Cleaning strawberries

Why we ended up in the IMAX mall in the first place is another long story, but the six of us were wandering around in there, looking at stuff and providing commentation in order to kill some time.

A guy selling cleaner for eyeglasses spied me in my bifocals and called out that I ought to try his lens cleaner.  He was pretty persistent, but I turned him down times and walked away.  I guess I still had lens cleaner on the brain as Katie and I studied a display of jewelry and commented on the sweet little strawberry earrings.

Jessica came up just then, and Katie said, “You should’ve heard Mom with the guy trying to sell her his lens cleaner.”

“Yes,” I replied.  “I told him I didn’t need any lens cleaner for my strawberries.”

Maybe you had to be there, but the three of us just laughed and laughed and laughed!

Indications of busyness

#1  Forgetting to eat.

We needed to leave for church at 5:30 PM, and I was trying to get a lot of odds and ends done before we left.  Midway through church, I realized I was getting hungry, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to eat supper!

Not my favorite month

Having watched the various months come and go for quite a few years now, and having spent a lot of time in miscellaneous gardening tasks over the past five years, thus making myself a bit more aware of the natural rhythm of events in general and late summer events in particular, I now officially and freely admit that I have come to a sobering conclusion:  I really don’t like August.

The only good thing about August is my dad’s birthday (and, when he was living, my grandpa’s birthday).  Besides those two events, I find August to be full of things that emphatically do not make me smile.

- The leaves begin falling off our red maple.  Because the big flower bed is built around the maple tree, this means that leaves fall all over the flowers and in the bed, making a mess of my (admittedly futile) attempts to keep the bed neat.  Falling leaves also portent fall, the season, which see “spiders” below.

- It’s hot.  Nuff said, although so far, this late July and early August have been notably cooler than usual.  I do thank God for the inventor of air conditioning and for my husband who pays the electric bills.

- Spiders begin building their webs everywhere.  Now, I don’t mind spiders outdoors, and their dew-strung webs can make for great morning photography, but to me, web-building is just another reminder that fall (a depressing time of year for me, full of brownness and leaf-raking) is just around the corner.  Spiders also tend to appear inside the house in August, an activity which is strictly forbidden.

- Katie goes back to college.  Okay, granted that this is a very good thing for her, and exactly what she should be doing in mid-August of her 20th year, but it’s tough to say goodbye, and I SO miss her when she’s gone.

So, summerwise, I enjoy June and July but mildly dread August; always hoping that THIS year, it will be different.  That maybe THIS year the falling leaves and spiders will all delay their activities until September, and maybe THIS goodbye will be easier.

Oh!  There is one redeeming thing about August.  We have started a new tradition of making plum preserves after Katie drives away.  That reminds me that I need to buy pectin and sugar and jelly jars, because just like everything else in August, the plums won’t wait.

Misplaced letters

“Do as I say and not as I do,” lives on in the fact that I require our kids to learn to touch-type properly (at least 55 wpm), while I myself remain a confirmed hunter-pecker.  People laugh, but my system works really well for me, even though it involves both fingers (well, actually only seven select ones) and eyes (two) to be on the keyboard.

Imagine my horror, then, when I sat down at one of the library’s catalog computers to search for some books and realized that someone had meticulously rearranged the letter labels on most of the keyboard’s keys – an exceedingly sadistic and vindictive act!  M and N were labeled B and V, respectively.  K was over where D should be.  I and O were down at comma and period, and I never did find R.

Now, I have lived 48 years, have read extensively, and have even earned a bachelor’s degree, but I confess that I felt very, very stupid sitting at that keyboard.  For each letter of each word, I had to look for it, eventually locate it in a place I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be, wildly stab at some (any?) other key, and watch to see what it would produce.

The process was frustrating and maddeningly slow, but mostly it was funny.  It made me think back to that one-semester typing class I pooh-poohed in 11th grade.  At the time, I knew good and well that I wasn’t going to be a secretary, so why on earth would I ever need to know how to type?  I only took the course because my mom said I had to.  She said everyone should know how to type.  What a premonition!

I somehow passed the class, but I didn’t learn to type very well.   Now, more than 30 years later, learning “real” typing is not an option, because with carpal tunnel syndrome, even those initial “A, S, L, semi-colon” drills cause my fingers to go painfully numb within just a few seconds.

So I’m sitting at home and laughing at myself as I hunt and peck this blog post.  But at least at my own desk, the keys actually type what their labels say.

Whole lotta dying goin’ on

It’s beginning to get depressing.  In just the past sixteen days. . .

Don Deal died.  He was our 71 year old neighbor and all-round nice guy.  He’d had many health problems for a long time, had suffered another heart attack, had been in the hospital a week, made great improvement, was going to be moved out of ICU into a private room the next day, and died.  His wife of 20 years, Eva, has now been widowed twice and is devastated.

Doug Decker’s mom died.  Doug’s the head of the TV department at church and one (maybe the youngest?) of six kids.  His dad died three months ago.  His mom was healthy, but developed an intestinal blockage, went into the hospital, and died.  How much grief can one family handle in three months?

Mary Varner died.  Mary was married to my grandpa, who had died several years ago.  Mary was in her nineties and had been living in a nursing home.  She was taken to the hospital for some tests, but commented that she didn’t have an ache in her body.  Mary was just old.  Tragically, I doubt she was a Christian.

Rick Cochran’s grandfather died.  Rick’s one of the associate pastors at church.  His wife leads worship, and when our world got wilder than usual Sunday morning, and Katie realized she was going to be late to help with the computer for the words on the screen, and called Rick’s cell to ask him to let Nicole know, she found out that Rick was not at the church at all but at his grandfather’s funeral.  Sheesh.

Oscar Hicklin died.  Oscar was probably in his late 70s, a white-haired, short, portly, cheerful usher at church.  He’d been sick for about a year with cancer and hadn’t been to church in a long time.  He was really touch and go there for a while, but in Sunday’s bulletin this blurb appeared, “Praise Report:  Oscar Hicklin’s last doctor’s report shows him cancer free!  Continue to pray for him to gain strength so we can see him at church soon!” Obviously you can’t print bulletins at the very last minute, but Sunday morning, Pastor Jess told us that he had gotten word Saturday that Oscar had died.

Kay Cameron died.  My great friend and neighbor, LaShell, has a sister, Denise, who lives in Colorado with her husband, Kirk.  Kay was Kirk’s mom.    On June 18, LaShell sent me this urgent prayer request:  “My sister and brother-in-law are in from Colorado.  When they arrived on Monday, her husband’s mother, Kay Cameron, was not doing very well and was admitted on Tuesday to the hospital, being upgraded to ICU.  Kay was diagnosed with COPD and pneumonia, which is a shock to everyone.  She has never smoked and is allergic to smoke.  This morning her lung has collapsed and they have inserted a tube to re-inflate it.  Kay is under weight and is in a very weakened state.  Please pray for a healing touch to her whole body, but specifically her lungs.  Her heart is strong.  Thank you.  We serve a big and mighty God.” We prayed.  She died Saturday.

Death has been a recent theme in realms far beyond my little world, with celebrities Ed McMahon, Farrah Faucett, and Michael Jackson all breathing their last this week, as well.  Their passings received more acclaim than the ones that have touched me personally, but their absences leave no bigger holes in families’ and friends’ lives.   For those of us who remain, the grave does still sting. . . but we look expectantly to the day when even death will bow its knobby knee to the King of kings.

Returning to blogosphere

After about a 10-day hiatus from blogging, I am returning to one of my favorite habits.  Andrew was gone to Camp Lookout last week, freeing me from many of my daily responsibilities (including lesson prep, checking schoolwork, overseeing chores, and dealing with attitude-related stuff), and giving me time to tackle various fun projects around the house (organizing our library, organizing Flickr pictures, practicing the piano, etc.).

In addition to all that fun, Scott and the kids have REALLY blessed me by taking over the menu planning and most of the meal prep for the entire month of June!  Yippee!  Right now, I am just doing weekly grocery shopping and cooking two nights a week.  I am pretty sure this is what heaven will be like, except perhaps minus the shopping and the two nights of cooking.

It’s so nice to feel caught up in at least one or two areas of life.  It’s been a new and different experience.  Now I’m off to make the grocery list.

Pink Pearl Queen

Until I began writing lesson plans a couple weeks ago, pens were my chosen weapon of  writing.  I typically use pencils only to mark music (which I do do with some frequency) or to work math problems (which I prefer to leave to my sons).  Therefore I also wasn’t what you would call intimately acquainted with erasers, but all that changed when Katie came driving home last week (hurrah, hurrah).

Accompanying her were a number of her used college books that weren’t worth trying to sell for cash, but which could be swapped on pbs – BUT a number of them contained marking, and I have been dutifully erasing the marks that were made in pencil.

I can now tell you EVERYTHING about my trusty Pink Pearl eraser – its shape (constantly becoming more rounded, much like me, come to think of it); its color; the exact GPS coordinates of its large and small black smudges; the feel of its “heft” between my right thumb, forefinger, and middle finger; its aroma (uniquely third grade); and the number of teeny tiny Pink Pearl molecules it sheds all over my desk with each underlined sentence or marginal note.

This may even be the same Pink Pearl I used in third grade.

Never too early for a shower

Although Saturday is a school day for us, we typically get a rather late start.  For one thing, Scott has a foreign language tutoring session at 7:00 AM on Saturdays, so he typically eats breakfast late.  That means that breakfast clean up (mine while Josiah’s gone) is late, which means I am late getting Andrew going on his piano and academics.

Saturday’s also my day to work in the “garden,” (actually a very small collection of containers and beds), which I like to do before showering; hence one can often find me in my walking clothes (gray shorts, bright blue T-shirt with massive white bleach spots, and olive drab floppy hat) and smelling offensive until late morning – but only on Saturdays.

Yesterday I was particularly slow to start.  I had gotten involved with letter writing and had even begun tackling the dreaded weekly Quicken update.  Well, that wouldn’t be too bad if I actually did it weekly, but let it sit for two or two-and-a-half weeks, and it’s a monster.

My desk is in the office, and the office door is directly at the top of the stairs.  The front door is at the bottom of the stairs, and it’s obviously a straight shot all the way.  About 1:00 PM, while I was up to my (not-so-fragrant) elbows in Quicken, the doorbell rang.  Andrew hollered that he’d get it, and I hollered back, “I don’t care WHO it is.  I’m NOT coming to the door!”

It was Alice Russum.

I could not believe it.

My hair was standing on stringy, my clothes looked horrid, Alice Russum (who always looks gorgeous) was at the front door, and there was no way for me to even escape to the bedroom and a shower without her seeing me!  AARRGGHH!

I called down to her that I was way too dirty to be seen, and I ducked around the corner – with all the grace of a baby elephant – and into the shower.  In eleven minutes flat, I showered, applied makeup and clothing, and fixed my hair.  As I was drying the hair, Andrew called up to me, “too late, Mom, she just left. . . just kidding!”

Alice and her husband were members of our little church some ten years ago.  He works overseas for Chevron – generally gone a month, then home a month – and in the intervening years they have lived in Missouri, Texas, Korea, and Viet Nam.  Now they’re back in Stone County (although he’s on a four-year stint in Bangladesh), and she was in the area and decided on a whim to drop in.

We visited for a couple hours and had a grand time catching up on everything.  We laughed till our faces hurt.  And I learned my lesson:  even on Saturdays, always shower early.

Misplaced brain

I have decided that the scariest part of this season of my life is not the hot flashes, or children the moving out, or the mood swings.  It’s got to be the constant feeling that I am losing (or recently lost, or am about to lose) my mind.

Case in point:  today I was scheduled to attend a one-hour TV department training meeting at church, beginning at 10:00 AM.  Actually, Josiah and I were both supposed to attend, but he had two AIM presentations and so could not go.  I would be going alone, which was fine.  I have known about this meeting for six weeks, and it has been on the calendar that whole time.

After a lot of yard work and some house work, I sat down to tackle a pile of desk work at 1:00 PM.  I know it was 1:00 PM, because I looked at the clock, and as I turned my head back toward my monitor, I happened to see on the calendar “10 – P, Jo TV dept mtg.”  I had completely forgotten to go!

I called our director and apologized profusely.  The only reason I could think to give him was that I had misplaced my brain.  Either that or it was turned off.  In any case, I am fervently hoping (and I guess I should be praying) that sometime in the next few years I can both relocate my brain and consistently keep it turned on – at least when I’m awake.

Routine

I have always known this, but the past few days have confirmed to me that I function MUCH better when a standard routine is in place.  Three days during which you have much to do but aren’t supposed to do much of it, three days of eating and sleeping too much and at odd times, three days of being home with your spouse who also has no schedule, three days of wandering around accomplishing nothing is too much for me!

Give me kids, interruptions, and a full schedule any day.