Have My Senses Taken Leave?

It is becoming harder and harder for me to multi-task, which I define rather conservatively as trying to think about more than one thing at the same time. And there has been a lot to think about in the past couple of weeks:

• My mother has had some very serious – indeed life-threatening – health problems that have caused great stress and strain on my family in Los Angeles: she was in the hospital, discharged to a nursing home, back to the hospital, sent home, back to the hospital.... And there is the on-going inner debate: do I drop everything and rush to LA to be there and help the rest of the family take care of her? Do I stay put and continue to plan our vacation there in June as a couple? What do I do?
• Then there is some new stress associated with my work. I very nearly stopped getting any work at all from one of the publishers. I had no idea why, so I sent an e-mail to the production editor supervisor. She, bless her heart, went above and beyond the call of duty and sussed out the problem. And now I know why. An attempt to be funny in an e-mail I sent to a production editor backfired and had the opposite affect. Instead of being seen as the warm, good-natured, funny person that I am (!!), I became an nasty-tempered unpleasant whiner who complains. This spread like a poison amongst the other production editors and no one wanted to work with me. The supervisor is trying to mend the situation. I was urged to read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People to improve my communication skills, which I am doing. I sent an apology to the PEs, which was surprisingly hard to compose without it sounding like I was blaming them for misinterpreting my e-mail. So now I have to wait and see how this is going to turn out.
• Finally, my main journal has been shifted to another vendor – I have been shifted too, fortunately – but I have to learn a new interface, and new procedures to follow. The new issue manager is great, but I miss my "old boss," and I am sorry that I won't be working with her anymore.
  

Which all leads to two recent things I did within a very short period of time that amused me, but also scared me quite a bit. We were in the kitchen putting away the dishes and talking about “stuff,” and I started to put the cast iron skillet in the refrigerator. As soon as I opened the refrigerator door I realized I had made a mistake, and I laughed about it and put it away in the oven where it belongs, but it still upset me very much. We saw the movie Away From Her recently, and the wife, who is showing symptoms of Alzheimer disease, does something very similar. Lord, have mercy. Then a few nights later, I filled my glass with ice and picked up the 2-liter bottle of Vernors ale (which according Wikipedia “shares the title of America's oldest soft drink with Hires Root Beer”) and started pouring it over the bowl of popcorn sitting next to the glass. By doing this, I did not create a new taste sensation. The soggy popcorn ended up in the trash, and I had to start over. But, it did give me something to giggle about for several days.

Flying gumdrop...

A flash of orange caught my eye as I was pounding away on the computer keyboard, and I looked up and saw this fellow land on the bird feeder outside the window. It just took my breath way. I was very excited: I haven't seen a Baltimore Oriole at the house for several years now. So I scurried and found the oriole feeder, which is so old its color has nearly faded away, and replaced the hummingbird feeder (they didn't care, orange works fine for them too). I cut a slice of orange and put it on the bird feeder. And sure enough, within a few minutes he was back. He ate some orange and then landed on the oriole feeder and R showed up with the camera. To paraphrase an e-mail a friend sent in response to a picture I sent her of the oriole... "how important it is to stop and notice the signs of new life around or else we miss it, for sure. Thanks for sending this cheerful little orange gumdrop." Amen. Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of Simple Abundance, writes about the importance letting our eyes "drink in the beauty that surrounds you" as we journey on the path to find order and balance in our lives. Amen to that too.

Gone, but not forgotten

On this day in 1986, my Grandpa Alpha Schuck died. Had he lived 2 more days, he would have been 94 years old. This picture of Grandpa was taken with my dad and mom, and his wife Helen (who he married a few years after grandma died), on the occasion of brother's wedding in October 1984. I think it is probably the last picture I have of him. Grandpa was a cheerful, happy person who liked to tell funny stories and jokes. Toward the end of his life, his hands were twisted and swollen with arthritis, and he must have been in pain, but I never heard him complain. He was a kind man.

He loved to grow things, and had a fantastic cactus garden. In fact, I have two varieties of cactus from his garden that are at least 40 years old. One of the earliest memories I have of him is helping him in his flower garden, planting pansies and alyssum. And to this day, those are the flowers that I enjoy the most, and in a few days I will be planting pansies in the whiskey-barrel planter by the back porch. As an aside, I used to plant them in an old galvanized washtub until I came outside one day and saw a rabbit sitting in the tub having them for lunch.

When the old family home where my father was raised was condemned to make way for a freeway, Grandpa and Grandma moved to Gardena, very near our house. In the early 60s, we moved into that same tract of homes, and so he then lived only a few blocks away, within easy walking distance. I don’t remember Grandpa “doing things” with his grandchildren like one thinks of grandpas today—although he may have done with my brothers—but he was involved with our family activities. He was always there to help when my dad got involved in painting a room or the house. He had edging machine for the lawn, and I remember him coming to tidy up after my dad finished mowing. And he always enjoyed the family dinners at holidays and birthdays, and he always ended the meal by saying “Edith [my mom], thank you , everything was delicious.” Grandpa loved the Western Scrub-Jays that lived in the neighborhood, and he trained them to come and pick peanuts out of his hands while he sat in a lawn chair in his driveway.

One of my most poignant memories occurred at Halloween after Grandma died, but before he married Helen (she was wonderful, by the way, stepping into the role of grandmother without a hitch). Grandpa invited us to his house for homemade hot chocolate after we finished trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, he accidently made it with salt instead of sugar—guess he got them mixed up—and we couldn’t drink it.

During the last few years of his life, I didn’t see him very much because by then we were living far away and only came back to California every other year. His days on earth came to an end in a nursing home, but he still had good quality of life: He wasn’t bedridden, and he still had a good appetite and enjoyed his food (Grandpa loved to eat -- especially chocolate kisses) and visiting with people. The family he left behind--wife, children, and grandchildren--buried him with love and respect in their hearts.

Checking things out...

After our house was moved to its current location many, many years ago, a porch was added to the original structure, and a gap—a very tiny gap—exists between the two foundations. Snakes live in hollow space under the porch as do lizards—if they can avoid being eaten by the snakes, I guess—and they slither in and out through the crack. The only variety of snake that I have actually seen going in and out is the black rat snake, which is very common here and grows to a very large size. Once upon a time I caught one eating my baby chicks that was more than 6 feet long; and no, I did not kill it. I put it in a pillowcase and took it for a ride. Other types of snake may also hang out in there, maybe even copperheads, but I don’t know for sure. As winter gives way to spring, I find I glance over there every time I go up and down the porch steps to see if one sticking its nose out to test whether it is warm enough to come out. And sure enough, the days have been warm enough that one did wake up enough to check things out and we are seeing it fairly regularly now.. And no, we haven’t done anything about trying to get rid of them. Anything that might catch and eat a mouse or a rat is welcome to stay.

Junk... or Treasure?

Lots of stories floating around about people finding priceless treasures buried in attics or for “pennies” at yard sales. And how pleased they were for having been able to snatch this priceless item out from under the nose of the seller, who was oblivious to the "real" value of what he or she was selling. It has always bothered me a little; I guess because of the element of deception that is involved. I don’t know. maybe not. Then again, there is the other side of the coin: the buyer who is deceived by an unscrupulous seller, which happens all the time. Maybe it balances out in the scheme of things. At any rate, I enjoy browsing through junk/thrift stores, and I am very thankful we have our very own thrift store in town. It provides food for people who are in need with the money it makes selling the stuff people donate. I go in there about once a month, maybe, to see if there is anything interesting and to look at the books that come in. That’s really my main interest--books. A couple of months before my sister’s birthday, which is at the end of March, I went into the thrift store, and there, sitting among all the used dishes and coffee mugs and old glasses, was this relish tray. It looked very much like a relish tray that might have come from the Blue Ridge Pottery. My mother has been collecting this style of dinnerware for years, and my sister has begun collecting it as well, so I am fairly familiar with what it looks like. I felt a thrill like an electric shock go through me as I picked it up and turned it over to verify that it was indeed a piece of Blue Ridge Pottery and the thrift store had marked it at $2.00, or maybe it was $2.50. I had no idea how much it was really worth, but I hesitated not a second in buying it. And off it went to my sister for her birthday, and she was thrilled to get it, too. And no, I did not go back to the thrift store and say.... “you know I bought something here the other day for $2.50 that I have found for sale on the internet ranging from $30 to $75 and even more....”

Overcoming the Darkness

For Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is a big deal, or at least it should be. I mean, it is one of the major foundations of the faith. To paraphrase what the Apostle Paul has to say about it, if there is no resurrection, then there is no hope. I suppose it is because I am studying about spiritual warfare that I have been thinking a lot recently about the importance of the resurrection as the crowning event in Jesus’ ministry of destroying the works of the devil. The devil and his followers thought they had scored a victory by arranging for his death; but it says in the scripture that He disarmed them all and made a spectacle of them by stripping them of their authority. There is a great sense of security knowing that we have access to the same power that brought Jesus up out of the grave in our own personal battles against the enemy. And there is great comfort in knowing that even when the devil wins a skirmish now and then, he will never truly win...

Peter Cottontail Better Watch Out...

I went on the back porch today on my way to the trash to toss a used vacuum cleaner bag and noticed what I thought was a small dog digging in the brush pile left over from when the contractor cleared under the electric line several years ago. It did not hear me, and so I darted back into the house and called for R to come and see. Our Dog was a stray, and I keep praying that God will send the perfect stray dog for us to love. Maybe this was it!! Richard joined me at the door; then it happened to look up, and we both realized it was a fox out and about in broad daylight. R raced for the camera; the battery was dead. He raced to find an extension cord to plug it in. Of course, by then the “perfect shot” had already passed; and I guess you can’t really tell that it actually is a fox, except by the color. My admiration for wildlife photographers who get marvelous pictures of animals in perfect poses has gone up by leaps and bounds. What patience they must have. The creek between the house and where the fox was digging has still not gone down enough after 38 hours of steady rain that started Monday night for us to jump across to go see what it was up to, but it left quite a pile of black dirt. Not sure if it was thinking about digging a den, after a rabbit that was hiding, or digging to get at some other small animal that it smelled. It nosed around the brush pile for maybe 10 minutes before trotting off.