Holes...

A stuffed armadillo makes an appearance in John Irving’s book A Prayer for Owen Meany, but the armadillos that visit our place are very much alive. Many people who live in the country take as much pride in their lawns and flower beds as do their counterparts in the city. In recent years, armadillos have moved into the area, and despite the carnage on the highway, their numbers seem to be increasing. And one or two determined armadillo can tear up a lawn or a flower bed looking for worms and grubs in nothing flat. They are really high up there on the Most Hated list, right along with moles, Country folk who have guns shoot them on sight or, in the case of one irate friend who arrived home late at night to find them busy rooting up her freshly planted lawn boarders.... careening across the lawn in the car attempting to run over them. As it happens, we do not take pride in our yard. We do good if we mow the grass once or twice during the growing season, and I have one flower bed planted in perennials and spring bulbs that I have not actually done anything with for about 10 years. Just in the past couple of weeks -- and yes, the grass really is this green despite snow, ice, and freezing temperatures--armadillos have made a pass through our “side yard” and left this pockmarked landscape behind. We didn’t care too much about it. Unlike the special effects wizards who did the movie Holes I can’t capture the scope of how many holes there actually are, but there are at least 40 or 50 in a fairly small area...

Icicle

A novelist I enjoy reading very much is Elizabeth Berg, and one of my favorites is Range of Motion. This is the story of a young mother who, along with her children, must cope with the aftermath of her husband becoming comatose after being hit in the head by an icicle. I keep a little notebook where I jot down interesting phrases and lines that I have read, and one of my favorites comes from this novel:

Alice and Ed have a little dog named Maggie. She looks like an animal dress up like dog, like a hedgehog or a weasel wearing a Tina Turner wig

Icicles are commonplace here along the eves of the house after a snowstorm or freezing rain, but I’ve never seen one quite like this. It formed on a twig of the tree by our porch. It was quite long -- about 17 inches before it finally fell, and it looked very lethal..

Happy Birthday.... and RIP

Our son’s birthday is today, and he has reached his 30th year. Three years ago today, our Little Dog died. It makes it impossible to “forget” loosing the dog, and what I find troubling is that it is easier to write about the dog than about our son. I feel rather awful about that, too. I miss the dog a lot, and I miss the young boy in this picture, which was taken in the Spring, just after his 13th birthday. Life was still relatively normal. The boy is now a man, the dog is dead, but I still have the plant, which is one of those “carrion” plants from Africa with a huge leathery flower that stinks like rotten flesh and attracts the flies.

The last 10 years in our son’s life have been tumultuous, to say the least. One hope after another.... raised, and then dashed to the ground. As unhappy as I am with the direction our son’s life has taken, he does seem to be happy, he has kept his job (as awful as it is) for 2 years and he is trying to live as best he can in the world he has created for himself.

Part of the reading from the Proverb for today:
Wisdom has built her house... she has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table.. she calls from the highest point of the city "Let all who are simple come in here!" she says to those who lack judgment.... come eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of understanding.

My hope for him is that he will someday learn walk in the way of understanding...

Take a seat... any seat....

So we embarked last night (yes, Monday night) on a date. Dinner and the movies. After our meal at the Chinese buffet, we did some shopping for the business and then headed on over to the movie palace. Armed with popcorn and diet soda (according to my calorie book, the popcorn probably had as many calories as the entire dinner at the buffet, but never mind), we ventured into the auditorium. Now, the 150-seat auditorium is filled to overflowing with a grand total of 3 people waiting to watch the movie, and they are sitting in the very back row, against the back wall on the left side. The theater has three sets of seats – rows on the left, rows in the middle, and rows on the right. Because we have the pick of the house, we wander down about midway and choose seats in the middle of the middle row. I turned to R and said ... “If someone comes and sits down in front me, I’m going to get up and move.” And laughed. About 5 minutes later, a couple came down the aisle, and the girl sat down in the row in front of us, one seat to my left. The guy sat down next to her on her left. And then... wait for it... he gets up, crawls over her, and sits down right in front of me. R and I burst out laughing, which I guess was very rude, and they got up and moved so they were sitting behind us on the left. A few minutes later, after the previews of coming attractions started, another couple came in. They sat down.... in the row in front us, but this time on the aisle. We didn’t laugh out loud this time. We saw “Pursuit of Happyness.” It was very good.

The Hairy Meatloaf is at Six.... and Counting

If it is true that cats have 9 lives, then I think ours has just lost another one. It is hard to say how many she has lost already, since things occur that we don’t know about, but I’m guessing 3 so far. She lost one the day she decided to go play with the fox... and survived. She lost the second one the day she brought in the live rat and let it go in front of the propane heater. The rat crawled so far up into the “innards” of the heater that we couldn’t get it out, so we had to dismantle the heater and take it outside so the rat would leave. In the meantime, we also dismantled the “doggy door” so she couldn’t come in with any more live “presents.” If one had been listening carefully, a few pithy words might have been heard, along with “why don’t you take the cat out and shoot her.” And finally, she is down to No. 6. She came rushing in the other morning from the cold outdoors, leaped up on the propane heater, which happened to be off at that particular moment, and then vomited. Fortunately, most of it did not fall down through the grill and onto the heating elements. Once again, I really wanted to kill her.

This little light of mine....

A couple of years ago we drove down to Hardy, Arkansas, a quaint, small town located alongside the Spring River in the foothills of the Ozarks. I found this ceramic oil lamp in a pottery shop, and it became my anniversary present for that year. I enjoy looking at its beauty even when it is not lit, but it is especially beautiful on a rainy winter day, when the sky is dark and gloomy, which it has been here for several days now. The Bible talks about letting our own personal light shine, and I wonder sometimes what sort of light I give off. I was told in a phone conversation recently that I have a “merry laugh.” I loved hearing that. I hope that the light I give off is, indeed, a cheerful one.

Ho, Ho. Ho.... aha hahahahaha

“Though you are far from us we hold you close in our hearts, and you’re in our thoughts and prayers. Have a blessed day in the Lord as you reflect upon the grace and love of God manifested in Jesus Christ.” So says my brother in an e-card. Amen and Amen.

Had it been just a little bit colder Christmas day, we would have had lots and lots of lovely snow. It would have made a very good day almost perfect day. This year we did put up a tree (we have not always done so). Saturday morning R went into the back field and cut down a cedar. Don't worry (dad was worried,, "you CUT DOWN a tree???), they multiply like rabbits and they need to be thinned to make room for the pine trees that are starting to establish themselves. He decorated it on Saturday evening while I prepared food for the church Christmas dinner. It was quite fun. N, his fiance (RC), and her ex-huband (T) showed up in the midst of the events and it was quite lively. I invited T to come to dinner on Monday with N and RC. Yes, it is rather odd they the three of them are close friends, still, but....

And they all came on Christmas day in the afternoon for dinner. Although T has family in the area, he didn’t want to spend the day with them because they treat him badly. He's loud, and friendly, and not quite in touch with reality, and it's hard to get him to stop talking once he gets going. He makes me laugh, though. It was a good day, different, at any rate. The combination of the three of them with their assorted mental problems could make interesting case studies for a psychiatry journal. And I don’t mean that in a mean, nasty way either, it’s just the way things are. It was hard to keep a straight face sometimes – one doesn’t want to be cruel and laugh at people instead of with them.

We exchanged some gifts, and played some cards. I found, much to my surprise, that RC likes to play Kings in the Corner. My brother-in-law’s mother taught our family this game, and I had no idea anybody else even played it. They all left after a couple of hours, and I’d have to say it went well.

And then I got to talk on the telephone with various family members celebrating with my parents in Gardena. I miss them, as always, when a special holiday comes around and we are here and they are there.

A Definitive Answer

Occasionally freezer containers make a desperate bid to escape their frozen environs and hurl themselves out of the freezer only to crash on the ground, and occasionally, they crack. This, of course, is fatal once the item inside has thawed. Thus, I saw that a container of soup stock that R pulled from the freezer and brought upstairs for me to do something with had a cracked lid. As soon as the soup stock thawed, I tasted it and pronounced it thoroughly nasty and poured it out. I also took the huge step of throwing away both the container and the cracked lid. This was a major deal for me. I normally do not throw away such items. I always look to find another use for them. When R strolled by and saw the container in the trash, he couldn’t believe it either and queried, somewhat incredulously, “Are you throwing this away?”
“Yeah, I am, the lid is cracked.”
“Oh, okay” he says.
But then I started having second thoughts. Maybe I could still use the container. I often pack small amounts of food in sandwich bags and put them inside a larger bag, so if I happen to need some of that food item, I have a small portion instead a huge chunk. Richard hates the plastic bags in the freezer, and this disabled container would be a perfectly fine to use for that. It wouldn’t matter that the lid was cracked a little. So then I started to dither about it. And I said, “I think I have changed my mind. I think I can find a use for this.” And he said. “No, no, no, let’s just leave it” and I said, “Well, but that’s a waste I could...” and before I could finish the sentence, he fished the container out the trash and stomped on it as hard as he could and it shattered into many pieces, which he then swept up.
“There” he said, “you don’t have to worry about it anymore...” Well, I guess not.

Leader of the Pack...

A situation has developed at the Y with the exercise class I attend that leaves me feeling amazed and sort of in shock, and yet wanting laugh out loud whenever I think about it. For most of my life, I have thought of myself as being a “follower.” I’ve always been content to be in the background, let somebody else be in charge, and be happy to do what I am told. But that has changed in the last few years. I have gotten much more assertive, and now seem to be quite happy to take over if nobody more assertive than me is around. I have also noticed that in meetings when decisions have to be made, I often “control” the meeting because I am usually the only one to offer an opinion and often the group agrees with what I want to do.

Now, to the funny situation in connection with the “active older Americans” exercise group that I attend thrice weekly at the YMCA. This is a picture of the women who mostly attend the exercise class. It was taken about a year ago at a going-away party for the receptionist. The men in the background are also regulars at the Y in the mornings when we exercise, and they were invited too. The class combines weight lifting and stretching with a low-impact aerobics routine on days 1 and 3 and a walking video on day 2 where we march along in place following the leader and the group on the video. On occasion, our leader is not there (that’s the short woman on the left hand side of the picture in the second row), and then Wanda takes over (red arrow) and leads the group with the stretching/weight lifting and the walking video. Only some of us don’t like the video that much, and during one period when our leader was gone for about 2 weeks, I opened my big mouth and said that I would be happy to lead the aerobics routine. So then a subtle struggle for power started between Wanda and me over who was going to lead the group when we do aerobics. This is not an “angry thing” though. I love Wanda to pieces. She is very funny lady, and we’ve had a few hilarious sessions (but I guess you’d have to be there to appreciate it), where everyone did more laughing than exercising as we tried to work it out between us who was going to lead. I think today we finally got it ironed out, though. She’ll do the stretching, and I’ll do the aerobics.

We are the pirates who.... don’t go anywhere

To paraphrase the gleeful “We Are The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” sung by the fruits and vegetables on our Veggie Tales video, who are dressed up as pirates but they don’t actually do any “pirate things,” they just sit around all day. We have been waiting for this day since I quit the job in May. Part of that job was shoveling snow off the sidewalks in front of the building and the loading dock in the rear, and we hated it. We? Well, it was my job but R usually went with me when winter storms dropped snow and ice. Mainly because I needed help with the shoveling, but also because I have had a few scary experiences driving in the snow and ice and I hated having to drive myself there (although I did it many times). And we have been waiting for the first winter storm to arrive so we could get up the morning and look out the window and sing “We are the pirates who don’t have to go anywhere...” Of course this morning R is probably doing more physical labor than if we were at the job because the ice storm that came through last night caused a tree to break and fall across the driveway. He had to get the axe out because the chain saw is not working and chop on it so he could clear it. And he very nearly got brained by a branch that broke off the maple tree just as he was fixing to come in the house.