Struggling Pays Off

Sometime in the early 1960s, our parents bought a 2-door Ford Ranch Wagon, very much like the one on the photograph, except ours didn’t have a white roof. 

Part of their ministry at church was to pick up people who had no way to get to the service. At various times they picked up a mentally disabled woman, Helen Opal; Elin, an elderly woman; Italia, a young teenager who was physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair; Betty, a middle-aged woman; and Hiroko and her 3 children. And as a side note, Hiroko had survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but her face was marred by damage sustained during the blast. 

But the one who sticks in my mind the most is a boy named Ronnie Murphy. My brother says we picked up his mother too, but I don’t remember her.

The problem with the 2-door Ranch Wagon was that to get in or out of the back seat, whoever was in the front seat had to get out of the car so the seat could be tipped forward. One time when we were bringing Ronnie back home, my mom got out and said “let me help you,” and he replied “I don’t need any help,” and he pushed the seat forward himself.

And because we were sort ornery—and I am guessing one of the my brothers came up with this—this incident morphed into a “sing-song” ditty “Ronnie Murphy helps himself.”

We are now at the 2-year anniversary of the accident that has left Richard partially disabled. He has made tremendous progress in some areas, but we suspect other deficits are permanent.

Several months ago, he figured out how to get his sweatpants on and off by himself. I still have to put the compression stocking and his regular socks on, but he can now take off his socks and the compression stocking, so I don’t have to help him undress.

Standing back and watching him struggle is sometimes very hard. I have told him the story about Ronny Murphy, so on occasion when I ask, “Do you need any help?” He’ll say: “Richard helps himself.”

Sometimes a person needs to struggle to achieve a goal, and in this case, it has paid off.

In Which a Loud Whack Is Heard

The church I attend holds the communion service on the first Sunday of the month. During the pandemic and up through December, the church switched from passing the elements to prefilled communion cups that we picked up at the door so we could maintain social distancing.

These convenient prefilled communion cups were rather difficult for some of us to use. The top compartment held the wafer (not sure what that is made of but it was truly awful), and the seal was hard to get off. The seal for the cup holding the grape juice was also hard to get off. 

 But we soldiered on.

At the annual meeting in December, the congregation elected me to be on the board that makes decisions for the church. The board also announced at the meeting that we would resume the traditional communion service in January.

Being on the board means that I am supposed to serve communion. When we were discussing on the first Sunday in January who would serve communion that morning, I told them that I did not want to serve communion because I am uncoordinated and clumsy and was afraid. They said that was okay, I didn’t have to.

But then a Sunday School lesson reminded us that “whom God calls He also equips” and so I decided I would take a turn after all. The first time I served communion it went okay.

And this past Sunday it was my turn again. And it also went okay but not quietly.

When I got to the last pew in the auditorium and took the tray with the cups back from the person I had served...

 I whacked the communion tray against the back the pew. Loudly.

Our pastor said not to worry, that one time someone coming down the platform steps after serving the organist stumbled and dropped the whole tray. 

It could have been worse.

Embracing the Slime

Signs of Fall are all around… still a little subtle but not too hard to spot. There is a bit of color now in the dogwood trees, and the plumes of goldenrod, which is one of the last flowers to bloom, sway gently in the breeze.

The sun has shifted in the sky and shadows are long. The hummingbirds were still here yesterday, but I haven’t seen one today, so I believe they have finally headed South for the winter.

It is approaching 90 degrees today, so it is certainly warm enough even if the days are getting so much shorter. Even so, the growing season is just about over.

The tomatoes in our bucket garden are on their last legs. There are a few green ones left that should ripen okay before the first frost. The jalapeño and bell pepper plants and the two okra plants that survived the groundhog have not gotten the message and continue to flower and produce.

I imagine okra is one of those vegetables that people either like or don’t like (well, I suppose that could be said of any vegetable, come to think of it), and then the issue of the slime.

To “slime or not to slime,” that is the question. I like the slime and have enjoyed the okra in Cape Verde Vegetable Soup originally from the “Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant” cookbook. Richard prefers it coated in cornmeal and fried. It’s great either way. The flower is gorgeous.

 I have a nice bag full in the freezer, which will be good for several meals down the road.

 

What We Have Here Is Failure to Communicate

A couple of nights ago I was putting food on the plates for dinner. Richard was having noodles to go with the pork dish I had prepared. 

Richard says, “Put the fork on the noodles” and rolls off to take care of something in his office.

I don’t think too much about this because occasionally he forgets his fork and one of us (usually me) has to come back and get it . I figured he just wanted to make sure he had a fork. 

So I put the fork on the noodles and put the pork next to the noodles.

He comes back, looks at his plate, and says, “I told you to put the pork on the noodles."

“No, you said ‘put the fork on the noodles’, which is what I did.” 

Well, of course he didn’t say “fork,” I just heard it wrong, but we had to discuss it for a while, which became yet another hilarious conversation.  

Just a bit ago Richard shouts from the kitchen, “I switched the tacos.” 

What?

So I get up and go in the kitchen. “What do you mean you switched the tacos?” 

"No.” he says, “I squished a cockroach. And you can put a fork on my noodles.” 

I put the squished cockroach on the deck railing for the birds.

Gotta Watch Out for Those Mammies

 Richard rolls into the kitchen wearing his serious face and says:

 “It bothers me that they are thawing out these mammy wooliths that have been frozen for thousands of years…”

I try very hard to keep a straight face so that he can finish his thought without being distracted by my laughing at him.

“What if in the process they also thaw out some bacteria or virus that has also been frozen inside the mammoth and it gets loose….”

And then he stops. 

“I said that wrong, didn’t I?”

And then we both laugh.

There are conflicting opinions about whether ancient bacteria and viruses brought back to life from a frozen mammoth could actually be a problem for us, after all, mammoths and humans were alive at the same time, but I hope we never find out.

...The Rats Will Play

One of the most memorable movie soundtracks is the music at the beginning of Jaws, where we are introduced to the shark. The only famous person that I know I have less than six degrees of separation from is the musician who played the tuba on that soundtrack, which was the theme for the shark. He was Tommy Johnson, my sister-in-law’s uncle. 

And one of the most iconic lines from the movie comes later when they are after the shark, where Roy Scheider's character says “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

That classic line popped into mind this morning when I got up and saw the mouse trap. Last week, while I was sitting the recliner at 4:45 a.m. with my coffee, reading my morning devotional, I caught movement in my peripheral vision and watched a mouse scurry across the living room, in front of the couch, and into the kitchen.

And the old maxim, where there is one mouse, there is usually another, proved true. I caught the mouse the next morning and a couple of days later I caught another mouse.

We have found this style of mouse trap is very effective at trapping mice – better than the spring type, which they tend to ignore. Peanut butter is put in the insert that fits in the back, the mouse goes in the front to get to the peanut butter, steps on the plate, and the door slams.

I did not catch a mouse this morning because the trap was dismantled overnight. This is the work of a pack rat, which was clever enough to pull out the insert to get at the peanut butter.

The idea of a pack rat running around the house is alarming.

We are definitely gonna need a bigger trap.

Play Time

Our trash is picked up once weekly on the frontage road. It is much too far to carry them, so one of us drives the trash bags up there as they accumulate. A few days ago, I carried a trash bag to the truck so Richard could drive it up to the trash can.

The bag was heavy, and a couple of times it drug on the ground enough to tear the bottom. An empty tomato sauce can fell out.

I didn’t pick it up (bad Leilani! Bad Leilani!).

Friday afternoon, as we were at the counter preparing some vegetables, I saw a rabbit hop down the driveway and go over to the can and start messing about with it. At first, Richard thought maybe it was trying to lick the dried tomato sauce.

Then we realized it was playing with the can.
 
The rabbit picked the can up in its mouth and sort of dropped/tossed it, and then picked it up again, turned in a circle, sort of dropped/tossed it again. This went on for about 5 minutes before it lost interest in the can and decided to sample things to eat in the front yard.

My brothers and I and our neighborhood friends used to play “kick the can” when we were kids. When I mentioned the rabbit to my baby brother in a telephone conversation, he thought perhaps the rabbit was having its own version of “kick the can.”

Lots of animals play. I guess rabbits do too. It was hilarious to watch. It did our hearts good.

Free at Last

Tuesday night the area around our house 4 or 5 inches of heavy, wet snow. Some people apparently got more than that. Even though it does not sound like a big deal compared to some places like, oh Buffalo or Minnesota, the snow did cause some problems: 13,500 people in the county were without of power. After  going off and coming back on several times at around 3 a.m., ours finally stayed on, thankfully.

We woke up yesterday to see that our driveway by the house was blocked by a tree. Richard sent me down the driveway—I was able to scoot around the branches—to see what else might have happened, and yes, indeed, another tree was down farther up the driveway. This tree had fallen into the bank on the other side so it was high enough off the ground that I could duck underneath it, but a car could not pass.

We were trapped.

I got quite a bit of exercise trudging the driveway. I made another trip yesterday after we received a call from a delivery man who saw the driveway was blocked. He left the package next to our sign, and I went up there to get it. It was hard going, the snow was very wet and difficult to walk through in my snow boots.

We were expecting another delivery today so this morning I made a third trip carrying a chair with a sign for the Fed Ex driver to leave the package on the chair. I had to wear the ice cleats this time because the wet footprints of yesterday had frozen overnight and it was rather treacherous.

Early this afternoon I made a fourth trip, with the wheelbarrow, to pick up the packages the Fed Ex driver had left on the chair. I was reminded of the day when our boy was in kindergarten that I had to use the wheelbarrow to get him up to the highway to catch the school bus because our driveway was a river after a heavy rain

While I was gone to get the packages, a man from church called and offered us the use of his electric chain saw. Richard will notaccept help from anyone unless it is dire straits, and he wanted to see if we could do this by ourselves. He said he would call if he needed the chain saw. I thought this is a case where we should get help, there are two people at church I could have called who would come, but I couldn’t force the issue.

Richard used the battery-operated pole saw to clear the limbs by the house. We will still need a professional tree trimmer to come and work on it though. One tree is being held aloft by another tree. Both trees are too low for a delivery truck to get through, but there is enough space for us to get the car through.

We put the pole saw in the trunk and drove to the second tree and were working on that when a pickup pulled up. The man from church didn’t wait around for Richard to call, he just showed up and I am so glad he did. Bless him.

I'll have to leave the chair for deliveries at the head of the driveway, but we are now free and can leave!

In the Eye of the Beholder

When we were children, my parents took us often to the Los Angeles County Museums in Exposition Park, which at that time were the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry. Admission was free, and it was a convenient way for my folks, who were very careful with their money, to offer us an excursion that didn’t cost anything except the gas to drive 10 minutes down the freeway and was educational as well.

Before the Museum of Art was built in the 1960s on Wilshire Blvd, the art collection was mounted on the walls and in galleries at the Museum of Natural History. I loved looking at the paintings.

One time Dad and I were in one the galleries, where a sculpture made of different kinds of metal things welded together, including old car parts, was on display. My dad, who worked as a mechanic for the LA Department of Water and Power, had strong opinions about stuff, and he had an opinion about this sculpture.

“What a piece of junk,” he said. And not very quietly either.

I think from that point on I loved looking at metal art that was created from other “stuff.”

There is some public metal art, a small herd of horses, on the lawn of the bank in town that I really like. 

But because it is "in the eye of the beholder," a dear man who we attended church with before he died, and who bred quarter horses to a high standard, hated them and thought they were... JUNK!!

We have some metal art, a cute pair of skateboarders created from

 spark plugs, bolts, washers, and other bits.

I don’t normally go to craft sales, but the week before Christmas, I noticed a sign that one was being held at a church I drive by on the way home. On a whim, I stopped in and saw Teapot Man (or maybe Teapot Woman). I wanted Teapot Man but given that I am very tight with my money, and have been known to talk myself out of a 25-cent book at the thrift store, I left without him. I went home and told Richard about him and he said, “You work hard for your money. If you like it, go back and get it.”

So I did.

And he gives me pleasure every time I look at him.