSING & ASSET TO YOUR HEALTH, to follow a fairly regular schedule all day long, do the same usual things at the same usual times, & then your bodyclock (No.1310) just becomes accustomed to that & you usually wake up at the same time & you have your BM at the same time, whenever that may be. Now Maria has hers at a different time, usually after breakfast, sometimes other times, but it's rarely that either one of us vary from our usual schedule of regularity & habit times. Which is very good for you, & your body becomes accustomed to it, & just like a computer it even prompts you by certain feelings that it's time for this or it's time for that.--A time to get sleepy & go to bed & a time to sleep & a time to wake & a time to go to the toilet & a time to eat & "a time for every thing." (Ecc.3:1-8) PTL!
22. SO YOU SHOULD HAVE A TIME FOR EVERY THING & USUALLY A REGULAR TIME, a fairly regular daily habitual schedule. This, as my father-in-law used to say, saves you an awful lot of decisions when you do pretty much the same thing everyday & follow the same schedule everyday. You don't have to make a lot of different frustrating, confusing & disconcerting annoying choices. You just do pretty much the same thing everyday, & so you don't have to decide when you're going to do it or how you're going to do it, but you just do it until it becomes so automatic you can almost do it in your sleep, just by habit.
23. I'VE FOUND THAT I DO CERTAIN LITTLE THINGS, mannerisms, moves, characteristics of bodily motion through preprogrammed habit, even the way I lie in bed. I almost always go to sleep on my left side & later on in the night turn over on my right side & then often wind up flat on my back in the morning. Your body needs to sleep in different positions during the night in order to rest different sets of muscles & not become rigid, so that motion in your sleep is not a sign of lack of restfulness but it is a sign of necessity for movement & flexing & resting of different muscles even while you sleep. Because some muscles are always working, even in your sleep.
24. I ALSO NOTICE THAT I ALMOST ALWAYS HOLD MY COVERS IN A CERTAIN WAY. I must've developed that when I was a baby, how I grab the top of the covers in a kind of a roll or a ball & cuddle'm up to my chest like I'm hugging them, & it just seems like that's the natural way I go to sleep, like my little security blanket. I still do it & it seems automatic & I seem to kind of miss it if I don't have that little roll of sheet clutched to my bosom like some children clutch a doll or a blanket or something like that, & I probably learned that in my cradle in babyhood & it's stuck with me all these years. Just another bit of regularity & habit-forming custom which is good for you & to which your body has become adjusted & accustomed, & therefore it can go through those operations without even thinking about it, just making decisions automatically.
25. HOW I LIKE OUR BED MADE. Well, I don't know, I suppose everybody has their own preference about how to do the bed, but I sure do like the covers &/or sheets tucked in well at the bottom. I don't like to be able to pull them out & have my feet sticking out when I want to be covered. Neither do I like the covers up so far that they get wrapped up around my head & there's too much covers.
26. IN COOLER WINTER WEATHER you may find out the sheet may be insufficient, & yet the spread pulled up on top of the sheet might be too much. So we have gotten to using the system of using two sheets instead of one for a little cooler weather, & it seems to work out just right, praise the Lord!--And if it does get quite cool sometimes, as it does at night, we have a light spread there also that we can pull up over us if need be. Some of these little tips might be helpful to you as well, so I'm telling you about them. In the morning we peel the sheets completely down for several hours before making the bed, so it'll have time to air well.
TOE CURE!
27. DURING THE WARMER MONTHS I SELDOM EVER WEAR SLIPPERS OR EVEN THONGS inside the room, where we keep our floors clean & it's a pleasure to walk around in your bare feet, & I have made a phenomenal discovery! For years I have been plagued with ingrown toe nails on both big toes, which began with those cheap too-small too-tight 2-pound shoes that I bought in Cyprus which I thought were a bargain, nice loafers that I could easily slip off & on & good for walking, but they were too small. Several women have complimented me on my feet even though my feet are large, & said they're quite beautiful. And I haven't denied it, because the Bible says,
28. "HOW BEAUTIFUL UPON THE MOUNTAINS ARE THE FEET OF HIM THAT BEARETH GLAD TIDINGS." (Isa.52:7) PTL! So I hadn't really noticed it before, but when they called my attention to the fact, I decided, "Well, the Lord did make the foot to be a rather beautiful thing." It certainly is a useful thing, & it's about the first one of my members that I use first thing in the morning when I get out of bed to get up on my feet, & as I say, we go barefooted about the room here because it's certainly more comfortable.
29. BUT THE MOST AMAZING THING HAS OCCURRED! For years I had this severe trouble with ingrown toenails & had to very carefully trim them & was often tempted to go to the doctor or Chiropodist to try to get them taken care of, as most of my family had the same problem. My brother & my mother particularly were plagued with it & had to go to the doctor to get'm taken care of & virtually operated on. I had never had any trouble with my toes or toenails at all until I wore those tight shoes too long. I kept them for a couple of years, & that did it!
30. THAT STARTED IT &, THEN I BEGAN USING THESE STRETCH SOCKS, TIGHT SOCKS that supposedly stretched any size, but since mine are such long big-size socks that said that they were from 9-11 or 9-12, I was stretching them to the limit, & I found that this pressure on my toenails, big toes in particular, apparently aggravated it. I noticed it constantly irritated me, & frequently I would even cut out the toes of my socks in order to relieve that pressure so that they wouldn't press on my sensitive sore big toes, & even though I bought shoes & boots of larger sizes which did not press on my toes, I found even the socks were doing the dirty work, & it seemed like there just was no cure & I was never going to get rid of those ingrown toenails, which really irritated both big toes until they were actually red & sore & very sensitive to the touch! So that as soon as I got home in my room I'd always take off my shoes & socks & wear some kind of loose slippers on my feet to keep them comfortable & warm.
31. IN THE TROPICS I FOUND THE SOLUTION, in fact the tropics themselves were the solution! Because there I found this was one of the fringe benefits of going South, & if you are plagued with ingrown toenails, this is where you need to be! Because in going around barefooted the way God intended for you to go originally & the way God created Adam & Eve to walk about, you'll find that most of your foot troubles will straighten out, as did my toenails!
32. WE WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZED that within just a few months after going to the tropics, I can almost say a few weeks, we suddenly began to notice the difference! My toenails, instead of curling around to al most a tube, had begun to flatten out perfectly normal, no longer cutting into the flesh of my toe on both sides of the bone until I could almost scream if I stubbed my toe! My toes became completely normal & my toenails flattened out normally, no longer cutting into the flesh of my toes & no more pain, no more soreness, everything normal again just like they used to be most of my life until I bought those tight shoes & my toenails started being ingrown.
33. SO IF YOU HAVE A REAL SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH INGROWN TOENAILS, BELOVED, THE SOLUTION IS GO SOUTH! Go South, young man or young woman & let'm grow flat with the country! Because it has actually cured my ingrown toenails, & that has been one of the great est blessings of our moving South, because they were always so sore & so sensitive & giving me trouble & having to trim them so gingerly!
34. MARIA'S VERY EAGER TO GET THIS PARTICULAR CHAPTER DONE FOR HER NEW HISTORY BOOK, which is her birthday present to me & to you. All her own idea, GBH! It was her pet project, & she has kept us all busy with it ever since she got this brilliant idea of cooking up this history book of the whole Family, including me, for our birthday in February! So she's kept me busy cooking up my own birthday present, since this Book of Remembrance is to be her birthday present to me & to you & our mutual birthday present to each other for all of us. PTL! I think it's a great idea & it's going very well & I believe you'll enjoy it, 'cause here it is! You've got it right in your hand right now, or you wouldn't be reading this. PG! Hallelujah! TYL! So, so much for my once-ingrown toenails which are now all straightened out & perfectly normal & no more painful. TTL!
35. SO IF IT'S WARM I DON'T EVEN WEAR SLIPPERS OR ANY KIND OF SHOES AROUND THE HOUSE. When we go outdoors we usually put on sandals or something loose-fitting to protect our feet from the ground & any bugs or varmints or little parasites that can collect on your feet, & some of them even bore holes through your soles & give you fungus & athlete's foot & worse if you don't wear some kind of protection on the bottom of your feet walking around on the ground in some of these countries.
36. OTHERWISE, IF WE GO OUT INTO THE TOWN WE DO OF COURSE USUALLY HAVE TO WEAR SHOES & SOCKS, but normally I wear socks that are not so tight-fitting anymore.
SPEX!
37. WELL, NOW I'M IN THE BATHROOM SITTING ON THE TOILET READING THE NEWSPAPER, & I have a little stand set up right here in the toilet corner to hold all my necessary equipment for that task, including a little high-intensity lamp for good light on the paper, & my reading glasses.
38. I KEEP A PAIR OF READING GLASSES IN EACH ROOM & almost in each place in every room in the house! I have one pair I keep in the bathroom so I won't have to go chasing around after them & remember to take them there, especially if I'm in a hurry. I have another pair at my bedside & another pair on my desk, another pair at the eating table etc. So I have several pairs around.
39. I GOT THE BRILLIANT INSPIRATION ONE DAY, when we were in one place recently where they do such excellent efficient expert work, to have my eyes tested again & check out what kind of reading glasses I needed now. So I dug out about half-a-dozen pairs of old frames, & when he got the right lenses from the tests etc. & I tried out the first pair, I brought him in all the other old frames, some of them with broken lenses & some with useless lenses that no longer fitted my eyesight, & I simply had him make lenses to fit every old pair of frames I had, so that I've got about a half-a-dozen different pairs of reading glasses now, & I got'm extra cheap because I only had to pay a small nominal sum for each lens as long as I had the frames.
40. AS YOU'VE PROBABLY FOUND OUT IN BUYING GLASSES, THEY CHARGE YOU MORE FOR THE FRAMES nowadays than they do for the lenses & you have a harder choice & more difficulty making a choice of frames than the lenses that the doctor chooses for you. So I thought, "Well, I've got all these old frames, I might as well put'm to use & work!" So I brought them in to his astonishment & I said, "Here, okay, for several days I've tried these lenses out that you made for me & they feel good, read good, work well, & so here, put the same kind of lenses in all these other frames." And it just so happened that he was able to get lenses to fit nearly all the frames that I had on hand. So now I have plenty of reading glasses all over the place, & I leave a pair here, there & everywhere to make sure there is a pair within reach.
41. BECAUSE AT MY OLD AGE THE LENSES OF YOUR EYES HAVE KIND OF HARDENED & THEY DON'T FOCUS SO FLEXIBLY ANY MORE & YOU BECOME NORMALLY MORE FARSIGHTED & you have to read your reading material almost at arm's length with your natural eyes, & that's when I first decided I needed glasses, when my arm was not long enough! Ha! Or I had to stand outside the phone booth to see the number on the telephone!I decided it was time to buy a pair of glasses. That was my first pair, way back yonder when I was about 45. But I think that was pretty good for 45 years of constant hard usage of my normal lenses & normal eyes that I got 45 good years out of them without glasses before I had to buy my first pair of glasses! So PTL!
42. WELL, SOME OF YOU CAN'T HELP IT, YOU WERE BORN WITH POOR EYES & poor eyesight & even some little children have had to be fitted for glasses, sad to say. But anyway I finally had to break down & buy glasses & it has been a help to my reading, which I have a lot to do, usually 6 or 8 hours a day or more, which is quite a strain on the eyes, & it's good to have good glasses that are comfortable & easy readers.
43. IF YOU BUY GLASSES, be sure you don't select frames that are so big & heavy & monstrous that they're quite a weight on the bridge of your nose, or you'll find that they will get uncomfortable through hours of use. Don't buy the popular large owl-shaped glasses & their big heavy frames & big heavy lenses which are going to be uncomfortable after some length of use, but buy glasses which are small, small frames with small lenses, of very light thin construction & lightweight, that you can wear for hours or nearly all day, as I do, & not even notice them or feel them there.
44. BE SURE THAT THEY'RE WELL FITTED & VERY COMFORTABLE & make sure the optometrist fits them exactly. Make sure first of all in your test that you tell him the truth & you get your signals straight & you call the letters right & make sure that you really can see that particular letter very clearly with that particular eye, & don't just be in a hurry or embarrassed that you're taking too long. I've often told the optometrist "Now go back to that other one. Now try that other lens again. No, back to the other one. Yes, yes yes, that's it, that's the one! That's the one right there! That's the best one!"--as he tests each eye. And they will test them under different kinds of light, like red light or green light, because your eye has a different capacity to focus under these different lighting conditions, as well as normal light.
45. SO DON'T BE AFRAID TO TRY THE OPTOMETRIST'S PATIENCE & TEST HIS SKILL BY INSISTING ON GETTING EXACTLY THE RIGHT LENS for exactly your most comfortable focus, what ever that may be. And then when he has finally come up with your lenses in your either new or old pair of frames, be sure you try'm out right there at the counter & you hold your reading matter at the usual normal focal length at which you normally read & test them on the spot to make sure they're exactly right, including holding a hand over one eye to see how well you're seeing with that eye, & then put your hand over the other eye & see how you're seeing with the other eye, & make sure you're getting a good pair of lenses that are exactly right for each eye.
46. OFTEN YOUR EYES DIFFER IN FOCAL LENGTH, so be sure you're testing at the right focal length for which they're design ed, & be sure you tell the optometrist when he's deciding on the prescription for your glasses, that this is the focal length at which you normally read. Now almost normally they will try to pawn off on you a prescription for a focal length of about one foot or 12 inches (30.5 cm). This is not the distance at which I normally read. I normally, through years of habit in sitting & reading books, have laid the book on my lap, which, from my eye to the book, is close to 18 inches or a cubit or a foot-&-a-half, & therefore that is 50 cm. I measured it time & again with a ruler, & that's what I told the sweet little boy optometrist.
47. I SAID, "50 CMS!" He said, "Oh no no, that's so far, so long! Usually only about 30 cms!" I said, "No sir, you make'm for 50 cms. I've measured it time & again & I do a lot of reading, & the distance at which I usually hold my paper, book or clipboard is 50 cms. from my eyeballs, & you make'm for 50 cms. or else! When I come back & test the glasses, if they don't read right at 50 cms. when I'm sitting here & I put the reading thing down on my lap & not on the counter, but down on my lap at my usual reading distance", I said, "if they don't read right, then I'm going to make you take'm back & do it over again!"
48. I'VE DONE THAT WITH A FEW OPTOMETRISTS. In London once they did such sloppy work, those lazy Londoners, that I had to have them sent back three times before they got'm right, & they never did get them right! I still couldn't wear those glasses & finally, right there at that place where I got my last glasses, I had to throw the lenses away when he took them out of the old frames & put in my new reading lenses. I just said, "Here, have you got anything you can do with these old lenses?", & I gave him all my old lenses! I figured maybe if nothing else he could give them to the poor or someone, anybody they fitted. But they sure didn't fit me! Now that's for reading.
49. BUT NOW IN MY OLD AGE I'VE FOUND I CAN SEE BETTER AT A DISTANCE WITHOUT ANY GLASSES! I can't see as well at a distance with any of my glasses as I can see with my natural naked eye, believe it or not! So really all I need is my reading glasses for reading at the normal reading distance, my normal reading distance of 50 cms. Your normal reading distance is the focal length of the glasses that you should buy. Your eyes can adapt themselves to any distance slightly closer or slightly further away than that. So you'll find that with glasses of a focal length exact & sharp at your normal reading distance, you will be able to read very clearly even if the distance is slightly more or less than that, because the lens of your eye still is flexible enough even at my age & still is able to adapt & focus at various distances within limits.
50. FOR EXAMPLE, I CAN LOOK OUT MY WINDOW RIGHT NOW & SEE THOSE LOVELY BEAUTIFUL GREEN TREES just sharply as can be, just as sharp as I ever saw with or without glasses, & my eyes seem to be almost as good at a distance as they were when I young. But the reason you need reading glasses as you get old is because the lens of your eye becomes a little harder & the close distances require the greatest contraction of the lens, the great est lens squeeze by the muscles that squeeze the lens into a more convex shape, a round er more oval shape for short distances, & this is more & more difficult for your eye muscles to do as the lens becomes a little stiffer in your old age. Therefore your eye muscles get tired very quickly if you try to do it on your own without glasses.
51. EVENTUALLY, AS OLD AS I AM, THE LENSES BECOME SO HARDENED THAT THEY WILL NOT CONTRACT to a sufficient thickness of convexity to focus sharply on objects very close at hand, such as reading. So you need a pair of glasses with correctional lenses which will help to bring your focal length within easy reading distance.
52. WELL, I DIDN'T INTEND THIS TO BE A WHOLE LECTURE ON OPTICS & OPTOMETRISTS & OPTICIANS & GETTING READING GLASSES, but maybe this will be of benefit to some of you who do have eye problems. Some of you may claim you've developed eye problems from reading our Letters & Magazines in such fine print! Ha! Well, we've tried to make the print in as comfortable a size as possible, at least the size of newsprint, & this is considered the usual normal minimum of small print in order to get as much material in a small space as we can, as we do. And I'm very sorry if it seems too small for you, & once in awhile in our experimenting we have gotten our print a little bit too small.
53. RECENTLY WE MADE A MISTAKE OF TRYING TO SQUEEZE with our computers our print into 20-characters-per-inch instead of the normal 17, & we found out our characters were bumping into each other & almost overrunning each other, so that you couldn't really tell sometimes whether it was a C or an O or whatever. But we have corrected that now, so please just forgive us & pardon us if even some of the articles in this book they ran by mistake at the tighter squeeze of 20 cpi. instead of 17. We found that the 17 cpi. is the smallest we can go & still be able to read the characters clearly, & also about 61 lines to the page is as far as we can squash'm without the lines bumping into each other, & even then we can no longer under line by machine, we have to underline by hand in order to keep the underlinings from running over the tops of the lower letters.
54. SO THERE ARE A LOT OF LITTLE TECHNICALITIES WE HAVE TO REALLY WORK ON WHEN WE'RE DECIDING ON THE PROPER TYPE & printing space for your publications & your easy reading. We have to try to keep them down to a minimum in order to get as much on the page as possible so we don't have too many pages & too much expense & extravagance in our printing. Otherwise we would be happy to make them in larger-size letters, but we have to pack'm in tight & make them as small as possible.
55. THE PRINTING & THE MATERIALS FOR PRINTING ETC. ARE NOT OUR GREATEST EXPENSE, IT'S THE POSTAGE, THE WEIGHT! So the number of pages & the amount of space the printing occupies on a page does count & it does mean something. So therefore we have to keep our printing to the absolute minimum, the size of the characters & lines etc., so that we can keep our pages at a minimum so we can afford to pay the postage to mail you these publications. So if you feel that some of the print's too small, I'm sorry. We can't help it, we couldn't afford to publish it, especially some of these lengthy books like this one, if we didn't scrunch & squeeze & squash our print down to the absolute minimum size that is still easily readable.
56. BUT IF YOU STILL FIND THAT PRINT IS DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO READ, PERHAPS YOU NEED GLASSES even at your age & even if the glasses don't do it, maybe you just need an old-fashioned reading glass, as my grandmother used to call it: "Where's my reading glass?". In those day it was a big round magnifying glass about four or five inches across with a handle. And she could just hold it there & run it along the lines of the page & read it as she went. If the page wasn't too wide she could hold it in one position & almost read the whole line. Later on they developed square or rectangular ones which have a nice little handle at one corn er & you can read very well with that if you don't get tired of holding the glass.
57. BUT PERSONALLY I PREFER READING GLASSES, & I think you'll find them much more comfortable & easy to wear & read by, if you do seem to have an eye problem resulting in eye strain, tired eyes, headaches etc. Perhaps you need some good reading glasses. I suggest you go to the nearest optometrist, find a good one that does good recommended work, & get him to give you a good eye test & insist on getting exactly the right focal length & lens etc. by going back & forth trying different lenses on the different characters that he shows you on the chart, till you get it exactly right: The most comfortable, the sharpest & the best for each eye.
58. THEN MAKE SURE THAT WHEN HE PUTS THEM ON YOU, TEST THEM YOURSELF at your normal reading length & make sure that each eye is reading beautifully & sharply & clearly without strain. Put your hand over one eye & read with one eye & then put it over the other eye & read with the other to make sure. Because sometimes if you just put them on without testing each eye, one eye is doing all the work & you think, "Well, I can see fine." But then later you get home & you find out by testing each lens that one is out of focus but the other's in focus, & that's the only one that's really doing the work, & it's an eye-strain on that eye.
59. YOU TEST THEM RIGHT THERE AT THE COUNTER at your usual focal length of reading before you walk out, & insist on getting them right. Don't let'm pawn off some thing on you that is not exactly right. You're paying for it & usually plenty, so make sure you get the right kind of lenses for reading. Well, there's one of the little lessons you're going to learn as we go through Dad's Day--how to buy glasses & take your eye test & test the glasses yourself etc. until you get'm right. And if they're not right, listen, he's in the business, he's got lots of lenses! Just insist that he change the lens of either eye or both eyes if they're not exactly right, & make sure you get them right, because you're going to read for hours & thousands of pages if you're going to read all of our books & Letters & get your proper education, information & inspiration.
60. EYES ARE ALMOST YOUR MOST PRICELESS POSSESSION outside of your own soul & the Word of God, & you must read the Word of God, but it's not going to do you much good if you can't read it comfortably & for hours at a time! So if you do need glasses, go out & get'm, & I'm sure the Lord will provide if it's a need. So be sure you get the right ones that are exactly fitted for your particular eyes at your exact focal length of normal reading. When after trying them for several days, if they still don't seem to be quite right & you're having any problem, be sure you go back & get them adjusted & fitted right or the right lens.
61. ALSO IT'S IMPORTANT TO GET THE BRIDGE & THE BOWS ADJUSTED properly to fit your nose & your ears. Don't take a pair of glasses that are uncomfortable on the bridge of your nose. Take a pair of lightweight glasses that are comfortable & sit in the right place at the right height for your normal reading or whatever you're using them for, so that you're not looking across the frame of the glasses one way or the other, they're not too high or low on your nose, & then make sure they're just right on your ears. Be sure they're not too tight so that they hurt your ears, or they're not too loose so they fall off when you nod your head. So all those things are important about buying glasses.
62. WE MIGHT MENTION THE MATTER OF TINTING IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET TINTED GLASSES which sometimes are necessary. Normally I do, ever since I was a young teenager in Miami. In brilliant sunshine you almost always need some kind of sunglasses when you go out doors, to relieve the eye strain of squinting in brilliant abnormal glare of the tropical sun.
63. NOW WHEN GOD FIRST CREATED THE EARTH & IT HAD THAT CLOUD COVER or that moisture cover, then you didn't need sunglasses. But nowadays with that upper layer of moisture removed, "the waters above the firmament" (Gen.1:7) & the brilliant sun rays are shining right straight through into your eyes. Almost always you'll find in super-brilliant sunshine you're going to need some kind of sunglasses! If you don't need reading glasses or distance glasses at all, you can probably go down & buy a cheap pair of ordinary sunglasses of some kind.
64. BUT YOUR EYES ARE PRECIOUS & VALUABLE & IT'S BETTER TO BUY NOT JUST TINTED GLASSES ONLY BUT POLAROID GLASSES, or the type of sunglasses which have polarised lenses, which means two layers of either glass or plastic with different polarity, so that they literally filter out completely the glares of either the sun or other objects by changing the direction of the rays as they pass through the lenses, & therefore are not glaring you straight in the eye. These are the best sunglasses to buy, good polarised lenses, & prescriptioned it necessary.
65. THE FIRST TO MAKE THE TRADE NAME POPULAR WAS POLAROID, also the most expensive U.S.-made! But there're a number of other brands, they may not be exactly as good & they're certainly not as expensive, of polarised lenses which are also slightly tinted to your favourite shade to help eliminate the glare, whether it's amber, like looking at the world through rose coloured glasses, or grey-green that emphasizes the greenery & beautiful colour of God's creation. You can almost adjust the colour of His creation like you do the colour of your TV, by getting the right tint.
66. BUT BY ALL MEANS, IF YOU'RE GOING TO BUY TINTED GLASSES OR SUNGLASSES OF ANY KIND, GET THE POLARISED TYPE OF LENSES, whether they be plastic or glass, in order to get glasses which are really good for your eyes & don't cause eye strain. Because mere cheap tinted sunglasses do not always eliminate glare & merely darken your view & the light without actually eliminating glare. Polarised lenses have two different polarised planes of filtration, & this changes the direction of the rays as they go through the lenses, so that they don't hit directly into your eyes & glare.
67. BUT YOU'LL FIND THAT HAS A STRANGE EFFECT SOMETIMES ON WINDSHIELDS! In looking out car windows that are tinted windows, you don't even notice that there's any difference in the windows until you put on your polarised lenses, & all of a sudden all kinds of strange spots show up in the wind shield! Well, there's nothing wrong with your windshield, it's just the interreaction between those polarised lenses & the tinted windshield which causes that. Once after I'd gotten tinted polarised sunglasses I climbed into my car & I thought, "Oh my God, sitting out here in the hot sun something terrible has happened to my windshield & it's all gotten spotty & probably ruined!" I jumped out & took off my glasses to check it out & all of a sudden the spots all disappeared!
68. WELL, YOU'RE GOING TO LEARN A LOT OF THINGS JUST FROM DAD'S DAY! HA! I don't know how long this is going to be Dad's Day, but it's gonna be pretty long if I'm going to give you this many lessons on everything as we go along! Well PTL! But that is very important to us who do a lot of reading, it's extremely important to spare your eyes so that you can absorb as much of the Word as possible without wearing yourself out & ruining your eyes & getting migraine headaches & whatnot!
69. IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO HAVE GOOD EYESIGHT, & if you don't have good eyesight, to have good glasses to correct them to make for easy & enjoyable reading of all of our publications, your spiritual food & inspiration & instruction &/or just sometimes plain amusement. Amen? So I hope you won't mind too much that I spent so much time talking to you about glasses, because particularly we of an older age find glasses are absolutely essential & very important to our work & easy reading, & it's almost impossible to get along without them. Thank God for the invention of glasses, which occurred some years ago, but I won't go into their history now--you can read that for yourself in the encyclopedia.
LIGHT!
70. WELL, SO I'M NOW SITTING ON THE TOILET READING THE NEWSPAPER with my reading glasses under a good bright light, which should not be reflecting on your paper so that it glares straight into your eyes, but at an angle over one shoulder or the other, whichever is convenient, so that when the light strikes your reading it bounces off in another direction & not directly into your eyes. All you have to do is tilt your reading matter one way or the other, & you can see how in a certain position the light strikes it in such a way that it actually reflects directly straight into your eyes & glares. So tilt your reading matter one way or the other until you eliminate that glare, & then you've got nice good light which does not glare right into your eyes.
71. ALWAYS TRY TO GET YOUR LIGHT SOURCE PREFERABLY OVER YOUR SHOULDER FROM BEHIND. If you're righthanded the best source is over your left shoulder. If you're lefthanded the best source is from behind your right shoulder coming at an angle of about 45 degrees over your shoulder onto your reading matter & this way it not only gives you plenty of light & eliminates the glare, but also the shadow of your hand in writing or holding your paper or whatever. If you're lefthanded you write with your left hand, & if you have the light over your left shoulder then you're going to have the shadow of your left hand right on your work. Whereas if you're righthanded, vice versa. So if you're righthanded have a lefthand light source, & if you're lefthanded have a right hand light source, & preferably from behind you so that it strikes your reading matter & bounces off away from you & doesn't hit you smack in the face & doesn't glare.
72. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU WHO DO A LOT OF PAPERWORK & A LOT OF READING, A LOT OF TYPING, COMPUTER WORK OR WHATEVER IT MAY BE, THAT YOU HAVE PROPER LIGHTING. Of course with your computers you have a screen like a television screen with the lighted letters on it. But we have found even there it's important to have the proper light source, because you're often doing copy work from some kind of copy, rough draft, or you're doing transcribing. So you should have the light certainly not directly in front of you nor directly behind you, if you're a computer operator, but from either one side or the other & preferably so that it does not strike the screen of the computer, otherwise it dims the image, for the same reason that you don't face your television toward a window. Because then you get not only light on the screen of the TV which lessens the brightness of the image, but you also get a bad reflection of the window on the screen of the television.
73. SO WITH COMPUTERS BE SURE THAT YOUR LIGHT IS COMING FROM AN ANGLE, preferably such an angle with your TV or your computer that it does not strike directly into the screen nor reflect off the screen into your eyes so that you see the lamp on the screen of the TV or you see the image of the window on the screen of the TV. Always have your television or video or your computer screen facing away from the source of light, just the opposite from reading.
74. YOU NEED THE LIGHT FROM BEHIND YOU IN YOUR READING, BUT IN YOUR TELEVISION & VIDEO & COMPUTER VIEWING YOU NEED THE LIGHT FROM YOUR EXTREME RIGHT OR LEFT SIDE, so that it does not strike directly into the screen. It's not good to have the light source straight in front of you either, because then that glares in your eyes when you're trying to see the screen. But have it off to the right or off to the left about 90 degrees, & perhaps even less or more, whichever way you're counting your degrees. The reflection of the window that you're using or the light source or the lamp or whatever you're using, move it around or move your screen around until that light source reflection that's reflecting on your screen, goes just off the edge of your screen, then you've got it just about right. 'Cause then you'll also have light on your copy work that you're reading from as you're typing, & also your keyboard that you have to keep your eye on if you're not a touch typist, & even in these modern computers, until you really know all your keys, you can hardly find them all by touch type.
75. SO WATCH YOUR LIGHT SOURCE--THAT'S ALL VERY VERY IMPORTANT! Well PTL! There's one subject covered by Dad's Day & I hope that's going to be a help to you, because if it saves your eyes & saves your reading, it may save your soul, or at least certainly save your spirit & inspiration & spiritual food & make it comfortable for you & tasty & appetising & not just a pain in the eye & a pain in the neck!
76. SPEAKING OF PAINS IN THE NECK, IT'S IMPORTANT ALSO TO CONSTANTLY CHANGE YOUR POSITION so that you don't strain the same muscles all the time in your back or your bottom or even your legs or arms. Frequently change your position, frequently get up & walk around. If you have a sedentary desk job, reading job or chair job like mine, you need to move about frequently in order to rest your muscles & relax them & flex them & keep them in good working order. PTL! OK? Hope you learned something from that little lecture on optics & reading & light sources, glasses, etc.
77. SO BACK TO THE TOILET & READING THE MORNING PAPER, or some places it's afternoon paper, & I usually go through it as rapidly as I can. I at least try to read the front page while I'm there, & sometimes a little more, & I mark the articles that I think would be of interest to you & important for you to know, & I put the numbers of the pages where they're found on the front page so that our World News editor will know where they are & not have to look through the whole paper to find them & clip them out for his World News pages of your FN & sometimes GN.
BMs!
78. WELL, NOW COMES THE TIME TO WIPE! You really want me to tell all these things? Maria's grinning & nodding her head! Ha! Well,I used to have a rule at TSC when the toilet paper began disappearing so rapidly, that no more than two or three sheets were allowed per BM, & sometimes we would ration it out & when they headed for the toilet they were just given three sheets & that was it! But if you will use it judiciously, you don't have to just use one sheet at a time.
79. IF YOU'LL TAKE THREE SHEETS & FOLD IT so that there are three layers, then you can wipe yourself once, with a pinching action, fold it again wipe yourself again, fold it again (by this time it's a small square, a fourth the size of the original) & even wipe yourself a third time if necessary, & usually that does the trick, at least it does with me. So that's one way to save money.
80. SO THEN I USUALLY ARISE & INSPECT THE RESULTS. A doctor in Hollywood once taught me that that's very important, to inspect your BMs & see what they look like, to see if there are any worms or unusual appearances of blood or excessive mucous--check the colour etc. Pinworms will not necessarily be visible in the BM. The test for pinworms is taken just by wrapping a piece of scotch tape around your finger, sticky side out, & touching it to the opening of your anus. If there are any eggs there, they will adhere to the tape. Put the two sticky sides of the tape together & take it to a laboratory for examination.
81. A NORMAL BM IS FAIRLY ODOURLESS & SORT OF BROWN, & it's sort of, what shall I say, marbly or like little marbles sometimes &/or like little marbles all squashed together & has some sort of air cracks. It looks like the convolutions of your brain sometimes. But I hope you've got more brains than that. But anyway, to be normal it should be fairly hard & sometimes dry enough to float if you've really gotten all the goody out of it. Your intestinal tract & absorption system has really absorbed all the nourishment possible.
82. DEAR MAMA MARIA, SHE PARTICULARLY HAS AN ESPECIALLY GOOD ABSORPTION SYSTEM apparently, because hers usually float, lighter than water, & we have a hard time gettin'm to go down when we flush. Mine very rarely ever float, usually they sink to the bottom, but are fairly solid & substantial, & my normal turd, as they are crudely call ed, looks like the size of a fair-sized sausage--one of those sausages that are about an inch-&-a-half in diameter & about six or eight inches long, with a lot of little cracks & crannies & ridges & this is fairly normal. Sometimes if I have maybe drunk too much milk or too many liquids or I'm slightly loose or I'm sick in some other way, it'll come through rather yellow & pasty-looking & soft & smooth without convolutions, & then I know I'm not really getting quite as much benefit out of my food as I should.
83. THANK GOD I HAVE YET TO EVER FIND A WORM OR ANY OTHER EXTRANEOUS MATERIAL! Although once in a great while I have found a bean hull or a corn hull in the doo-doo, which are a little difficult to digest. If you are passing a lot of bad-smelling gas, try adding yoghurt or acidophilus milk to your diet. Most people have one or two BM's a day. Loose watery bowels are never normal, nor are hard rocky stools that irritate or tear the rectal outlet. Neither constipation nor diarrhea are normal.
84. ANY SUDDEN CHANGE IN BOWEL HABITS FROM THE NORMAL PATTERN OF MANY YEARS COULD MEAN SOMETHING IS WRONG, & you should check your BM carefully for blood, worms or excessive mucous. And it's wise particularly for you mothers to inspect your baby's doo-doos to see if there's any abnormality & if they are the right colour, consistency & content & whether there is any undigested food, blood, mucous or bad odour. That's very important in diagnosing a number of problems. Do remember though that it is normal for the character of an infant's stool to change when you change the baby's diet. Colour fed to a child is likely to turn up in the stools--red from beets, a greenish tinge from green vegetables etc. In general if the child feels & acts perfectly well, there is nothing to be concerned about.
85. WELL, I NEVER DREAMED WE'D BE GETTING INTO SO MANY IMPORTANT SUBJECTS JUST IN DEALING WITH MY DAY! But these are really very important to your health & well-being & your daily happy living. So check out that BM & make sure it's normal & contains no extraneous matter, & certainly you should be concerned if there're any signs of blood which could indicate either a mild piles or haemorrhoids.
86. HAEMORRHOIDS ARE EVEN MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE, only they leave off the "H" there in the Old Testament. "Emerods" (1Sam.5 & 6) God afflicted the Philistines with haemorrhoids because they stole the Ark of the Covenant! They finally had to make special peace offerings to the Lord & the Jews & give it back to them before they were delivered from this plague of haemorrhoids, which means a slight little swelling of your anus area, the sphincter area of the anus or, to put it in very crude course common language, your ass hole out of which your BM comes!
87. IF YOU HAVE STRAINED YOURSELF OR WEAKENED THOSE MUSCLES OR TISSUES in any way, particularly through improper sexual practices, or sometimes just too-long seating periods, like truck drivers (it's common with truck drivers, pregnants, homos, women & people who sit at desks all day, as well as being actual afflictions of disease etc.)--It will weaken the tissues there & cause them to be slightly swollen sometimes, like varicose veins. The first sign is a sort of an itching, & finally if they continue, it'll become even painful & even to the point of rupturing & bleeding slightly, & you may discover some flecks of blood on your bowel movement or when wiping.
88. SO A NORMAL CURE FOR PILES OR HAEMORRHOIDS IS TO OF COURSE PRAY & CORRECT WHATEVER THE CAUSE MAY BE, such as strain. Maybe you've been lifting things that were too heavy, this will sometimes cause it, or sitting too long in a strained position, or some other kind of weakness or disease that attacks those tissues & causes weakness there which causes them to bulge. Sometimes just straining on the toilet, if you have a tendency to be constipated, will cause some of those tissues to bulge a little bit, & you've got an actual haemorrhoid caused by a hernial condition of the anal area.
89. THIS OF COURSE IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU & IS SOMETIMES ANNOYINGLY ITCHY OR ACTUALLY PAINFUL, & of course could be serious if it persists too long. Which means you should never lift things that are too heavy for you & you should never strain too hard when you're on the toilet if you're a bit constipated. Frankly you won't have that problem of constipation normally if you eat the proper unrefined foods with plenty of liquids & fruits & vegetables & juices.
90. EVEN A GOOD STRONG CUP OF COFFEE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING BEFORE YOU GO TO THE TOILET WILL USUALLY HELP TO CURE CONSTIPATION, because this stimulates the adrenalin in your blood, & the adrenalin stimulates both the heartbeat & the pulse of your veins & arteries & expands the openings & even stimulates the peristaltic action of your bowels & helps to stimulate your whole body so that you'll not have so much difficulty in having a BM.
91. OF COURSE, IF YOU'RE NOT ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING A REGULAR BM TIME, or you go too long without having a BM, or you don't get much regular exercise, or you eat too many dry & refined foods & don't drink enough liquids or eat enough fruits, vegetables, juices etc. you're apt to have constipation. Also, if you don't heed the call of nature, you'll find that it stops calling after awhile! So you really do need to, when you first get up in the morning, drink some kind of a liquid. What I usually do is drink a whole glass of water right away first thing in the morning, & if that doesn't do it, I wait till I've had my coffee & that almost always does it.
92. SO IF YOU ARE HAVING ANY PROBLEM WITH CONSTIPATION, which means very hard dry BMs that are hard to eliminate, I suggest you start off the day with a good stiff drink of water, coffee, fruit juice or whatever you prefer, & as soon as you get that whole glassful or cupful down, you'll find it normally will stimulate you to have your BM. First thing in the morning when you get up is actually the normal time. If your normal time is after breakfast, it's probably because you needed the extra bulk & liquid & juice in you in order to stimulate the BM & help you to stimulate that peristaltic action, that rhythmic action of your bowels which is a constant moving stricture of the bowels that travels along the bowel muscles in waves which causes the material within the bowel to move.
93. YOU'RE SUPPOSEDLY TO HAVE LEARNED ALL THAT IN SCHOOL, but I've found a lot of you guys never learned much if anything of a practical nature in school. But I suggest first thing in the morning, if you're having trouble with constipation or anything like that, besides having a diet of a lot of good fresh vegetables & fruits & fruit juices & liquids, drink a good glass of water. Usually water at least is available, if not a cup of coffee, or better still fruit juice to stimulate that bowel action by the injection of fluid & a little fuel sometimes too, & this will get you going, & wait then till you feel like it.
94. NOW YOU CAN'T ALWAYS WAIT TILL YOU FEEL LIKE IT! I suggest if the morning juice, water or coffee doesn't do it first thing & you don't normally go right away, then wait till after breakfast & that should move things along. But at least try! Don't strain but relax with something to read & stay on the toilet for at least 15 minutes no matter what happens. If you didn't have one before breakfast, by all means try to have one after breakfast, & then get on the toilet & think about it, concentrate on it.
95. IT'S AN AMAZING THING HOW GOD HAS MADE YOUR BODY! Many things are automatic & in voluntary, & you have many muscles which are involuntary & have an involuntary or automatic reaction. But with certain bodily functions such as going to the toilet, you have to actually think about it & you have to concentrate upon that particular function, whether it's urinating or having a bowel movement, in order to stimulate your self & cause your body to release the fluid or release the solid matter. You actually have to sit there awhile & think about it, believe it or not, & get yourself in the mood if you have any problem.
96. MAMA MIA SHAKES HER HEAD & SAYS SHE DOESN'T! She doesn't even have to think about it, it's just automatic with her. Well, that's one reason she's very well regulated & very regular, no problem, & she just goes real quick, boom-boom, & that's it! She's often on & off in less than two minutes! Me at my age & so sedentary & most older folk are known to be somewhat prone to constipation. It usually takes me a little longer & it's not at all infrequent for me to sit there for half-an-hour while I'm reading the paper & encouraging it to come & with usual success, as well as absorbing some important information from the newspaper while I'm eliminating unnecessary waste matter from my body.
97. MARIA HAS TO SLEEP OR BE VERY QUIET DURING THIS EARLY MORNING TIME, as it's my time to not only read the paper but to meditate & pray & wake up. So, so much for the BM & inspecting it & making sure that all is well. Don't get too concerned about your BMs however, but it's wise to take a look at it. If you'll notice, even animals will get up & look at it & sniff it. Almost all cats will cover it up, bury it, & some dogs will dig a little hole & bury it, & you'd better get that kind of a cat or dog if you have children in the home, so that you'll have a fairly sanitary yard.
98. EVEN IN GOD'S WORD IT'S COMMANDED that if you're in the field, like out camping, you're to take your paddle or shovel & dig a hole & "ease yourself therein" & then cover it up! (Deut.23:13) And if you want to drop your apple core or some seeds in with it, you may have an apple tree next time you come back, all planted & fertilised! That's what Johnny Appleseed did. OK?
99. MY GOODNESS, HERE WE'VE GONE NEARLY AN HOUR ALREADY & THE DAY'S ONLY GOT STARTED! It may have to turn out to be a serial, dear Maria! (Maria: We might have to make it a separate book.) Yes, we may have to make this a separate book for sure! Well, having arisen & inspected the results, I then flush the toilet & rid the scene of such unwanted elements, & proceed from there to the wash bowl where I wash my face & hands & ears very thoroughly.
WASH UP!
100. IN FACT, IT'S VERY IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY IN WARM COUNTRIES TO WASH not only your hands & face, but your ears & your neck & other parts of your body frequently, to keep them clean & to keep other little denizens of the deep & microbes & parasites etc. from choosing you as their host & hostage! Yes, you often become a hostage of them while you're their host. You need to keep your skin very clean, so it's well to wash frequently.
101. I WASH MY FACE & HANDS & NECK & EARS MANY TIMES A DAY. Since I'm usually up about 16 hours of the day & I usually go to the toilet about every couple of hours or so, that makes at least 8 or 10 times a day that I wash my face & hands, & frequently my ears, as well as taking a daily bath or swim. I prefer swimming for my daily clean up as well as my daily exercise. But I'll tell you more about that later. But first thing in the morning I just usually freshen up enough to wash my face & hands so they'll be clean for fixing my breakfast, & to wake me up & freshen me up.
ROUGH UP!
102. I PERFORM ANOTHER LITTLE OPERATION WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT which Maria some times laughs at as I'm rubbing my scalp. Actually I'm rubbing my scalp vigorously with a coarse-nap towel, massaging my scalp, beginning at the rear roots of the neck in the back, up through which part of your neck most of the main blood vessels flow up onto your scalp, if you've ever seen one of those diagrams or charts in a barber's shop.
103. THERE ARE TWO MAIN BLOOD VESSELS WHICH SUPPLY THE BLOOD TO YOUR SCALP, & they run up the backside of your neck on both sides, one on each side, & then they branch out & spread into a whole network of little blood vessels all over your scalp.--And it's very important to get this blood flowing vigorously! It not only helps wake you up & make you feel good & give you some brisk morning exercise, but it stimulates the blood circulation in your scalp, & if you keep it properly flowing & stimulated you won't lose so much hair, like some of these billiard balls you see walking around! You'll find that your scalp & your hair & hair follicles, the little holes the hair is planted in, need good circulation of blood, just like any other part of your body, to stay healthy & wholesome & vigorous & growing.
104. SO YOU NEED TO GET THAT CIRCULATION IN YOUR SCALP REALLY MOVING! It also helps to get your whole body blood circulating with a vigorous motion of your hands & arms & I shake all over when I'm doing it & almost do a jig & Maria laughs at me, for after I'm done my hair's all standing straight on end & I look like the Hottentots or the bushy-haired wild men of Borneo until I finally get it laid out with a comb. But comb your hair vigorously too. Kind of scrape your scalp with the teeth of the comb or brush to really scratch it & make it feel good & make it awake & alive, so that your whole scalp is stimulated & you've stimulated the blood circulating in not only your scalp but even your brain & you'll think more clearly.
105. BY THAT TIME I AM REALLY WAKED UP, by the time I'm finished washing & vigorously massaging my scalp. You do it with both hands with the tips of your fingers.--Not the palms of your hand but the tips of your fingers planted in the towel, & you rub it real hard like the old-fashioned Dutch rub. Begin at the back of the neck & work forward on both sides, & then you do it again & work toward the middle, & then work all around on the top & everywhere--you'll figure out whatever pattern is best suited to your motion & movement & feeling, until you've got your scalp & head & brain really going!
106. (MARIA: TELL'M ABOUT THE TOWELS.) Well, I start out with a brand clean face & hand towel Maria hangs by the bowl. Then when I've used that several days & it begins to be a little bit unfresh, I rotate that to a body-towel-bath-towel. When I'm feeling like that bath-towel-body-towel needs changing, I rotate that again, down to a bidet towel hanging by the bidet, or in this case, a toilet with a little portable bidet that we use. Then finally if I think the towel's had enough use as a bidet towel, I lay it on the floor for a nice little bathmat beside the tub!
107. SO THAT OUR TOWELS, BY THE TIME THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THIS PROCESS OF ROTATION OF FACE-TOWEL, HAND-TOWEL, BODY-TOWEL, BIDET-TOWEL, FLOORMAT, are well on their way to the laundry & have lasted as much as two weeks in the bathroom!--There's one way to save on laundry, folks! Try to really make your towels useful & go around & recycle them & give them as much use as possible. Actually, normally I take a fresh face-&-hand towel at least once a week, so that they go through this rotation every few days. Each towel winds up fully used & ready for the wash in about two weeks time. Also my towel by the pool I leave out there almost permanently for several weeks, & it keeps getting washed & dried in the sun & the breeze & smells nice & fresh everyday! But finally it gets a little bit soiled with just the smoke & dust from the air. So it finally has to go to the wash too.
108. BY THAT TIME I'M READY TO COMB MY HAIR & I'M LOOKING PRETTY & ready to make my grand entry back into the bedroom for Maria to inspect! All cleaned up & eliminated & spruced up & perfumed & ready for breakfast! Well now, breakfast. Isn't that next, Maria? Meanwhile I throw the paper back out to anybody else that wants to read it. I throw it outside the door, take off the "do-not-disturb" sign which shows that we're sleeping, & show that now we're available for any kind of information or notices or whatever.
DO NOT DISTURB!
109. WE HAVE DEVELOPED A VERY CLEVER LITTLE "DO-NOT-DISTURB" SIGN SYSTEM. While travelling we bought some "do-not-disturb" signs, but usually kind of accumulate them from some of the hotels we've been in, who give them away free or supply them free & we take them along with us. We figured we paid for them in the hotel bill. We have two kinds: One very large cardboard type & one small white plastic type, & the big one is for me & the little one is for her. When I'm sleeping we put the big one on, & that usually also means we're both sleeping.
110. IF SHE'S THE ONLY ONE THAT'S SLEEPING or only one or the other of us is sleeping, we just put the little white one on, which means that one of us is still available for answers if necessary, or emergencies or if there's a phone call or something that has to be attended to or some answer needed, something important. Then they can creep through the door & whisper to us & not disturb the one who's sleeping. But if they're both gone from off the doorknob outside, then we're both available.
111. WHERE WE ARE NOW IS A HOUSE THAT HAS TWO FLOORS, & the folks downstairs can't always see the "do-not-disturb" sign hanging on our doorknob. They'd have to come clear upstairs to see it & so they might be tempt ed to make too much noise downstairs that might disturb us. So Maria has invented a new type of "do-not-disturb" sign: She tied it on a long string & she has it tied to the banister above the stairway, & everytime she wants them to be quiet downstairs she just picks it up off the floor & throws it down & lets it hang there, very obvious & visible for all to see that we should not be disturbed & they should try to be a little quieter than usual while we're trying to rest or sleep. Well, there's a little invention for you that you might find fairly useful. You say,
112. "WELL, I CERTAINLY DON'T NEED TO KNOW ALL THESE RIDICULOUS DETAILS!" Well, they're not altogether that ridiculous, & they have helped us to save some sleep sometimes. So you might find some of these suggestions valuable. It's sort of like a language, a code, who's asleep & who's not asleep & if anybody's asleep or if they're not asleep at all, & are we available or not? So it's very important with us & our sleep & our availability & their information, that we have some way of letting them know. So then I throw out the paper, take off the "do-not-disturb" sign & we are ready for action!
TEMPERATURES!
113. THEN I GO FROM THERE & usually step out on our front porch, or back porch in this case, & I look at the temperature-recording thermometer: A simple little instrument that has some little indicators in it or tiny blue rods that slide up & down inside the tube with the fluid, but stay stuck at the highest & the lowest temperatures even after the fluid has receded--they call it a temperature-recording thermometer. They cost a little bit more than other thermometers, but they're very valuable & very important & interesting to me, to keep an accurate record of daily temperatures, which I do in my Diary, of the high & the low of the day, just the same way you read it in the newspaper.
114. SO THAT I CAN TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE WAS LAST NIGHT that occurred in the wee hours of the morning, because it was recorded by my thermometer even in my sleep! I didn't have to run out there every hour to take a look at it. Or I can tell you what the high was during the warmest hour of the day, which is usually anywhere between 1 & 3. So I step out on the porch & I take a look at the recording thermometer & I clock exactly what the high & the low were.
INSPECTION!
115. THEN I WALK A LITTLE FURTHER OUT ON THE PORCH & INSPECT THE GARDEN, the yard, the pool & the house & look around a little more to see that everything is shipshape & in order. I'm the Captain of the ship, so I have to keep a sharp lookout on my vessel & make sure everything is shipshape. And some times I notice something in the yard that needs attending to, or the pool or various things, & when I get back inside I call on the intercom to let our maintenance men know what needs to be done in either mowing the lawn or trimming the garden or the trees or attending to the pool or whatnot, & I'll get into that later.
116. IN TRIMMING THE TREES, some of the branches were pretty high, & even at the top of our ladder we still couldn't reach'm. I like lots of light, & some of our trees had too many branches interfering with our light to our windows, as well as dropping too many leaves into the pool etc. So we keep our trees very close-cropped & trimmed. Some of you might think they look like a butch hair cut or a flat top, but actually it's good for them.
117. EVEN THE BIBLE TALKS ABOUT PRUNING, pruning away branches that are unnecessary & that are a drag on the main body of the tree or bush or vine because it doesn't need them, & we need the light more than the tree needs the branch! Some of these branches really know how to give shade, but we don't particularly care for that much shade in our windows where we need light rather than shade. But some of the branches were so high that we couldn't reach them.
118. SO I GOT THE BRILLIANT IDEA OF USING THE VERY LIGHTWEIGHT SKIMMER POLE, an aluminum tube that had a couple holes in the end for bolting on the skimmer net. We had a couple of these, so we took the skimmer off of one, & we also took the handle off of our saw, & we bolted the saw blade to the skimmer pole, & now it's quite easy for us to reach some of the highest branches & saw them off with this extension saw that we created! So it's a very handy invention.
119. HAVING INSPECTED MY SHIP & looked around the neighbourhood to make sure their houses aren't on fire or something haywire, & seeing that all is well, I can go back & report to Maria that all is well. Then I sit down at my little breakfast table which I have right here in our bedroom facing the view, as we do the bed, so we can see the beautiful view of God's creation both from our bed & from my little breakfast table.
BREAKFAST!
120. THEN I BEGIN TO PREPARE MY MORNING BREAK-FAST: Break-my-fast of some many hours with some kind of nourishment. When it's hot I don't really need very much in the way of a breakfast. But you do need a good substantial breakfast to get started no matter where you live. In the warm countries I don't really need a hot breakfast. It's too hot to do any cooking for me, so I make a cold breakfast but certainly not cold cereal! Now I don't go too much for these cereals! I don't think they're much good, especially cold boxed processed cereals, dry cereal, I don't think much of those things.
121. I GO PREFERABLY FOR THE MOST NATURAL FOODS & not highly fabricated, refined or fast foods, such as cornflakes or Post Toasties or Wheaties or whatever. I don't think there's too much nourishment in those & they don't last me very long. I think foods in their more natural state are far better & more nourishing, more healthful & better for you. Frankly, when you hear what I have for breakfast, you'll be amazed how little I actually eat & yet how long it usually lasts me, because it is good normal healthful food.
122. SO I SIT DOWN AT MY LITTLE BREAKFAST TABLE which has on it already the materials which have been supplied to me by the kitchen, the night before, God bless'm, which is a little tin box of three eggs. And you say, "Oh my goodness, three eggs, no wonder! We only usually eat two eggs for breakfast!" Well, when you hear how little else I eat, you'll realise that three eggs is not too much. So they furnish me with a little tin box of three eggs, & also they've made sure that I have a jar of peanut butter, a box of powdered milk & a jar of freeze-dried instant coffee. They used to give me honey too, but I found that the natural sweetness of both the powdered milk & the peanut butter are usually sufficient to make my drink very palatable.
123. I GET ALL THESE THINGS OUT ON THE TABLE. (I usually keep them in a drawer in this little table) & I prepare to make my morning coffee-peanut-butter-milk-eggnog! Hope you're not getting too bored now by this time with the way I live & how I eat, but I'm doing this at the insistence of dear Maria & staff. It wasn't exactly my idea, but anyhow I thought maybe you might learn something from it, & maybe you might even want to copy some of these things I do. At least you might learn some lessons.
124. I SET UP & GET MY MIXER READY, be cause there are so many things I have to mix together. I found a little cheap mixer that was made for children's milkshakes at a very low price, only a fraction of what the big kitchen mixers sell for, & it's just a little tiny mixer that I can mix my little milkshake on, & they furnish a little mixing cup for it. I put in about an inch of water in the bottom of the cup, a rounded teaspoon of coffee next, stir it & dissolve the coffee.
125. THEN I PUT IN ABOUT A HEAPING TABLE SPOON OF PEANUT BUTTER, BELIEVE IT OR NOT! Chop it up, mix it good with a spoon, & then add the powdered milk, about what would be considered maybe a small cup of powdered milk, & mix that in real good too with a spoon. First of all, I get these four substantial things mixed up, & by that time I have all my ingredients in except the eggs. When I've got those first ones mixed up well,
126. I FINALLY TAKE MY EGGS ONE BY ONE, I look each one in the face & marvel at the wonder of God's beautiful symmetrical perfection, the gorgeous creation that is just one egg, & I pray for the little lady whom I always seem to see tending chickens when I'm praying for the eggs. With the milk I also pray for the dear man I almost always seem to see, a farmer milking a cow. Maybe I better start praying for the Latins who are picking the coffee beans, & the Africans that are growing the peanuts!
127. I BREAK MY EGGS GENTLY ON THE EDGE OF THE CUP. I found out it doesn't pay to hit'm all with the same force. First of all I tap each gently on the edge of the cup to see how strong the shell is. I've found some times the biggest eggs have the weakest flimsiest thinnest shells, & if you give it a real bang, I've had the sad experience of having this egg splatter all over, half in the cup & half out!
128. SO I TAP IT ON THE EDGE OF THE CUP, AS YOU GOOD COOKS KNOW, TO TEST THE STRENGTH OF THE EGG SHELL, & when I've tested to see about how tough it is, then I know just about how sharply to crack it on the edge of the cup to just make a little slot in the side of the egg that I can get my two thumb nails into & spread apart & drop the egg into my coffee instead of on the top of my table! I do this three times with three eggs until I've got a triple-header-eggnog-coffee-peanut-butter-milkshake!
129. WHEN THE EGGS ARE IN I BREAK THE YOLKS TO MAKE SURE THEY STIR EASILY & WELL, & give'm a few more stirs by a long-handled spoon. Then while I'm licking off the spoon thoroughly (I don't like to waste anything or make any extra work for the kitchen, so I lick it off from stem to stern on both sides until there's hardly a thing left on that spoon) & I'm slipping the milkshake contain er onto the little mixer, I set my alarm-watch beeper for five minutes, & then sit down to either finish the newspaper or start my Diary while I am waiting for the drink to be thoroughly mixed.
130. WHEN IT'S FINISHED & my beeper goes off, I stop & take off the milkshake, take a nice swig to refresh me & see if it's okay, then while I'm continuing to take sips I'm taking the mixer, the little round beat er off the stem of the mixer & I'm washing it in a special cup of wash water on my breakfast table, so I don't have to keep running to either the kitchen or the bathroom to wash things--I wash my mixer right there! I also wipe off the shaft of the mixer real well with a wet tissue to make sure it's clean, clean up the mixer, lay it down on its side to keep it from getting knocked off the table, as I did once or twice & had to repair it!
131. THEN HAVING GOTTEN EVERYTHING CLEAN & my fingers washed in my cup as well, & the whole operation completed, I set everything in place just as it ought to be: Mixer, cup, little mixer head & my paper towels that I usually set my cup on to do the mixing, so I make sure I don't get my tablecloth dirty, I fold them up & use them again & I usually only have to throw about one little tissue away during that whole breakfast operation, the one that I wiped the mixer off with first before I finally wash it. And oh yes, I do finish with a paper towel that I wrap the eggshells in so that I don't have to throw them into my wastebasket to attract roaches or varmints or ants, & I put them back into the tin box & they're sent back to the kitchen for disposal in the garbage can & everything else to be washed up.
132. OK! I DON'T KNOW WHY I SHOULD COVER EVERY LITTLE DETAIL, BUT ANYWAY. Anyhow, when I'm finished with this delicious coffee-milk-peanut-butter drink, I put the empty mug on my little breakfast table, put the dirty spoon in it, & pour a little water in it to keep it soaked good, so that the dishwasher won't have so much difficulty getting it cleaned. Because sometimes that stuff hardens & dries, especially the milky things, & are very hard to wash. So have a heart, have a little consideration for your dishwashers, folks! I do. PTL!
133. I ALWAYS TRY TO GREET THE FAMILY WHEN I FIRST CALL IN ON THE MONITOR IN THE MORNING on our communication system, the inter com. I try to give them a happy cheery greeting, ask how everybody is, how are the children, everybody healthy & happy etc.?--Or if I see'm out in the yard first.
134. I ALWAYS HAVE TIME FOR A HUG & I LIKE TO KISS THE GIRLS! I kiss the boys too, but for some reason or other it's not quite as exciting as hugging & kissing girls! But the boys are very sweet & I love them just as much. But I guess I get a little more physical thrill out of the females. In fact they often like to make sure I give them the full treatment, so as they approach me for a kiss they'll pull down their blouse or their top so that I can put one hand on each bosom & I give them an affectionate squeeze & kiss at the same time, & they seem to like this for some reason. So we greet one another with a holy kiss & I cover three holes at once! PTL! Sometimes I cover another hole too, if we get to kissing too much!
135. FREQUENTLY WHEN I AM PASSING THROUGH THE HOUSE I STOP IN THE KITCHEN WHEN I SEE THE PRETTY COOK & I SAY, "WHAT'S COOKIN', GOOD LOOKIN?!"--& she comes running over for a squeeze & a kiss! Here in the South in the hot kitchen our girls usually go topless with just a light filmy see-through scarf on their bottom or just their panties, so I & the cooks sometimes really start cookin'! Sometimes it really cooks up quite a stew! Praise God! But I always like to know what's for supper & they tell me & I kiss'm & hug'm & bless'm & pray for'm & tell'm how much we appreciate'm! I always like to give our staff members good appreciation for all their sacrifice & all their good work & their tender loving care of us, praise the Lord!
136. WE ALSO DO TRY TO AVOID TOO MUCH KISSING WHEN COLDS ARE GOING AROUND, ESPECIALLY KISSING ON THE MOUTH. We seldom kiss on the mouth, kissing everybody on the mouth too freely if there are various catching things going around in our local family. About the only time I kiss full in the mouth, deep kiss & really get to kissing, is when I'm having sex! When I get to really feeling sexy with some girl, well, then it's almost uncontrollable & unavoidable & I don't seem to care what I catch! Thank God, we haven't caught much! The Lord really protects us!
137. SO WHAT'S NEXT? I'M NOW SITTIN' OUT ON THE PORCH DRINKING MY COFFEE-EGGNOG-PEANUT-BUTTER-MILKSHAKE, enjoying the news paper (or enduring the newspaper!) or starting on my Diary already--it depends on how much progress I made on the newspaper. We have a large round table there that I set the lawn chair on top of so I can be elevated enough to see my domain. And thereby hangs a tail! I don't know whether you really want all these de-tails or not. It's quite a tale for sure! I then am able to drink my breakfast while I work.
WNs!
138. READING THE NEWSPAPER IS WORK, as far as I'm concerned, & sometimes unpleasant work. But we need to keep abreast of the times & events & the signs of the times, particularly of what's appearing to happen & about to happen & what's going to happen, so we'll know where we are on God's timetable, His schedule, & how close things are coming. And from what I can see, as I've already told you, it looks to me like we can hardly avoid a war either this year or next. At least it looks like they are refusing to avoid a war! They're getting all set up for it & there's every indication of it.
139. ANYHOW WE DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, WE JUST GO AHEAD & LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME & TRUST THE LORD to help us do our work. "Fret not thyself for tomorrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Mt.6:34), & as well as the work thereof! We don't worry about the past either & forget that, except in this Book of Remembrance that the Lord Himself told us to keep for your sake, that you may learn lessons from it & that these things might be written for your sakes, because they happened to us for your sakes, & we've gotten many good lessons out of them!
LOG!
140. NOW THE DIARY, THAT'S THE NEXT CHAPTER I guess: How I keep my Diary. Well, you've all got nice Family-made Diaries now, with everything organised in them & charts & markings & headings etc., to help you remember how to keep your diary, & most of these are the way I keep my Diary, believe it or not! In fact, that was their original source, how I keep my Diary in certain columns & certain ways, & of course some of these ideas I also got originally from the 7-Star Diary that I used to keep for several years. I adapted to our Family Diary some of these good features & points which I thought were very applicable & useful & necessary, & added quite a few ideas & revisions of our own.
141. PARTICULARLY OUR MONTHLY SUMMARIES ARE MADE UP TO SUIT OUR OWN PARTICULAR NEEDS & ACTIVITIES.--Such as in my case my schedule & my work page & reading work & various publications projects, & in your case your witnessing progress & stats etc., which can help you remember & make it easy to total things at the end of the month for your Report. Which, if you have not kept that faithfully day by day during the month, you're going to have an awfully hard time remembering when you're there sweating over your TRF at the end of the month!
142. SO IT'S BETTER TO KEEP UP YOUR DIARY FAITHFULLY DAILY! In fact I keep mine up not only hourly but with every change of operation or work or project or whatever I'm doing during the day. I immediately pick up my Diary & make a note of what I started doing at that particular hour or time. Now I realise you don't have an awful lot of space in your Diary to put too much into it, & some of you like to be flowery in your language & write on & on, in which case you better get yourself another book, a larger book, if you're going to be writing a book instead of just keeping a Diary! But in our Diary we have daily pages, one page per day.
143. I HAVE DIVIDED MY '82 DIARY IN HALF, EACH PAGE WITH A LINE DOWN THE MIDDLE, & I'M REUSING IF FOR 1983 & I'm saving the new Diary that we've just received, the so-called 1983 diary, I'm saving that one for 1984-1985, if I should live that long! So I won't need another Diary for another three years, having used this one already for one year & I've got another year to go in this one, & two more years in the other one! Because I draw a line down the middle of the page to divide each day of the month of each year into two days.
144. FOR EXAMPLE, JANUARY 1982 IS ALREADY THERE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF EACH PAGE, & now I'm filling in January 1983 on the right side of the page, with a line drawn down the middle, & my page is divided right in the middle for this purpose. I've found out that having a nice long column of all these 24 hours, that's all the space I need. It's sufficient for adding the hourly information regarding my major activities of the day.
145. I DO A LOT OF ABBREVIATING TOO, WHICH OF COURSE HELPS SAVE SPACE, & I have a list of these abbreviations alphabetically indexed in the back of the Diary in that alphabetical index, since I don't accumulate many addresses any more, except yours, & the office keeps them! I use that for an alphabetical index of what few addresses I do have & the abbreviations, which pretty well fill it up, because I do a lot of abbreviations in my Diary, so I can economise on space & probably enter a lot more in that one-column half-a-page than you do in your whole page! But I pity the person who ever tries to read it!--Ha! My abbreviations are cryptic & my writing microscopic!
146. SO I'M USING ONE DIARY FOR TWO YEARS & I've already started my 1983 columns here in January. I keep it hour-by-hour & as I say, not only hour-by-hour but almost moment-by-moment. With each change of work I jot down each new event or each new project or change of projects, as well as listing the actual progress of projects in a chart in the back of my Diary as well as in the monthly summaries.
147. ACTUALLY THEY'RE DAILY SUMMARIES OF THE WHOLE MONTH in the back there, for which I have figured out a new system to economise on space so that I don't have to do so much repetitive writing & just copy again all the things that I've already said in the daily pages. I don't repeat the details nor the titles nor the exact activity everytime unless it's something major or a major event or a major activity or something of a special nature or a special point of interest or something I really need to keep a note of to remind me of if I look down the Monthly Summary of the summaries of each day.
148. I HAVE EVEN DIVIDED MY DAYS ON THE MONTHLY SUMMARY INTO HOURLY COLUMNS in a way that I'm still able to keep even these tiny little lines, each one a line for a day, each day a whole day for only one line, divided into hours! I keep the morning hours condensed into one little rectangle since they are usually almost all identical in my usual morning activities. But then from the hour when usually my morning work begins, about 9 or 10 or 11, I keep a little square for each hour & I am able to write in two lines in one of these lines because I print so small, almost microscopic, & therefore I get a lot into those little spaces.
149. SO I CAN JUST AT A GLANCE TELL YOU WHAT I'VE DONE THAT DAY IN ANY GIVEN MONTH as well as all of the various other information which you'll find in your new Diary, such as what the weather was like & the temperatures & the "Hours of Word" etc. In my case I put down here for "Hours of Word" the hours that I talk or dictate or lecture or give lessons etc.; & then the "Hours of Work" in my case is the number of pages I did; & then of course the "Hours of Exercise", whatever they may be, & if it's walk, kilometers; & finally the total hours of sleep within the 24-hour period. I figure those usually the following morning so that I have figured the sleep that I have had from one morning to the next morning, both all night & sometimes a nap in the day.
150. FINALLY WE HAVE THE LIST OF PARTNERS IN SEXUAL ACTIVITIES, & I have learned how to abbreviate a great deal & use abbreviations for names & types of activities, such as what kind of sexual activity it was, & I won't go into the details to give you the secrets of my coding here, lest you should happen to read my Diary someday, ha! But anyway I've got abbreviations for each kind of sexual activity, usually just little two or three-letter abbreviations of the word which shows what kind of sexual activity I had with that particular partner, including an abbreviation of her name, sometimes just her initial & exactly what we did, which is very interesting because I total it up at the end of the month.
151. I CAN TELL YOU EXACTLY HOW MANY TIMES I HAD SEX, for example, in the month of December, with whom & how many! Well, that was kind of a low month, because I only had sex 27 times with only three girls during the month of December, whereas sometimes the total has run up to as many as 15 or 16 different women & maybe 50-60 times a month!
152. I THINK THAT ALL-TIME HIGH WAS REACH ED WHEN WE WERE IN TENERIFE & had so many women around, so many FFers & girls we were training. After all, if I was going to train them I had to teach them, & the best way to learn is by experience, the clinical method, & so my clinic was my bed & the actual operations & mechanics of it all. They were each taught personally & by hand by me in person in my bed, God bless'm! It was lotsa love & lotsa fun! So a lot of those pioneers of FFing that we trained in Tenerife I trained personally myself in my own bed, thanks to dear Maria's generosity & patience, & of course being very busy herself in other beds with other men.
153. THEREFORE MY SEX SCORE LATELY HAS BEEN A BIT LOW regarding the number of women, confined primarily to our present local staff, & since we only have a few women on our staff, I can't go beyond a certain limit on the number that I have sex with each day or so, & I've slowed down a little bit on the number of times as well, so that it is not always daily anymore like it used to be. It used to be several times a day with several women, but I'm getting old now & the old grey stallion or stag ain't quite what he used to be!
154. (MARIA: NO, IT'S JUST THAT YOU'RE WORKING HARDER NOW & have to save your energy for your work.) Oh isn't that sweet & kind & generous & charitable of dear Maria to say, "No, no, Honey, it's only because you're working harder & you need more time & energy for your work." Well, that does have something to do with it, I must confess. Anyhow, be that as it may, so much for that. But I thought it might interest you how I keep my Diary & save on space etc. & just exactly how I do it in order to get all the data & information & stats in.
155. AS I SAY, I USE A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF ABBREVIATIONS, & normally if you tried to read my Diary it would be totally incomprehensible to you unless you were familiar with the abbreviations, & it would take anybody some time to learn all these abbreviations by studying the alphabet & all the dozens or scores of abbreviations under each letter.
156. MANY OF THESE I LEARNED IN LEARNING STENOTYPING, because stenotyping is printed English with alphabetical English letters, believe it or not, but in extremely abbreviated form, & so that course was very useful, even though I didn't continue my stenotyping as a stenographer or a secretary. I only used it a short time, & in fact, I finally got hard up financially & sold my machine!
157. NEVERTHELESS, THE ABBREVIATIONS HAVE STUCK WITH ME OVER THE YEARS & been a great help & benefit to me in speedwriting & English shorthand, without having to learn one of the other shorthand systems, which are like learning a whole new form of writing! In fact shorthand is learning a whole new form of writing, whether it be, what are the two kinds, Maria? (Maria: Gregg & ?) It begins with "P". (Maria: Oh, Pittman!) I can almost always remember the first letter of a name or a word, usually names. The words come to me, but names I have problems with. But it's strange, I must sort of photograph them & I remember the first letter, & if I get the first letter, Maria can almost always come up with the rest of the names! So there you are:
158. THE TWO MAIN ENGLISH & AMERICAN SYSTEM OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHORTHAND ARE GREGG & PITTMAN. But you have to learn a whole new kind of writing for those--it looks like Arabic! With stenotyping, it is machine recording by using all 10 fingers operating several keys at once, & you literally learn so many abbreviations you can print whole words & sometimes whole phrases with one stroke of all ten fingers or as many fingers as necessary! And by this I learned a lot of abbreviations.
159. SO YOU'LL FIND MY DIARY READS ABOUT LIKE STENOTYPING, which is considerably abbreviated & you may not be able to under stand it unless you know stenotyping or know my system of abbreviations, so it may be code to you, which is maybe just as well, if anybody ever decides to inspect my Diary who is not friendly! I usually keep it, of course, in a very safe place & locked up at night, normally in my fleebag, so in case I should have to quick run, I won't forget it & leave it behind! Once in awhile I've been a little careless & left it out, but that's the best place for it:
160. KEEP YOUR DIARY AT NIGHT IN YOUR FLEEBAG BESIDE YOUR BED! Keep it beside your chair or on your desk in the daytime when you're there, but I suggest that you lock it up, put it away when you're not actually at your desk or in your chair using it, so that someone unauthorised will not be tempt ed to pick it up & read it in case you have any classified or confidential security information listed therein, which you probably should have & do have. Well! So far we have at least gotten through breakfast! And we've also pretty well covered how I keep my Diary, I think that's almost sufficient. I can't think of anything else about the Diary
161. OH, I ALSO HAVE A RECORDING OF THE YEARS! In the new Diaries we have a page for the whole year, modelled after the way I do mine, with months listed in vertical columns & the various totals & stats & major events of the year, so that you can list everything important in the whole year on one little page, except perhaps your witnessing stats, which you may need to keep on another page.
162. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT WHEN YOU WANT TO QUICKLY LOOK BACK & REFER TO A DATE OR A TIME or a time space or something you need to look back at your Diary for & see exactly what was the day or the date regarding visas or your monthly periods or your pregnancy or all kinds of important reasons why you need to be able to recall dates or record dates in order to know exactly what the date was. That's very important, so be sure you keep accurate record of all important dates, periods, visas, events, etc. Well, that just about covers the Diary I think.
163. OH!--ALSO IN THE BACK OF MY DIARY I HAVE A LIST OF PUBS that we have completed & their progress chart of each one of these pubs as it proceeds to completion right on down to the date of our final receiving it in printed form! So that I have a list of everything we've ever published.--No, sorry, not from the beginning, although some of our stat men & researchers have dug out nearly all of it now for your information & it's probably going to be in this same book of the History of the Family. But I've got mine reaching all the way back at least to the beginning of 1980 with FN Mag 14, when I started keeping an accurate record of all of our pubs.
164. WELL, PRAISE THE LORD! PRAISE THE LORD! THERE GO THE LIGHTS! THE DEVIL IS REALLY MAD! Every time I start dictating or taping it seems like the Enemy really cuts loose, & we're having a real storm right now & it's really blowing, & apparently lightning has struck somewhere & our electricity has been cut off, which is something not at all uncommon. In the rural areas of some countries like Portugal, when it was constantly going out we almost got used to it & you immediately switch over to batteries, as I am now doing, & I trust you are still able to hear me, & let's hope these batteries are good enough to last a little while!
165. YOU HAVE TO BE SURE TO REMEMBER TO HAVE BATTERY LIGHTS READY if it occurs in darkness or during the night, & you should have tape recorders, radios & torches or flashlights that run on batteries. In fact, almost everything we have not only runs on electricity but also on batteries, either one or both, & therefore we're well-supplied with electronics that can function independently of the local electric system in case of an emergency, & when need be for portability as well, including our videos & everything. We even used to have a little television that ran on battery, but we haven't considered that important enough to have battery TVs anymore. If the electricity goes off while watching a video, we just go to sleep, because the only time we ever watch videos is at night when we're too tired to do anything else & we're in bed.
166. OK, LET'S SEE WHERE WAS MOSES WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?--The Diary! Did I finish? I got everything that is in my Diary, yes, I got the whole works. In fact, since it's my personal record & Diary of my life, I have glued in the Chronologue summary or condensation right in my Diary, so I can remember it clear back to the very first years, my birth, my childhood etc. as well, when I need to refer to it.--And I'll tell you, in writing this History Book we had to refer to it continuously & constantly to get our dates, times & events straight, & it has taken a lot of work!
167. I THINK WE HAVE WORKED HARDER ON THIS HISTORY BOOK THAN ANY OTHER PUBLICATION we ever worked on, because it was so highly technical & it had to be accurate according to events & years & dates & places & times & persons etc. So this is going to be one of the most accurate & one of the most valuable reference works that you have ever received, to know the exact history of us & your Family as a whole! Well, so much for the Diary. I don't think there's anything more I can tell you about it except that I keep all those records & stats & data & events, persons, places, everything in my little Diary.
168. LIGHTS ARE BACK ON! HALLELUJAH! THANK GOD! So here I'm going to plug in the juice again. OK, now we're back on electricity & I hope you can hear me just as well if not better. Well, praise the Lord! After breakfast & filling in the initial entries so far in my Diary for that day & its totals & stats etc. etc. I then usually lay my Diary beside me where it can be picked up with every change of events & work, & pick up the most urgent form of work.
WORK!
169. DEAR MARIA USUALLY CAREFULLY STACKS MY WORK FOR ME, if she can, in order of priority--at least she always lays right on top of the stack whatever she thinks is most important that I ought to do first. This morning I found lying on top of the stack of papers a list, a 1,2,3,4,5,6-page list of suggestions for "Dad's Day"|--All the various items that she & the Family here contributed as what they thought was important to include in this description of my day. Apparently they didn't want me to miss anything, because they've got it all here! They've got it here somewhere & if I miss anything this'll remind me.--Ha!
CHAIR!
170. OK, NEXT SHE WANTS TO GIVE YOU THE SETTING, THE PLACE WHERE I'M DOING ALL THIS WORK. Well, I'm one of those modern executives who no longer use a large ornate mahogany impressive executive status-symbol desk! But I have found that the best work place for me is a comfortable chair! Since most of my work is paperwork, reading, editing, proofreading, reading reports & business etc., it is largely sedentary, meaning you sit down to do it. So I have tried to find the most comfortable possible place to sit & the most comfortable kind of a chair or in which I can be the most at ease & take the greatest strain off my body so I can use most of my energy & electrical impulses for my eyes & my brain, along with a hand to do a little writing & one to hold my reading. So my place of work, next chapter.
171. SO I, LIKE MANY OTHER EXECUTIVES, HAVE FOUND THAT THE MOST COMFORTABLE WAY TO WORK IS AN EASY CHAIR in a fairly secluded private spot with good light coming over my shoulder--something in the nature of a lounge chair, whatever is available, contour couch, a chaise lounge, overstuffed chair, whatever. If it has a leg rest, all right--if it doesn't, use a footstool & make yourself at home & comfortable.
172. FOR MY WORK COUCH, I usually use some kind of a chaise lounge, reclining chair, contour couch or lounge chair for my work to be comfortable so I can partially recline while working. But I do like to take a break when one of our pretty little angels comes in due to some business with Maria or me & it is necessary for them to enter the Lion's Lair! The Lion usually is lyin' in his couch & takes advantage of the opportunity to take a nice long stretch. Have you ever seen a lion stretch? They really stretch & they yawn, & sometimes growl or roar.
173. WHEN ONE OF THOSE PRETTY GIRLS COMES IN I STRETCH & YAWN & BEGIN TO PURR, hold out my arms, & they know what that means! So they come closer & lie down on top of me, prostrating themselves before the King!--In fact on top of the King! We have a nice little affectionate squeeze & kissing session which often develops into something even more exciting! But I think a little love-break is a very necessary & very happy occasion, because all work & no play makes me a very dull boy! So I have to have a little play as I go along.
174. SO THE ONLY DESK THAT I NEED, AS OTHER EXECUTIVES HAVE DISCOVERED, AS I WAS READING IN THE PAPER THE OTHER DAY, IS A CLIPBOARD to hold the paper I am writing or working on, & a little chairside table to hold the various instruments with which I am working, such as pens, pencils, the intercom for contacting the office & kitchen & various parts of the house & workers, a few reference books, & a tiny little Bambi stapler .
175. I ALSO HAVE A BALLOON GLOBE OF THE WORLD HANGING ON A STRING FROM THE CEILING BESIDE MY CHAIR so that I can twirl it around to any position, or even keep it rotating like the world actually rotates on its axis, in order to find the various places I want to look at on the world map. This is one of those balloon globes that you blow up like a balloon, & therefore when deflated doesn't take much room in your luggage. I long ago discarded the bulky frame it used to stand on, as being too difficult to carry & pack. So when I got to the first place without the frame, I had a problem with what to do with the Globe, how to set it up.
176. I USED TO KEEP IT IN THE WASTEBASKET for awhile, on top of the wastebasket, but that sometimes got in the way or mistaken for trash or something. So I finally got a brilliant idea, as I was looking around the room trying to figure out someplace to set it so it would be handy for me to look at, I decided there was almost no place available on any of my table tops or anywhere that it wouldn't be knocked around or unavailable. So I finally got the bright idea of putting a little nail in the ceiling, very small, & hanging it on a string beside my chair!--That's one of my inventions!
177. I ALSO HAVE THE WALLS USUALLY COVERED WITH MAPS & FAMILY CALENDARS & POSTERS & THE CHILDREN'S ART! In fact our bedroom-&-office combo looks more like a museum & an art gallery than a bedroom & an office! But the children are always quite proud of our appreciation of their artwork by seeing it hanging on our walls. Of course they do so much of it that we're almost running out of space!
178. I'M ALWAYS TRYING TO IMPROVE THINGS, improve my work & work set-up & living facilities & accommodations, & particularly I'm always working on getting sufficient good light for our many hours of close paperwork & reading. And because I like efficiency, I like to keep everything in its place, with a place for everything & everything in its place. That was almost my father's religion & it's part of mine. Everything should be done in decency & in order & cleanliness is Godliness, so I like to keep things neat & clean & organised & everything where I know exactly where it's at & could even reach for it with my eyes shut or while I'm reading or in the dark!
179. I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE MY PEN & PENCILS ARE ON THE TABLE BESIDE ME. I don't even have to take my eyes off the page to pick up a pen or a pencil for correction. And all my other necessary office tools & instruments are right here handy, I keep'm right where I know they're available & where I could even find them in the dark! Incidentally I always keep a little flashlight right there within easy reach where I know exactly where it is, so if the lights should go out I could reach for it in the dark to turn on its light, & that's a very wise & important thing to remember!
180. ALWAYS KEEP A FLASHLIGHT OR TORCH OR SOME KIND OF BATTERY LIGHT HANDY WITHIN EASY REACH IN A KNOWN SPOT, so in case city electricity should fail & the lights in the house go out in the dark, it doesn't leave you in the dark, but you could reach quickly for a light. If you're too poor to afford a flashlight or a torch, at least you could have a box of matches & a candle within easy reach, so you don't have to get up & wander across the room & stumble over the furniture & break a leg trying to find a light!
181. I DON'T KNOW WHY SOME OF YOU GUYS HAVEN'T FOUND OUT THE VALUE OF STAPLERS as far superior to & less bulky & cheaper than paper clips! I have almost totally abandoned the use of paper clips as being too insecure & bulky & I use almost entirely one of those little Bambi or Bambini baby staplers, which I've found sufficient for almost everything that I need to staple together, including several papers at once or even sections of a Letter & changes etc.
182. SO THAT'S ABOUT IT! Oh yes, I've got a box of Kleenex & a bottle of cologne for washing my hands & freshening when I feel like I'm getting too coated with xerox electronic paper dust or whatever it is! I also have one of those little calling-card-size calculators that tells the time, the date & that I can use for calculating as well, & it also has a little beeper alarm on it when necessary. I also like to have my little weather station right here to tell what the temperature is, & the barometer reading, as well as the humidity of the air.
183. I REFUSE TO USE THAT WORD "CELSIUS" BECAUSE I'M SURE THE JEWS PICKED THAT ONE! He probably was a Jew or they wouldn't have picked it!--Just like they did Hertz for kilocycle! They changed it to kilohertz! They're trying to make everything Jewish, & I refuse to change! I still call them kilo cycles & centigrade, which I think is a lot more sensible & technically correct. Why bring in the names of people to try to make some Jew famous? They are trying to compete with Sir Isaac Watts who named the watt etc. Apparently they don't want any more Christians or Christian names of famous Christian men to get the credit for these technical terms! So I go right ahead & call it Centigrade, which is much more technically accurate, because it's divided into a hundred parts, "centi" meaning a hundred, & "grade" meaning in graduations of different degrees: 100 degrees!
184. FOR HUMIDITY, 50-70 IS CALLED NORMAL. Obviously in the North where they made these instruments, 50-70 is normal humidity. But humidity in the South normally runs about anywhere above that, usually somewhere around the 80s or even 90s! But it's very comfortable if you go naked! All you really need is a fan, just a simple little table fan that either blows on you or oscillates back & forth so you don't get too much at once or the overhead fans with which many homes are already equipped.
FAN!
185. IN WARM WEATHER, IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE TABLE FAN YOU CAN STICK IT IN THE WINDOW, if you have a window that has a good-sized window-ledge or window-sill on it, so that your fan is secure, & it will suck in the nice cool air from the outside at night & blow it across your bed or oscillate it about the room, so you don't get too much draft at low speed. Or in the heat of the afternoon from clear across the room you can turn it straight towards you & put it on high speed & it really keeps up a nice breeze to keep you cool.
186. EVEN IN HOT WEATHER, WE SELDOM EVER USE OUR AIR CONDITIONER, although most of the Homes we have found do have one or two. I always said that you didn't really need air conditioning in the Tropics, all you needed was a good fan, because where the air is humid & warm & you therefore perspire some, the surface of your skin being slightly damp, all you need is a very slight breeze on it to keep it cool, just like a cooler, the principle of those Arizona air coolers. By the process of evaporation, your skin is kept cool by a little breeze blowing on it. So we have seldom ever found the need of an air conditioner.
187. EXCEPT SOME OF YOU BOYS WHO WORK IN DARKROOM LABS, YOU PHOTOGRAPHERS NEED AIR CONDITIONING to keep you & your chemicals cool. You'll find you really need that, or you're apt to have washed-out photos & prints & films when developed in warm chemicals of degrees higher than 70 F. or 20 C. Better keep those chemicals cool, boys! When I was in the Tropics & doing my own developing & printing, there was no such thing as air conditioning & a fan didn't help that much--it certainly didn't keep your chemicals cool! So I simply used ice water out of the fridge in order to make my solutions & then use them as rapidly as possible before they warmed up to 70!
188. BUT FOR PERSONAL COOLING ALL YOU NEED IS A NICE FAN. You can even use a hand fan, some of these beautiful hand fans made by the natives in many countries & just fan yourself! When I was a boy before electric fans, on a hot Sunday it looked like the whole church was in motion! Because there was no air conditioning & no electric fans, but there were lady fans, & all the ladies were fanning themselves & their husbands, so the whole congregation looked like it was in perpetual rhythmic motion with these little hand fans! Praise the Lord! So anyhow, that's how we keep cool.
189. YES, & I ALWAYS HAVE A GLASS OF WATER BY MY CHAIR on my little table, because I constantly drink water all day long in the nice warm climate. In fact, even in the cold climates I drank water all the time because I've found it necessary for my health & I'm thirsty, so I drink it. It's normal to drink lots of liquid, lots of water, & it's good for you. That's one reason probably why I have remained in good health, thank the Lord! Well, aside from other little odds & ends, a pair of scissors, a nail-clipper & a few other things lying around here on my table, that's about it!
LAMPS!
190. NOW I'LL TALK ABOUT THE LAMPS AT NIGHT FOR WORKING. I do have a couple of neon lamps for when it gets too dark to read by natural daylight. I prefer to read by natural daylight, I think it's better for your eyes, & I have quite a rig here!--A scientific rig of reflective mirrors rigged up to catch the light from the window on both sides & focus it down on my work, believe it or not! It's not necessarily direct sunshine, but window light. It's always best of course to have a window, if possible, facing North, in the Northern Hemisphere, & South in the Southern Hemisphere so that you don't get direct sunlight, which can be somewhat blinding on a white sheet of paper!
191. BUT I HAVE MIRRORS SITUATED ON BOTH SIDES THAT CATCH THE LIGHT FROM THE WINDOW & focus it on my work! So that I get not only the window light but I get triple window light, like having three windows! I focus the light from these two mirrors so they reflect the window light on my paper. I also have discovered a way of focusing one on the ceiling for the sunlight when it's too bright, & that way I get a nice bright spot of sunlight on the ceiling which acts almost like a spotlight on my work! It's very very important that you have good light for your work, Beloved, those of you who do a lot of deskwork & reading etc.
MORE WORK!
192. LIKE MOST OFFICE PEOPLE'S DESKS, I ALSO HAVE ONE SPOT FOR INCOMING MATERIAL & ONE SPOT FOR OUTGOING MATERIAL. In offices they often have certain trays for this purpose, stackers, each one labeled as incoming or outgoing etc. OK, so I go to work & you have seen the results of most of my work, so I don't have to describe that to you! But it starts normally with a rough draft of a talk that I have given to the Family or the leadership or dictated already on tape, & I edit that to what I feel it should be & send it back for a first edited draft--what we call a "Semi Final", a corrected draft, & then that comes back to me & I check the corrections to make sure they have been made, & usually send it back for a few more corrections.
193. IT COMES BACK TO ME SOMETIMES SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE IT GETS REALLY READY FOR FINALISING, what we call "lay-out" or scrunch, because we put it on the printer & gear the computer to print it out in a certain special format, as you see in the FN Magazines & the GNs. So by the time you get one of those nice easy-to-read Letters, it has been gone over & read & corrected & proofread & recorrected several times, until we feel that it is just about as good as we can get! Of course nothing is ever really perfect, neither you nor me nor our work, but we do the best we can.
194. FRANKLY, IN COMPARISON TO SOME OF THE OTHER THINGS I'VE READ & OTHER PUBLICATIONS & NEWSPAPERS, I THINK WE HAVE GREATER ACCURACY & neatness & continuity & make more sense than most of them, with almost no typographicals! Because by the time we feel the material is ready for mock-up, in other words to mock up an actual copy of the completed publication, we have a number of copies made by our office & we give a copy to each couple of each bedroom, so that they can each have at least one copy avail able to read, & everybody is supposed to read them within a certain length of time, & they have a deadline by which they must hand in their suggested corrections & revisions or comments etc. So that by the time the pub actually goes to press, there are lots of people that have read that copy as well as me & Maria! Therefore if we don't catch it, they do, & if they don't catch it then they catch it from me, ha ha! So that I think you'll find the typographical errors & mistakes in the text are rather rare!--Amen?
195. I ALSO PERSONALLY SEE TO THE ART, its content & appearance & illustrativity, so that it is usually designed by me personally, often even sketched roughly by me, to help the artist to sketch what I feel it should be, & then I make corrections & revisions & modifications & adjustments until I get it just about where I think it should be, just how I like it, how I want it, so that the picture says what we think it ought to say to most vividly illustrate the central & principal thought or thoughts of the Letter, until it is finalised & I give them an OK to roll! It goes then along with the Letter to press for the next edition.
196. SO THERE ARE A LOT OF STEPS TO THE FINAL STEPS & FINAL PRINTING & MAILING TO YOU. But, as I say there are many slips 'twixt cup & lip--there are many steps twixt, in this case, my lip & your cup!--Till it's all finished & ready for you to read, praise the Lord!--To feed you, nourish you, inspire you, encourage you, instruct you, inform you, advise you, counsel you, warn you & whatever it may be, praise the Lord! So that's my work all day long, usually from morning till night!
197. ONE OF THE MAJOR PARTS OF MY DAILY WORK IS TO ANSWER THE MANY NOTES & REPORTS which I receive from various staff members & others, & I always answer them right away daily on their own note or their report regarding each item that they mention, so that they know I really read it, as they see my answer right there, right on their own note! Then I mark their name at the top to show it's to go back to them, & they get it back shortly with my answers & words of love & thanks etc. PTL! And I understand a lot of them keep them as souvenirs, having my own handwriting on them & my own little greetings & words of love & thanks. PTL! I usually say, at the very least, besides answers & all: "Tx! GBY! PTL! ILY!--D." & the date. PTL!
198. WE LONG AGO ESTABLISHED A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM CALLED PAPER POWER here & everywhere we have lived, & that is, that staff members, unless it's a real emergency, do not knock on the door & disturb us or interrupt our work unless it's truly some emergency that needs immediate attention. So when we have a knock on the door we know it's important! Normally they just write a little note, shove it under the door & we keep one eye on the door frequently so that we'll see if there's any new message. This way we get the message, write a little answer on it, & we slip it back under the door for them to pick up, or throw it out side the door.
199. THIS WAY WE AVOID A LOT OF UNNECESSARY CONVERSATION, interruptions & distractions from our work, which sometimes requires a great deal of prayer & concentration without interruption. This system has worked very very well, passing the notes back & forth under the door, so that they do not have to intrude on our privacy & our study & our work, & we don't have to get involved in unnecessary conversations & interruptions & personal confrontations & whatnot!
200. I STARTED THIS 'WAY BACK IN LONDON in the little house in Downham with Brother Ho, who was constantly eager to come in & have a conference with me about this or that. So I finally just told him, as you recall, I just couldn't talk to him all day! Whenever I let him in it was hard to get him out, & we got into all kinds of discussions & conferences & visitations & whatnot, many of which were not absolutely essential & a waste of time. But once someone is in your room like that, it's a little hard to get rid of them politely.
201. SO I FINALLY SAID, "WELL HO, I'M JUST SO BUSY, PLEASE AFTER THIS IF YOU'LL JUST SLIP A LITTLE NOTE UNDER THE DOOR; I will give it my attention, I promise you, & that'll give me the time to pray about it for an answer, & I'll write it on the note & shove it back to you." So that became our standard means of communication between us & the rest of the house, staff etc. for the normal run of the day's business, unless it's a real emergency & they have to contact us immediately about something, a phone call or somebody at the gate or whatever, then they knock & we give them an immediate reply.
202. I REQUEST A DAILY NOTE FROM THE CHILDREN'S NURSES & CARETAKERS & TEACHERS ON THEIR DAILY PROGRESS, what they've eaten, how much they slept, what they had for breakfast & lunch, & what they studied that day. So I get a small note, about a fourth of a typing page, handwritten usually with the date, & signed by whoever it is, telling me about the kids' activities for the day.
203. OFTEN-TIMES THEY HAVE CUTE LITTLE QUOTES that different ones have said about this or that, which I get a real bang out of, a real good chuckle! Because our cute kids say some real funny things & some very wise things--it's amazing! So I get their little daily report from each of the child care workers or their chief nannies on their progress & their sleep & food & schoolwork etc. to keep check on them. So I know how they're getting along, even if I don't have much time to spend with them. PTL! (See "No More Tears!"--No. .)
204. I NOT ONLY SEND NOTES TO THE STAFF FOR VARIOUS THINGS, BUT I FREQUENTLY SEND LITTLE NOTES TO THE CHILDREN, & if I have extra pictures or covers or artwork which we're working on & I have a spare that we've finished with, because our art usually goes through several different stages before it's complete, & I receive several different xeroxes for approval, the ones that we're through with, I pass these on to the children to colour & they appreciate this. I write them little notes on them, little love notes.
205. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO READ, LIKE DAVID, when we get through with the test articles & proof articles etc. which we have finished with, first copies, work copies, I write a little note on it to him & pass it on to him, letting him know he is one of the first to receive that particular Letter, & he seems to appreciate the recognition & honour of that special privilege & he likes to read the Letters. Yes, & when we get the new edition of GNs or whatever, or even a new mock-up, we get enough final mock-ups for each couple in the Family to have a mock-up to read before we give it its final OK, in case they find any needed corrections etc. as I've said before. I always have David come to be the newsboy to pass these out.
SWIM!
206. GET OUT IN THE FRESH AIR & SUNSHINE DAILY, EVEN IF IT'S ONLY CLOUDSHINE! Out doors you get a little of the good ol' ultraviolet rays & vitamin C's & D's just being outdoors in the fresh air. Even if it's a little cloudy, some of that sunshine gets through. And I try to make sure everybody, including the children, do the same. We all need a little get out time, exercise, recreation & happy, playful, just plain fun in the beautiful creation of God in the garden of God outside where we can get lots of good exercise & fresh air & sunshine to refresh us!
207. I ALWAYS TRY TO REMIND THE NURSES & CHILDCARE WORKERS WHEN IT'S TIME TO TAKE THE KIDS FOR A SWIM. Particularly I'm conscious of the sunshine hours & that they must get out there while the sun's still shining, & before any clouds come. So they've got to get out there & "make swim while the sun shines"!
208. OF COURSE, LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I HAVE TO TAKE A BREAK SOONER OR LATER & after I get hot enough & sometimes perspiring enough & hot enough under the collar, only I don't wear any collars, I usually feel like taking a dip or a real vigorous swim, that's our "get out" & primary form of exercise here. It's what I always dreamed of, to have a pool to swim in in a warm climate, & this is what we had in Tenerife,a small pool, & this is what we have here also. In fact, I don't like to even live in a house in warm weather without swimming at least close by, either beach or a pool or a lake or something!
209. SO USUALLY ABOUT ONE OR TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON I'M READY FOR A BREAK & I'm tired of settin' & sweatin' & scratchin' & itchin' & writhing in my chair. I shouldn't say torture chamber, but I squirm & writhe all the time I'm working, which is good for you, to keep your muscles pliant & limber & to keep your circulation going & your organs well-supplied with blood, especially my brain, until finally I've had enough & I just plain quit!
210. COME ONE OR TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTER NOON, & I'M READY FOR A SWIM! And we go out, usually Maria & I together, & we're ready for a good vigorous swim in our nice warm pool, something I always dreamed of, a nice warm pool! In some places it's not difficult to have a warm pool because of all the warm climate & warm sunshine & warm air to warm it & keep it warm. I normally spend anywhere from half an hour to 45 minutes, even often an hour, in the pool swimming vigorously from end-to-end while conferring at the same time with some leadership, having a pool conference while we swim, not wasting time. There's time for a talk even while we're exercising.
211. MY USUAL CUSTOM TO OCCUPY THAT HALF-HOUR OR SO IS TO SWIM AT LEAST 20 LAPS from one end of the pool to the other & back, that's 20 round trips in the water! I usually swim the length of the pool under water one way, & then I swim the length of it on my back resting & gasping for air the other way on the surface. This gives me lots of good exercise. I love to swim under water, it's like flying & you're weightless, there's no sense of gravitation there because you're buoyant & supported by the water. It's the most comfortable exercise in the World & the most relaxing & yet at the same time the most invigorating!
212. SO SWIMMING IS TO ME THE WORLD'S GREATEST SPORT, my favourite sport & exercise, & therefore I really love to swim & always have ever since I was a child. I used to swim in the ocean at Miami Beach for miles! It's excellent exercise, very good for your body, good for your cleanliness, salt water is good for any sores you may have, any rash or almost anything. It's almost good for everything that ails you. It also washes out your eyes if you swim underwater with your eyes open. Salt water is actually easier on your eyes than fresh- water swimming, if you swim underwater with your eyes open, which is good policy, considering that you might run into all kinds of things underwater in the ocean! In a pool you need to open your eyes once in awhile too.
213. SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO WEAR FACE MASKS, GOGGLES, EVEN SNORKELS, BUT I HATE TO BE ENCUMBERED WITH ALL OF THAT PARAPHERNALIA! It's just a nuisance & I don't feel as free, when I'm swimming even without a bathing suit, nude, completely nude, which is the way we usually swim. You feel so free, free as a bird! You can feel just like you're flying & it's just thrilling, exciting, invigorating as well as sexy! We often have some sexual encounters in the pool as well! We get started with just a little affection & get a little worked up & worked down & worked in & worked out, in & out till we explode! So that we really enjoy our pool. Thank You, Lord, for a house with a pool!
214. SOME OF YOU COMBINED HOMES SHOULD PRAY & ASK THE LORD TO HELP YOU FIND A HOUSE WITH A POOL which would be a blessing to your whole Family! It's the one good clean place you can be sure of being clean to swim in for you & your children & workers & helpers. I'll tell you, that's one thing we do--we really keep it clean! Our boys are out there every day, every time they want to get out & get a little fresh air & sunshine, whoever it may be, they pick up the skimmer & they go around sweeping the pool water & picking up the leaves & debris that are always landing on the surface from the breezes & the wind & the trees, & also vacuuming the material that escapes the skimmer & settles to the bottom.
215. WE ALSO KEEP THE FILTER GOING ABOUT 16 HOURS A DAY, all day long. We only turn it off about eight hours of sleep at night to give it a rest. This filters the water as well as skims it through the little skimmer hole at the edge of the surface. It does a lot of skimming itself, as well as pumping all the water through the filter constantly all day long, so that we really keep it clean, as well as vacuuming from the bottom the debris that does escape the skimmers, the hand-skimmer & the pump skimmer, the filter.
216. THEN THERE'S ALL THE CHEMICALING THAT WE DO, because it is very necessary to chemical your pool properly in order to assure its sanitary condition & to keep the water clean & pure & even clear & crystal blue & beautiful! Our pool looks like a beautiful crystal clear blue lake, small lake of course, very small, but beautiful & clear. If you wear goggles or a face mask & swim slowly along on the surface with your face down looking at the bottom you can see it as clear as can be, beautifully clear & clean, because we keep chemicals in there constantly that keep it not only clear & clean but also antiseptic, pure & sanitary.
217. WE ADD CHLORINE EVERY TWO OR THREE DAYS, the proper amount of chlorine for the volume of our pool. You must figure out the volume, the actual volume of the water in your pool, & then you can find out either from a pool man or from your own figuring, if you're following instructions on the can or the bottle or whatever it is, exactly how much you need to properly chlorinate your pool so the water is clean enough to drink! This was the standard which the head Inspector of Pools in Tenerife originally taught me. He said, "We keep chemicals in these pools to keep the water clean enough to drink, because people often get it in their mouths & little children swallow it, so it's got to literally be sanitary enough & clean enough to drink it if you have to!" And who knows, you may have to drink it one of these days in an emergency!
218. SO IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE A POOL ALSO FOR A SPECIAL EMERGENCY TANK OF WATER! It's a comforting feeling to know that that tank of water is out there in the yard to use in case we run out of water & they can't even pump water to us anymore! So it's comforting to know we've got lots of water out there to drink if we have to, & even clean enough to drink already, or boil it. Water is your most vital & important necessary utility, a real necessity primarily for drinking, but also for washing yourselves, baths, & then finally washing dishes & clothes & eventually for flushing your toilets etc.
219. IF YOUR WATER IS EVER CUT OFF, INSTRUCT EVERYBODY TO TURN OFF THEIR TOILETS, to turn off the water inlet valve, usually a little handle down on the pipes coming out of the wall into your toilet tank, a little valve that feeds water to your toilet for flushing. You need to turn that off immediately, because the toilets use more water than almost any other vessels in the house, & can quickly use up your emergency water if you don't turn off the toilets. Even if you know you shouldn't flush the toilet during such an emergency, you're too apt to forget, it's very easy to forget that there is such an emergency, & you have such a habit of flushing the toilet after using it that you're apt to go ahead & flush it & then suddenly catch yourself & realise it's too late to stop it, the water is gone & you've used up a whole toiletful of water!
220. BECAUSE IN AN EXTREME EMERGENCY YOU COULD EVEN USE THAT WATER THAT IS IN THE TOILET TANK, BEFORE IT'S GONE INTO THE TOILET, FOR DRINKING WATER IF YOU HAD TO! And you certainly don't want to waste the toilet water or flush the toilet until it is an absolute necessity, until your toilet is really full of wastes sufficient to make it absolutely necessary to flush it! If you have cut off the toilet water during the emergency in time, you have still got at least one tank of water with which to flush it, & normally that's sufficient to survive a water-shortage emergency of a few hours.
221. OF COURSE IF YOUR WATER GOES OFF FOR TWO OR THREE DAYS, THEN THAT'S A DIFFERENT STORY! You may not be able to flush your toilets so much, & you may have to save your waste water from the washing of faces & hands & bodies in buckets, as we used to do out camping, & use that water for flushing your toilet! But anyway, it's very wise in most of these countries to have a special water storage emergency tank, in fact in any country I would advise it, even the most civilised mechanised countries of the North, where in times of emergency you're apt to lose both your electricity & your water, in war or whatever, & you're apt to need emergency water for drinking, if nothing else.
222. TO HAVE A GOOD-SIZED EMERGENCY TANK OF WATER AVAILABLE IS VERY COMFORTING TO KNOW! It is better to have it & not need it, than need it & not have it, so praise the Lord! We also keep in each bathroom a glass or two of water full for drinking, for immediate consumption in case the water goes off even temporarily. Also always keep the bathroom wash bowl & sinks at least half filled or so, so that there will always be water available for drinking & washing your hands, & if you have a bathtub, keep it full! Since we swim daily, sometimes two or three times a day, we seldom ever have to take a bath or shower.
223. SO THEREFORE WE'RE FAIRLY CERTAIN WE'VE GOT QUITE A BIT OF WATER ON HAND IN SUCH AN EMERGENCY, even if there were a national emergency & the water were cut off for say a week or two, perhaps even a month, we could survive without city water on our own, between our own house system, our wash bowls & swimming pool. PTL! We also keep a number of emergency jugs of water sitting around. Every bathroom has at least one or two big ten-litre emergency jugs of drinking water, that's a couple gallons of water for such emergencies. In case even all the other water runs out, we've still got some emergency water in those jugs, in the washbowls & even in the toilet tanks, as well as the pool outside.
224. WELL, WE WERE ON POOLS & POOL WATER! I was astounded to hear the Inspector of Public Pools & hotel pools in Tenerife when he said, "We chemical these pools so that you never have to change the water! If you keep it well-filtered, skimmed, vacuumed, clean & properly chemicaled you'll never or seldom ever have to change the water! I've got some pools here that have had the same water in for seven years, believe it or not! We usually keep the same water in at least three or four years! The only reason we have to change it or drain it then, is in order to service the pool, because they usually have to paint the bottom & the walls of the pools about once every three or four years for both waterproofing & preservation maintenance. So they only drain their pools about every three or four years for painting & service & any necessary repairs etc."
225. SO IF YOU KEEP YOUR POOL PROPERLY CHEMICALED IT WILL ALWAYS BE NICE & FRESH & CLEAN & BEAUTIFUL & CLEAR, CRYSTAL BLUE & without trash & dirt & bugs & germs etc. Because if you add the proper amount of chlorine each day or so, it kills all germs. The liquid form of chlorine of course is the best & easiest to use & more readily dissolves & mixes more quickly. In many countries you can only get the crystal form or powdered form, & that takes a little more stirring of the pool with the skimmer or a paddle or a shovel or whatever, just to keep the pool water stirred to dissolve & mix the chemicals. Give it ten hours before swimming!
226. BUT IF NECESSARY, YOU CAN EVEN CHEMICAL YOUR POOL, IF YOU HAVE A SMALL ONE, WITH CHLOROX! On these bottles of Chlorox it tells you right on the bottle exactly how much to use in relation to the capacity of the water in your pool. This is what I used to do & use for my little tiny pool behind the church I built in Arizona. It was only nine-feet-long & about five-feet-wide & four-feet-deep. I would use about one-half gallon, I think it was, those half-gallon bottles of Chlorox bleach, I'd pour in about one every other day, because we had a lot of people swimming in it, the kids from the neighbourhood etc., so it had to be clean.
227. THAT'S WHERE I FIRST LEARNED THAT YOU ALSO NEED TO ADD SOME COPPER SULPHATE, just a little handful of that bluish-white copper sulphate powder to the water, usually at least once a week, to kill & deter the algae, & it also turns the water a beautiful crystal clear blue & just clears the water almost like magic! When you throw in that handful into the middle of your pool it dissolves very quickly & beautifully! Most places you can only buy it in rock-crystal form, & you have to grind it up in a mortar with a pestle like some people grind grain, & you have to grind it to a fine powder & then take a handful & throw it in the pool about once a week, & it keeps the water beautifully crystal clear & free of algae.
228. OF COURSE YOU ALSO HAVE TO ADD WHAT THEY CALL "ACID", SPECIAL POOL ACID, TO THE POOL ABOUT ONCE A WEEK. But the chlorine, in very hot climates where there is a great deal of evaporation & sunshine, you might have to add some every day. In cooler weather you may only have to add it a couple times a week. We have found that in the cooler part of the year we only need to add it about twice a week, every three or four days. We keep check on it by a little special pool chemical checker which shows the different colours that the water should turn these chemicals when added to the pool water, what colour it should be, & this way you can tell exactly how much you need or don't need & whether it has sufficient chemical or not, sufficient chlorine & acid etc. WARNING!: THESE ARE ALL POISONS!
229. THESE CHEMICALS COST A LITTLE MONEY BUT THEY'RE CERTAINLY WORTH IT to keep your pool absolutely clean, free of harmful bacteria & algae & various types of animal & plant life that can be dirty if not actually injurious & disease-causing! So we keep a real clean pool, very clean & very sanitary, because I love to swim & dive under water & swim with my eyes open & frequently get water in my mouth & ears & eyes, & you'd better have mighty clean pool water to swim in if that's the way you swim!
230. NOW OUT IN GOD'S NATURAL OCEAN where it's not polluted by man, God has His own balance & re-cycling system, so that He keeps His water pretty clean. What is floating around in it is not usually harmful unless it's caused by man & his awful offals! Only, there you sometimes have to watch out for the animal life the fish & the sharks & the barracudas & the octopi & man-of-war jellyfish & quite a few types of poisonous stingrays & electric eels & all kinds of other kinds of dangerous creatures that can live in natural ocean water!
231. I'VE FOUND IN MOST FRESH WATER LAKES THAT THEY ALSO HAVE A LOT OF SNAKES in some lakes. Snakes seem to go with lakes as well as rhyming with lakes, & you've got to watch out for them: Water moccasins, Copperheads & whatnot, all kinds of snakes that swim, & whose bites are venomous & poisonous & can make you pretty sick if not fatal! So watch out for your swimming, make sure the water is not dangerous & the surf, if it's ocean, not dangerous. Watch out for bottoms where there's either debris & broken glass, bottles, cans & horrible pollution of so-called civilisation! Or even out in more natural places away from man's pollution you may find sharp rocks & pitholes & coral rock & whatnot on the bottom, which can also be injurious & dangerous as well as the sea creatures & other kinds of animal life!
232. SO FRANKLY, A POOL CAN BE THE SAFEST CLEANEST MEDIUM IN WHICH TO SWIM, & we keep ours that way, so praise the Lord! And I swim usually at least 20 laps, round-trip laps from one end of the pool to the other & back, in my half-an-hour of daily swimming, & that keeps me pretty well in shape even if I don't have opportunity to have other exercise, such as the long walks which we normally used to take in the North where it was much cooler & more pleasant to walk. But you will find that in the hot humid scorching sun of the southern climes you may not be quite as inclined to take long walks during most of the year as you will be to swim long swims!
233. SO THE SWIMMING HAS KEPT UP OUR EXERCISE & "get out" & health in the South as well as occasional walks we take either around the neighbourhood or town etc. But we have found that swimming daily, regularly, strenuously & vigorously, I mean really swimming from one end of the pool & back, this really keeps up our strength & our health, vital circulation, flushing out our lungs with fresh air & getting our touch of sunshine that we need etc. So that is our get out & our exercise & the swimming we do virtually every afternoon.
234. OH YES! DEAR MARIA REMINDS ME that in warm weather since I only wear this little pair of trunks every day all day long, that usually I enter the side of the pool which happens to be in view of the neighbours with my trunks on, & then I swim around for awhile with them on until they're thoroughly washed, take them off on the side of the pool that's out of sight of the neighbours, wring them out, hang them on a little line that we have there in the sun, & continue to swim on the unviewed side of the pool, the private side of the pool, so that we won't shock the neighbours or offend them or have any problems along that line.
235. KEEP OUT OF SIGHT IF YOU SKINNY DIP OR SWIM NUDE, which we love to do & which we have made possible by putting up a screen. You can buy in some places very light material already fastened in large rolls a couple metres high, & you can stretch that across one side of your yard or pool to shield your pool from the neighbours' view.
236. IF WE STAY ON THAT SCREENED SIDE OF THE POOL WE'RE PERFECTLY SAFE FROM VIEW & can enjoy our freedom of complete nudity just the way God made us & intended for us to enjoy life free of all these encumbrances of clothing & shoes etc. Well, as Maria is just pointing out, since I wash my panties out in the pool each day as I swim & then hang them up to dry, by the time I get out, if it's sunny they're already dry & I can dry myself off & slip back into them & walk back in & I wouldn't even have to change them at all!--I could wear the same pair of panties every day all day & day in & day out, because they get washed daily that way. But some days it's cold & a little cloudy & they don't get dried out, so just for safety's sake I usually walk in with the same ones on, get a change in the bathroom & then I hang them up to complete their drying & change to another pair that are already hanging in there & already dried out, so I alternate shorts each day. I just wear one pair one day & the other pair the next day, wash each pair out as I swim each day. And so that creates an absolute minimum of clothing & washing, & since I wear no shirts or tops or shoes or socks or anything else at all, I have virtually no washing at all to do!
237. NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD!--JUST LIKE ADAM & EVE IN THE GARDEN, & just think, they didn't have to wash clothes at all! They didn't have to cook either because they could just pick their food off the trees, & they didn't have to wash dishes, didn't need dishes & didn't need clothes, didn't need to cook, didn't need to wash or iron or mend or anything, God made a perfect environment for them to live in with the least possible work & trouble until they did get in trouble, got themselves in trouble. Then He had to take them out & put them some place where they'd have to work hard to keep them out of mischief!
238. IN THE NATURAL PARADISIACAL ENVIRONMENT OF HEAVEN ON EARTH, such as was the Garden of Eden & some Southern countries, you can live like the natives & Adam & Eve & run around either completely naked or with almost no clothes on at all much of the year, day & night, & what little you might have to wear you can wash at the same time you're swimming! So, much of the time you don't have much washing except when you go to town. Let me tell you, after going to town in some of these filthy cities of the poor South, you come home, you take off all your clothing & put it all immediately in the wash, & you immediately go take a swim or shower to take off all the dirt & the filth & disease of the city!
239. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP CLEAN IN SOUTHERN WARMER COUNTRIES! The germs like the warmth too & they thrive on it, so you've got to keep free of them & clean. (Maria: How do you dry off?) Oh yes, well when I get out of the pool of course, in case you don't know how to do it to save your towel so it won't get too wet, you should always wipe the water off of your body, wipe your hair back real tight & squeeze all the water out of it from front to back till you can feel it running down your back, & wipe off your face & your arms & your chest & your back & your legs, "squeegy" the water off with your hands so that all the excess water & drops of water are all wiped off, & then you can easily wipe off the remainder with your towel.
240. I JUST KEEP A TOWEL HANGING OUT ON A LITTLE LINE BY THE POOL, & the sun & the air & even the rain keeps it clean all the time, because it gets washed by the rain & purified by the sun & cleaned by the air & it's just as fresh as though somebody had washed it every day! I can use the same towel actually for weeks just hanging out there in the sun & the air by the pool! Once in awhile if there is a little too much dirt that settles on it, I have to bring it in & have it washed, but otherwise that's it! That's all the clothes I wear & all I have to wash, except as I say for trips when you have to wear shoes & socks & underclothes & upperclothes & jackets & everything to protect you from filth & disease of the festering sore of the city. Otherwise I have virtually no washing at all. Also my meals are, as you can see, very meager.
241. OH BY THE WAY, AFTER WIPING OFF WITH A TOWEL, IF IT'S SUNNY WE LIKE TO LIE DOWN FOR JUST A FEW MINUTES IN THE SUN, bake on one side a moment & turn & brown on the other side--actually not usually more than about five minutes on each side, that's about all we can stand in this hot sun! Then you'll feel your skin begin to burn, & that's it! Maybe in the North where the sun's rays are very slanting & the heat is much less you can take it, but I'll tell you, in these warm Southern countries when the sun is bright & more directly overhead, you can burn in a few moments!--I mean really feel it! When your skin begins to feel so hot that it actually hurts, you'd better get out of the sun--in fact it may be too late then!
242. ANYHOW WE'VE FOUND THAT 3-5 MINUTES ON EACH SIDE IS PLENTY FOR A GOOD LITTLE SUNNING & DRYING out & absorbing a little Vitamin D & C & the violet rays, or whatever it is that you need. Then I don my shorts again & run back in. Of course, if you can't find a house reasonable enough with a little pool of some kind, try something else. In one place in Miami we used to use our fish pond! We just cleaned out all the junk & the fish & kept the fish pond for a pool! At least you could sit down in the water & the kids could play in the water.
243. OR YOU CAN BUY THESE LITTLE CHILDREN'S PLASTIC POOLS & they're very effective, filled with your garden hose, & they're so small you don't even have to chemical or anything, you just dump out the dirty water & refill it next time you use it! (Maria: Or drain it.) Yes, if you've got any kind of container or old wash tub. At TSC when I first went there I was a little leery of swimming in these so-called tanks which were ponds, just open ponds in the mud, so we bought a large galvanised metal tub to swim in or to bathe in & the kids used to play & slosh around in it when it was hot, & they also got washed off at the same time. You couldn't exactly swim in it, but later on we swam right in the pond.
244. OF COURSE, IF YOU CAN FIND SOME KIND OF BODY OF WATER SUFFICIENT TO BE ABLE TO SWIM IN, IT'S ALSO NOT ONLY CLEANSING BUT GOOD EXERCISE. But if you haven't got any thing that big, don't despair, it's not the end of the world or the end of your pleasure of cooling off & washing off! We used to just use our bathtub in one of the tropical countries we were in. We were not close enough to any body of water or ocean & had no pool, so every time we got hot during the day we'd just keep the bathtub full of water & we'd take a dip & cool off & come out refreshed! We couldn't get much exercise at it, we had to get our exercise in bed, ha! Of course if you don't have a tub, just use your shower, but even some showers are built in such a way that you can fill up the bottom of the shower & the kids can sit in it & play around in it.
245. WHEN WE WERE KIDS IN FLORIDA, WE LOVED TO RUN THROUGH THE YARD SPRINKLER when it was hot! It was fun, good exercise & refreshing, but got us more muddy & sandy than clean! Or you can buy one of these little plastic pools, children's pools, & they even have some larger adult pools that if you know how to construct one & put it together with a do-it-yourself kit, are actually big enough to swim in! They're at least waist-deep, & in waist-deep water you can swim around quite a bit & at least cool off & wash off & enjoy it. But I'll tell you, water is essential, & some type of body of water to swim in & wash in & cool off in is virtually vital to enjoying living in the South. I guess that's why the Lord put so much water in the Southern climes! Most of'm are islands surrounded by water! PTL!
POOL HEATERS!
246. AH, THE POOL HEATERS! NOW THERE IS AN INVENTION!--When it begins to be a bit cool during the Summer months, or it might be the Winter months, depending on which part of the tropics you're in & where you're at. But frankly, I always did like warm water for bathing or swimming. That's why I always enjoyed the ocean in Miami, it was usually about air temperature & very comfortable to swim in, even for hours without being cold or chilled. So when I found our pool water was beginning to cool off, I saw we had to do something about it.
247. I LIKE OUR POOL TEMPERATURE 30 DEGREES CENTIGRADE TO BE TRULY COMFORTABLE! You say, "My goodness, that's bath-water temperature!" Well, that's the way I like it & that's the way we enjoy it, & you can really feel comfortable, especially swimming nude, & it really encourages much more love in the pool & you can be more comfortable making love or being affectionate or enjoying the beauties of God's creation in the pool in that nice warm water!
248. BUT I'LL TELL YOU, WHEN THE WATER BEGAN GOING DOWN, DOWN, DOWN TO 25 C. IT BEGAN TO FEEL COLD TO US! Now 30 C. is about 85 F., & 25 C. is somewhere around 75 F., & to us that's cold! I even like to have a room heated to at least 72 degrees to be comfortable, & that's the way Maria & I almost always like it.--We even think 30 C. is comfortable naked! So we like our water not much cooler than our room air, so I was determined there had to be some way we could heat that water in the pool! I've been in homes before which had heated pools.
249. NOW IN TENERIFE WE HAD a furnace system with a big oil furnace in the basement of our garage room that we lived in upstairs, with the furnace room just below us, which was nice in cold weather because with the furnace going, which heated the hot water for the house--it was for that purpose almost entirely--it kept us nice & snug & warm upstairs most of the time, without any additional heat, or much.
250. BUT IT WAS ALSO SUPPOSED TO HEAT THE POOL WATER by pumping hot water out to a subterranean chamber beside the pool, the filter-motor chamber, where it passed through what was called a heat-exchanger, which simply meant a pipe, a hot water pipe from the furnace passed through a thing which looked like an automobile muffler, with the hot water pipe, the small water pipe looking like a tail pipe passing through the muffler, & the pool filter pump pumped the pool water into the chamber around this hot water pipe constantly, pool water flowing through there over the hot water pipe. The whole thing was not more than about half a meter long, a foot-&-a-half long, & maybe six, well, eight inches in diameter, so there wasn't very much hot-water pipe to heat very much pool water! Therefore as a result, our pool never did get very warm! In fact, with the furnace going full blast most of the time in the Winter, it still was too cold!
251. SO I THOUGHT WHEN I GOT HERE & OUR WATER BEGAN TO GET PRETTY CHILLY, NOW THERE MUST BE SOME BETTER WAY TO HEAT WATER IN THE POOL directly without all that waste of having it pumped clear to the pool by a hot water furnace system & all that expensive contraption, & it would have been ridiculously & phenomenally expensive to install such a system in houses where we are only temporarily residents & renters with often short stays & short Winters. So what in the world could we do or use to heat our pool water?
252. WELL! AS I THOUGHT & PRAYED ABOUT IT, I USUALLY GET PICTURES of ideas of what to do, so it must be from the Lord or some of His helpers or angels! I just see a picture of it as clear as anything! I got a picture of one of those big electric heating coils that they use for heating water in cooking pots! They stick the heating coil into the pot, hang it on the side of the pot, & they can boil water very quickly without a waste of heat, with no open fire necessary!
253. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT IN HOT COUNTRIES WHERE YOU DON'T WANT THE KITCHEN HEATED UP to a sweat box, suffocatingly hot when you've open fires going, & therefore these coil heaters are very efficient. All the heat goes into the liquid you are heating & very little escapes, & you may want to try that just for your ordinary cooking & your hot water heating in your kitchen, for which these heating coils are designed.
254. YOU KNOW, THEY'RE LIKE THOSE SAME LITTLE TINY HEATING COILS THAT YOU STICK IN YOUR COFFEE CUP TO HEAT YOUR MORNING COFFEE. If there is no other heat handy or avail able, you can even heat your coffee in your room that way! I used to do that in the cold countries all the time, if there wasn't enough hot water in the faucet or it wasn't handy, especially out in a trailer you don't have a hot water system usually, & you have to heat your own water. So I used to just stick the little heating coil in the cup, plug her in, & in just about a couple of minutes the coffee was piping hot!
255. OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL YOU DON'T STICK THOSE HEATING COILS INTO ANY TYPE OF MILK fluid or a food which will cake & harden & cook & literally bake on the outside of the coil to the point that you cannot get it off or wash it! You have to either scrape it off with a knife or almost file it off, some of those hard sediments & some mineral-type of sediments that just almost weld to the coil! So they are better suited for just either heating water or coffee without milk, liquids not containing any type of food which will stick to the coil & bake on the coil so that it is impossible to even wash it off or get it off afterwards or even scrape it off!--More watery liquids & very water-soluble materials such as your coffee or powdered coffee, instant coffee. You can have that instant coffee already in the water & still heat it up with your coil without necessarily dirtying up the coil, & easily rinse it off afterwards.
256. ALWAYS BE SURE THAT YOU IMMERSE THE COIL IN THE COFFEE OR COFFEE WATER OR TEA WATER BEFORE YOU TURN IT ON, otherwise we've had a few sad experiences in the past where someone turned it on but forgot to put it in the water soon enough, & it soon turns bright red & then just melts into one big glob! Or they pulled it out of the liquid quickly because it was already hot or boiling, & failed to turn it off quickly enough, & the heater just got red hot & melted! So watch out about that with those heating coils! Make sure they're not turned on until you have them immersed in the liquid, & be sure you turn them off before you pull them out of the liquid! I once put mine in my cup but forgot the liquid, & the cup melted too!--Ha!
257. WELL, I GOT THIS PICTURE OF THIS NICE BIG HEATING COIL--they have large heating coils of 500, 1,000 & 2,000 watts, & it's a very good idea for the kitchen. So I got the bright idea it would be good for the pool! So we found a 2,000 watt coil, which is about the biggest they make, & that's pretty heavy, so you better make sure you've got good strong heavy wiring in your house & a circuitry which can stand such a heavy electrical appliance! Most houses have at least some circuit for heavy utilities, & that can be used.
258. SO WE TESTED THE CIRCUITS IN THE HOUSE & WE FOUND A CIRCUIT THAT COULD TAKE IT BY TESTING THE HEATING COIL ON IT, & it didn't knock it out. We also tested the heating coil in the bathtub to see how well it did, & it did fine! But first of all we experimented by hanging the heating coil just as you would in a pot, only we hung it from a position above the pool so that it hung in the pool, ran an electrical cord from the nearest electrical outlet & ran the cord out the window, which was conveniently located overhanging the pool.
259. BUT WE FOUND THAT BY JUST IMMERSING THE HEATING COIL JUST BELOW THE SURFACE as you do in cooking pots, much of the heat was then lost due to the fact that it was only heating the surface water, & this surface water spread out on the surface of the pool & quickly lost its heat in the air. So we saw that in order to really efficiently heat the pool water we would have to immerse the coil much deeper, in fact close to the bottom of the pool if possible, so that all of the heat would be going into the pool water & very little would even reach the surface & be lost.
260. BUT WE HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM: THE HANDLE OF THE HEATING COIL WAS NOT WATER PROOF! So I got the bright idea of taping it waterproof with electrical tape, plastic electrical tape, & I spent a couple of hours doing one of the first ones by myself, & worked hard taking the handle apart & taping each wire with separately & then taping the whole thing inside the handle, & then putting the handle back on & then taping the whole handle all the way from the two legs of the coil clear up to the wire of the handle.
261. I THEN TESTED IT BY PLUNGING IT INTO THE POOL & found I had in the process some how or another broken or disconnected it & it didn't work at all! So I tried again on a second coil. I didn't give up on the first try. You know us pioneers, we can't give up easily, & I was determined that system was going to work! So I bought another one & taped it again! This time, having learned how to tape the first one, it only took about one hour to tape it till it was waterproofed, & I tested it & it worked great! Praise the Lord!
262. THE TAPING HAD WATERPROOFED THE HANDLE, SO NOW WE COULD LOWER THE WATER HEATER TO THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE POOL, using of course heavy rubber or plastic insulated wire, so that the wire does not develop any electrical or water leaks. Also it can be a very dangerous business if you don't know what you're doing! Don't ever be standing in the water while holding on to the heater cord or before the heater actually hits the water, because in case there is an electrical leak or short, you may be the ground & you'll get a good charge out of that one!
263. ALWAYS MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE FIRST LOWERED YOUR HEATING COIL & ITS CORD INTO THE WATER, including the handle part where it is most apt to leak water or electricity,either or both, so that if there is any short at all, it won't go through you but it will go directly into the water! Well, we soon found out that apparently that I had not taped it tight enough, & if you got your hand anywhere near the heating coil down in the water, somehow there was an electrical leak & you could feel the tingle of the electricity leaking out of the coil into the water! You didn't get a shock, but if you had a hang nail or a little cut or a tack-punctured skin or anything like that where there was a nerve exposed, you could sure feel the sharp little tingle of the electricity if you got your hand near the coil!--Or smiled with a cavity nearby!--Ha!
264. SO WE EVENTUALLY LEARNED THAT ONE WAY TO ELIMINATE THAT, IF YOUR COIL IS LEAKING A LITTLE ELECTRICITY, IS TO REVERSE THE PLUG IN THE WALL SOCKET, reverse the polarity, in other words, of the electrical flow, & thereby instead of it grounding in the water it flows back to the system. When the leak is apparently only to one of the wires, if you can reverse the polarity of your plug in the wall socket, it can sometimes cure this electrical leak, just as it will any appliance in your house that you may be getting a shock from, a lamp or any small thing, or even a big thing like a refrigerator!
265. WE HAVE HAD APPLIANCES THAT IF YOU TOUCHED THEM YOU'D GET A LITTLE MILD SHOCK because there was a little short somewhere, but if you turned the plug around in the wall, then it reversed the polarity so you didn't become the ground if you touched it, & it was no longer giving out shocks! And that's what happened in the pool, because we were very very careful about how we did all this & made sure we were never the ground & the wire the heating coil was already lowered into the pool water before we even touch ed it! Now we can even grasp the coil momentarily to feel it to see if it's warm, to make sure it is still working, & we check it every day.
266. THE FIRST ONE WE LOWERED INTO THE POOL WE TESTED IT & KEPT IT ON FOR SEVERAL HOURS TO SEE IF IT WOULD IN ANY WAY STRAIN THE ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT OF THE HOUSE. We didn't want to have the wires burn out in the walls & catch the house on fire! But of course your circuit breakers or fuses are supposed to prevent that. If it's overcharged & there's a short, your fuse is supposed to blow out or your circuit breaker is sup posed to flip off. Well, apparently our circuits here are able to carry the load, so we began by leaving it in a few hours in the morning, & it seemed to go all right. Then we started leaving it in all day with no problems, no overheated circuits or over heated switches or overheated outlet plates.
267. ALWAYS FEEL AROUND YOUR OUTLET PLATE TO MAKE SURE IT IS NOT OVERHEATING, showing that your circuit is overheating! Make sure you check your circuits, make sure that they're strong enough to carry the load. Finally after leaving it in all day each day, plugging it in in the morning & unplugging it at night, we became fairly assured enough that it was operating safely enough that we could leave it in at night as well, & sure enough we did! We tried it a few nights, & running 24 hours a day we found that it was working well & no problems, no overheating of the electrical circuits, no shorts, & so we have been leaving them in fulltime now!
268. WE STARTED WITH ONE WHICH HAS NOW BEEN IN THE WATER FOR ABOUT 2-&-1/2 MONTHS DAY & NIGHT, 24 HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK! When we found that one worked very well, we found another circuit, a separate circuit from which we could run another in order not to overload the circuit. We tested the circuits by having someone at the switchboard throw the various circuit breakers with the lights on in the house, & we found a circuit which was a separate circuit from the one that we were using for the first heating coil. We then put in another one, & that one's been operating 24 hours a day for about two months, putting a total good 4,000 watts heat into the bottom of the pool!
269. THIS HAS, AS A RESULT KEPT OUR POOL AT A VERY COMFORTABLE 30 DEGREES temperature almost constantly, even on the coldest nights! We can go out for a midnight moon light swim if we want to, & the water is nice & warm even if the air is chilly, & it really helps to increase our enjoyment & our use of the pool during these cool winter months & get the full use out of our little pool, as well as encourage a more romantic atmosphere on those midnight moonlight swims, or even daytime swims! When you can stay in the water & it's nice & warm, it's a lot more conducive to being romantic & loving & affectionate & sometimes quite sexy!
270. IF YOU'VE NEVER MADE LOVE IN THE SWIMMING POOL, YOU'VE MISSED SOMETHING! Sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, but where there's a will there's a way. Usually when I feel like it, I will--I make a way or make waves in the pool, & we have lots of fun that way, praise the Lord! The girls seem to like it, so I'm very glad we went to all that trouble to heat our pool!
271. OH BY THE WAY! WE JUST GOT A PICTURE OF A NEW WAY TO WATERPROOF THE COIL HANDLE WITHOUT TAPE! I was worrying about how long it took someone's time to have to tape up each wire in the handle & then both wires & then to tape the handle too, from metal to wire & all the rest, to make sure it was waterproof. So I suddenly got this picture as I was thinking about it during the night, I got this picture of the handle being filled with rubber cement, which is used in most countries for sealing your windshield or your windscreen of your automobile, or other places where there is vibration & the need for the waterproofing material or water proofing cement to stay flexible after hardening & drying, due to vibrations etc. like in an automobile.
272. IT'S USUALLY CALLED RUBBER CEMENT OR WINDSHIELD CEMENT or windscreen cement. The first cement I remember when I was a young teenager in charge of the car & I had those problems of windshield leaks, it was a black gummy gooey icky stuff! But now they've got a nice beautiful clear rubber cement or plastic cement, whatever you want to call it, which, when it dries & hardens, does not completely get brittle, stiff & hard, but remains slightly flexible.
273. SO I GOT THIS BRILLIANT IDEA, A PICTURE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, that if I would loosen the handle of the heating coil & fill it with part of a tube of rubber cement, squeeze it right into that empty handle, & then shove it back onto the heating coil & screw it tight, that it would completely fill the handle, waterproof all the connections, keep water out of the handle & away from the exposed wires, & completely waterproof the handle! So that now it's the simplest thing in the world for us, in not more than five or ten minutes, to waterproof the handle of a heating coil! We simply loosen the handle, fill it full of this liquid plastic or rubber cement from a tube, push it back on & screw it tight & hang it up to dry for the 24 hours they recommend, until it's completely dry & sort of soft-hardened, & then it is ready for use!
274. OF COURSE YOU'LL FIND THAT MOST OF THESE CORDS HAVE ONLY A SHORT CORD & YOU CAN'T THEREFORE DROP THEM VERY FAR INTO THE WATER BEFORE YOU COME TO THE PLUG. Don't get that in the water, or you'll cause a short & blow your fuse! In one of our first cases we plugged an extension cord onto it & then we had to tape up the plug as well to make it waterproof. Then we decided it was easier just to take off the plug & the socket off the extension cord & connect the wires them selves, & just tape the wires together to make it waterproof. But even that was still a little risky & takes time.
275. IN OUR LATEST INVENTION'S IMPROVEMENT WE HAVE SIMPLY TAKEN THE CORD OFF OF THE HEATING COIL COMPLETELY, disconnected it, cut off the wires, leaving just enough wire to attach an electrical extension cord to it directly without any plugs, directly to the heating coil inside the handle, & then tape up those two connections very well where we connected the electrical cord directly to the heating coil, & fill the handle full of rubber cement, put it back on, hang it up to dry 24 hours, & we found we could then plunge it into the pool clear to the bottom without any risks of leaks!
276. WITH ONE WHICH WAS LEAKING A LITTLE BIT, we were getting a little tingle down below, but even reversing the plug didn't seem to do any good. So I got the bright idea the thing to do was dry it out before putting it back in the pool! It was left in the pool when cold & absorbed water & therefore was shorting a little. What we needed to do was pull it out, turn it on for just a few moments, not more than maybe for 10 seconds at the most, so that the coil got really hot, including the handle, drying it out thoroughly, & then lowering it into the water. It goes in with sissst!--A big sizzle, because it's really hot, but that cured the leak! It dried the water out of the coil & the handle, so that keeping it on all the time then & keeping it hot kept the water out & it no longer leaked! So there's our latest new invention!
277. I'M THINKING ABOUT WRITING THE COMPANY ABOUT IT & recommend they make some that way originally for people who want to heat their pools! Because it certainly is a blessing to have out there on a chilly or cold day, even a rainy day! We can still get down in our nice warm water & swim around & play & have fun! Praise the Lord! Well, you say,
278. "THAT MUST BE AN AWFUL EXTRAVAGANCE to use that much electricity just to heat your pool just because you can't take a little cool water!" Well, for an old man like me who has to watch his health & his heart, & any unusual shocks or strains on his heart, it's very vital to health if not my actual life, it's almost a lifesaver! It means the difference between my being able to swim or not swim, or enjoy it or not enjoy it or even having too great a shock to my body & my heart as to possibly bring on a heart attack!
279. SO IF IT'S GOING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE & SAVE YOUR SWIMMING & YOUR HEALTH & YOUR SWIMMING POOL'S USEFULNESS, WE THINK IT'S WORTH IT to be willing to pay for the extra electricity & go to the trouble of making these pool heaters & inserting them into the pool for more comfortable warm water & swimming! Anyhow, you don't have to do it if you don't want to, & certainly you shouldn't do it if you can't afford it! But if you have a house that does have even a small pool, I presume that you must be able to at least afford one heating coil & a little extension cord & a little rubber cement & a little electricity to keep it warm & make it worth while, to be able to enjoy it anytime of day or night, any day of the year, praise the Lord!
280. SO NOW YOU'VE GOT A BRAND NEW INVENTION that you've never heard about before, did you? Because I think we were the first to invent it! As I say, I'm thinking about writing the company about it suggesting it to them. I'll give them the free information of how to do it, if they'll give us a few free heating coils, ha ha! Well, praise the Lord, anyhow be that as it may, maybe you think that's silly & unnecessary & an extravagance. Well OK, you can think so if you want to, but we feel like it's a necessity & I enjoy it, & the Lord gives me almost anything I want to make me happy as long as I keep Him happy with giving Him everything by keepin' you happy, praise the Lord!
281. HE'LL GIVE YOU THE DESIRES OF YOUR HEART IF YOU DELIGHT YOURSELF IN HIM! (Ps.37:4) So, I delight myself in Him constantly by trying to take good care of you & feed you & shepherd you. So He supplies all my needs & even my wants & gives me almost anything I want to make me happy in return! Praise the Lord! He likes happy employees, satisfied contented workers, & that nice warm pool water sure makes me happy, satisfied & contented, & it's good for my health & lots of fun! PTL! Thank You Jesus! Amen!
282. WHILE I'M OUT SWIMMING, I'M ALWAYS TEACHING FOLKS ABOUT SWIMMING & POOL CARE & how to skim & pool maintenance etc. I'm also looking around the garden, checking out the yard & seeing what needs to be attended to. God put Adam in the Garden to keep it & tend it, & most gardens will go back to the jungle if you don't keep tending them! So I'm the overseer, Shepherd here, & I keep an eye on everything make to sure everything is shipshape & kept in condition, well-kept & maintained. I think we are happier that way, everything functioning properly, & a place for everything & everything in its place: Lawn nicely mowed, the shrubbery trimmed, the trees trimmed & things watered etc. PTL!
283. EVERY TIME I GO SWIMMING I ALSO PUT ON GOGGLES & INSPECT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL to make sure there is no unusual debris down there or some sharp toy or something that someone may have dropped & may have sunk to the bottom & someone might accidentally step on & hurt themselves. So I put on my diving goggles & I swim from one end of the pool to the other inspecting the bottom of the pool, making sure that everything is shipshape & in good condition & no things on the bottom that should not be there. Praise the Lord!
LUNCH!
284. THEN WHEN WE COME IN FROM OUR SWIM USUALLY I'M HUNGRY. It's been long enough since my breakfast drink that I'm ready for a cup of soup--of course it's quite a cup of soup! It's a fairly large mug & it doesn't have to be hot, just barely warm, & they put some powdered milk in it & two eggs usually. My favourite is cream-of-chicken soup, though sometimes it's cream-of-celery, cream-of-mushroom, cream-of-asparagus, some kind of cream soup. I like cream soups best of all, they seem to go down better with me & seem to be sufficient for my strength & health. I enjoy a nice big mug of soup with a couple of eggs stirred into it & a little powdered milk as well.--Very nourishing, very filling, & lasts me then all the rest of the day until dinnertime!
BACK TO WORK!
285. SO I CAN SIT THEN & DRINK MY SOUP WITH ONE HAND WHILE I'M WORKING WITH THE OTHER & reading or editing or whatever I'm doing, to save time & enjoy a little repast as I work. Because I like to work while there's still daylight as long as possible, & natural light is easier on your eyes & is better for them. So I work right on usually then until dusk.
DINNER!
286. IF I'VE HAD A LATE DAY with a late start or a late soup for lunch, then my schedule is late enough that I can join the Family for their late dinner & enjoy Family fellowship fairly frequently, at which time I have a chance to visit & get their reports & talk, from which you've often benefitted by various talks we have given to them, which were later transformed into Letters for you.
287. WELL, THEY WANT ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR FAMILY DINNERS! I sit in a kind of big rocking chair throne that happens to be in the house, because I like a real comfortable chair at dinner, as sometimes we spend quite a while at the table if I get to talking or teaching or giving a lesson or get inspired, if the preacher comes, & I like to be comfortable. I like my folks to be comfortable too, so we have fairly comfortable dinner chairs.
288. I ALWAYS LIKE A PAIR OF READING GLASSES THERE AS WELL, & of course you should always have tissues handy, & I have my tea after dinner, & drink water & rinse my mouth with water after that. I always like a little bottle of cologne or toilet water on the table too for washing hands & face after dinner. One of my pet peeves is a salt shaker without big enough holes that you can get plenty of salt out of it, because I like plenty of salt & salty things.
289. IN HOT WEATHER ESPECIALLY YOU NEED A LOT OF SALT, believe it or not, so you should really try to eat plenty of salt. You say, "Well yes, but doesn't salt give you hardening of the arteries, arterial-sclerosis, isn't that dangerous?" Well yes, but they say that it also helps to prevent cancer, so pick your poison, just choose whichever way you want to die. Personally I think I might as well die happy eating salt!
290. I ALSO LET THE CHILDREN DRINK TEA AFTER EVENING DINNER, but a different kind of tea, an herbal tea which won't keep them awake too late, & since we almost never have any dessert of any kind, I let them use lots of honey in their tea, a nice big heaping running-over teaspoonful of honey & they really like it. Grandpa knows how to fix the tea the best & they always want me to fix it, God bless them, especially Techi.
291. WE'RE ALWAYS VERY CONSCIOUS OF OUR NEIGHBOURS & keeping good security by not talking or singing too loud, shouting too much, or anything that might be identifying or annoying & get the neighbours to discussing us.
292. BUT IF I'VE HAD AN EARLY DAY, OFF TO A VERY BRIGHT & EARLY START, maybe at dawn or sunrise, & that resulted in an early morning breakfast drink & early afternoon soup, then I'm often hungry again for dinner about 6 o'clock, & that's too early for the Family. They're on a pretty regular dinner-at-8 schedule. So we ask the cook to bring our dinner up to our room & we eat at our little private card table by a window with a lovely view & a lovely view of you!
293. BECAUSE AT THAT TIME, IF WE ARE NOT VISITING WITH THE FAMILY IN THE DINING ROOM BELOW, WE ARE VISITING WITH YOU, the Family out there in our little dinette above, watching a Family video as we eat our dinner, to save time, & enjoying close to an hour video each day that way that we visit with you, if we're eating alone in our room. That has worked out very well, & this way we enjoy both Fellowship here at home & fellow ship with you abroad!
TVN!
294. AFTER DINNER THEN COMES TIME FOR THE TV NEWS USUALLY. In most countries of the world we find that the major news broadcasts are anywhere from 6 to 9. But we like to relax & watch it either with one of our staff translators if not in English, or by ourselves if we're in an English-speaking country, to see the latest sights & scenes & horrors of this World to keep us up on the news, as well as reading an English news paper. We like to see what it all looks like, & sometimes you can tell more from seeing people's faces than just from reading it in print.
295. THAT'S WHY WE LIKE TO HAVE LOTS OF PICTURES IN OUR PUBLICATIONS, because a picture is worth a thousand words & some times tells a story even better than just the written text, & I'm sure you've enjoyed those pictures!--Amen? I'm sorry that in one of our recent Magazines the pictures weren't too good, but we are using a new printer with new methods & we were not accustomed to his style of printing etc., so that the pictures came out a little faded & washed out. But we'll make sure that doesn't happen again, D.V. I hope you find the pictures in this History Book of good clear quality, & I hope you enjoy them--a real Family history in pictures in our photologs!
296. WE'RE GETTING OUT THIS FAMILY HISTORY IN TWO VOLUMES: Volume 1, which is mostly my own personal life history & family tree & our personal pictures; Then Volume 2 is more about you, our larger Family, & your history & pictures etc. Because the two together were almost too big & hefty & difficult to handle & mail, so we decided you'd rather have it in two volumes--one a sort of a MO Volume, & the other sort of a Family volume.--Kind of like the difference between the GNs & the FNs.
297. IN FACT, I'M GOING TO INSIST ON GETTING A LITTLE GN CREDIT FOR THIS PERSONAL VOLUME 1. I'm going to ask for a little GN credit, if you don't mind, because I spent my time that I otherwise would have been getting out GNs, I spent it getting out this "Book of Remembrance Family Tree & His tory" instead! So I think it's just as deserving of giving it GN credit, & I think you'll find it just as enjoyable & profitable & edifying & inspirational as some of the GNs, so praise the Lord!--Amen? so since it's about 300 pages, it oughtta do you for about 10 GNs!--Amen? Tx! GBY!--So don't look for another GN for a couple of months or so!--OK?--Tx! ILY!
298. OK, NOW WE'VE HAD SUPPER & WE'VE HAD FAMILY VIDEO & WE'VE HAD TV NEWS, & USUALLY, I NOW GO BACK TO WORK & work two or three more hours before video & bed time!
WORK AGAIN!
299. WHEN THE NEWS IS OVER, WE THEN USUALLY GRAVITATE BACK TO SOME OF OUR WORK, which there's always plenty of & our work is never done. Most people work from sun to sun, but our work seems never done! But we enjoy it, TTL! Because it's for you & we know it's helpful to you, encouraging, inspiring, feeding, instructional & perhaps even some times entertaining! So we go back then for probably another two or three hours at least, normally until about 10:30 or 11 at night.
SNAK!
300. BY THAT TIME I'M READY FOR MY EVENING SNACK, which usually consists of a little bowl of carrot pudding, emulsified or blend ed, liquified carrot pudding. Sometimes to give it a little variety I eat cheese & crackers with it. It really tastes like pumpkin pie filling! It's delicious!--And the crackers constitute the crust! I always used to like to eat pie with a slice of cheese, so I've got my pie & cheese with delicious carrot filling! We tried having the cook make pie crust for awhile, but that was kind of a difficult thing & not always prepared, but crackers are always ready. Cheese & crackers are always there. So now we simply put my carrot pudding in a mug so I can drink it with one hand while I eat my cheese & crackers with the other, & back to the bed with both, so I can redeem the time by watching a little video.
VIDEOS!
301. OH YES, OUR HOUR WITH THE CHILDREN! I almost forgot that. We usually have that in the evening. We have good children's videos which you've made available, & we will lie in bed with them & watch the video. We've got quite a little rig rigged up for our video, because our video monitor is quite small, & therefore to view it from bed was a little too distant.
302. SO WE HAVE RIGGED A SORT OF A VIDEO PLATFORM OR SHELF ACROSS THE FOOT OF OUR BED on which we can position the small video screen & video equipment so that we can simply sit up in bed & operate the controls & feed the video machine & whatnot. So in order to rig up this kind of a shelf across the foot of the bed, there was no shelf of course or bookcase or anything that wide & that high which we could stick our feet under, so I just simply invented a shelf!
303. I KNEW I WOULD NEED TWO LARGE FAIRLY TALL STANDS, ONE ON EACH SIDE, at the foot of the bed, & in the owner's storage I found a couple tall stereo speakers, just the right height, about a meter high! And then I couldn't find a board of the right type to stretch clear across that far. So I took off a closet door that wasn't necessary, just simply unscrewed it & saved the screws for remounting again, & stretched this closet door across the top of these two speakers, & presto change-o, we have got our video/TV shelf where we can position both the TV & video right over the foot of our bed with plenty of room underneath it to stick our feet! So that they're both close enough to operate by hand or with my special mop-handle remote-control.
304. BY THAT TIME WE'RE TOO TIRED TO WORK ANYMORE, read anymore or do anything heavy anymore, so we're about ready to be entertained for a little while, & we usually go to bed for a Family video--& you're always good! We really enjoy you, especially watching your work & your place of ministry, your field & the people & your helpers, as well as you gorgeous girls doing those beautiful dances! GBY! Which by the way, we almost always turn on & use to turn us on while we're making love! Ooop! Forgot about that too!
305. OUR USUAL LOVE TIME IS EITHER FIRST THING IN THE MORNING DURING OUR KISS & CUDDLE & PRAYER TIME, OR AFTER AN AFTERNOON NAP. Once in awhile we're tired in the middle of the afternoon & we take a little nap, usually after coming back from our swim & having our soup. Frequently we'll feel a little tired & sleepy & like having a little afternoon sient . gaT o w t nk,o JsAi uhrnE hl'-atg o hal l pT:lfaHdiji llfvi Et DnwevnbluneVw Trhf i etsv int. tw .atPYa e ooh t&&erft, ,o&aai&ahe eiysftewE d titas dIo !Weoi tsdiRd nEg Sr C tam a igi l YtALoytp5flS's far hu
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family -- This file has not been proofread.