One of my favorite pics from Boone Reunion 1984


A favorite subject for me.  I grew up with cousins being the closest of friends. Their visits were always the highlight of the summers and letters were written back and forth during the year.  They are still some of my most special people, on both sides of my family.  I’ve also been thinking of my daughters lately and the relationships they have had and will have in the future with their cousins. They have many things in common because of their ages and their common relatives and heritage. They probably have more in common than they actually know. I hope they continue to forge bonds and share their lives with each other.

I wish we could have had digital cameras back in the “old days” so there would have been more of these cute pictures and they could be shared more easily.  We all deserve to remember some of these times (even if we groan inwardly at some aspects of them…). Julie and Esther, what a priceless pose. And Jonathan and Jamie, love the outfits. And Lissy, already into purses! You all continue to brighten my days and give me much to think about.

I am sitting at my desk looking at a coupon that would allow me to save 50 cents on any Excedrin Migraine product I wanted.  I’m thinking that I could eat some of that right now if it would make my head feel better.  It’s been a slow day at home and it seems that I do get headaches on days like this quite often.  Is it dissatisfaction with the day’s activities? It could be that I wish I had gone outside more, moved more, talked more, even worked more. The things I did do needed doing but they aren’t very visible things. I think there’s something wrong with me.

So I’m left with my headache, thinking about the day and wondering if it can be salvaged or if I should just go to bed and try again tomorrow.  Maybe I should have gone off to Saturday night church with the husband.  He looked kind of lonely heading out by himself. If I listened to every sermon he listens to I think I would go out of my mind, no matter how good the sermons were.  It’s just not my favorite way of hearing from God and I’ve decided to choose carefully how I involve myself on the corporate level. I don’t want to go to more than one church and I want to focus on knowing and caring for the people I worship with.  Our problem is that he can’t commit to the church that I am involved in and I don’t want to go with him when I’m already going somewhere else.  This is not a new thing with us.  We have been with many different churches for many different reasons but hardly ever the same church at the same time. I think there’s something wrong with us.

Today we got a phone call from a travel agency.  A couple weeks ago we stopped at a home show and looked at all the displays and unfortunately, signed up for a lot of free “contests” and “give aways”.  The offer was probably a good value for a vacation, but who takes vacations? Not us. We wouldn’t do a thing like that, unless it was to visit relatives.  I think there’s something wrong with us.

I’m not saying that we’re unusual, or on the brink of falling apart because we aren’t.  But I have to say that God isn’t finished with us yet and sometimes we get uncomfortable while we’re being worked on. That’s probably part of my angst, my headache, my discontent.  And part of it is that I didn’t get much sleep last night and don’t feel well, so goodnight.

Lots of mornings on my way to work I see the sun coming up in a way that just takes my breath away – but I never have time to sit and look at it or take a picture. This morning I was 10 minutes earlier than usual, traffic was light, so I stopped at the boat ramp and took in the view. Here is a bit of what I saw.  Hope it inspires you as much as it did me.

I am not a great cook.  But I’ve been cooking for many years and in that time it’s unavoidable that I would have made a few good meals here and there. My employer thinks I’m a pretty good cook but the real secret to what I do at work is that I am scared. I’m scared I’m going to ruin the only food she has for her meal and I’ll have to thnk of something else.  Also, at work I am not distracted from cooking.  I have about an hour in the morning to prepare her supper and/or her lunch and that’s my first priority – get it done before she wakes up.  As I said she seems to think I’m good at fixing her food, but I’m not sure whether I can believe someone who has to warm everything up 10 hours later in the microwave. It’s probably not even the same stuff by then.

Tonight at home I was working on some rice (This is my second story about rice. Read “bug soup”. We don’t like each other.). All was going well with my Indian Pilaf recipe until I stopped to put away some mail.  It was such a shame to have to throw away my only cup of white rice and all those nice spices. I think the burner was just too hot.  So I started over, thinking I’d have to use brown rice. This time I only got as far as putting some oil in the pan and a little garlic, and honestly I was only gone for a blink of an eye and it was black. It has to be the burner – must be something wrong with it. I finally made yellow rice from a mix. It’s the kind that you dump in the boiling water, put the cover on and 20 minutes later it’s done. You don’t even have to look at it.

But what to go with the rice?  My personal opinion is that the hardest thing about cooking is figuring out what to cook. And since I hardly ever shop for a recipe it has to be something I already have in the fridg or the cupboard. There is always something in the fridg that should have been eaten yesterday, something that starving children in India would be happy to see on their table, if they had a table. Tonight there was half a red bell pepper, slightly slimy (I can cut that off) but still a beautiful color. I chopped that up and threw it in the pan. There were a couple chicken tenderloins from …  not real sure when those came out of the freezer, but they’re still the right color too. Color is king in my kitchen. And an onion that’s been hiding in the purple, plastic onion container – in it goes.  Ta da, chicken and rice!

The trouble with eating old food, even when you know cooking kills most bacteria, is that you are going to be a little nervous.  Nervous as you taste, nervous as you watch others taste, never knowing if it’s just the garlic or does that chicken taste a little funny?  I took some Pepto Bismol for dessert. Really, I feel fine.

It was a unrivaled beautiful day today, inside and outside.  The husband and I went on an urban hike after church.  I packed a low-fat lunch in my back pack and we set out on what I have labeled the Palm View Loop.  This is part of my plan to get moving in 2013. Actually we walked yesterday too but we had a stupid argument before we left so it wasn’t as much fun as today. (I might add that if you do argue, you might feel better after walking for a while. It helps.)

So we set off and kept up a pretty good clip all the way through Golf Lakes Park then across the busy highway to Palm View Park. We did the loop around their pretty lake and back home almost the same way we came.  It took about one hour and 45 minutes, not counting the time we stopped to eat our lunch. 

I downloaded MapMyWalk onto my smart phone in order to track our progress and measure how far it was.  First of all, it’s almost impossible to read my smart phone in bright sunlight.  I pressed start and the app kept track of our time but had us going 0 miles.  It was 3.77 miles, however it took me 3 hours on the computer after we got home to figure that out. Two hours walking, three hours on the computer… yeah that sounds about like life these days.  Oh my goodness, how frustrating can they make a map program!?  I logged onto the website to put the route in manually. It refused to start at our home address – I guess we aren’t on the map. And the idiot in my computer kept picking different routes than the ones I was telling him we traveled. Yes there are directions on how to do it all but you have to FIND THEM FIRST!

Okay, I’m all calmed down now. I even managed to snap a picture on the route, in our yard.  It is time for the kapok tree to bloom and, well if there were a nice word for litter I would use it, but I don’t think of one now. You don’t want to stand under this tree. The flowers are big and meaty and they come from waaaaay up high. They’ll dent your car. But they make a pretty red covering for the drive.

Various thoughts as the morning progresses…

6am – Gray Kitty is scratching on the furniture in here somewhere close to the bed. Dennis must have left the bedroom door open. I’m not getting up this early. I’ll get up as if to feed her and when she runs out into the kitchen I’ll close the door and go back to bed. Yes.

6:30 – okay I’ll get up, lots to do before pest control guys come. Feed the cats. Turn up the heat, brr…

6:45 – Coffee just tastes different when it’s not in a travel mug. Good change. Sit down in the quiet and see if I can get a sense of what my orders are for the day. Only God knows, although I have plenty of plans.

7:30 – What should I dress/look like today since I’m not going to work? Hair is really straight in this dry, cold weather – going to leave it down to keep me warm. Gotta clean up this closet a bit, finish the vacuuming I started a week ago and never completed.

8:00 – Oh no, why is Scottie calling me? Day nurse didn’t have a ride to work? Whaaa…?  Okay, I’d rather give her a ride there than work it myself. I’ll go get her. An hour out of my morning isn’t going to ruin my day.  30 more miles on my car isn’t going to kill it.  Not my plan, for sure, but I can handle it. Graciously. I hope.

Pest control is here… maybe Dennis can stay and monitor them. He says the boss will complain that he’s late and is not too happy about it so I’ll have to hurry.

I wonder who Scottie is going to be mad at? What can I say to Kelly as she sits in the car with me on the way out there? I don’t want her to have a bad day. What on earth is her life like?

She wants me to stop at McDonald’s on the way so she can get breakfast?! What on earth is her life like? she is remarkably calm for the situation she’s in. I really need to pray that employer doesn’t give her a hard time. We all need a little mercy.

9:30 Home again. I’ll just start the day over. Another cup of coffee, maybe. Pest control wants in to the rental side of the house. where is that key? Hmm… there is a car here but no one is answering the door. Why not? I don’t really like that she’s invited someone else in to live with her without checking with us. I told her we needed to get in and she gave permission so I’m going in.

Waiting while they treat the house…. wow, when renter leaves it’s going to be a real job to clean up in here.  We may have to move over here while we remodel and rent out our side instead.  Wish I knew someone who would live on  our side and take good care of it.  Her husband’s wheelchair has really done a job on the door trim.

Pest control guy wants to know what we rent the house for. He wants to live here, no kidding? There is a man sleeping upstairs and it’s definitely not her husband. I really have to talk with my renter about this. not my favorite kind of conversation.

10:30 So now my house is sufficiently poisoned for a bug free year. The kitchen counters are all a mess – if I clean and put everything back am I just wiping off the treatment I paid $500 for? I wonder if living with bugs is all that bad?

11:00 Crazy morning recorded in blog. What’s next God? Bring it on.

While waiting to know if I should plan the next AT hike I decided it would be a good thing to see if I could walk for more than a half hour here in flat Florida.  I’m thinking of myself as being “in training”. Sunday I did a solo walk in the park next door. ( I say solo because I’m walking without the husband along – he gets his three intensive walks a week at the Cardiac Rehab place.  Now, I will ask him if he wants to go on the AT but I have no idea if he will rise to the challenge.) Monday I decided to stop on the way home from work and walk on a wildlife trail near the beach. Today I hiked around the village of Bradenton Beach.  I’m just realizing how many places I haven’t explored on foot. These places need to be visited. I am newly motivated and am on a quest for wonder. 

Wonder = moments of spiritual awakening that make you want to know God more.

Today I realized that I could make a lot of people with strange eating patterns feel better about themselves by giving them something to compare with. Others might actually be inspired in some way (just to throw in a bit of optimism).

This afternoon I was being health conscious and decided to pass up an afternoon cup of coffee and have water instead.  Upon further consideration I decided it wouldn’t hurt to add some Royal D vitamin powder (from Cambodia) to the water, being that it is flu season.  I had just eaten lunch, an apple and half a cup (well, maybe a cup) of mixed nuts and was deciding how they felt in my stomach.  I usually eat this kind of lunch in the car on my way home from work but on the weekend, sitting at home, it felt different and was kind of giving me a headache. Back to the coffee – sometimes coffee is good for headaches and the freshly brewed pot smelled pretty good – I had some of that too, and an Excedrin. 

A little later, feeling a bit jumpy but very alert, I needed something to calm me down and thought maybe some yogurt would do the trick. I ate cherry Greek yogurt while I was cleaning the papers off my desk. Now is a good time to mention that an important element in eating weird is that it helps to be doing something besides just eating. You can be driving, watching TV, reading or just about anything that takes your focus off the thing you are eating. Suddenly, the food is gone and you don’t even remember eating it. 

Another thing that helps you eat weird is not having anything at all to focus on.  It was only a few minutes later that I got stalled on the deskwork and not finding any of the available tasks to my liking I wandered into the kitchen (having a kitchen also contributes to eating weird) thinking that I should eat some bread.  Bread balances yogurt, weird but true. So I made a sandwich with bread, butter, peanut butter and a near-death banana. I don’t know why I went back to the refrigerator at this point, but I did, and saw some left-over pasta with veggies. It looked really good, kind of like the bread, so I ate the pasta and the sandwich. I guess the most important characteristic of a weird eater is that they don’t really care what they eat or when they eat it.  I don’t feel full very often, or hungry either for that matter. There is still a carton of rice pudding in the fridge but I might not eat it tonight. After all, even I know when to stop…



Hmm…. looking pretty good there.

  

Ends get a lot of attention.  There’s graduation, there’s the winner’s circle at the end of a race, there’s the final score of a game won or lost, there’s death… But this January is the beginning of 2013 and I’ve been considering – trying to get vision as to what I should aim at in the future. Five years from now, what am I going to wish I had started today?  I put up a facebook status today “starting something is the first important step to finishing well”. My husband asked me where I got that but really, it came from my own head as I was considering beginnings. Sounds like a famous quote doesn’t it?  I might not have been the first one to think of it.

Four years ago Julie, who thought of herself as not having accomplished much,  began a course of study to be a veterinarian. Yesterday she learned she had passed her medical boards.  She has only a few more months before beginning to practice. That beginning four years ago was pretty important.  It was also challenging and a step out of the comfort zone for her.  

And forty years ago this January I got married to Dennis. That was the beginning of a covenant promise that we have worked at keeping, not always perfectly or happily, but it has provided the framework of everything else that our lives have produced. I am glad we began.

Some of my favorite words on beginnings:
Job 8:7 Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.
Psalm 111:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (How true and how exciting.)

I am a little bit afraid of asking God what I should begin this year. I say “asking God” because I believe the things he gives people to begin have lasting value, eternal value even.  And I believe He has certain things in mind for me specifically.  Those things might be really hard to do, or take a lot of time, or money but they are going to be the things that matter. I am more afraid of not beginning something like that. that is why I’m asking, listening, keeping my spiritual eyes and ears open, considering what might begin in 2013.