I invited two people over for supper. I don’t really know what I’m going to serve them so it’s a good thing they aren’t fussy. They just want to eat something cooked in someone’s home. I do this almost every week that I’m home and not traveling and the main reason is because it makes me clean at least part of the house, and cook a meal.

It isn’t necessarily easy or quick to make supper for people, although I have put a beans and weenies meal on the table in less than 20 minutes for those who will eat them. Usually it takes me several hours to think of all the parts of it, check out what I have in the freezer than needs to be used, cook the main things, make a salad, get all the needed stuff out on the table, make a drink, … and then there’s the clean up if your kitchen is in view like mine is. Better plan on it taking the whole afternoon after I get home from work. 

Today it has to be simple because in the middle of my prep time I’m having to go have a new serpentine belt put in my Aztek. And it’s very possible there will be other interruptions. As I sit here, not cooking, I’m wondering if the frozen chicken breasts sitting on the counter will turn into something scrumptious by the time Hector and Carroll arrive at 7 pm. I’m looking to my creative side and wishing it would wake up and do something. Whatever happens I can be pretty sure they will come in with hugs and good appetites and eat it all up as long as I have Ranch dressing to go with it. Ranch dressing and ice tea mix – my magic meal ingredients.

Go to go. My creative side just said to get on up to Acapulco and buy Mexican take-out.

I have barely touched the computer now for 10 days except to pack and unpack it. I took it to work with me in Ocala but as it turned out I couldn’t connect with Scottie’s network – we don’t know why. I might have been able to figure it out if I’d had more time but honestly, in the five days we were there I had only minutes to myself and the most pressing decision was always whether to try to get a short nap or a short shower. I hope to avoid taking her there by myself in the future.

I love the novelty of being able to paddle to Mar Vista on the beach, pull up the kayak and sit at a table within feet of the water while having lunch. I always feel like a tourist, or a rich person. I had a mango daquiri and it was definitely a birthday splurge since it cost as much as the wrap sandwich I had for lunch. Each time I take someone new on this particular outing I remember the four or five other favorite people who’ve done it with me at other times.  We had an excellent talk time while eating and watching people and boats. Now, don’t you just want to get down here and do it?!

I was a little worried that my arms (shoulder) and wrists might pay the price for all this fun but decided that of all the things that might make me hurt, I would rather have it be my passion than my work.  When I’m working the pain is during and after. When I’m having fun the pain, if there is any, is only after. I guess that’s the power of fun.

It’s not bad enough that I ache for days any time I use my muscles, not bad enough that my hair is way gray and my eyebrows are turning that non-color too, not bad enough that I keep thinking about another birthday on the near horizon… all this is not bad enough, someone had to leak it to the world of commerce. Now, every day I get a new catalog full of old people fashions, wrinkle creams and medical breakthrough pills to keep me from looking old.  Who did this?

I will admit that I prefer shirts that don’t shrink to above my (unpierced) belly button.  I don’t like plunging necklines and see-through holes all over. I don’t want to worry about butt cracks showing or jeans so tight I can’t bend over. I’ve been avoiding these things since I was thirty and don’t consider them age characteristics. Just don’t send me those catalogs, okay Boston Proper? 

The one last week that was like an arrow right in the heart was a catalog called “As We Change”. It made me mad because it had so many things in it that had me thinking “hmmm… been looking for something like that”.  How many times have I been out to the beach by myself and wished for a gadget to put sunscreen on that spot in the middle of my back? And those glasses with swivel lenses so you can put on eye makeup and see where you’re putting it – genius. But, in general the catalog is full of things to hide what is really happening to bodies over sixty. The clothing is a pretty clear give away cause if you wear those things people are going to know you are old.

And today I got a 40 page brochure called “Have you tried my Skin Secret, Shirley Dietz?” Forty pages that said basically one thing – buy this cream so you won’t have wrinkles on your face. And I don’t remember how many times I read the words “free sample” to find out that it’s only free if you don’t like it and return it. Otherwise you pay four installments of $7.99.  So not only do people over sixty look old and wrinkled but they also get suddenly dumb.

I save some of these mailings because, crumpled, they make good fire starters when I’m having burning fun in the backyard. Maybe someday I’ll buy myself a birthday present from one of them but this year I’ve decided I will go kayaking again. It might hurt a little after but I’ll take the chance. Arlette wants to go with me and I’ll have her sit in the front where she won’t see if I’m paddling, or not.

This is somewhat of a sensitive subject and I want to convey the most important (to me) things about it clearly. Why do we make ourselves known to other people? I was asking myself the question because of an incident – someone sharing a bit of their life with me – and the path it led me down.

The path starts here. When the aforementioned person made an effort to communicate this week, and it was an effort, I felt like I’d been given a gift of sorts. It was a case of difficulty being overcome by the necessity of showing love. And that’s what it is when we open ourselves up, being as honest as we can, and become better known by another person. It is love in action.

I’m kind of a quiet person at home. There are just the two of us, my husband and myself, and it’s my perception that he does most of the talking. He tells me all about the phone calls he’s had at work, all about the pieces of music they’re playing in band and who came and who’s fighting with who. He talks about whatever he’s watching on TV and whatever he’s thinking about. All this in spite of the fact that he talks on the phone most of the day at work too. I guess it’s because his mind is always on something and it’s difficult to switch gears. Face to face talks make him feel like he has to get a response together and deliver it. He’s told me that often when he’s listening to a person he’s thinking about what he’s going to say next, which is only half listening at best. So I don’t go out of my way to make myself known to the only person God has paired me with for a lifetime. This is not to say that we never have meaningful conversations, but they fall short and seldom get to the “soulmate” level. I’m not proud of this. Would it be love in action for me to work to better this situation? Probably. Definitely. Just talk to him more. Confide. Lean on him some and be less independent.

We’re nearing the end of the path – it has a discovery at the end of it. I started realizing that it’s easier for me to write what I feel and think, like in this blog. It’s true, I have to make myself do it and work at what I say, but having made the committment I find that it’s becoming kind of a pleasant habit. And guess who reads me almost as soon as I’ve written? Yes, my husband. And it’s different for him when he reads what I’m thinking. He’s visual and focused on what he reads. I’m not there to talk to so he’s not thinking about what he’s going to say. He comes home and mentions stuff I’ve written and it feels good. I can tell he’s read my stories and enjoyed my communication (most of the time). People take things in differently. I should have figured this out thirty plus years ago. It’s kind of a neat little gem, don’t you think?  The End.

For the last two days there has been noise in the backyard, suggestive of an interstate highway being built behind our fence. Yesterday it woke me out of my one nap this month and I had to go investigate. I took the camera and I must have looked threatening because the guy roared right up to the fence on his huge machine and shut off the engine for a chat.
Says he “I thought someone would show up sooner or later…”.
“Digging a little hole?” says I. 
“No, just making a little dip in the road.” he answered. 

I don’t know how often it takes two days to make a little dip in a road, a road which, by the way, I didn’t even know was back there. It was an ATV trail or a raccoon path as far as I knew and very seldom traveled.  The large property beyond our fence is owned by a small private school – half of it being school buildings and a field, the other half creepy woods, thick with palmetto and vines and beasts. When my Dad replaced the fence years ago, we had a gate put in, which turned out to be wonderful foresight. Twice now the school has let us use the field to park cars for events in our back yard – both of them weddings.

So dozer driver’s parting remark before he fired up the machine was that they needed the dirt for a berm and decided to get it here to make it a little more exciting for their Jurassic Park entrance. We have Jurassic Park behind our fence! That explains some of the weird noises and the large flying creatures we see from time to time. And now I have an idea for a theme that will make the next wedding the best ever.

My job and I are going through a (another) difficult stage. As I drag myself out of bed in the dark of morning I’m saying inside my head “I’m soooo tired”. But, although it would be nice to continue sleeping, I don’t really think I’m tired. Most nights I try to get at least seven hours sleep, sometimes more. But  my own tired thoughts keep working on me as I progress through the closet, the kitchen and into the car, past all the things I’d rather be doing. I think of my friends who are already retired – that certainly doesn’t help.

Today I thought I might look for a different thing to tell myself and came up with “I’m bored”. I’m not sure that’s a lot better but rings truer than a bell. Being bored masquerades as being tired, but now that I recognize it, I’m encouraged. There’s a whole range of things I can do about being bored, from finding a new job (way too extreme) to doing something unexpected but simple like wearing a dress and heels to work (bad example and not likely to happen.) I am closing in on my third year working for Scottie and have repeated the same five hour routine a bazillion times. There are a few variations but I’ve also gotten those memorized, painfully memorized. I can actually tell you every word that we will speak during our regular procedures.

Scottie is dangerously addicted to routine. It’s not that I don’t understand how this happens – I do. When you are a quadriplegic you are vulnerable to so many things that “routine” means safety and security.  Even when it’s a bad routine that is inefficient or awkward, at least you know what is going to happen, so the routine lives on. I am even required to teach the routines to new nurses. When they ask for the sense of them, I just have to remind them that in this job they are not necessarily paid to think creatively, but to do what reassures the employer.

It’s not all about boredom. I am a little tired of doing things that hurt and being in pain does make me more tired than usual. But I think mixing things up and being a little “out of the box” might help that too. It’s called distraction.

Fortunately, my birthday is coming up. I try to make my birthday a remedy for boredom by planning something new, adventurous, interesting, something to look forward to for weeks prior. I am getting excited just thinking about figuring out what to do. I have some thoughts already but would like to hear what other people suggest if anyone has ideas for me. Last year I took a kayak trip in alligatorville and got a little excited. It was good. This year it needs to be something that doesn’t involve using my arms much. Help me out here, we have about three weeks…

Gently raining, which is a very calming, soothing weather event to me.  I live in an awesome forest of old growth live oak trees – and the word awesome really does apply here, unlike many instances where it’s used.  A whole year’s worth of energy from the sun, rain and atmosphere, put into leaf growth, has fallen down. See, we do have “fall” only it’s in the spring. And now the canopy is that light green, almost glowing shade of freshness with huge, dark limbs supporting it. It is even more apparent how awesome this all is when you start to rake and find if there is any grass left under the leaves, and when you have to vacuum them out of all the cracks and crevices of your car, when they cover the drive every day and stain the cement brown with their tannin, and when you find them on the floor of every room in your house, and in your shoes, cuffs and pockets. I am not sending any of them to the landfill this year. They are all getting piled around the bases of the trees that produced them, which I think is fair.

My weekend is nearly over – the second half being much more restful than the first half. I was still in the stage of thinking about cleaning the guest room when Scottie called to say that the Saturday nurse had been in the hospital and needed a recovery day. I was the only possible replacement since Cindy would be on her way to the airport. I cleaned until I went to bed and got up early and cleaned some more. Scottie had the night nurse get her started on her day and asked me to come “finish her off” which I think is a poor choice of words because my mind always goes you know where. It was only two and a half hours of work and an hour of driving but it certainly added some stress and busy-ness to life. I had a clean room instead of a clean house but I don’t think our guests noticed.

The girls were nice and their stay was uneventful. The whole group had been at the beach in the afternoon and they were glad to get here, take a shower and go to bed. We went to bed on the new spring time since I had turned all the clocks ahead early. I didn’t hear either of their performances today since I was on the way to my other church after dropping them off. They seemed to think it was odd that I would be going to two churches and I guess it is. I’m so used to it I never think about it anymore.

I’ve heard some thought provoking messages today, done some good reading, some writing, relaxed a bit and am now watching and listening to the rain. A good day overall. And as predicted, Monday morning will be here in the blink of an eye…

First, I have something to clear up. Someone who actually reads my blog and knows how far it is to Gainesville has brought it to my attention that doing the 180 miles in two hours would be going 90 miles an hour. I didn’t do that. I only counted interstate miles in my reckoning which cuts off about 15 miles. I also round it down because I don’t want to type “two and a half hours” or “two and a quarter hours” every time I mention how long it took.  I am not the fastest car on the road by any means but I do go with the traffic and sometimes the fast lane. And I had absolutely no slow downs or traffic hazards this last time too which helped the trip immenseley. Thanks so much for worrying about me (and for reading my stories).

Oh, the weekend. I feel like I’m on the end of a diving board about ready to jump off and hit the water. When I come up for air, it will be Monday. This weekend will be remarkable, I’m sure, because we are having house guests.  A high school musical group called Metro East is coming to the Lutheran church to give a couple concerts on Sunday. They were actually brought in by some other church that backed out at the last minute for unknown reasons and BSLC accepted the challenge to take over. And I guess it was a challenge to find houses for all 40+ people to stay in Saturday night. It sounded like fun to me so I volunteered to take 2 girls. They arrive at the church Saturday night – I am at church anyway – and are having a pizza supper there and then coming home with us. The only slightly inconvenient thing is that they have to be back at the church at 7 am Sunday and we also have the time change to contend with. But I don’t care because I’m used to getting up at 5:30 am every morning anyway.

Our guest room is not really the guest room when we don’t have guests. It is inhabited by Dennis and Zoe (a cat, not his second wife).  This is a good opportunity to dust, vacuum, shake and scrub. I probably don’t do this often enough because we hardly ever have guests and because no one spends any time in there when the lights are on. Both Dennis and Zoe are invited to spend Saturday night in my special room with me, which is really no problem since I won’t be getting much sleep anyway.

Zoe is a pretty quiet cat at night. She gets fed right before lights out, which gives her about six hours until she starts wanting more food. Crying (meowing) doesn’t usually work so she has several tricks like charging the bed and rebounding off before anyone can hit her, playing with loud toys that she never plays with during the day, and knocking her head against the filing cabinet (did I mention the guest room is also the office?). We try not to give in and reinforce her bad habits but sometimes it’s the only way to obtain peace and an extra hour of sleep.

Dennis, the dreamer, is sometimes not quiet at night.  His dreams are occassionally productive, like last night when he told me he solved a problem from work and it really was a solution which he was able to remember. Other times he’s doing normal things like fighting off attackers and telling hilarious jokes, both of which can get a little loud and boisterous. But for one night I can handle it, especially since I still have Sunday night in which to recover. We’ll be fine and it’s for a good cause.

The scary part about this weekend is that Cindy, who has been Scottie’s helper for nearly three months now, will be leaving tomorrow morning to go back to Myrtle Beach. What will we do without her? I don’t like to think about it. She has been such a help to us and Scottie is rightfully nervous about being alone once she is gone. I may once again be getting some extra hours (that I’d rather not have) but I guess it’s a chance to pad the bank account a little. The Lord knows there are a lot of things I’d like to throw some money at….

So with that little preview, I will leave off and clean a room (or two, or three) and get back to writing on Sunday night when I can tell you what really happened.

Two hours… slightly longer than the average church service, roughly equivalent to two TV shows or one feature length movie, a generous naptime, the time it takes to mow the lawn. None of these things seem difficult to endure but put me in the car for the trip to Gainesville and two hours becomes mind numbing and an insurmountable length of time. I only made one batch of popcorn to take along because otherwise I would have eaten the whole way, just to stay alert enough to stay in my lane. When the popcorn was gone I had to resort to the radio.

My favorite station,, which is the only one I can listen to along the whole route, was fundraising. That was only slightly less aenesthetizing and in my crazed state I was actually thinking “yes, yes, come on, one more caller, you can do it!!” So I switched to country music which is usually very entertaining. And it was that, mostly because of the variety. I was first brought to tears by “Jesus, Take the Wheel” (I can’t do it justice in an explanation so you’ll just have to listen for it yourself) and then taught how to escape from prison, the warden and his dog “Red”. Oh, and there was also the little four year old who learned to pray AND say four letter words by watching his daddy. I am always amazed that I make the trip without dying from road hypnosis, an MVA or overeating.

So I am on the couch now, watching the “lady vet” do some homework for tomorrow. I have already done my ritual poop shoveling down in the barn, petted the cats, dogs and horses, cooked dinner and eaten it with Julie and roommate Jen.  Tomorrow I will reacquaint myself with the yard and gardens and pastures that need cleaning up.  I view this as motherly morale boosting and a bit of my own escapism. My life seems kind of overwhelming lately. So many of my close contacts are having problems that have no easy solutions and although they are not directly my problems, I am involved.  There are just way too many things to pray about and too many answers to be waiting on. So, to come here is refreshing in that there is a whole new set of problems that are fresh and unfamiliar to me. It seems that having problems is one of the requirements of human life, and that even in good times there are still those situations that are not so good. 

I am preparing to learn new things about persevering and staying the course.

Day 2 at the farm: What a gorgeous day in central Florida! The dog and I woke up about the same time and I got to let her out. She is a good dog (only snored a little last night). Good coffee and my favorite cranberry walnut bread for breakfast. I got to let the horses out and put out a bale of hay for their day’s ration. The pastures are very short on grass but horses still have to eat something all day long – that’s just what a horse does. Julie and Jen are off to school by 8. I decide my first task will be picking up sticks in the yard and pastures so the lawnmower doesn’t have to eat them.

Picking up sticks is a simple description but the job involves a lot more – listening to the birds, playing with the dogs, watching out for snakes, pretty much the whole nature experience. The horses get curious and walk around me and the wheelbarrow to see what’s happening. As long as I don’t have a halter or rope in my hand they don’t mind getting close.  I forget to close a gate and the next thing I know, three of them are in the yard where the grass is a little longer. They love it and I can’t get them to go back where they belong so I let them graze.

Julie comes back for lunch and eats in front of the computer as she prepares her second presentation of the day. She was feeling overwhelmed earlier in the week and called to vent a little, but I am pleasantly surprised. The house is clean, the refrigerator is well stocked (and nothing appears to be decomposed), the animals are happy, things look really good in the physical.  Good job Julie.

I will spend a little more time outdoors and then… another two hours in the car. Oh well.

Today I am restless and out of sorts (I do not know what a sort is or how it came to mean what it means…). It’s a restless day – windy outside and 20 degrees cooler than yesterday. Things are falling out of the trees every time we get a gust and the lawn that was just “vacuumed” yesterday is getting littered again. Wind always makes me feel like something is coming.

I suppose a restless spirit is a good thing if you know what to do with it. I’ve tried praying about it, talking it out with God, working it to death with laundry and cleaning, eating it out of existence (chocolate) and about all there is left is to wait and listen for something… the wind, maybe. I don’t really know.

Words are pretty powerful when you think about it. To be able to write or speak and describe something you’re feeling is almost like a therapy that sets the feelings free. We write words down to convey our history. Spoken words form a child’s perception of himself. The words we decide to use give others an impression of who we are or aren’t. Words and slogans sell things and make fortunes happen for some. Words can ruin people’s lives. It almost makes me want to quit speaking and writing – except for the fact that lack of words can also ruin people’s lives.  Language and communication is a very serious thing and I think it’s very wise of the Bible to warn that we are going to be held accountable for every word we say. I haven’t always been as careful as I should be and I wish I knew where all my apologies should go. Probably to everyone who reads these posts for starters… I hope to do better.

I have to say that most of the time the words that I hear from others are like the breath of life to me.  Just the fact that someone speaks to me at all means that I am noticed or thought of and worthy of some communication. Words encourage me, reassure me, inform me, make me laugh (and cry) and stir me to love people. The right word at any time can make my day and give me hours of happiness.  I have a theory that lots of the people on facebook are there just looking for a personal word from someone that acknowledges their existence, makes them feel part of a community. Why are we this way? I have my theories about that too.
All for now. I have to go think for a while.