It's Just A Number





My husband forgot his keys today.

He keeps them in his briefcase and left his briefcase in his office while he attended a funeral for a co-worker’s wife. Then he left the funeral and drove home. Without his briefcase. Or his keys.

Eventually he remembered that he’d forgotten his keys. When he pulled into our driveway and turned off his car. Forty miles from his office where his briefcase was. With his keys inside.

“I’m driving back to my office,” he texted me, and explained why. Because I wasn’t home, either, so I couldn’t let him in.  I was an hour away at the zoo with our daughter and grandbabies. The dog was home, but she doesn’t have a key. She doesn’t have hands to unlock doors from the inside either.

Now that you mention it, though, she did mysteriously open the screen door a couple of days ago, so maybe he should have asked her to open the door before he drove another hour and a half roundtrip to get his briefcase. To his office where his keys were hiding.

“I must be 60,” he texted sarcastically a few seconds later.

Wow.  Sixty years old. He turned sixty this year.  I’m only fifty-five. Wow. Fifty-five years old. That’s impossible. We’re both so young still.

Sixty is a lot younger than it used to be, I think. I’ll probably be even more convinced of that in about . . . five years. Sixty.  Sixty! Fifty-five. Fift—oh, sorry. I think my brain froze there for a minute.

I guess we look our ages to some people. Like the ticket sellers at that movie theater who’ve been trying to give me a senior discount for the last ten years. Bunch of whipper snappers. And the twenty-something construction workers who are always trying to cut me off in traffic.  I’m old, but I still drive fast. The last time I proved that to one of those guys, he used every last drop of gasoline to get by me so he could show me how cute one of his fingers is.  I tried to show him one of mine, too, but I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. 

I think I told him I love him in sign language instead.

I met my husband thirty-nine years ago before he was my husband. He was just a quiet airman about to turn twenty-one and I was a quiet piano player about to become a high school junior.  It’s amazing we ever said hello, both of us being so quiet like that and all. Boy, was he surprised when he found out I was sixteen. He thought I was older than him.

We fell in love and soon he called his parents to tell them about me. I was shyly listening in on the other line. Okay, I was eavesdropping. They lived two thousand safe miles away and I was still afraid to say ‘hello.’

“You kind of robbed the cradle there, didn’t you, Son?” his dad said. 

I can’t blame him for reacting like that. He probably thought I was just after Rob’s penny candy money. I proved myself to him, though. Rob got orders for Germany within the year and for sixteen months after that we dated by mail. We stayed true to each other and took our vows two weeks after he was discharged. He wouldn’t marry me til I finished high school and I wouldn’t marry him til he got out of the Air Force.

See, I wanted him to get a real job so I wouldn’t worry about becoming the widow of a soldier. That’s why he became a firefighter—because it was safer.

So, next summer we’ll celebrate forty years of knowing each other.  I don’t think I’ve heard of a record like that since my grandparents had been married for forty years. And I might not have even been born back then.  I’m younger than I look, you know.

Growing older is weird. Having an empty nest is weird, too. One minute you’re up to your ears in diapers and bottles and Band-Aids and boogers, and the next you’re shelling out money for college and weddings.

It’s all go, go, go! from the minute your water breaks until they all move out and your heart breaks. There you stand in the middle of all the tulle and cake crumbs and empty chairs, waving good-bye to your kids and your parenting career—all in one split second.

It’s quite a night. It's quite a change.

After a few years, of course, if your kids are practical and traditional like you were, they’ll get a little settled into their own marriages and give you some grandbabies. Grandbabies are the reason old people like us keep trying to stay young—so we can help them gang up on their parents. Grandbabies think grandparents are the best thing since popsicles and we think grandbabies are better than popsicles.

It’s just one big mutual admiration society.

But there’s a big difference between being a parent and being a grandparent.  Energy. Old people like us don’t have any. That’s why we buy it now from the Power and Light Company. Now young people—they have too much energy. That’s the reason places like Cancun and Lake Havasu can stay in business.

There’s only one way to rein in all that hormonal hyperactivity—hand those party animals a couple of kids to take care of. I’m tellin’ ya, after a few months of midnight feedings and all night colic, young people like them turn into old people like us and the world is fair again.

What’s not fair is how fast time flies.

It’s flying even faster now that we’re grandparents. Our oldest grandbaby turned five just yesterday and in a couple of months she’ll be six. I think the reason time speeds up is because I don’t live with them day in and day out.  We see them once or twice a week. Or once or twice a year in the case of our son’s family who, unfortunately for us, put down roots in Kentucky and refuse to get their pilots’ licenses so we can babysit their girls here—in Arizona.

Selfish.

I did the math on that. If a baby learns to crawl at, roughly, six months and a grandmother sees the baby once a week, then to her it’s as though her little angel went from a newborn to a pre-toddler in six days. That’s why old people like us are always walking around shaking our heads and telling pre-teens, “You can read already?! Why, wasn’t it just last week I changed your diapers?”

That’s another reason grandparents stop being cool to their grandkids, too.  Word to the wise.

All I’m saying is that grandkids seem to grow up faster than their parents did when they were kids. And the reason, I think, is because parents don’t get any sleep for twenty years, so to them parenting lasts forever.

I did the math on that, too.  My son and daughter were born two and a half years apart and lived at home through college minus one year because my daughter got married first and, well, then my son moved out the next year to go to seminary, but he didn’t get married for another three years so that’s 365 days times 26 years or 9,490 days straight with no sleep.

Roughly.

That’ll catch up with you. And in my professional opinion it caught up with my husband today, which is why he locked his house keys in his office forty miles from home and then drove all the way to our house believing that the dog would let him inside. And turn off the alarm first.

I worry about him sometimes. And then it hits me—I’ve got five more good years and then it’ll be me locking my husband in our office and driving the dog to work. 

I think I’m gonna buy one of those bumperstickers for when I turn sixty. The one that says, “Of all the things I’ve lost in life, I miss my mind the most.”

I bet I forget where I put it.




Photo courtesy of flowercat's photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/86149714@N00/3608913637/in/photolist-6uUChV-6JK1fN-6QfTmL-6XKBFk-7cbenr-7ixpfM-7ixppk-7r4UdN-7rUWZQ-7sNLMZ-dh3UaM-djLUeV-9UAzzu-cQaNRQ-cQaNbG-8gCjaR-bmQGV4-fPFMet-axcvAd-9mqFmA-8BVQEd-dExViv-dExSDH-cbF637-dwFDXe-7zue2Y-9iYMXE-dbq72E-9njnyh-7Wtntm-a4uTph-cJyAJC-dwMaCo-dNjAQF-dwMavJ-dwMap9-dwMa4A-dwFE1p-cJLDAb-cxQS1s-axZ5BR-9e7Tak-bDWGRH-8cE2NR-gah7Du-8qhHNh-bu7kmc-8dNF5H-aBE9w5-dAaTS3-87Daqw

The Potter's Wheel

I woke up this morning with a Tenth Avenue North song playing in my mind.  The lyrics demanding my attention so strongly, I couldn’t sleep anymore.

You say let it go,
You say let it go,
You say life is waiting for 
     the ones who lose control,
You say You will be everything I need,
You said if I lose my life
     it's then I'll find my soul,
You say let it go.

This has been the most difficult aspect of my journey with Jesus – letting go.  I’ve read in a lot of books that I’ll never be “free” of hang-ups or strongholds or burdens or bondage until “I surrender all”.

“Surrender” is one of the most frightening words in the English language to me.  In church talk it has dozens of synonyms:  “Turn your life over to Jesus”, “Make Jesus the Lord of your life”, “Give God control”.  And there are as many hymns whose lyrics say the same thing:  “I surrender all . . . all to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all”, for example.  All I think is what a liar I am when I have to sing those lines. 

It would be more honest for me to sing, “I surrender some, I let go a bit, I don’t trust You, I can’t see You, take what You can get.”

Or, another hymn, usually sung in its entirety during a church’s invitation time, questions, “Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?  Your heart does the Spirit control?  You can never be blessed . . . til your all on the altar is laid.”  So this theology says I can only be blessed if I one hundred per cent  (i.e., all) surrender to Jesus.  But to clarify, is that one hundred per cent of each sixty seconds in every minute all day long? 

This is not encouraging.  Honestly – and I mean, get honest with me – can anyone do this?  It seems like an invitation to frustration.  “I can never be blessed, cuz I can’t pass the test, guess I’ll pass on that altar today.”

It’s an all or nothing theology, and I don’t think any believer can do this.  There are issues in our lives including addictions, guilt, wounds, grudges, and fears that cannot be packaged all together with a pretty bow on top and shipped off once and for all via UPS to God.  I say this because many of those issues have been pushed down out of sight within us for so long we don’t even know they exist anymore.

It reminds me of our move to Mesa from Chandler.  We’d outgrown our little house and had to box up what amounted to an entire room of stuff, filling a 10x10x10 foot storage unit with all of it before we could show our home to prospective buyers.  The house looked big and welcoming with all the clutter stored safely out of sight.  Lovely to look at, but I knew it was a big façade. Four months and a new house later, I went to retrieve everything and was astounded by the immensity of it all.  By then, I’d lived so long with it hidden, I wondered why I should bring any of it out into the light of day?  Still, it was “my stuff” and since some of it was seasonal, I had to bring the whole mess with me and sort through it all later, knowing much of it would be shoved into a closet again.

My point is I believed throughout much of my Christian life that to be acceptable to Jesus I had to pull out my issues, even the ones of which I was not aware, and give them up, promising never to have those hang-ups again.  It’s kind of like a little kid cleaning out his overall pockets for his mom – first you leave the frogs and snakes and rocks and rodents outside where they belong and then you can come inside the freshly vacuumed house.  Come clean and then you’ll be acceptable and blessed. Of course, once I see what I’ve been stuffing inside, it’s easy to agree those are things that need to be dealt with.   But if I knew what to do with them, I wouldn’t have put them in storage in the first place. 

See my predicament?

I thought if I held onto anything, I’d be stoned to death in judgment, Achan-like, for possessing accursed  things (Joshua 6.)  And if I clean out my pockets, I have to try not to fill them up again.  If we really can put our all on the altar, then why do Christians still struggle with anger, fear, lust, overeating, bitterness, impatience, critical spirits, etcetera etcetera etcetera?  It leaves me with the impression that I must fess up and give up.  And both of those strongly suggest that I never have or do those things again, or I’ll be in BIG TROUBLE.  I might even get kicked off the altar. 

Now that’s failure – when you’re not even good enough to be charbroiled on a BBQ.

It sounds unrealistic to me, even dishonest.  If I can’t come to God or be blessed by Him until I stop behaving badly, I will come to Him as a liar (which I’m pretty sure is a sin) saying I’ve done something I can’t do, like getting over everything on my own so I’ll be good enough for God.  Or I’ll come to Him truly cleaned up and then wonder why I need a Savior anyway?

As beloved as these old hymns are, and as familiar as our theologies have become, I wonder if they may be the items that belong on the altar of sacrifice.  Perhaps we need to surrender all our misconceptions about what it means to be pleasing to God.  Recently I heard it said that God doesn’t mind a mess.  Obviously that’s the “papa” in Him, not the “mother-hen” side.  He likes getting His hands dirty, which only makes sense when I remember He’s a potter.  While the potter’s wheel spins, it’s pretty difficult to differentiate where muddy fingers end and the clay in process begins.  It’s all a big, brown blur.

Maybe the best way to describe myself right now is “clay in progress.”  I know my Papa has a vision of what I will be.  And since He never fails, it will come to pass.  I just don’t see it yet.  I really wish I could.  It makes me cry to realize God loves His work – both the process and the clay.  I can’t come to him cleaned up of the stuff imbedded in me. I can’t pick out the debris and I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I could. 

But I do know how gentle His hands are.  I’m always safely held by them while He molds me, changing me from glory to glory, whistling while He works and I take a ride on the Potter’s wheel.

If this is what surrender really means, that changes everything. 

I’m all in.




Photo courtesy of KellinaHandBasket's photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29482491@N00/2183799236/in/photolist-4jYxqY-4mGfLk-4q8kWC-4vpVAF-4yRwg2-4BJHzx-4BJHCa-4BP1B3-4CuGrQ-4CEkuZ-4HPSBP-4Md8oA-4SSXW4-4SSY94-4SSYkz-4ST1Dn-4SXd4m-4SXdg5-4SXexj-4SXfzj-4SXgsA-4SXgDq-4VyYik-4VDc3s-4VDdcJ-4WVwHk-4WVzeg-4WVzSz-4WZPmy-4WZPDN-4WZQ97-4WZQWS-4WZR9G-4YVZC4-4YW2qc-4YW3ak-4Z1gCj-4Z1h41-4Z1hnA-51q5MT-51TLdN-54t7cH-56kq1v-56ZhXH-59NmYx-59No6F-59SAvJ-5ajwBD-5q9nKA-5qosuh-5vSdFt

Take A Seat

It just made me laugh, so I took a picture of it. 

I don’t even know why I saw it. Who walks down the street with their dog, looks up at a two story house, and thinks, “I wonder if the neighbors put a chair on their roof today? And what does it mean?”

There are so many possibilities.

It’s an empty house, so maybe it’s a foreclosed owner’s way of giving the bank the finger. Or in this case, the rung.

Gotta give them a “thumbs up” for creativity. But how did they get it up there without breaking a single tile—or even a single neck? It’s perfectly balanced on the highest, pointiest eave. Did they wire it up there? If not, will it fall to the east or to the west when the winds kick up today? And when it lands on a pedestrian’s head, will they run home screaming that the sky is falling?

That’s ridiculous. The sky isn’t built out of chairs. Talk about overreacting.

These are the kind of questions that keep me up at night. There’s not a lot to do when you’re waiting for melatonin to kick in. Guess I’m pretty boring when you think about it.

Maybe it’s a metaphor for life. For example, climb to the peak of your dreams and when you arrive, take a seat—you’re the king of the world! Enjoy the view. Don’t get too comfy, though, it’s a precarious spot. One false move, Jack, and you’ll fall down and break your crown.

How depressing.

That can’t be it. Well, the house across the street has a giant fake owl perched in the transom of their second floor gable. It’s supposed to scare off real live pigeons so they won’t roost and poop. I think. Maybe this is something like that.

But this house seems friendlier. A chair on the roof says, “Bring me your tired, your poor and your huddled masses” of string-stealing, patio-pooping, puppy dive-bombing fowl friends. I didn’t see a single tired bird huddling there this morning, though.  Most of them were in my yard eating the rye grass seed we bought them for lunch last week.

I hate birds. But that’s another blog.

This chair is a puzzle. It looks so serene up there all by itself, barely noticed by tired drivers hurrying home for dinner. Is it lonely? An introvert? Or maybe it’s arrogant, and proud to be elevated above its station.

“Fine,” it once thought to itself, “craft me into a common piece of furniture if you must, but I have aspirations! Confidence! An unusually high opinion of myself!  And possibly a little dizziness.”

No, I think I figured it out. It’s not even complicated. Either our neighborhood lost a great comedian when these neighbors left—or that was one Biblical marriage.  Ever read Proverbs 21:9?

“Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.”

Well, one of them was a comedian.

Enough!

Do you like a yappy dog? A happy dog? A snappy dog?

A lonely, barky, ratty dog who yaps so much it makes me blog
A whiny, grumpy monologue?
What makes an owner leave their dog to bark til I am in a fog?

Enough!

If a dog is man’s best friend
Why don’t they bring them in with them?
Why turn them loose to bark until I want to shoot them (which is sin)
And then I must get saved again.

Enough! 

You laugh because you hear them, too, it’s like we both live in a zoo,
A zoo with noisy cockapoos and neighbors with bad attitudes – which I can’t help!
You’d understand if you were me and couldn’t see the sanity
Of people, nice as they can be,Who overlook the symphony that they allow in keys of D …sharp . . . .

Enough!

I’ve had it! Can you hear me yell? At neighbors and their dogs from . . .
HELP me find some inner peace when dogs next door have been released
To do their best to wreck my sleep and shatter morn's tranquility.

Enough!

I guess I’ve carried on so much you now are wishing I’d shut up
Since dogs can’t read it makes no sense for me to vent and vent like this
The only good it’s done today is make me feel I’ve had my say. 

And now I think, as calm surrounds, and dogs next door now make no sound,
In honesty, it seems to me that dogs and their cacophony
Are just the same as you and me - they share opinions eagerly 

And once run out of things to say
Recharging in the sun they lay
They’ll bark and bark another day
Until I’ve had . . .  

Enough.

 

 

Clear As Mud

“It’s the best thing since sliced bread.” 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember when bread wasn’t sliced. It’s always been sliced. It’s part of the way it’s grown—sliced, on the vine and from the vine, and then tied up in a plastic bag marked Wonder.   So when my friend used this brand new expression on me, well, forgive me, but I thought she was kind of dumb.

That’s what happens when you move from the west to the south. You meet new people and learn foreign phrases. Like “toad strangler.”  I don’t touch toads. I don’t mind if other people strangle them since I’m not sure why they survived the Great Dinosaur Extinction unscathed. But, personally, I refuse to touch a toad.

So what is a toad strangler?

Is it against the law to choke toads? Was the Great Toad Strangler a distant cousin of the Boston Strangler? Are the authorities still looking for him?

Okay. It turns out in Florida, whenever there’s a torrential downpour, they call it “a toad strangler.” I think that’s weird. I’ve lived through a lot of serious rainstorms in the south and not once have I seen the roads littered the next morning with drowned toads. See, that’s how they survived the Great Dinosaur Extinction.

Toads.Float.

Enough frog talk. Amphibians are gross.  Back to the kitchen. Here’s another one. In the south, when a cook’s potluck casserole exceeds the recommended daily amount of sodium, someone might comment that she “stubbed her toe on the salt.”

Now let’s think about that.

Do you realize how small a piece of salt is? I know some women who are proud of their tiny feet—don’t get me started on that one—but do they seriously want me to believe that their Princess And The Pea Complex could actually trip them up on a grain of salt?  I saw one of those under the microscope when I was thirteen. I think someone could stub their toe on a microscope, but beyond that . . . And frankly, if someone has their feet anywhere near a casserole they bring to a church potluck, I’m not touching it, sister.  I don’t care how high the sodium content is.

I think the problem is people don’t say what they really mean. If it’s raining cats and dogs outside, then just say that. If there’s a new fangled invention that really flips your switch, that’s all you need to tell me. And if you think I’m a lousy chef whose salty casserole makes you want to drink like a fish, you should keep that opinion to yourself.

See, discretion is the better part of valor, which is a Yankee expression meaning “she has a nasty right hook.”And that little piece of info right there could save your life at a church potluck.

Which might very well make it the best thing since sliced bread.

Waffling

I've never been a breakfast person. 

I don’t wake up hungry—I just wake up sleepy. And even though I enjoy the calm of that hour just before lunch, it takes me a while to snap out of my coma and figure out where I am. My husband, on the other hand, has veins full of sunshine. Do you have any idea how annoying it is for a zombie to be married to the Good Humor Man?

I can’t help being sluggish—it’s like my veins are full of molasses.  But I can’t handle caffeine, and cold cereal is of the devil, so mornings are a challenge. When I was a teenager, I thought leftover pizza and potato salad were the breakfast of champions, and an iced tea chaser was the bomb.

Those days are gone.

Welcome to midlife—land of nutritional guidelines and disapproving doctors. I’ll say this for me, though—I never skip breakfast, no matter how boring it is. I rarely skip any meals, but discussing that could only lead to hurt feelings and grudges, so let’s not go there.

Rob and I drove to Kentucky recently to visit our kids and grandbabies. Our first night on the road we slept well and the next morning went down to the hotel lobby to check out their breakfast bar. I was practically awake at the time, so I did a quick survey of the room and suddenly I saw it. Alone and unclaimed, it called out to me.

The waffle maker.

Waffle makers rock. They are the highlight of a free breakfast and I hardly ever get there first so I hardly ever get a free waffle. But today was different. Today I went directly to the round, flippy machine, poured in a Dixie cup of prepared batter, shut the lid, turned it over and waited for three little beeps to announce the arrival of an epicurean fantasy.

At the far end of the counter, I piled scrambled eggs on my plate, surveyed the sausage—not bad—and took my bounty to the last empty table in the room to listen for those tantalizing beeps.  Like Wile E. Coyote, impatient and drooling, I sat mesmerized by the thought of a buttery, imitation maple syrup-drenched waffle and finally understood his Roadrunner addiction. 

Then I ate a piece of sausage.

After entire minutes of anticipation, I heard them—THREE TRIUMPHANT BEEPS! Grabbing my medium sized paper plate, I scooched the eggs to one side, lifted up the lid of the shiny, steamy appliance and . . .

It was empty.

Cleaned out like a burgled bank vault.  I nearly wept at the shock. And then, as the stages of grief set in, anger welled up in me and blew open my big mouth.

“Somebody took my waffle!” I announced to the entire room.  “I can’t believe it!  Somebody took my waffle!”

Rob rushed to my side.

“Hush,” he said, “everyone’s looking.”

“But I can’t believe it!” I told him, as he pulled me away from the violated appliance.  “Who would do something like that!  Right here in America—who walks over in broad daylight and just takes somebody else’s waffle?”

“You can make another one,” he said, placating me with an impossible dream.

“I don’t want another one,” I told him, “I wanted that one!”

We sat down across from a man who looked at me and timidly asked, “Did somebody take your waffle?”

Rob shook his head and got up, walking away, but it was too late—everyone knew he was with me. I scanned the room for the perpetrator of this crime, but no one had the decency to make eye contact. 

And no one was eating a waffle.

“Guess they wolfed it down,” I muttered to the empty chair across from me, suddenly vacated by the shrewd stranger. I finished my breakfast alone, pondering the gall it took for someone to whisk away another person’s waffle and never even apologize.

“I don’t think I want to live in a country where no one respects another person’s right to their own waffle,” I muttered bitterly, swallowing the last piece of cold scrambled egg.  “I hate breakfast,” I said and threw my soggy plate in the overflowing trash.

Oddly overcooked smells began wafting throughout the crowded breakfast room and, distracted from my heartache, I tuned in to a loudening clamor behind me brought on by the acrid aroma.

“Where’s that lady who couldn’t find her waffle?” a tall man said to his seated wife.  “The one with the red hair?”

Every eye in the room now focused on me. Sure. Now they care, I thought defensively.

“I found your waffle,” he said. “It was still cooking on the other side of this two-sided appliance,” and he held up a black hockey puck that used to be my coveted breakfast.

Oh.

On the upside, I’m not the only one who hates breakfast now. On the downside, Rob refuses to book us in any more hotels with breakfast rooms. But for the record, my faith in America has been restored. And I’ve sworn off waffles forever.

Who needs breakfast. I’ll just sleep another hour til lunch.




Thanks to Jonathan McIntosh for this mouth-watering breakfast image. I bet they're good for lunch, too. You can see more of Jonathan's amazing photos, as well as view the original of this shot, at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmcintosh/3751958052/in/photolist-6HxLpW-5nNXFZ-28ZNVv-9wbg1r-am9fjK-fmKqPK-6BP3Tf-qYMU7d-aymZqg-5HtpGC-SMpawz-bgDuse-5Epqcy-a4yBJR-4SRimY-6KJYsT-99L7aM-4hamp6-98jStC-Guovy-dd9PHS-4srfyQ-8Pf5ci-64gvNr-qGRVoH-bUJre9-52rXk-8RV6wU-p3VaC-96nmP7-agh3VL-gkygN-5Agn5c-moXZq4-a7jKJW-4kjNjx-oh2kGb-5CdDQ4-bzBrDD-dYKRhA-9mT3mT-8NX3jV-7HCkuZ-apjDrb-5iviZ8-bAydXy-fvUiWh-4BPBag-bctNWn-4itmtY

Mistaken Identity

I’m pretty sure they were framed.

I know these two. They can’t even spell “selfish”. Well, okay, one of them can, but with her five-year-old phonetics, it reads more like Sell Fish. She’s so cute. And so’s the little one.

I think it was just an overwhelming case of circumstantial evidence. I know how this works—I was a mother once. You hear a few raised voices in the other room and suddenly your blood pressure shoots up. Then before you can say, “Stop that fighting!” somebody’s in time-out and somebody else is, too.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the whole affair go scot free, floating away from the crime scene, their own reputations unbesmirched. It’s a crime, I tell ya. Everybody’s fooled by those happy-go-lucky types.

Everyone except me. I know their MO.  See, I’m kind of like a Grandma MacGyver. And believe you me, I’m qualified. After years of experience raising my own children, I’m both confused and suspicious.

So today my daughter handed over the innocent looking ringleaders of yesterday’s skirmish and told me to take them to my house. Like I could control them. Dreamer.

“The girls were fighting over them,” she alleged, implicating my precious granddaughters without even a cross examination. Well, actually there was an examination and the evidence made her cross. But I had a sneaky feeling the real suspects were the two who couldn’t make eye contact with me.

Reluctantly, I wrestled them out to the truck, tucked them in safely behind my seat, turned on the A/C so we’d all be comfy, and pulled out of the driveway. That’s when the trouble started.

Jostling and shoving, bumping into each other and getting in my face, I realized suddenly those two oddballs had pulled out of their restraints. And somehow, there they were, up in the front seat with me!  I pushed them back so I could safely see around them, but I was outnumbered. Bobbing and lurching, they blocked my view of the windows and mirrors and I nearly drove off the road before miraculously I grabbed them both and put them in their place.

“Aha!” I announced to . . . no one in particular. “So it was you two all along!”  Feeling pretty proud of cracking this case, I could hardly wait to tell my daughter. However, I restrained myself—I wasn’t born yesterday, ya know.

Finally at home, I put those two in timeout where they eventually calmed down. I just had to deflate their supersized egos a little. It wasn’t pretty, but I had no choice.

See, I’m soft and tough.

Hand me a couple of miscreant balloons and I can make ‘em regret they ever wished anybody a happy birthday.

Party animals.

Dancing in the Dark

"What are you laughing at?” I asked my son and daughter-in-law while we visited them and the grandbabies in Kentucky.  They passed me a video baby monitor of Tully, their two-year-old, who’d been in bed for an hour or two. The picture was pretty super-spy high tech since it was filming in the dark, but the image was unmistakable. Their pajama clad redhead was on her feet in the crib, dancing and swaying at her own private party.

“And a little child will lead them,” Isaiah said.

I had a hysterectomy three months ago today.  I was asleep when it happened and when I woke up, I was missing quite a few original body parts. It’s scary what can happen to you when you’re not paying attention.

The doctor told me it would take 6-8 weeks for my body to heal. I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavier than my head off the pillow. My sister-in-law gave me permission to be treated like a princess for two months, which made my husband a bit of a bondservant. Oh.  That’s what it meant when he promised ‘for better or for worse.’

I feel really bad about that.

Every night for the first month I woke him up once or twice to help me get out of bed for pain meds, new ice packs and bathroom visitation.  It was like having a newborn in the house again, only bigger. And whinier. I needed help with everything.  Getting in and out of a chair. Getting in and out of my clothes. Getting in and out of the shower and the car.  Why he doesn’t have a sprained back, I’ll never know.  I guess all that carrying me through life for the last 37 years paid off.

Two weeks after my surgery I finally experienced what most of my friends have been talking about for ages—my very own hot flashes.  Private summers, power surges, no-spring-chicken fevers.  I.Had.No.Idea.  And I apologize to my friend for laughing that day she walked through my front door, straight into the kitchen, and stuck her head in my freezer.  Now I understand.

I found some meds that relieved those personal visits to the tropics, but not everything is hunky dory in EulaLand.  Turns out it was eight weeks for the surgery to heal. It’s taking a bit longer for my soul and body to adjust to the new normal.
 

I feel like a two-year-old again. Every day I need a nap.  But I don't want a nap.  I want to do what I want to do. Most days I don't have a choice about it, though. I need a nap, cuz I can actually stay awake until ten or ten thirty at night if I take a nap.  And if I don’t take a nap? Been around any toddlers when they reach their melting point?

This is so humiliating. 

So there I lay this afternoon, listening to Zen music on the TV, counting elderly sheep who can’t jump a fence, trying to relax and turn off my brain, and after forty-five minutes—nothing.  I knew I needed some sleep but just telling somebody to go to sleep works about as well as telling Congress to balance a budget—no comprendo.

I finally decided laying there for a while was better than nothing and got up. Every day I am better. I wish I was back to normal right now, but I have so much to be thankful for that feeling fatigued for a few months instead of worried about cancer seems like a small price to pay. So while I keep recovering and finding my own unique way back to me, as bewildering as it is sometimes, I'll at least be good and take my naps. And I'll try to keep in mind what my granddaughter does when she can’t make sense out of down time, either.

I’ll dance in the dark. 

Poor Rob. I hope he doesn’t mind another redheaded pajama party.

Redhead

I don’t know what came over me. I could blame it on my red hair, but now my natural color is gray—no blonde roots here.  Maybe Target's to blame for expecting all of us to stand patiently, three carts deep, in two open checkout lines. I’d be happy to blame it on the guy in front of me who made sure he got into the shorter line before I did, but he must have already had a rough day.

Poor baby.

He had three items in his hand. I had about twenty in my cart. Impatiently he kept his options open, standing back from the woman in front of him just far enough so he could sprint to the next checkout counter if the Target gods deemed to open one.

They did. I was invited first. Boy was he ticked off.

But I didn’t know he was upset until all my purchases were bagged and in the cart. I saw him and the barbed wire tattoo he flaunted on his arm, leaning against the wall, with his stuff all paid for as I began to walk away.  "Good for him, that guy got done already," I thought. Then I heard him behind me as I headed for the door.

“Yeah, it happened to me again,” he said to the invisible comforter on his cell phone.  “They opened up a line next to me and some lady behind me jumped into it before I could get there.”

Hmm, I thought, there was a guy in front of me with a tattoo on his arm who seemed really impatient, and I am a lady who was behind him when a clerk motioned me over to the next line—I’ll bet I’m the lady!

All my red hair turned redder.

“People are so selfish these days,” he continued loudly on a call I now realized was directed at me and probably not even connected. “People used to offer their place in line to someone with only three items, but not this lady. I don’t know what this world is coming to,” he complained closely in my ear. 

I stopped and let him pass.

“Really?” I spoke to his back.  “The man motioned me over.  You’re ridiculous.”

All the way out the door, his voice growing louder and louder while he courageously put me in my place on his cell phone, he assaulted my reputation and demeaned my existence.  He probably wasn’t too impressed with the dog food in my cart, either. Finally he “hung up” as we both cleared the automatic doors and I commented on his comments. Loudly. In his direction.

See? Red hair is a curse.

“The world used to be full of gentlemen, too,” I said in the wind which was blowing northwest toward his self-righteous back. Then I headed for my truck. The big giant one with the personalized plates that psychos might be able to somehow look up so they can begin stalking your house. 

“What did you say to me?”  he shouted across the parking lot.  “You only think of yourself, don’t you?” he shouted again, heading now towards me. I missed the rest of his genius monologue because of that northwest breeze that blew his words back at him. But I still began to pray in tongues that God would surround my truck with images of gorillas. I heard stalkers are afraid of gorillas.

Something stopped him as I began loading bags into my truck, and he cut short his attack. I never spoke to him again or looked his direction. But after I pulled out of the parking lot and came to a stop at the next light, I saw a small black car behind me whose driver had the attitude of someone who’d had to stay put in a checkout line.

We both pulled through the light and then he quickly pulled in front of me, slammed on his brakes, and as I moved into the left lane, he swung widely in front of me, stopping abruptly again before turning right and roaring off to nurse his wounds.

Boy. He sure showed me.

If I'd known how hurt the little guy would be by letting a woman go first, I'd have probably done the same thing again.  Even bullies could use some manners. The world is in dire need of a few more gentlemen. And if there really was someone on the other end of that cell phone, I pity them.  There's obviously only one adult in that marriage.

Fine.  I guess red really is my natural hair color.

Red hair courtesy of Michael W. May's photostream at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14609664@N06/5133365949/in/photolist-8PBQRt-dvFPx2-dssYNC-dssNRF-dssNKc-dssYyA-dssNTx-9R9RvJ-7VhS1o-84tBB1-84cnmr-8yKoBw-95Qjpt-dfNgnR-aDVfTL-8iehuB-8iehuF-8iehux-8A1rtf-cW8X8E-8CkPrg-8A1rqA-aERfmH-c1CwQq-bZPccS-apKMfJ-dwvzt6-7UWBEd-8Cq69b-95o9dr-87sHP6-87vVQW-87vWjf-a9uMos-87sJAt-9o4dte-8A9FWf-9vyswU-apKLYS-apKM61-8mme85-8EgcgP-8Yiivw-7A27zY-87sK8p
 

Agitation



I don't know what to believe anymore.

Won't we save our planet and the landfills and our children’s future if we don't consume so much? I thought less is more and downsizing is better than supersizing.

Are you as confused as I am?

Procter and Gamble have a new commercial which promises that “caring for your clothes just got easier”. All you have to do is buy Tide detergent plus Downey fabric softener plus Bounce softener sheets and use all three for every load of clothes you wash.

I’m no math genius, but it looks to me like that should increase sales revenue for Procter and Gamble by fifty per cent.  And goober up your clothes with one hundred per cent more chemicals than necessary, leaving an oily film on your undies and preventing towels from absorbing water. And won’t all those empty Downey bottles and Bounce boxes make the landfills fill up with . . . less land?

That’s not the worst of it.

My firefighter husband told me loads of laundry ago that I should go easy on the liquid fabric softener because it makes clothes more flammable.  I may or may not have taken his advice. But I did look it up today, and what do you know? He’s a pretty good firefighter.

Using fabric softeners makes our clothes softer by bonding a chemical finish to the fibers, and that makes the fibers work like a wick when they get too close to a flame. Experts recommend using dryer sheets only, and only on every third wash.

On the other hand, Procter and Gamble wants us to double the amount of softeners in every load of laundry. And the kicker to their ad is this—they say if we follow their advice, it will make our clothes last longer. “Tide, Bounce and Downey together keeps our clothes looking newer 50% longer – they’re greater together,” the ad promises. Using both Downey and Bounce will save you money, they gush.

Unless you stand too close to a flame. Or spend twice as much money on fabric softeners as normal.

That’s the way advertising works, though. Remember the directions on shampoo bottles? Honestly, who needs directions to wash their hair? Lather, rinse, repeat.  That last little word doubled the sales of shampoo and secured the need for hair conditioners for all our dried out locks forever.

I wish I could think of one word to write that would double my income.

The whole thing gives me heartburn, to tell you the truth. Thank goodness I’ve got Alka Seltzer in the medicine cabinet.  A little “plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is!” should take care of all this stomach acid. Except the truth is you only need one tablet, not two. They doubled our pleasure and doubled their fun in the 1960’s with that little jingle and their pre-packaged packets of two tablets.

Maybe they’re just too smart for the rest of us. Every mom on earth knows you’ve got to tell your kids something two or three times before they’ll listen to you. So if a little fabric softener is good, twice as much is better. If one heartburn tablet is good, two is fabulous.  If it says Libby's, Libby's, Libby's, on the label, label, label, I will like it, like it, like it, on the table, table, table. And every time she Meow, meow, meow, meow, Meow, meow, meow, meow, Meow, meow, meow, meow, Meow, meow, meow, meows, it hits me like a ton of bricks—even my cat is a sucker for ads.

Okay, I don’t have a cat. That was just a bunch of baloney, and if my baloney had a first name it’d be O-S-C-A-R. Like my dog. Cuz my dog’s better than your dog, my dog’s better than yours. Okay. Actually my dog’s name is Sydney.

What can I say. Sometimes I feel like a nut.

Sometimes I don’t.

http://shine.yahoo.com/cleaning/doing-laundry-wrong-141000491.html

http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4014731.html