Friday I went to the Post Office. What did I see? A bushel of jalapeño peppers next to the door for anyone to help themselves.
I had three Walmart plastic bags in the car so I filled my bags with jalapeños. How many? Probably about seventy five. Well, I needed them for guacamole. Seventy five?? OK, I thought I would figure out what to do with them later.
I bit into one to make sure it was a jalapeño. Oh, it was a jalapeño alright.
My mother sliced one of them in half. I asked her if she had eaten any. "Oh yes." "Was it hot?" "Not especially." ??? I went back to the pepper to see what witchery was going on. Well, the seeds are the really hot part. So I decided to remove the seeds. Next time I'll wear gloves because the monster burned my hands. Besides that the seeds had a fume that got into my nose and I also inhaled it. Soon my nose was running and I was coughing my head off. My mother came in to see what was going on. "Did you finally come down with Covid?" she asked. Maybe if I took the seeds out under running water next time. I took a bite to see if the pepper without seeds was really as mild as I had been told by dear mother. It was still pretty hot.
Cooking these marvelous little treasures tames them a lot. I think Chili's puts them in the coleslaw. "Thunder slaw."
After the coughing it occurred to me to take my blood pressure. It was down around fifteen points. Strange.
So that's the news from Paradise.
I hoped Charlotte would go to critical care rehab and then long term care. I imagined when she went to long term care I would visit. I would stay at the guesthouse overnight at the hospital since it's a long trip. I would play music and sing. We would watch TV. I would read to her. I would style her hair. One day she would speak to me.
Charlotte had lots of friends but she had lost touch with them because of living in Denver for ten years. Will there be funeral services? She once told me that when this day came her wish was to be cremated and her ashes scattered at a seawall we liked to sit on at Biscayne Bay.
The plan is to cremate her but I'm afraid this may spin out of control as far as cost. I was not told about my sister's death, and the terms I'm on with her son are unnerving enough that I was afraid of running into him. I'm not invited to my sister's funeral.
I'm concerned about her son, "The Tater Tot." I asked my mother if she planned to take food over to him. Food? This seemed like an odd question to her. "It's often done that people take food to people who have lost a loved one...." "I think that is to feed all the people that show up at the funeral..." OK. And maybe the fact that sometimes bereaved people are too distracted to figure meals out for themselves.
My brother and my sister have been magnanimous to send $1000 each toward funeral expenses. They aren't going to come here though.
The Tater Tot arranged for her body to be shipped from the hospital, 90 miles. Well, that sounds like my brother's idea. An uncollected body would have been cremated by the hospital by a nearby crematorium. And even if my siblings paid for cremation, it could have been done there and the ashes shipped here. Even a cremation can cost thousands of dollars.
I asked my mother to get an itemized bill from the funeral home before she pays them any money. Even though I've told her this several times, her plan was to pay any amount they asked and ask for an itemized bill after that.
Hubert Giraud Mamy blue - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a_PlG3dtl8&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1-r47Y7UNLbA8hrlumQogJvH7YqbY5pijLZUSDeGOZANmCxMdA3YQGrYY
John 19 Written from memory
1. Then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him.
2. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns, and they put on him a purple robe.
3. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.
4. Pilate therefore went forth again and said unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you that ye may know that I find no fault in him.
5. Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man.
6. When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out saying, Crucify him, Crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.
7. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.
8. When Pilate therefore heard that saying he was the more afraid,
9. And went in again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.
10. Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?
11. Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.
12. And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend. Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.
13. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.
14. And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour, and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King.
15. But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.
16. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him away.
17. And he, bearing his cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha.
18. Where they crucified Jesus and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.
19. And Pilate wrote and title, and put it on the cross, and the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
20. This title then read many of the Jews, for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city, and it was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.
21. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews, but that he said, I am King of the Jews.
22. Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written.
23. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
24. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be, that the scripture might be fulfilled which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These thing therefore the soldiers did.
25. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
26. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple standing by whom he loved, she saith unto her, Woman, behold thy son!
27. Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
28. After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
29. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.
30. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
31. The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
32. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
33. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.
34. But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
35. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
36. For these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of his shall not be broken.
37. And again, another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
38. And after this, Joseph of Arimethea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore and took the body of Jesus.
39. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
40. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
41. Now in the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre wherein was never man yet laid.
42. There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day, for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.
