I am helplessly trapped between worthy requests, necessary work and scheduled events that can’t be cancelled. Well, I guess they could be cancelled if I died or got really sick. Saturday, Sunday and Monday have been like a trio of mind- numbing, busy days lately. I’m starting to dread them. I have a minute right now, but I worked a double shift last night and am longing to close my eyes (so I can stay awake in my class tonight…) But what I’m really going to do is get a Mary Kay order in the mail to one of my four customers. All of them picked this weekend to order something – how does that happen? I know they don’t get together and plan to make me crazy. I would love to take more time and maybe even be funny about this but, got to go. Just thought I’d let you know and thanks for checking in to see if I’m writing….

I would like very much to be spending time with my parents. It’s so easy to tell myself that I know them very well in the way that I’m used to thinking about them in relation to myself. But when I hear them tell a story of a part of their life before I came along, or when I was young and oblivious, I find myself thinking “who are these people?” I really hardly know them at all. Even the stories I know and experienced with them sound different to me when I hear what they were thinking or feeling. My parents are several thousand miles away, however my father’s sister and her husband, Auntie Irene and Uncle Bob, are less than 1/4 mile west of my house and it just occurred to me that they are a pretty good second choice.

Last weekend when we stopped in to see them Auntie Irene gave me copies of notes my grandmother had made. There were notes about her own children’s important events (first time to milk a cow, when they had measles, first loose tooth, etc…) and also her grandchildren’s and great grandchildren’s doings and sayings. There are lots of little hand tracings. There are lots of cute things Shirley did and said because evidently I was with her a lot and somewhat favored. Going over all these notes got Auntie Irene started remembering all kinds of “stuff”. I think everyone has a tendency to think that their life is pretty ordinary and uninteresting to anyone but themselves (and frankly my life sometimes is uninteresting even to me) and Auntie Irene feels this way, but at the same time she has had an urge to write stories down, just in case.

She has to get about two inches away from the page with a magnifying glass to see what she’s written – but her printing is even and careful and her lines are straight across the page. I have no trouble reading it. She has already finished 30 pages or more and I start typing them up for her. I have to stop frequently to ask for more details. It’s fascinating. This woman, her mother, that she writes about was the grandmother that I loved all my childhood. What does a grandchild ever know about their grandparent? I certainly didn’t know her like her daughter knew her so these stories are enriching. And as we get to the stories about my father it’s getting even more interesting.

My point – we really don’t know people like we think we do. We shouldn’t pass up the chance to know them better from a different angle. What better way to study life than through your own family history. What better way to grow in love for your family than to hear stories of their ordinary, day to day life, that turns out to be rather like your own in many ways. I’m going back again this week to finish typing what she’s written so far and I’m just sayin’… it’s a good thing.

In my house there are hundreds of cozy places for a cat to nap. But I am honored that my cat finds me, in whatever room I am working, and wants to nap preferably on me, or if I am vertical, as close by as possible. And my cat knows that I love her and she trusts me. That is why, when I fold clean laundry and happen to leave a tablecloth on the bed while I’m putting other things away, she is quick to take her place. She KNOWS I have set that tablecloth apart just for her – a throne-like place where she can lick herself and shed fleas and hair (before I put it on the table). I’m just saying… I like to make her feel special.

All sorts of nasty jobs are getting done today. Hector and his friend are pressure washing the house, Dennis is finishing income tax, and I am doing a complete closet cleanse. It started out as a cool, breezy morning which had me opening all the windows and looking forward to airing out the house. Midway through breakfast Heck showed up unexpectedly – another job had postponed – and all the windows got closed again as the water began to fly.

What a job it is to wash a house – or really two houses in our case. Our side is not so difficult, but the two story rental side is, well, it’s another story.  It has steep roofs, and a balcony with white trim and a heavy tree covering which results in lots of mold and tree dirt. Even the metal roof gets dirty, making it pretty slippery when wet. I was just outside watching the process and have to admire the stability of the guy with the wand. He’s managing to stay upright and keep his footing while holding on to that hose that has a mind of it’s own. Heck is lighter and says the pressure pushes him around too much so he works on the ground fixing the ropes and ladders. It will probably take two days. I will have to pay them well because it looks like hard work. The house looks very nice when it’s clean.

The groans and exclamations coming from the table where Dennis and the Mac are doing income tax are a yearly occurrence. As it progresses we have hundreds coming back from the government one minute and owing thousands the next. Such weirdness comes from the program, I’m told. The last report was a $24,000 loss that suddenly came up and can’t be accounted for.  Poor Dennis. This is the one job that I can promise him I will never take away from him. Never. Ever.

And the old clothes closet situation… it’s a “walk in” true, but I’ve seen ones a lot bigger. I don’t know how I can actually lose clothes in there, but in cleaning it out I find stuff I didn’t remember I had. It’s like going shopping but cheaper. And instead of just passing by everything that’s wrinkled, I am ironing things, resulting in all kinds of new wardrobe choices. Did you know that hangers can get dusty? I cleaned all the horizontal surfaces of my clear plastic hangers and now they’re shiny (And keep in mind that this is the FIRST time I’ve ever done this so it’s not like I’m obsessive or anything). The biggest problem for me is that I keep a lot of things that I don’t wear very often – they really might come back in fashion, or I might remodel them. I give up on a few things each time I do this but I have to keep at least a couple of Dennis’s suits (I can’t remember the last time he wore a suit, years ago) and I don’t know what to think about Esther’s wedding dress. I think I was going to mend something on it and send it to her. It makes Gray Kitty very nervous when I have so many things spread out on the bed and the vacuum cleaner standing at the ready – no good, safe place to lie down.

And to complicate all these nasty things taking place, the power has just gone off all over the neighborhood. We have no water for the pressure washer, no internet connection for the computers, and no lights in the closet. Guess we’ll have to take a nap since that is much easier than trying to figure out what to do without electricity. Got to go… battery getting low.

I pretty much have to have some fun every day – vitamin F for fun. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Sometimes it’s a new T shirt to wear to work, sometimes it’s a magazine in the mail that I actually take time to read, a stop at the beach for a few minutes on the way home, an unhurried phone call to Mom, a nap, a movie… lots of things are fun to me. Yesterday’s massage was fun, but of course cost limits how much of that kind of fun I can have. When I know I’m going to do something fun I can almost feel the brain chemicals, good ones, being pumped into my system, helping me to be healthy and calm. And when I have regular fun I have a hard time feeling sorry for myself. So fun really is like a vitamin, and well worth having on a regular basis.



mixed medium by a local artist  I’ve been meaning to copy this method only with my cat



One of my favorite quotes is “If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good.” Dr. S. got it right.  It’s my opinion that God likes for me to have fun and he especially likes it when I share it with other people. I should plan our monthly dinner club outing with Jack for this weekend – it would be fun not to cook! But right now, today’s fun is breaking out the Cozy Shack rice pudding and enjoying a half hour read (or make it nap if I can’t stay awake). If you’re reading this, I hope you have a good dose of fun today too.

Isn’t spring just amazing?!

Working on the second cup…

This last week has been incredibly restricting. I’m not complaining because I had choices that led to it all, but now I am craving time alone to think about what has happened, savour the goodness, and make plans for the future. Sometimes life just hands you a busy week and there is nothing to do but plunge into it and emerge on the other side. I woke up this morning at the usual 5:30 am time and got up just so I could have the satisfaction of going back to bed, and not to work. It was sweet. It’s now only a little after 9 am and I’ve done some important reading, thinking/praying about the day, the second load of laundry is chuggin away, and the second cup of coffee is cooling at my right hand. My electronic servant is watering the lawn. The day is young. I am hopeful for it. (And I have a massage scheduled for this afternoon, yay!!!)

Birthday aftermath – see how I’ve stretched this yearly event out in time over several posts? The pergola project certainly had a hand in the stretching out. It seems like I’ve made daily trips to hardware stores, and cooked multiple meals for my workers and we still have several things to finish. The photo on the last post was taken Sunday afternoon after Carroll and Hector had done some of the major work. That night, after we had returned from dinner and multiple desserts at Kim’s house, Hector and Carroll showed up once again with a rather large three milk birthday cake from the Mexican deli.  I’ve told you Hector is a rather unusual young man, and one of his quirks is that he feels a happy obligation to celebrate people and events. I am blessed by him. He told me when he ordered the cake it had to be large because the man told him he couldn’t fit ” Happy Birthday Shirley” on a small cake. So we stopped and had coffee and cake one more time. I told him next time “Hi Shirley” would do just fine.

The pergola is going to be stained grey, like driftwood, and that is about all that remains to be done. I’m looking for some grape vines to plant and maybe someday it will have lovely greenery growing up over the top, with bunches of grapes hanging down inside please. One interesting realization during the course of this project – a small metal brace with four holes in it for screws that cost $.65 in some past year when Carroll bought it, now costs $1.47! Since he had 10 of them already put in place I wanted to match the other 22 needed. It took me three hardware stores to find them, and they only had 22. Isn’t that interesting. and expensive.

The lovely coffee cup pictured here has a pine cone on it, which is kind of a recurring theme between Esther and myself. It came in the mail yesterday, and gives me a reason to consider pine cones once again. What a crazy way to package seeds! A protective sleeve that pops open and releases new potential trees at the perfect time, and sits around looking lovely all the while, one of the zillions of amazing ideas God has had to make this world beautiful. I enjoy collecting pine cone things – did I mention that I found pine cone earrings in Cambodia? As I was looking at some silver items, the woman vendor noticed my necklace and being very good at her job, she just laid them out in front of me. They matched perfectly.

My A.W. Tozer thought for the day: “We have almost forgotten that God is a Person,… it is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.”



Pergola (not pagoda) in progress

 I should probably be getting some sleep, but I really want to write. I was thinking about something I wanted to write late last night when I heard a light knocking on my bedroom door. It was 12:09 am. Julie had driven down from Gainesville and wanted to know if by chance she was the first one to wish me happy birthday. She was, and I was so glad and excited to see her that it took me another hour or so to get to sleep.  Or maybe it was the cup of coffee I’d had earlier. Either way, it was a good start to April 8, 2012.

Church was good, not necessarily because the message was inspired or the service was awesome in any way but because I’ve been doing so much thinking, praying, conversing with God lately that I needed to express what I was feeling in an organized, public way. It felt good to have thought about what I was singing and to mean it. I love music. I think God would have let me be a musical Levite if I’d been an Israelite.

When we got back home after church, my men friends Carroll and Hector, were nearly finished putting up my pergola. A pergola is a fancy word for what Carroll calls a shade shed. I had asked if they would contribute the labor to make it as a birthday gift to me and they complied even though this was a busy week for them both. I was quite surprised that it worked out on time. It’s looking really good and needs just a few more braces and lattice on top. It’s my answer to “what to put in the front yard that won’t die from blistering heat”. The personal relationship side of this project was interesting to me. To watch Hector, who is a pretty skilled younger man, work patiently with Carroll, an 80 year old Cracker horse trainer with lots of experience building pole sheds, was amazing, amusing, and instructive. Clearly, I asked the right people to get this work done fast. It looks just like I imagined it would and I know I will enjoy it.Thanks guys.

I spent the morning in the One Acre Woods. I’m pretty much exhausted. I have lounge chairs, three of them to be exact, in various places around the yard but I do not lounge in them, ever. Their purpose is mostly to slow down my lawn mowing and challenge my creativity in moving them while staying seated on the mower. I think “things” live in the cushion on one of them and the other two don’t have cushions. I keep thinking I’m going to sit out and tan, or take a nap under a tree but it doesn’t happen and won’t as long as there is a chore to be done, a weed to be pulled, fruit to be picked, leaves to be raked. It’s a woods and it keeps changing and producing tasks in a very glorious way.

I have discovered the trick which makes life easier – it is to have as many areas as possible where you are content with whatever nature naturally does.  Or if not that, at least try not to have to move anything very far from where it originally started. My goal is that nothing should have to leave the premises. Fallen branches can be burned and the ash distributed. Leaves can be piled around the trees that produced them – serves them right – and called mulch. Today I cleared an area for a new vegetable bed and the clods of weed (no grass) and soil that I took out I spread out in low spots and around exposed roots. It’s absolutely serendipitous that what is not wanted in one place is exactly what is needed in another.

The vegetable bed is done now, but at one point it was a very weedy patch of lawn or rather a weed plot with a few grass plants mixed in. Hector and I have been talking about where the sunniest spot might be for a bed and how to improve the sandy soil. He had brought me a load of composted horse maure which had been sitting in a corner for a couple months and it truly was growing some very healthy looking, big weeds. I didn’t have to move the pile very far (see trick #2). I did have to carefully, carefully remove the foliage and clean the bed surface before putting the compost down. I say carefully because, as you would expect in a woods, there are lots of pretty thick tree roots very near the surface. Also, but as you would not expect, every cable and wire laid down in the last twenty years happened to run under the 5 foot by 16 foot spot I picked for a garden. It can be a scary thing when you are pulling roots and you get a strange black one that comes loose way too easy and is way too long. I could not tell which were functional but thankfully our tv and internet are still available. Of necessity the garden will be a raised bed.

Ultimately, what I want to say is that I love working outside in the One Acre Woods.  It is totally absorbing and in a way quite like writing.  Often I try to plan what to do with a new plant, or how to make an improvement but it doesn’t turn out to be right and I’m stuck for a while. Then suddenly one day the solution will be obvious and I’ll move things around and it will look wonderful. The excitement of trial and error and discovery, over and over. I think I’ll sell the lounge chairs.

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.