I’m waiting for it to be cool enough to go outside and mow the lawn and for the laundry to be done in the dryer.  I’m waiting to see how my employer will respond to my latest e-mail.  I’m waiting for a text-back from my daughter to hear how her trip home went. I’m eagerly waiting for my vacation home to Wisconsin to come.  I’m waiting for supernatural direction on several life issues. I’m waiting for numerous prayers to be answered. Waiting is not a bad thing, I don’t think. The longer I live, the more comfortable I am with it. 

I used to get very worked up inside having to wait for other people to get ready to go somewhere with me.  I’m very time conscious and given a choice I will always be leaving early to get someplace on time.  I even like to have extra time in case some unforseen thing happens to delay me. Having this mindset and being ready to get in the car, I would find out that the person who wanted to go with me was just beginning to consider taking a shower and getting dressed… the resulting wait was really difficult. And it usually made the following car time unpleasant as well.

 But now I think, this is the person and the circumstance that I’m given.  I can get angry, hurt them emotionally, make them angry or I can love them. I may not even make it to the next person or the next event so I’d better be really careful with the person I have right now. I believe my time is ordered by God, every minute of it, so when I’m asked to wait, it now occurs to me that there’s something God wants me to see in that waiting moment.  And that he will get me to where he wants me to be next, at the time I’m supposed to be there.  I’m not worried. God can do some really spooky things with time.  I still have to walk myself through this in crisis times but it’s getting more habitual.  My conscious choices are quicker and better.  I’m just saying that there are some very rich and rewarding things about living, learning and getting more experienced.

Now to mow the lawn.

Lately around home I hear a lot about diets, fat and weight loss.  A lot about heart disease, stents.  Yes, my husband has discovered he has some blocked arteries in his heart. The doctors he’s consulted want him to have a stent put in but after reading about some of the bad experiences people have had, he has decided not to do it. The people who died from not having stents placed aren’t around to post their bad experiences, a fact which has to be weighed in there somewhere, but still he thinks he can reverse his problem.  He doesn’t just think it, he’s really excited about doing it.  He’s thankful he has a compelling reason to do what he has wanted to do for years – lose weight.

So, his hero is Dr. Dean Ornish who has written the book on heart disease reversal.  The diet required is basically vegetarian, with only 10% of daily calories to be from fat sources.  It’s pretty restricted.  Exercise is also a big part of this regimen, as is having good personal relationships and avoiding stress. “So you should write up my progress in your blog”, he says. And I’m thinking it would be a lot more reasonable if he would write up his own progress in HIS blog.  I think I actually said that to him. But the whole idea got stalled on the matter of having a blog, because he doesn’t have one and probably won’t, ever.

I do have a certain perspective on this program he’s setting himself to. After all, I’m the one who most often shops for what we eat, and fixes what we eat, and calls him to the table. I also seem to be the exercise police in the evening. So I’m a part of what goes on and I guess I might as well add this story to the other ones I tell.

I am proud to say that the husband has lost (by his own report) a total of 15 pounds off his all-time high. He has many more to go but this is a good start, and as I said, he is very excited this time around. So from time to time my post will be about the deprivation, discipline and agony we are going through and about the fat melting off, I hope.

Do you remember that rhyme? For some reason it always comes to my mind, but I don’t say it because the parts about the market and buying a fat pig don’t seem too relevant.

There is no place like home and I am glad to be here once again. I have such a mixture of feelings about this travel that I do for work. I really don’t want to do it anymore but I hate to admit that my age prohibits it or my ability to do it has diminished. Obviously I can do it, but it seems to be that I pay a price, and the price is going up somewhat. Maybe I just need time to forget the parts I didn’t like, if that’s possible. The long night drives scare me – we are always arriving at our destinations late and tired out and of course that’s when my night shift starts. I really miss a lot of sleep, which makes the return trips even more scary. Sometimes I get in the van after stopping for a gas break, and am amazed at how clear and three dimensioned the road looks compared to before the break when it all looks flat and I’m fighting to keep the white lines in focus. Evidently I’m a pretty good driver even in zombie mode but all it would take to create disaster would be one moment of the eyes going shut. I don’t even want to think about it. Sometimes I do imagine what I would do if we crashed and rolled and I had the responsibility of helping a quadriplegic who is strapped in a 400 lb. wheelchair and bolted to the floor of the vehicle… I don’t know if it even pays to have a plan in mind for that. I thank God that he hasn’t put me in that place.

I have a box of delicious peaches to reward me for traveling through the state of Georgia in July… that and a paycheck.

I have always loved to see inside other people/s houses, especially when the outside looks mysterious or especially well designed or creative in any way. So yesterday was the tour of all tours, seeing the interior of the Vanderbilt home, Biltmore, the largest privately owned family residence in the United States. When George Vanderbilt decided to build his retreat in the North Carolina mountains he was thinking 50,000 sq. ft, that is until his architect convinced him he needed 175,000, more like the castles he’d seen in Europe. I haven’t done the math but one of the guides said that was around 4 acres (but maybe that was just the area the house covered, not counting the two upper stories).  It was quite a house. I’m sorry you can’t see here some of the things I marveled at because photos and sketches were not allowed inside. You’ll have to go there yourself sometime – it is worth seeing and you can easily spend an entire day doing it. It was built over a six year period in the 1890’s and has many features that were way ahead of the curve. Personally, I can’t imagine living in anything that big in scale and I wouldn’t have known how to start decorating it. They evidently did not have any problems there. It is full of rare art and furniture.  None of the family lives there presently but several of them do have homes on the 8,000 acre estate. They have opened the home to the public in order to afford the historical preservation that is being done. Real people actually remember growing up in this place and playing hide and seek in the many rooms when they were kids. Awesome.

The employer and I had a nice lunch in the stable which has been converted into a cafe, a BIG cafe. In the late afternoon our party of four walked through all the gardens and greenhouses for which the estate is famous.  They were so filled with gorgeous plants that it made me want to start growing something immediately. The designer of Biltmore gardens also designed Central Park in NYC, although he was only warming up when he did Central Park. The Biltmore gardens are several times bigger.

Would you ever decide to read a book standing up for hours on end? The answer is probably not because it wouldn’t be comfortable. Well sightseeing and touring is a lot like that and we were all very tired, especially in the feet and legs and the headache parts of our brains. (Shopping has a very similar effect.) I couldn’t take it two days in a row, which is why I’m not with the others today while they “do” Asheville.  I did take a short walk to look at the nice community around our hotel and finished off with a salad, a pear/gorgonzola pizza (Oh good!) and a piece of strawberry tiramisu. I am quite content.

It is really strange how I came to have so much to do with this memorial for a woman I didn’t really know all that well. I did know her a little and admired her a lot. I will miss her and all that she added to my job in taking care of her daughter.  She was immediately cognizant of me and how I was responding to the job – I think she worried about her daughter finding good caretakers.  For instance, she was the one who chastised her daughter about not having chairs for “able-bodied” people to sit in at the Ocala house, she was the one who insisted I take her nice car for my day trips to see my parents or my daughter, she was the one who purchased Mary Kay from me in generous amounts whether she needed it or not, she was the one who took my side when things were getting unreasonably difficult. I learned a lot more about her today from the speakers at her memorial. She was Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart.  One story I loved was about a luncheon that she put on for a group of people. Her house was beautiful, all the food was homemade, all the appointments were perfect, and when someone admired her plates and asked where she had gotten them, it turned out she had made them too, in her basement on her pottery wheel.  For years she was on tv and radio with a cooking/homemaking themed show that she did herself for the Egg Commission. I had a few conversations with her about her faith as well and she was very open about her love of God and her journey in following him. I would have enjoyed being her friend and feel a sense of loss having only known her a short time.

The service was in the Pinehurst Tea Room in Stockbridge Georgia – lovely place. It was done in a style that did credit to all that she stood for. I got to help type up the bulletins and get them printed, get the slide show ready for the computers and start them up, and brought a keyboard to play for several hymns which everyone sang.  My employer loves harp music so she had hired a harpist to play and sing for us and she did a wonderful job – I enjoyed playing the hymns with her too. It’s over now and we are resting back at the hotel.  So, I just have to say I appreciated the time I had with M. R. S. , and I hope to see her again some day in a better place.

Going north, not very far north -, in fact most people in Atlanta would not want to be described as being north of anything, but they are at least nine hours in that direction for us. Traveling for work almost never starts early either because there is so much packing to be done that can be done ahead of time. So our 1 pm departure was pretty good for us.
The remarkable part of this trip was the weather. It’s summer here and there is typically rain in the afternoons. Strangely, the clouds often seem to line up over the interstate (I-75) and you drive in and out of showers through much of Florida. It started for us around Gainesville with some pretty intense downpours. It got worse before long. It was knuckle-biting, white out, 35 mile an hour, 2 inches standing on the road, cars leaving a wake rain for at least an hour. My stomach was in knots. I can only imagine how scary it is for my employer being helplessly strapped in her wheelchair and bolted to the floor of the van, trusting someone else to get her through it. I have to hand it to her – there was no backseat driving AT ALL. This was unusual and remarkable, which is why I am remarking about it. We were relieved to stop in Valdosta at our usual eating place, even though we had to wait for quite a while before we could exit the van.

The only thing worse than driving in torrential rain on the interstate is driving in torrential rain on the interstate in the dark. And of course the roads got a bit more crowded as we went past Macon and on to Atlanta. The windshield of our van had gotten waxed by mistake before the trip and oncoming lights and the rain did a funny reflecting effect that wiped out any piece of visibility I might have had. Thank God for white lines on the side of the road because they are the only things that kept me in my lane. The trucks going past reminded me of jet skis the way the water shot out from under  the wheels. Enough of this horror story. We got there around 11, some friends met us at the hotel and helped unload. I was in bed by 1:30, and yes I had a real queen bed all to myself.

Before I forget, I need to pass on this advice that could be very important, maybe life-saving.  When driving your zero turn lawnmower please keep both hands on the steering handles where they belong. Don’t be fooled by the drink holder, which would suggest that you can have a beverage while mowing the lawn. You can’t.  One hand, one handle, one direction.  Other hand, other handle, other direction. It is not a round steering wheel that can be turned wherever by one hand while the other hand does whatever it wants. Try that and you will leave a very strange mow pattern behind you until you crash into something. These handles determine not only direction but also speed so the very strange mow pattern happens very quickly until you put the drink down and get control again. Trust me.

Or if you insist on using the drink holder while mowing be sure you are in the middle of a large empty space, and drink quickly. (Or just stop the machine, put in park, take a drink.) That’s it. That’s all.

There are several (okay…  two) of us in our family who get really attached to our vehicles, name them and keep them forever or until someone sells them out from under us, literally.  I have a 2002 Pontiac Aztek which I liked right from the moment I first saw it, to the surprise of my husband and the car salesman.  It’s the color of a school bus and has a shape that was very cutting edge in 2002 – so much so that not enough were sold and they quit making them a few years later. I’m thinking it will be a pretty valuable relic someday.  Because of the color I’ve called it Sunny and also because of the color I’ve never had problems finding it in crowded parking lots.  Sunny has aged well over 10 years and 160,000 miles and is still a pleasure to drive, but has had a few electrical/computer quirks. One of them was that the windshield washers quit pumping fluid to my dirty windshield.  I’ve lived with the problem for over six months, always carrying Windex and a roll of towels along, or settling for just being barely able to see.

A couple days ago my AC quit blowing cold (UNACCEPTABLE in Florida) so I took Sunny over to my favorite mechanic, Pat.  Pat is a car’s best friend, and I like to think he’s one of my best friends too.  He refilled my cooling fluid and even divulged his secret supplier of the stuff, Big Lots! He sent me down to get a couple more cans of it and put it in for me. While he was at it I asked if it would be too much of a pain for him to look at my windshield washer.  He had me turn on the engine and work the washer switch while he did his magical procedure – hitting it with a board – yes.  And it immediately started working. It’s something akin to kicking the Coke machine… Another mechanic could have charged me big bucks and given me a story about all the things he had to replace to fix it, but not Pat. And he has always been this way. I’m just saying that this is why Sunny and I consider him a “must have” mechanic.

P.S. Pat only works on a few cars now in his spare time after school.  He teaches at the local tech school and is training more mechanics all his tricks, including how to use boards to fix washer pumps. Yea!!!

I am thankful for the country I live in, the freedom that is allowed to me, the ability to travel and be with family. There is much to celebrate every day, but particularly on July 4th.

The daughter in vet school got back from Ecuador one of the first days of July and we asked if she would like us to come to her house for the 4th and catch up on her news.  She was pretty enthusiastic about the plan which made me feel good.  She is often so busy, stressed and unavailable (not always by her own choice) that it’s difficult for her to have company.  We drove up on Tuesday night and each took a couch to sleep on.  Wednesday, the 4th of July, the first thing on the list, after morning coffee, was spending some time with the horses.  Julie is trying really hard to keep me interested in my horse. Of course, she is interested in her horses too, but especially when I am there she tries to plan a ride for us. It was a beautiful morning, fairly cool in the woods where we rode and there was no reason to run so we didn’t.  I spent a little extra time untangling Andy’s mane and tail and whispering horse things in his ear afterwards. Mission accomplished.

There were others invited to join us for our cookout later in the afternoon so we did the obligatory house cleaning and food fixing. And then it was time for the other “activity” Julie had planned – playing hair salon.  I don’t know what made her think her mother could put highlights and lowlights in her hair. It was probably the video that made it look like a five year old could do it.  Let me tell you, if you haven’t had a lot of practice painting bleach on hair and then wrapping it in pieces of foil, it is hard to do and you are going to wish you had three arms, maybe four. I did what I could (me, who barely combs her own hair) but I was worried I might have done damage to our relationship, or her hair, or both. I found out later from my hairdresser that I needn’t have worried because not much color change takes place unless you take off any previous coloring first. Julie was gracious through the whole thing, for which I am grateful.

The burgers were good, the company was good, the afternoon and evening went quickly.  We left for home and got to sleep around midnight, hoping to be ready for work the next day. The only fireworks we saw were taking place here and there along I-75 as we drove home. It was enough.

For those of you who don’t know what the west coast of Florida is like normally – the water is quiet. Nobody comes here to surf. The beaches are wide and often shallow a good ways out. At Coquina Beach which I pass going to and from work every day, there is plenty of room for people to spread out with their blankets, umbrellas and gear. There are long concrete breakwaters (kind of like piers) that protect the beach sand which the communities regularly pay big bucks to have replenished. Here is a  video of Bradenton Beach experiencing Hurrican Debbie.  I was at a beach access that used to have a bridge over the dunes before the waves washed it away. The beach is totally underwater and the waves actually flooded the roadway in some areas. Tides were 2 – 4 feet higher than usual.