More Water, Please

I can't seem to get caught up on dishes this past week.  Nor on laundry.  Nor watering the garden.  Definitely can't keep up with watering the garden and the trees! 

Symposium last week with lots of wonderful company.  Working lots of extra hours this week.  Monday is my only day off next week.  (The paycheck will be nice.  But when will I catch up on laundry, kitchen, and garden work?) 

Somebody suggested putting a fan near the entrance to the attic, to draw some of the stifling heat out.  I tried that today.  Boy, it was blowing hot air!  But it sounds like it should help in taking the "warm blanket" off the top of the house.  (Besides, it's probably also better for the stuff that's stored up there!)

We did not mow in June.  Well, Andrew did hit up part of the backyard once where the grass was getting water from the sprinkler's overreach from the garden.  As Katie says, it smells like August, it looks like Augusts, it feels like August.

The wasps are building nests like crazy.  Our wasps don't seem to be mean.  I don't recall ever being stung here.  But there are a lot of nests -- way more than I've seen before.  Then we come along like dragons, stomp on their cities, kill their babies, spray poison on the adults, wreck their homes, and cause general mayhem in Waspland.  So the poor homeless wasps keep trying to hang around and rebuild. 

The news clip from Channel 58's coverage of the presentation at symposium is now available online.  That's got nothing to do with heat and water and summerness.   But I'm throwing it in this blogpost anyhow, because, well, it happened during summer.  (Do ya buy that?!)

We are running the air conditioner.  I know, most of you think that's a no-brainer.  But WE are running the AC. We, the people who usually go for a few years between turning it on.  We, who run it for only a few days during the hottest of summers.  I think we're on Day #5 already, and it's still June.

Well, off to change yet another load of laundry. 

Red Ear Lobes

I wore earrings for about 15 years after my ears were pierced.  Then I began to have occasional infections.  Besides, at that point it was hard to manage jewelry.  You moms known how it is.  For one thing, babies would pull on the earrings.  For another thing, when you can't even go to the bathroom by yourself, taking the time to put on jewelry just doesn't happen so easily. 

So, eventually, I got back to wearing earrings.  Or trying to.  But they weren't comfortable.  Every few years I decide that I want to wear those pretty, dangly, dress-up things again.  So today I wore them at work.  For three whole hours.  Then I couldn't take the pain any more.  When I took the earrings out, my ear lobes were red and swollen. 

Why?  [pout]

I guess I should remember this the next time I get the goofy idea to wear earrings.  Maybe I should do something really outlandish and get rid of my earrings so I won't be tempted. 

Bummers.

I Believe in the Holy Christian Church

Once upon a time, I was particularly ticked at some shenanigans within our beloved synod.  At the same time, a dear friend of mine kept talking about the so-called "visible" and "invisible" church, and how we should be able to see the true church in one particular organization.  My pastor pointed out to me the line in the creed: "I believe in the holy Christian church."  He explained that the Church's holiness is an article of faith; we cannot see her holiness.  He said,

Allow me to call our synod beloved, as a confession of faith in the forgiveness of sins. Just as I call you holy by virtue of Christ's righteousness, not your own.  If you deny the one, you end up denying the other.  If you accept the one, it might make it easier for you to accept the other.

If you deny the one, you end up denying the other.  

Yes.

So, How Do You Feel About Kids?

Our annual catechetical symposium was last week.  Our congregation hosts, but people come from all over the country (and we even had some from Europe and Africa this year).  There are two large rooms at the conference center.  Next door to us on Thursday was Planned Parenthood.  Interestingly, because the Roman Catholic bishop was unavailable at the time of our district convention, we had arranged to make a presentation to him at symposium.  So next door to Planned Parenthood, the Lutherans were thanking the Catholics and promising to stand with them in the fight for religious freedom and protecting the yet-to-be-born babies.

But that's incidental to what I wanted to mention.

Katie tells me that she never goes out with my granddaughters without somebody somewhere commenting on the kids.  "They're so beautiful."  "What cute little girls."  "Aren't they sweet?"  "They're so well-behaved."  "Such pretty daughters."  Katie was afraid she'd sound arrogant saying it, but it is simply a fact that that's what she hears at the grocery store and the park and stuff like that.  Every time.

Until Thursday.

The girls were playing in the foyer so that they didn't have to be perfectly still and quiet, but Katie could listen through the doorway while she kept an eye on the girls.  The folks from Planned Parenthood came through the door, passed through the foyer and noticed the girls, and said not a word.  Not one person.  Every one of them kept her mouth shut.  Some averted their eyes from the children.  Katie said that's never happened to her before.

That silence speaks volumes.