Tremble

The psalms often mention people trembling before the Lord.  It sounds like shaking-in-your-boots, terrified panic.  I'm pretty sure that's the intent of the word in the original language.

But there's another kind of trembling.  Trembling with excitement, with anticipation. 

The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!  He dwells between the cherubim.  Let the earth be moved (Ps 99).  

Later in the psalm He is called "God-Who-Forgives" though He takes vengeance on sinful deeds.  He forgives.  He promises.  We have some things to anticipate, things to look forward to.

Obeying God Rather Than Men

Story: King Saul orders somebody, anybody, to kill this popular young David fellow.  Prince Jonathan objects.  David escapes.  Jonathan wants David to come back to the palace.  David says, "Not on your life!  Your dad is plotting to murder me."  "No, he wouldn't do that."  "That's what you think.  He's hiding it from you because he knows you wouldn't like it."  Jonathan comes up with a plan to test it out and still ensure David's safety.  (1 Samuel 18-20)

In chapel, Pastor asked the kids about the fourth commandment.  Jonathan was disobeying his father.  Wasn't that sinful?  (By the way, in case you're wondering, the answer is NO, not sinful.)  As we read the story, and as Pastor brought in other passages, something crossed my mind.  

We cannot truly honor someone unless we are holding fast to the Word of God.

Any time we have to fudge on God's word a bit, whatever "honor" we are showing to somebody isn't really honor.  It may be for self-preservation or for gaining power or for some other reason.  But it's not honor.

So when there are ethical problems with regard to abusive husbands, or parents using kids as drug-runners, or governments enacting unjust laws, the answer will always be in God's word, especially in connection to His word of promise and mercy.




 

A Very Clean Pantry

My poor pantry was feeling left out of the cleaning binge.  So it had its own little meltdown.  A beer bottle exploded. 

1.  It was inside the closed pantry.  So flying glass stayed contained in the pantry.
2.  It was beer, not wine.  I had a wine bottle explode once.  That required not only cleaning but also painting walls.
3.  Gary was home when it happened, and did a huge portion of the clean-up work.
4.  From here on out, liquids should live on the bottom half of the pantry, and dry goods (noodles or sugar) should live on the higher shelves.

When you empty out the whole pantry, onto the kitchen floor and counters and table, it's rather surprising to see how much food we are blessed with, with it spread all over instead of contained in its proper spots behind a closed door.

So, do ants and other nasty critters like beer?  We have cleaned and scrubbed.  But I fear missing ANY drips of beer, lest I should entice pests.  (I mean the six-legged kind, you silly.)

This Is "Retirement"?

Yesterday was the first day I Should Have Been At Work, but wasn't.  (No, I haven't fully quit yet.  I'm still taking some short shifts until they replace at least one of the open positions at my branch.)

Such conflicting emotions!

Instead of doing one of a gazillion things on my After-I-Quit-Work to-do list, I spent the day with my daughter and newborn granddaughter.  Rachel ended up in the emergency room this weekend.  The surgeons removed a troublesome organ.  They sent her home on narcotics.  I spent a couple of days there, taking care of things that she simply couldn't.  While running some errands Tuesday morning, I wondered about certain customers, whether they'd come in yet.  I wondered how my co-workers were keeping up with the work, whether it was a busy day or a boring day, wondered who was subbing for me, etc.  And that's when it hit me.  Tuesday would have been loads easier physically and mentally if I had been at work instead of tending to family needs.  And yet ... working Tuesday would have been awful as my mind and heart would have been preoccupied with my babies and grandbabies, wanting to be there to help but unable.

Today I planned to spend a shorter amount of time with Rachel and Lizzy.  Instead the day was spent helping Katie get her car functional again.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

See what price my daughters pay when I make a "vacuum" of my calendar?  (Well.  Okay.  Not a vacuum.  But cleared out a little bit.)  It makes me wonder if I should protect my kids by going back to work!

Rachel says God had it all worked out.  She had a tiny baby ... and that baby is big enough to be safe/healthy but small enough to be carried by post-surgery mommy.  Rachel had been over-producing milk, so there was plenty in the freezer for Baby to live on while Mommy couldn't feed her.  And Nanna didn't have to be at work and could be butting in, soaking up some baby-snuggles between washing dishes and stuff like that.  I guess, if you're going to toss an emergency surgery into life, this probably was a darn-tootin' easy way to go about it.

Today's Laugh

What does the moon do when he needs a haircut?

'e clips.

A Very Clean Refrigerator

I blame Maggie.

Today while cutting veggies, we were watching Good Eats.  Eventually Maggie commented on how clean Alton's chill-chest was.  "How can anyone keep a refrigerator that clean?"  I told her that if I had as many aides as he has, and if I were putting my refrigerator on national TV, ours would be that clean too.  At least for the camera.

A few hours later an uncovered glass of grape juice tipped over in the refrigerator.  Grape juice on every shelf.  Grape juice on the walls.  Grape juice pouring out the bottom of the appliance.  Grape juice all over the floor.

She had to go and comment on clean refrigerators.  You know the fates heard her.



An hour-and-a-half later, any qualms I had about having Not Accomplished Much today were gone.

Tomorrow we tackle the floor, including underneath the stove and fridge.  That grape juice sure was some motivation!

Why Space Is Called "Space"

A long time ago in a county far, far away
we built a model of the solar system.

(This was before Pluto was demoted.)

Most models of the solar system put either
~the planets' distances in scale to each other, or
~the planets' size in scale to each other. 
But not both. 

So we went out on an isolated country road, and made ourselves a scale model of the solar system, with the planets' sizes in scale to their distances from each other.  We made 1 inch equal to 50,000 km.  This is awesome.  When you plunk down a couple grains of rice and a few lentils and a marshmallow or two across the space of nearly two miles, you really see why we call it "space."


The next time we laid out our scale model, several years later, I realized that the planets aren't lined up in a nice, neat row.  So our model shouldn't be in a row either.   That time, we placed our planets in two dimensions:  Pluto was about two miles to the west of the sun, Neptune 1.5 miles south of the sun, and Uranus a mile east of our 20" sun.  That really shows you the vast nothingness that's out there.  This project also gives you a really good grip on the difference between the inner and outer planets!

 ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

If you're interested in trying this out yourself,
and if you don't want to bother with the arithmetic,
these are the numbers we used:

Sun  20" diameter
draw it in sidewalk chalk, or use a smallish laundry basket as your model

about 96 feet away
(I took 22 paces, which are about 4.5 feet each, 
calling a "pace" a set of right & left steps, 
but I have long legs)
Mercury   1/10" (we used a crumb of rice)

about 180' from the sun
(another 18 paces)
Venus   1/4"  (we used a dried pea)

about 250' from the sun
(another 15.5 paces)
Earth   1/4"  (dried pea)
with the moon 7" away
1/16"  (a pin head)

about 380 feet from the sun
(another 29 paces past the earth)
Mars    1/7"    (a small lentil)

Then we went back to the sun, and drove,
using the car's odometer to measure distance.
Sun is your zero point.

Jupiter   (3" -- a baseball)
0.25 miles from the sun

Saturn (2.5"  -- a racquetball)
0.2 miles past Jupiter
or .45 from sun

Uranus  (1" -- large marshmallow)
0.45 miles past Saturn
or .9 miles from sun

Neptune (also 1")
0.5 miles past Uranus
or 1.4 miles from the sun

Pluto (1/22 "  -- a pin point)
0.45 miles past Neptune
or 1.85 miles from the sun



 ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~


Have fun!

Recent Events

Elizabeth's arrival is the best of the recent events.  But, oh!, I do wish I had the strength and endurance to go help more, visit more, snuggle more. 

Gary's hungry.  He's having some health problems that require [deep serious voice--] Dietary Changes.  Right now it seems like there's nothing he can eat but veggie salads.  Nothing with sticking-power.  Yeah, but how much of that is real, and how much is scientists and chemists trying to figure out the art of medicine?  Once he gets the pain under control, I suppose then we can begin experimenting.  I'm wondering: if we fix guts, might the rest of the body straighten out too?

Sister, brother, and I divided up most of the belongings of my mom's house.  I've heard stories from other families about what happens when a parent dies.  Oh my goodness -- I am so thankful that we can get along and be nice to each other!

Maggie and I have an appointment coming up at Easter Seals to see if they have any programs that might benefit her. 

Between Gary, Maggie, Rachel, and me, it seems like we're seeing doctors or making appointments or receiving test results practically every day.  My head is swimming. 

Pretty soon I will be leaving my job.  Working and homeschooling and healing-from-stroke was at the utter limits of what I could do.  There was no margin.  Mom' death and helping with settling things just didn't/won't fit in.  So something has to go.  Since Maggie's not expendable, and since I have no magic wand to [poof] achieve full healing from my brain injury, the job is the only thing that I can take a break from.  I will miss it.  I will miss some of the customers.  I will miss the paycheck.  But mostly I will miss the nice feeling of having finished a task completely and correctly.  I keep reassuring myself that I can always reapply for the job when some of these family matters are wrapped up.

Google tells me that the European Union has instituted new rules for cookies on websites.  That means bloggers must inform readers about cookies and obtain consent.  I don't know how to do that!  And I don't have the time or brain power to bother with figuring it out right now.  So my counter (which is, I think, the only cookie I have) had to go bye-bye.  If you leave an anonymous comment, please sign something on the bottom so I know who you are, so I can allow the comment to go through.  (You could use initials, or first name plus last initial, or "Friend in Janesville," etc.)  It's getting tempting to just shut-down the blog or make it private (readers by invitation only).  But I'd need to save a lot of information first, including printing out recipes.  And that too is too much work right now. 

Katie, Maggie, and I watched "Pride and Prejudice" at APT last weekend.  Sarah Day does such a great job with fussy, busybody women-characters!  And Marcus Truschinski is the best Mr Darcy I ever saw.  

I'm working on lacto-fermenting veggies.   The corn relish was made with fresh-picked corn from the farm.  I made it a few years ago, and it was my favorite pickled recipe.  It's great to make another batch.  I should get my hands on some more corn while it's still available.  The pickle-batch I set aside today was sauerkraut.  Fresh, unheated sauerkraut is so much yummier than the cooked/canned soft kind.  I think broccoli slaw may be my next attempt.  There are so many possibilities that sound good.  And non-vinegar pickles are so much tastier ... as well as being super-healthy.

New Grandbaby

Baby Elizabeth arrived a few days ago.  She is so little and so pretty and it's wonderful to hold her!

The Life Which I Now Live ...

THIS life.  This life of deciding whether to take a nap or doggedly continue weeding.

This life of having overslept and needing to rush to get dressed to make it to work on time. 

This life of laundry and mowing and dishes and teeth-brushing. 

This life of figuring out where to work or where to rent or whether to go to the doctor for the owie.

I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me.
And the life which I now live in the flesh,
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.  (Gal 2)

Paul's not spouting some theological mumbo-jumbo.  He's talking about the here-and-now, the nitty-gritty of what we do each day, each hour, each minute.  No matter what mundane aspects of life we're slogging through, we continue on in faith in the Jesus who saved us.  We serve Him.  We worship Him.  And when we don't --when our sinful flesh has its way-- we depend upon Him all the more because He forgives, He rescues, He saves.

Potatoes Are Done

The centipedes will gobble up Yukon Gold that sit in the ground too long.  So when we saw the potato vines beginning to yellow, we decided to get out there and dig 'em up before we lost 'em.

Somebody was having a grand time helping move potatoes from the bucket back to the dirt, or from the bucket into the wash-water, or from the muddy water back into the bowl of dirty potatoes.  Somebody else decided to help Nanna scrub potatoes. 

Grand to have such helpers!!

Pearls

I love pearls.  I often wear my "pearl" necklaces to work.  When my sibs and I went through my mom's stuff, I wanted one of her pearl necklaces.  (Hers may be cultured pearls, or they may be mere white beads.  I don't have a clue.)

I have been surprised by how many people compliment my pearls:  "Those are so pretty.  You don't usually see people with pearls nowadays, but I think they're so classy."

Yes.  Pearls are not bling.  But they're pretty.



Besides, comments about my pearls always remind me of the scene in Anne where Anne and Diana are standing by the shore after the event at White Sands:  "I'm quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady's jewels."

Yet One O'er All the Earth

We're singing "The Church's One Foundation" this week.  It sure is somethin' to know that my friend Karl is in Ghana, teaching at the seminary there, while another friend (Rick) is in Singapore, teaching God's word over there ... while we're singing
Elect from every nation,
yet one o'er all the earth,
her charter of salvation
one Lord,
one faith,
one birth.
One holy name she blesses,
partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses
with every grace endued.

Babies Suck

My class consisted of one [count 'em -- one] kid who was not yet ready for confirmation class with the pastor.  So during confirmation class, he and I would sit in my dining room and work on memory work, basic Bible stories, stuff like that.  One night he exclaimed about something not-to-his-liking, "That sucks!"

My eyebrows went up.  I gasped.  "You will not talk like that around me and my children.  You may apologize and not use that phrase any more while here!" 

"What?  What did I say?"

"You know what you said."

"But what's wrong with that?"

Kid kept claiming to not understand what the big deal was.  He kept asking me to explain to him what the problem was.  I thought he was being obnoxious.  But now I wonder.  Maybe he wasn't being intentionally provocative and ugly-mouthed.  Maybe he just didn't know the origins of that phrase.



One day when I was in junior high, some high-school fellows drove by and mooned the PE class.  A bunch of us were talking about it at lunch.  When I said, "Yeah, he stuck his a** out the top of the car for everybody to see," gasps exploded around the table.  "Susan said 'a**'!  Can you believe that Susan said that?!"  That's when I discovered that a** is not a substitute-word for hiney or tuschie or bottom.  I didn't know.  I used a word that I heard people using, and I knew what the word meant, but I didn't realize that it was considered naughty.

Many years later, I mentioned something about one of my daughters looking "hot" in a particular dress.  I thought it meant "pretty" or "fantastic" or "especially dolled up."  I didn't know that it had somewhat sleazy connotations until I saw the reaction of the people to whom I'd said it.  Whoa.  Botched it again.  Major embarrassment!

So maybe my student that day really didn't know the implications of the word "sucks." 

When something "stinks," there's a reason we use that word.  If a potato or raw meat or a rotten egg "stinks," it is spoiled.  It makes the atmosphere around it unpleasant.  Thus, if a situation stinks, it is likewise bad and unpleasant. 

I think a lot of young people don't have a clue where the word "sucks" came from in the 60s and 70s.  They're so used to hearing the word as a synonym for "that stinks" or "that's awful" that they never stop to consider what the word is referring to. 

Babies suck to eat.
Babies suck on their thumbs.
Bigger people suck on soda-pop straws or even the cap of their pen.

But can we please please please stop using the word "sucks" to describe things we don't like?

Stuff

I've been making phone calls. 
I have an appointment for a haircut.
The car has an appointment for maintenance. 
I have a clue where to go next to request help in job training for Maggie and in obtaining health insurance for her as an adult.
We have an appointment to see the immunologist again, hoping to forestall another winter of pneumonia and other illness for Maggie.
I need to take care of some paperwork following up on Mom's death.
I sorted out the "I can't find anything" situation in the freezer.
I figured out the problem with the refrigerator-puddles and did a quasi-fix.  The real fix will require a much emptier refrigerator so that it can sit unplugged for a couple of days.

The birds think they shouldn't have to share the wild black-raspberries with me.  Ha -- I am bigger than the birds, and I scare them more than they scare me.

Grape vines are crawling all over the ground.  So are the tomatoes that came up "volunteer" in the plot of yard Formerly Known As Garden.  Staking things up would be a good plan.

I'm still recuperating from overdoing in April, May, and June.  I made a meal yesterday and today -- huge step forward!  I can even foresee a day when I might be able to help with the housecleaning instead of foisting the job on my daughters ... as long as I don't try anything big (like a trip ... which must be made regardless ...)

How does a person decide what they want from their parents' house?  So many memories.  So many items that could replace what we've picked up at Goodwill.  On the other hand, that may involve more shuffling work than we can invest right now.  I keep teetering back and forth between "but I'd like it" and "I could surely use it" versus "we don't need it" and "we should be downsizing, not adding."

Another 3-6 weeks before new grandbaby arrives.

There's so much paper to shred that I am tempted to sign up for paperless statements everywhere.  But having everything dependent on the computer scares me.  What happens if the machine crashes?

That's all for now.  It's past bedtime.   :-)

Dirty TV

Tired, I forced myself to watch a couple of movies last night instead of tackling my to-do list.  Both movies had interesting premises.  Both were interesting and had the kind of story that could be nicely emotional.  But both left me feeling uneasy.

In one, a cabbie was driving a woman cross-country to see her hospitalized dad.  It could've been a fabulous story.  But ...
Near the end, although the two had grown somewhat attached, the woman went home to her husband.  Then the movie concluded with the woman deciding she really needed to go find the cab-driver after all.  I had had miniscule hopes that maybe, just maybe, there'd be forgiveness between the husband and wife, and that they would be faithful to each other, even if the joybells and the twitterpation weren't there.  Silly me.  Luv and Romance aren't about that kind of stuff.  Luv is about the twitterpation. 

Next movie was about a fellow with a brain injury.  They found that music got through to him when nothing else would.  Oh, a producer and a writer could do an awesome story with that kind of a set-up!  By the end of the movie, I didn't know what I thought.  On the one hand, the father of the brain-injured guy was relentless in his love.  He did whatever he could to reach his son.  He persisted.  That part was great.  But ...
The son had been a rebellious hippie back in the 60s.  Drugs, free love, angry music, and despising everything his dad had taught him.  The family became estranged.  It seemed to me that the story was largely about the dad having to come to terms with how he'd been unaccepting, and how he needed to change.

I woke up this morning feeling like I was dirty. 

Marriage

Most people live together before they're married.  Friends will be aghast if a couple decides to marry without living together first.  "What's the matter with you?!  You should try it before you make the commitment!"  A fuddy-duddy asks, "So then what's the point of marriage?"  Finally Gary noticed that when his co-workers get married, it's often a signal that they're ready to have a baby.  There's often a sense that they should marry before they begin raising a family.

So, what is marriage anyway?

No, I don't mean the marriage that everybody knew when I was a little girl.  I don't mean the marriage that we saw in the Bible or in history books or in literature.  I mean, what is marriage now, today, in America, after the Supreme Court ruling on "marriage equality"?

Recently, Americans see marriage as having to do with romance and companionship.  For much of history, through most cultures, marriage has been (sociologically) more about children having a stable home with Mom and Dad.  From a theological viewpoint, marriage reflected the image of God (Gen 1).

So now we have a legal status of marriage which provides financial and legal and social benefits.  This marriage is currently available to any two people. 

Christians who marry at the courthouse will probably still desire to have their union sanctified by the word of God and prayer.  This is no different from having the pastor minister to a family when a baby is born, or when Grandma dies, or when Junior goes off to the military.  When big events occur in life, we pray and we listen to God's word and we sing hymns and we seek the Lord's blessing.  That will continue for Christians who marry, even if they can no longer marry in the church.

The thing I've been wondering is:
Is there a reason Christian couples should seek a legal-marriage in addition to ... uh ... well ... I don't know what to call it.  Can they enter into matrimony without the legal contract that is offered by the State?  Obviously, the State doesn't mind people living together apart from legal-marriage.  It's the Church that has been objecting to people living together without legal-marriage, calling people to repentance for their adultery.  But now that the definition of marriage is officially changed, will it still matter?  Can there be marriage-before-God (and before family and society) without having the marriage legally sanctioned?  Maybe not.  Maybe so. I don't know.

My friend Cheryl pointed out an article by Kate Ashford that listed some advantages of being legally married instead of merely being in a domestic partnership. POA's and wills can arrange for partners to have many benefits that normally come to legally-married folks.  But that can't cover everything:
~ No gift taxes on large monetary gifts to a spouse.
~ Upon death, an IRA can be rolled over to the spouse.
~ Spouses can receive survivor benefits from pensions or SocSec.
Also, the wife can change her name via marriage without petitioning the court for a name change.

So even if there are no theological reasons to be married by an agent of the State (although there may be!  I'm still wondering about this ...) there are still some practical reasons to go to the courthouse for a wedding license.

Not Trendy

This evening I noticed something beautiful in the sky.  Venus and Jupiter are very close together.  The computer tells me that this is the closest the two planets will be over the space of a few decades.  The astronomers are saying that this series of three conjunctions (over the space of 14 months) is quite similar to what the star of Bethlehem may have been.

When Maggie and I were first looking up "Sky and Telescope" to see what they said about this lovely sight, I started singing, "... and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets ..."  Poor Maggie.  "WHAT are you singing, Mom?!"  So I belted it out: "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius ..."  Yeah.  Like I said -- poor Maggie.

Singing the song reminded me.  Once upon a time, in grade school, I won some contest at the Y.  The prize was a 45 of my choice.  (For you youngsters, a "45" is a record.  The kind that got played on a old-fashioned turn-table.  The little ones, with one song on each side.  It would be comparable to your winning a $3 iTune giftcard.)  They asked all three winners for what songs they'd like.  The other two girls immediately came up with song titles.  At that point, I didn't listen to pop music yet.  So I chose "Age of Aquarius."  It was something I knew.  The adults didn't know what to do: "That's old.  I don't think that's available any more.  Is it still on the charts?  Can you tell us a second choice?  I don't think we'll be able to find that song."



When my hair was initially cut short, here not too long ago, several people complimented me with how "trendy" I looked.  I was offended.  I didn't respond in a nasty way, but yes, that kind of praise bothered me.  If they liked my hair and I didn't, I could accept their compliment.  If they said my haircut suited me, I could disagree but appreciate their well-intended words.  But trendy?  Yuck.  I don't like trendy.  I don't want to be trendy.

"The Age of Aquarius."  I was already out-of-sync and decidedly behind-the-times when I was just a little kid.

Definitely untrendy.
And proud of it.  Darn tootin'.

Brain Games

We are watching a psychology show on Netflix right now.  Brain Games explores the way the brain works, and how it can play tricks on us.  There are plenty of optical illusions and interactive activities.  (After several episodes my curiosity got the better of me -- I did peak once when they said to close your eyes and listen.  The sign on the screen?  "We told you to close your eyes.")

One episode was quite interesting in that it began with the premise that --from birth-- men and women are different.  They think differently.  They have different brains with different strengths and weaknesses.  This is inbred in our cells and DNA.  I was amazed that such a thing would be stated so bluntly a mere 3 years ago.  (We've made quite the rapid slide into nonsense here the last year or so, eh?)

Another interesting episode was how people tend to be overconfident.  We don't like to think we don't know.  We don't like to accept that we make mistakes.  We justify ourselves.  There are spiritual and theological ramifications to this psychological fact.  (Or maybe flip it around: they showed the psychological ramifications of what is actually a spiritual fact.)  It makes me even more put off by [ahem] confidence.

The episode on paying attention helped me understand some situations I face at work ... and why it's so easy to overload a mind (especially after a brain injury that compromised my thinking skills).

In many ways, I apparently think more like a man than a woman: my color perception, my spatial skills, my verbal skills.  Oh well.

The episode on memory showed me something else that I suspected.  My memory has really gone downhill.  [My apologies, Gary.  But it has.]

The oddball thing of this whole series?  My brain is more like Maggie's now than it used to be; we're finding quite often that we both come up with the same answer in the interactive games.  But we keep answering the "wrong" answer (that is, the unexpected answer, given by a small minority of their subjects).  We're wondering if we have trained our brains this way.  If so, I think it's a good thing.

Update

Lovely, amazing, beautiful wedding yesterday.  We've known the groom since he was 1, and the bride since she was about 4-5.  So good to go to a wedding where they are firmly committed to Christ's being the center of their marriage.

Cherry pie in the oven baking.  The cherry tree is loaded with beautiful fruit.  I don't know if it was that the weather was just right this year, or if the tree's flourishing was due to my lack of mangling pruning the last two springs.

Gary is still doing ALL the mowing.  He does not permit me to help.  I am spoiled.  Also, Maggie and Katie seem to be accomplishing any housecleaning that happens around here.

I gave up on the garden.  I planted some lettuce and almost none of it came up.  I've harvested almost none of the strawberries -- Gary, Maggie, Katie, and the kids have done whatever picking has happened.  Not all the raspberries have been pruned and weeded.  Grape-vine shoots and tendrils look nice but need to be tied to their supports.  I guess we'll be buying tomatoes from the farmers' markets this year.  The garden spot is covered with dead leaves, a little hay, and the kitchen scraps for composting.  This is the seventh year of the garden.  We'll call it our "fallow year" and just pretend like we planned it this way all along.  Yup.  Sure.  Absolutely.

This year's catechetical symposium had a smaller attendance than usual.  But the topic was good. 

Took a trip down to my hometown to start helping with cleaning out my mom's house.  Between the travel, the late nights, and the simple physical work of going through drawers and closets and carrying things and walking back and forth, it took a week and a half of recuperating before I could do anything more than lie around (when I wasn't at work).  I was even too tired to read.  My appetite went away, and I still haven't cooked a real meal since before that trip.  I fear that I'm not going to have the strength to do what I should in this project.

What is it with all the rashes this past year?  It seems like, if somebody merely looks at me cross-eyed, I'll develop another rash.  Well, no, it's not people looking at me; it's plants getting anywhere near me. Thus the disincentive to be putzing in the garden very often.

I heard two different conversations at the wedding yesterday from young unmarried men.  You know what they each want in a wife?  Number 1 requirement: a woman.  What a different world it is today that this would even be mentioned in a joking way. 

One of the gals at work just had her baby, and the two college-aged gals are doing temporary internships (thus limiting their hours available for work).  I hope my hours get shuffled a bit for the next few weeks so that I can fill in holes instead of working my usual hours.  Thing is, I'm still under doctor's limitations on how many hours per week I may work -- that will keep me from overdoing.

I've got some editing to do, so all the rest of my to-do list for church tasks is getting ignored.

I tried going back to Curves to "exercise" -- with a very slow and easy trial of getting back to some physical activity.  That was right before we went on the trip to Illinois, so I haven't been about to go back to Curves again.

It happened again today: I decided that no matter what went undone, I had to call Mom because it's been so long since I talked to her.  And then I realized ... no, I wouldn't be calling Mom.  I wonder how long it will take before I quit forgetting.