The Funniest Thing I Saw Last Week

(I don’t know if this says more about what kind of week I had last week or something about my sense of humor…)

I was driving home with Eowyn the other day on the highway and all of a sudden I said to myself,

“Something stinks!”

And I thought,

It kind of smells like rotten eggs. Yes, more like rotten eggs than compost or rotting carcasses or Timmy’s breath…

And lo and behold I looked up and saw this sign on the semi in front of me:

WARNING!
HOT
MOLTEN
SULFUR

And I started laughing, because, well, yes indeed, that explained it.

—

In other scent related reports, I realized something this morning.  Do you know what my ideal room freshener smell is?

BLEACH. 

Ahh, bleach. Clean.  Crisp.  No heavy fruitiness or plant-type associations anywhere.  Just the comforting scent of dead microorganisms. 

Coffee is a close second, with outside windy fall weather and baking apple pie coming in third and fourth, but bleach is definitely Number One on my list.

—

Finally have a camera I think I like.  Here are pictures from hanging out in the back yard yesterday and this morning:

Baby In The Leaves

That Look!

And That Look!

What An Amazing Trick!

Adding To The Leaf Collection

Fall Is GREAT!

—

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 
Hug your family,
Eat lots of delicious food,
Let the wind take your breath away,
Laugh and smile a lot,
And get someone else to do the dishes.

Soothing Autumn Sunshine

There’s something about peanut butter. I was spreading it the other day and it was so luscious and creamy and such a beautiful amber brown.  I think I’ve fallen in love with peanut butter. Warm peanut butter that is. Room temperature. We’ve been keeping it in the fridge to prevent possible bacterial growth (something Joel read about, of course) but it’s so recalcitrant and intractable right out of the fridge. But straight from the cabinet? Beautiful! Creamy! Delicious!

(What did you expect? A rave about the gorgeous day today?  You know I can’t stay on topic that long!)

—

I had a brilliant storage idea the same day I fell in love with peanut butter.  Little shelves that come down from the ceiling.  I can hear the hummy quiet whine as they descend now, holding all the crap that currently sits on my dining room table/unwilling desk that I HATE looking at every day.  Yes.  Ceiling shelves. With little programmable beepers to remind me to pay the bills that are sitting on them, waiting for me to stop being so damn lazy. 

—

Now that I have my own precious child, I have discovered that I really dislike other children.  Especially the ones with fat little ham hands that take toys from my precious sprite and knock her over and treat her perfect little self with disdain.  Oh, I want to slap them and remove them forcefully from my presence!  I substitute this with veiled dirty looks at their parents.

Yes, I have become an angry and protective mother (who still manages to let her child get a huge bruise on her giant pale forehead from falling head long on the cement at the courthouse. sigh…) who suddenly has a gigantic preference for the well being of her own child! I still don’t quite understand psychotic parents who do things like kill their children’s coaches because they’ve been unfair to their little brats, thank God, but I now have a little rootling of that same emotion planted deep in my heart. 

—

I also hate eschatology.  I’m more interested in working on that part in the Lord’s prayer: Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yeah, that’s right.  Jesus said to pray for heaven on earth.  I’d rather work on that than be hypersensitive to how much more terrible times supposedly are now than they have ever been. Yeah, right. Why don’t we discuss the “worst time in history” with victims of the Spanish Inquisition, or gypsies in Germany in the 1940s or survivors of the Black Death in the 1340s or suburban American housewives terrified of the Cold War in the 1950s….  Yeah, things suck in a lot of places and in a lot of ways (anyone else got the serious heebie-jeebies over global warming?), but no more than they ever have in my humble opinion.  Why? Because PEOPLE are PEOPLE and they’ll always be rotten and saintly and complicated and stupid and brilliant.  Until people change, I’m just not buying that “end times” bullshit.

—

Since I LEFT MY CAMERA IN OKLAHOMA CITY two weekends ago, the Eowyn pictures are pretty scarce. I bought a new camera that is going right back to the store because it immediately pissed me off by not focusing in an idiot proof manner (I have no time to focus! Sheesh! Eowyn moves too fast for such silly details!!).  But here are a few samples from last weekend:

Like Every Good Mother,
I Make Sure My Child Gets
Her Daily Serving Of DIRT.

A Habit To Encourage:
Placing Dead Leaves In A Garbage Can
(She IS Her Mother’s Daughter!)

Released

I just finished a VERY VERY VERY long book and now that I am released from its insidious spell, I may now blog again (as I now have free time).

I have actually composed several very fascinating, erudite, pensive and touching blogs as I lay in bed in the moments before going to sleep.  Sorry you missed them, but I am relieved that all of you are not snuggled up in bed with me reading my thoughts. 

Requiem

On Thursday of last week my neighbor’s husband died of cancer.  She is a good neighbor and watched our house for us and knows our names and the names of our dogs.  We’ve watched as in the last year 4 ambulances have flickered late night lights over our yards as first she took a near-death trip and then her husband took three rides, each one keeping him away a little longer until the last when he didn’t come home again. 

Ron had cancer.  Inoperable lung cancer the first time (probably a product of a lifetime of cigarette smoking) and then, after a few months of remission, bone cancer.  The last thing I said to him was, “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” as we took Eowyn and the dogs for a walk and passed by him on his porch the day before his last ambulance ride. 

It’s a sad death. Expected yet long hoped against.  My neighbor is immersing herself in remodeling jobs to keep her busy.  I need to buy her some flowers.

On Saturday of last week, a dear friend from church died.  Bill was 72 (he died the day after his birthday) and had been his doctors’ miracle patient for years.  Bill and his wife Carole’s ministry at church was greeting.  There is not one single person who entered the doors of that church who escaped his loving hugs – even the ones who tried to run away!  He was every visitor’s first encounter with the palpable love of God in our church family. 

At his funeral, our pastor, with tears running down his cheeks, talked of how he’s sure Bill is at the pearly gates, stubbornly insisting to St. Peter that they be wide open no matter how inclement the weather and regardless of the heating bills.  We all laughed because, well, if that’s the way heaven works, that’s definitely what Bill’s been up to this last week.

Bill’s death isn’t as sad as Ron’s.  I realized driving back from the wedding on Saturday night that Bill is the first person who I know who has died that I know – KNOW – is in heaven.  I’m not sure what this utter certainty means – because we all know utter certainty doesn’t necessarily mean veracity – but it’s there and it’s real.

The Sunday before he died, Joel and Eowyn and I went over to his house to visit him.  He normally got sick around this time of year but he hadn’t made it to church for almost 2 months and I knew that was a bad sign.  When we got there he didn’t even get out of bed, which was also a bad sign.  He was very weak, but still sharp.  We had a nice visit (Eowyn, brat that she is, cried at the scary old man) and I’m glad we went at our very last opportunity.  He was in the hospital three days later.

The saddest thing about Bill’s death is the difficulties it leaves for his wife Carole.  She has early stages of Alzheimer’s that aren’t as early as they were a few years ago.  Her short term memory is essentially shot, something I know know know she hates.  Her sister died from Alzheimer’s two years ago and I remember helping them interpret MRI findings from Carole’s scan (memory loss due to multiple lacunar infarcts) four years ago when she started noticing irritating little memory lapses.  But she can’t live alone. She can’t keep track of her purse, much less run a household. 

I hated seeing her cry at Bill’s funeral  – which wasn’t a funeral, by the way, it was (truly) a Celebration of Life.  Sweet Carole – so lighthearted and fun that she could even laugh with us through her tears.  She told us, “Sometimes life just sucks, doesn’t it?” and you know what? She’s absolutely right. It’s making me cry just to think about her.  I wish I could just hold her and make it all better, but we don’t get to do that for anyone really, except briefly for our children when they bruise their knees.  Even God seems to have to wait until later to fix things like this.

It’s sad how ages sweeps life away.  Three years ago another dear friend at church had a stroke just as she arrived on the shores of Alaska to take the cruise she’d waited her whole life to enjoy.  Rose moved to an assisted living center and I visited several times and brought her to several of our special evening services, but after a few times she didn’t really want to go.  She wasn’t quite the same person anymore and it was too hard to leave her new place of comfort to try and interact with old friends she couldn’t quite see or hear the same way she used to. 

But Bill’s fine. I know he’s happy. It’s the rest of us who have to figure things out for Carole and ourselves.  It really is strange knowing he’ll never hug me and give me a kiss on my cheek at the doors of the church. 

Bill and Carole After Dinner

 
We had them over for dinner two months ago.
I made lasagna and Eowyn impressed everyone with her newfound ability to walk. 
How odd that all that separates us from that moment is time.

So those are my deep thoughts.  I’ll let those settle and get back to you with all the frivolous ones soon, I promise!