The sweet little girl at the end of our drive hits me up a couple times every year. She fundraises for her school and I end up buying cookie dough, entertainment coupons, and magazines plus I always get to visit with her for a while.  But today was a first time for a higher level.  I came home from shopping and met her and a boy on a bike as they were leaving the drive in the opposite direction.  A minute later as I was unloading the groceries, they were back and coming up to the house.  The boy left his bike and I saw he was carrying the usual solicitation papers and a dog-eared book.

I always make them talk to me before I give them any satisfaction.  Alissa, my little friend, bowed and waved her arm to present Nicholas, the boy, as I asked her who she was bringing to meet me. A little conversation revealed that she didn’t know Nicholas before she saw him riding down the road and started talking to him. He lives several blocks away from us.  She found out what he was doing and offered to share her “easy marks” with him.  How nice of her.

As a result I have now helped sponsor someone to Jr.  ROTC camp next week.  He was a very polite and well-spoken young man and seemed like a good investment. He also asked for a drink of water which he downed in two gulps. He said it was “nice water” and thanked me.  I find young people so refreshing.  I hope he comes back to tell me how camp turned out.

I don’t always have the best attitude about going to work, especially on Mondays.  The weekend is just long enough for me to taste freedom but really too short in all other ways.  But it is important to be happy doing what I know I have to do. So, I end up asking God for what is really a miracle – that I would find a reason for enjoying my work, and that my attitude would change. I’m audacious enough to ask that there be some small but interesting evidence of the miracle that I can notice and get excited about.  I know that my attitude has changed when I start feeling thankful, not just in my head (my head knows that this job provides for me – a good thing) but also in my heart (I sincerely feel loved because of that provision). 

I still dream of what it would be like to be retired, to have enough time and money to go about doing good things and helping other people realize their potentials (I envy “Undercover Boss” his unique position).  But meanwhile I’ll proceed to work this week and see how God wants to answer my request.  I figure He will.  He’s given me a pretty unusual job in the first place and he’s kept me at it for over three years, which is a minor miracle in itself. I have learned so much about patience, about boundaries,  about negotiation and compassion.  And even in the worst of times I have always felt useful and needed.  Those things are important to me and God knows me so well… this job he’s given me never leaves me wondering whether I’m needed.

Off to bed now, wondering what interesting thing will happen tomorrow.

Well, it seems that another part of me is giving up the fight.  And it’s the part that the rest of my body had voted the most influential and likeable – my eyes.  I’m not going blind, but I am developing cataracts, and at a younger age than most people do. My doctor and I tried to figure out why this might be and couldn’t come up with any real reason.  Back “in the old days” no one was warning about sun damage to skin or eyes like they do today. I thought sunglasses were more for decoration than necessity. I don’t remember having any except one time when I got pink eye and needed to hide the scariness of it. I suppose I could have gotten more exposure than was good for me.

So I heard it mentioned that a cataract was starting a year or so ago but I couldn’t tell. There was nothing I was told to do about it.  And then just lately, in the last couple of months, I have noticed that I was squinting to focus when reading. Every word would have a shadow of itself which made it look fuzzy. My eyes would get tired quickly and it wasn’t fun to read.  But the interesting thing was that the problem was only when I was wearing my contacts, not when wearing my glasses. And this is why – the cataract that is worst is in my right eye, the one that is designated as my reading eye.  I have monovision contacts with the left contact correcting my far vision and the right eye correcting my near vision.  When I look at things through my contacts, my brain decides to see only the clearest image from whichever eye sees it and ignores the other.  So with contacts the only eye capable of seeing close things was starting to be affected by the cataract.  With glasses both eyes see far and near.

Now I have switched from monovision contacts to ones that do the same corrections that my glasses do. They transition from far to near in each eye. And the good news is that even though I’ll probably need cataract surgery in the next three years, after I have it,  I won’t need glasses at all.  That is truly amazing.  I’ve always hated wearing glasses.  I can hardly wait.

Last night as I was falling asleep I had some really good thoughts to put on my next post and I went over them several times in my mind rather than getting up and writing them down.  It didn’t work so well. I can’t remember them.  I was thinking on the subject of Esther and Jonathan’s visit over the holiday.  We don’t really get to see each other very often and don’t know whether we are going to feel like strangers or kin when we do get together.  It’s a very natural phenonmenon that after ten years of marriage and living on their own away from either of their childhood homes, they would have developed their own family culture (aaaaagh – they/ve become coffee snobs!). In some ways Esther is still the person I remember and in other ways she is someone else that I need to get to know.  All this to say that I think we both had a degree of anxiety and wanted our time together to be everything good that it could be. 

And it was good for me.  I would say that the only regret  I have is that the time was short – and that couldn’t be helped. There are people on both sides of their family in this area and Jonathan had not seen his sister for years and needed to spend time with her as well.  My good memories of the visit are: watching Jonathan work on the quilt while watching Moonshiners (not his choice of show), Esther with pumpkin pie in front of her almost constantly, sitting around the front door at night talking, hugs in various places, walking the beach and the River Walk, reading Amichai poems and old journal entries, listening to car talk about jobs and life in Seattle, the sacrificial 6:30 am goodby time,  and the hugs. Did I mention I loved the hugs?

I love you Jonathan and Esther. Thanks so much for coming.

I remember last week looking at the date of my last post and thinking that it had been a whole week since I’d written.  I didn’t feel any guilt at that time because the purpose of my having a blog is not to produce guilt. I have to watch out for that because guilt is not a good thing and most of the time it’s completely unnecessary.  Now it’s been about two weeks since I’ve written and I have double the reason to feel guilty of neglect, but I still don’t.  I’m going over all of this hoping to encourage anyone who is feeling burdened by the demands of communicating.  It’s a good thing to never give up on communication but get back to it whenever you can.  Having not done it for two weeks I should have plenty of things to write about. It will be fun to think about the events of the Thanksgiving season as I record them.



Family cojes to visit





It’s not hard to catch them all in the same pose





Did you ever get the urge to kiss a horse? (Me neither)

But it is even more fun to ride them and our afternoon ride through the preserve was absolutely perfect. There was no stampeding, no unruliness, no bad attitudes, and the horses were really good too. Juie was the ultimate trail guide and even had supper ready in the crock pot when we returned.  We totally enjoyed our time there and it was DIFFICULT to leave Saturday morning.



Tess, the vigilant farm dog



Julie and Sheepie demonstrating proper sheep holding technique.

I am in the process of using things from my freezer so I can restock with newer, fresher things. I was looking in there last week and taking out some food I thought might be used for the week and for Thanksgiving dinner.  I found a box of frozen pie crusts and a loaf of bread and some English muffins. Actually while searching for the bread I spent some time organizing all my bread products and needed to set the pie crusts down while doing that. The freezer is in the garage and my Aztek is parked about a yard from the freezer door so I just reached up and set them on top of the car – the floor is too dirty.
Yes, several hours later in church, the husband who had driven separately from a different location said to me “I parked next to you. Why do you have pie crusts on top of your car?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m going to make pies and I’m thawing the crusts. They were frozen.”
“Okay,” he said, “I put them in my truck so no one would take them.”

That was my first Thanksgiving faux pas. The second one, and again it’s that freezer that’s getting me in trouble, is that I find out at 11 pm the night before that I have no butter.  The freezer is usually full of butter! I love butter and I never want to run out. Since the freezer is getting rather empty it was easy to search every shelf and there was no butter. Now I will have to be one of those terrible people who goes looking for a grocery store that’s open on Thanksgiving. Aaaaaaaagghhhg!

But there is no chance that the turkey will not get done tomorrow, because it has been cooked tonight. I was taking no chances. All of my guests tomorrow were also present two years ago when we waited on dinner for over an hour because the turkey wouldn’t cook. It never did get done. We had lots of other food and no one went hungry, but no turkey?!  It was surreal and supremely embarrassing, and evidently very memorable because they all have fun reminding me of it.

So this year I want to be known for something else and we’ll see what it will be. Maybe the well-travelled, church going pie.

As of 12 noon today I am on Thanksgiving vacation!! I am already mentally enjoying it even though there is work to do. I feel excited and relaxed at the same time, how can that be? The morning was rigorous and ended with me packing hundreds of bags and suitcases into my employer’s van (slight exaggeration) and sending her and her helpers to Myrtle Beach for their own Thanksgiving vacation. I am off work until next Wednesday and already the time is going way too fast. 

Tonight I go fetch the kayaks. Tomorrow I get to bake and smell wonderful stuff in the kitchen. These things are fun and fun is good. #so#thankful.


Okra and sunflowers for the table



Well, like all Boone coffee hours it was probably longer than an hour.  And because we’re all on diets it was oatmeal and fruit instead of cinnamon rolls and pastries, but it was great and it’s a keeper.  Visitors always welcome.



waiting for the starting flag



Digging in



Kim and Gracie



Me with a small coffee, Dennis with a large milk

Gracie took this one





Gracie’s animals came too



 It’s funny how one can live so much with a future event in mind that everything revolves around its approach, its occurrence and then its memory. And it can all happen in such a short time once it starts. Thanksgiving and a visit from family members is the commanding event. Every day I’m planning, putting another piece of the event in place. There is a lot to do that is interesting so I’m enjoying it moment by moment.

I have done a lot of cleaning.  I have no fingernails left and if bleach is as toxic as they say, I can expect to die momentarily from exposure to it. I have disposed of enough cat hair to fully clothe two additional cats at least. (Locks of love for felines?… maybe not). I have overcome two of my most deep seated proclivities. I threw away most all the magazines I have been saving and I also gave up some boxes. I don’t know why I save boxes – except that some of them are so cleverly built and seem like they should be useful for something. Well, they’re gone. I just got tired of saving them, and cleaning them, and organizing them, and looking for a new place to store them. And in spite of the fact that I’ll probably need them tomorrow, I’m glad they’re gone.

I thought some on my meal plans for the coming week. I bought some first quality Hunsader vegetables and a boquet of sunflowers and okra pods. I was given a whole bunch of coupons for other Thanksgiving groceries by a thoughtful friend. I’ve gotten together with my co-conspirator for the cooking and we’ve planned our pre-meal work and everyone is assigned their favorite thing to bring. My guests are all lined up. I’ve started reading the Thanksgiving story to Gracie, a few chapters at a time out of the book about John Billington and Squanto. We’ve had a good laugh at all the pilgrim names like Love Brewster and Remember Morris,

I’m planning on cleaning the car and making a packing list for Gainesville tomorrow.  I have the batteries charging for the air mattresses. I’ve asked Julie to make her yummy crockpot lasagna for Friday. I have reserved our kayaks for the weekend. Things are moving forward and I’m full of anticipation of a good family time together with my children – a pretty rare thing.

And in the midst of this, last Wednesday, a young mother in our church died suddenly and unexpectedly. It must have been an embolism or something quick like that. Her four year old son found her. I have just been to her memorial service and am very aware of how quickly life can change, and how final that change can be. The things that I am thankful for, the things I get to do in the next week with people I love, have taken on a new brilliance and significance. I am so thankful for now and even more thankful that I’m not afraid of the future and of eternity. This will be a heartfelt Thanksgiving for me.

Last night someone asked me a question about a past event in our lives, when did it happen, what year?  I’m not good at answering those questions.  Time goes by too fast for me.  I’m always thinking some great memorable time was just last year until I realize that two or three years have really gone by since it happened.  So I try to journal, keep calendars, write letters… anything to rehearse events and the dates that they happened.  I still don’t remember them very well but I have the written record in most cases.  I looked in all those places last night and didn’t get the answer to the question, which was, “what year did the horse, Ghost, come down to Florida from Wisconsin”? I had to message my daughter and get the answer from her.

But, oh the fun I had looking for it! I have one journal in particular that I wrote in, off and on, for over ten years while my children were young.  There are so many descriptions of them, and life with them from my perspective.  Having such a poor memory I really value those writings.  I suppose the memories are in my head somewhere but reading about what happened kind of drags the thoughts out where I can think them again. I guess that’s what memory is.  I’ve also been looking at a lot of old pictures of family and our lives in various places since my “barn window project” and that has been a similar experience down memory interstate (it’s not a lane anymore). 

The most remarkable thing for me was to see how my feelings about some things have changed over the years. Specifically, I see how hanging in there has paid off for me in so many ways (my work, my marriage, my faith).  I am glad that in those moments of temptation, despair, trouble of one kind or another, that I had a reason to persist and a purpose to fulfill.  Faithfullness is one of my favorite words and to me, it is a description of God’s character much more than my own. Given time, he is always proven to be faithful.  I think he gives us the past to prove that.