It is getting scary close to time for going to Cambodia. This evening and the next two full days are all that is left and they are filled with work in the mornings and Christmas activities in the afternoons and evenings.  It doesn’t seem like I’m ready to go and I’m worried I will remember all kinds of things to do the night before.  Panic may result.

Tonight we are going to see the documentary “Nefarious” which is about human trafikking. I might not have spelled that right.  It might seem like a mood spoiler for the holiday season to be on such a sad subject but I’m told the film has a very hopeful conclusion. A good deal of it is filmed in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh, near a place I have visited called the Russian Market.  In Cambodia it is not uncommon for poor families to sell their children to the sex industry.  The children feel it is their duty to support the family.  Many of the children in the orphanages I’m visiting would have ended up in this situation if they had not been rescued by Asia’s Hope.  There are some wonderful organizations helping young women leave the sex industry and learn new ways to support themselves. I would find it personally devastating and hopeless to be in the place of someone trapped in that life and I am wondering what God would have me do now that He has brought this to my attention.

I have really avoided making Christmas a commercial venture this year. I feel good about that. Well, I will qualify that and say that there are a few people I would love to help out with a gift, either because they need the encouragement or because they have many physical needs.  Our renter next door went to the hospital in an ambulance yesterday and may not have long to live. My employer lost her mother last December and this is her first Christmas alone. I am praying and hoping that God will help me know what I can do effectively, since it doesn’t seem I can do all the things I can think of to do. I never can. But I know God does not expect more than He enables me to do. I rest in that.

I can’t keep up with how fast time is going! A somehow related fact – I’ve finished two Lindt truffles in the time it took to write that first sentence! Stress does this to me.  That, and living with mid-level pain pretty much all the time. I do fall asleep at night and get a few hours reprieve.  Between the neck thing, and the leg thing, and the hand/arm thing I don’t know if I’ll ever make that thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail.  But I’m determined to get on the plane to Cambodia a week from tomorrow, aches, pains and all.

In one of my crazed moments I made an appointment to have a tooth repaired tomorrow afternoon.  That ought to take my mind off anything else that hurts. What was I THINKING.

It’s funny how small pleasures start to loom large when one is feeling a bit stressed.  I was dreaming on the drive home today (this was post chiropractic treatment when my neck was feeling like it had been twisted off and replaced on crooked) about sitting at home and lighting a nice smelling candle. Just to sit in the presence of a candle and watch it burn. Ok, boring to most, but pretty nice to me. I never did it. By the time I got the groceries unloaded, listened zombie-like to the Verizon salesperson (real people do this door to door now), and read a couple chapters of my new AT thru-hike book, I forgot about the candle. It would have been so nice.

Right now I should be (going to bed) packing the suitcase of medical supplies for the orphanages so I can determine how heavy my suitcase is going to be. I’ve been able to collect probably 30 pounds of children’s vitamins from various sources, plus a few antibiotics, and some thermometers and lice combs. I’ve discovered some interesting resources for this stuff this time and feel like I’ve made some headway into the supply chain.  I’ve also gotten a number of generous donations so I can buy some of what they need when I get to Cambodia – some things really are cheaper to buy there than here. My nurse friend who takes care of the medical and hygiene issues for the orphanages friended me on facebook – turns out a lot of the Cambodians are on it.  I have 3 of them on my friend list now and that makes communication so much easier. 

My employer is trying to be matchmaker for one of her young musician friends…  she’s trying to get him together with my daughter Julia who is probably, and understandably, nervous about arranged meetings.  This man plays a mean fiddle and travels with a pretty well known country band. I suppose he’s kind of famous in some respects which doesn’t really impress me. In fact it would probably make life for whomever he marries a bit lonely and insecure unless he really is a super wonderful guy. But it makes life interesting I guess.

It’s been a week with more than the usual amount of pain. Pain in the neck.  I’ve heard that expression many times before but now it takes on new meaning because I know more about pain in the neck. The chiropractor came into the office on a day off just to adjust me and apparently I have a C2 out of place.  The muscles around it are too tight and he couldn’t get it to go back into place fully.  He’s going to adjust it again on Monday and he’s looking for a definite “clunk”, as he calls it, when it’s back in it’s normal position. He says I will know.  I feel a little better just from what he did today, that and the ice pack I have strapped around my neck.

Julie is visiting this weekend.  The vet students are on semester break and she was able to catch a ride to Bradenton with one of her friends.  I was relieved she didn’t ride her motorcycle down, at night, on the interstate. I have concern about people on motorcycles even though I know many travel safely on them.  Of course the person with the motorcycle always feels they are being reasonably careful and I have never seen anyone get talked out of riding one, so I’m not going to try.  I will accept and pray.  This is life ( unless it is death, which unfortunately it sometimes is…).  I enjoy Julie’s visits even though she is usually pretty busy  planning catch up visits with friends.  We slept in, then had a wonderful breakfast of Pumpkin Ginger pancakes and some kind of honey/creme fraiche sauce with raspberries and blackberries. I would have posted a beautiful picture of it but I’m never good at getting food pictures before things are half eaten. They don’t look so good at that point.

All for now. I don’t think it’s good for my neck to be in computer position. Besides this is pretty boring content… I’m just sayin’.

I couldn’t resist writing something on this historic date when the month, day and year are all the same numeral. I guess it’s going to be a long time before it happens again (would that be sometime in the year 3001, right?) I’m not sure what I have to write about that anyone else would find interesting. Most of the time now I’m either thinking about Scottie and how to serve her, or about Cambodia and getting ready for my trip – oh, and I think a bit about Christmas and how I feel about the whole holiday picture.  I suppose writing about that would help me clarify how I feel and think.

I have a different perspective that’s hard to explain to a lot of people because for years I didn’t observe Christmas at all. That fact lets me know that observing it is not really necessary to my happiness or to my family tradition. I lived without it quite well and I could do it again. And in light of the commercial nightmare it’s become in this day and age I would just as soon do without it.  Never would I design a holiday where I have to give gifts to every friend and family member I didn’t want to insult, all at the same time. That is purely a tradition started by the marketing devil. Spending money is such a big factor in the modern celebration that it takes the next six months for lots of people to recover financially, and it spells success or failure for lots of businesses. Seems like birthdays would be a more do-able way to schedule gift giving (unless all your friends and family were born in the same month, and what are the chances of that?) All this to say that I’m pretty much crossing shopping off of my December to do list. I feel the same way about Black Friday and Cyber Monday – pure avoidance is my goal.

There are certain naturally occurring things in December, associated with Christmas that I like a whole lot.  I love poinsettia plants. Hmm … I guess that’s about it for Florida. But if I lived in the north I would like snow, and fir trees. I like pretty lights at any time of the year but since it’s dark so early in December it’s especially delightful (good word) to see them as decorations.

Now if people who believed Christmas was really Jesus’ birthday and were celebrating that fact – if they wanted to keep it like they keep other birthdays, that would make sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to me that we basically teach selfishness and materialism to our children, as they make lists and think about what they want instead of what they might give to Jesus. What is really true about Christmas is that most anyone can celebrate it without even knowing anything about Jesus. How would we feel if everyone in the world came to our birthday party for the food, and door prizes and didn’t even know who we were?

Another thing I kind of like – the fact that the days have grown shorter and darker and colder, and then the solstice occurs and the opposite starts to happen. That is very like the theme of Jesus’ birth bringing light and hope to mankind in the darkest of times which is probably one of the reasons Christians celebrate the nativity at the end of December.  It’s also why others worship the sun at that time (to get it to come back) and I’d just as soon not get mistaken for one of them. 

This is all I have time for – got to go, but I’m still thinking. 

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.