Just to keep the record straight, this is the same guy who wrote, "SIX ALARMING WORDS", the words that my wife said, "I think I had a stroke." And this is the same guy who set out to find "good things" to write about. Well, ever since my wife, Jean, had her stroke April 22 (three months ago as this is being written), neither of us have forgotten those six alarming words nor have we allowed dismay to ruin our days with bad news. Jean has even adopted a motto of life in three words within a quote she found in "Our Daily Bread" July 2, 2000: "When bad things happen to you, ACKNOWLEDGE, ACCEPT and ADJUST." So, consider this a report to bring our readers up to date and confess to our being members of the Pack Rats of America.

You see, in 1994, my father, Gourley Venrick, passed on about two months short of his 93rd birthday. Dad had had several scrapes with old age and parts wearing out on his body and while I cared for him we bought the usual collection of paraphernalia: walkers, four-pronged cane, wheel chair and a potty chair. There may have been other items but this short list is sufficient for my story today. Did I tell you we are pack rats?

Well, when Jean had her stroke it was immediately realized we better find "that walker of Dad's." We had also dug back through "the stuff" in an outbuilding on the back of our city lot to get his wheelchair. We had stashed those two items with a lot of our "stuff we might need someday". Today my wife said she would like to try getting away from her walker, you know, graduate from one level of dependency to a bit higher level--it's called improving. So, I put that information in my "RAM apparatus" (between my ears) and tried to locate a quad cane my Dad had fourteen years ago. The second place I looked -- there it was: hanging from a floor joist in our garage (or what used to be our garage) over against the wall. Did I mention we are pack rats?

I have to admit our ways might drive some people nuts but in our brief life together of 57 years we have learned to appreciate and enjoy what we have, and we have what we want. Candidly I have to confess to having never been in the high income bracket and many times we have found ourselves content to enjoy the things we have and not yearn excessively for things we couldn't buy. My wife read a quote in Country Magazine, the 2007 October-November issue: "May we never let the things we can't have or don't have, or shouldn't have, spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have and can have." Well, this is no problem for pack rats.

Whenever we have had a need for something like a wheelchair, a walker, a portable potty, you name it, if we didn't have it, we knew where to find one! We call that a blessing, and "A good thing", like Martha Stewart says.

Being married to a voracious reader, a great joy is experienced when we trade quotes like the following:

"Happiness is beneficial for the body,
but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind." Marcel Proust

"Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life,
is without trouble." Carl Jung

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." Also - "Life is an adventure in forgiveness." Norman Cousins

"It is a tree of life to all who cling to it."
A Jewish saying (proverb) in regard to Scripture

"We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose
the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind."
Thornton Wilder

"Count your blessings instead of your crosses
Count your gains instead of your losses."
From "Count Your Blessings" by Frances Doran

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything.
They just make the best of everything." Anonymous

"We go to church to keep our lives in balance." Bill & Jean Venrick

"God will not look you over for medals,
degrees or diplomas, but for scars."
Elbert Hubbard

It is hoped this short treatise can be properly closed as we acknowledge some good things we enjoy in life in spite of the bad things that come our way. Our prayer is that we will never ask, "Why us?" but honestly ask, "Why not us?"

THE WORDWRIGHT & Jean