Peanut butter pie and pool

Mary, Dan and Brittany came here for Memorial Day lunch in the dining room. We were having hamburgers, hotdogs, barbecued chicken and most of the traditional fixings.

Mary told Dan I was “tickled pink” that they were coming. It’s true. I’ve asked them before, but they had never come.

Mary wore her little camouflage head scarf. Not wanting to flaunt her nearly bald head before all the old folks, I guess. She doesn’t mind going to restaurants with me without head covering.

I think she was protecting me from questions later.

Dan thought the hotdogs were great and ate three. He likes his with everything on them. Mary just added coleslaw. Brittany chose chicken, having had hotdogs and hamburgers at a slumber party the night before (and no sleep, of course.)

We all thought the chocolate peanut butter pie was too sweet, but found that if you just ate the whipped cream and chocolate parts and left the peanut butter, it was really good. I have no idea why the peanut butter was so sweet.

After lunch, Dan and Brittany played pool – with Dan instructing as they went. Mary and I walked slowly from the dining room to the game room. Mary commented on how she used to have to wait for me and now I have to slow down for her. But it was ok. She made it.

Nothing profound. Just life shared for a few hours.

But precious to me.

I have realized that I must record these moments if I don’t want to lose them. My forgettery is working overtime these days so I will help my memory along.

Mary, Dan and Brittany came here for Memorial Day lunch in the dining room. We were having hamburgers, hotdogs, barbecued chicken and most of the traditional fixings.

Mary told Dan I was “tickled pink” that they were coming. It’s true. I’ve asked them before, but they had never come.

Mary wore her little camouflage head scarf. Not wanting to flaunt her nearly bald head before all the old folks, I guess. She doesn’t mind going to restaurants with me without head covering.

I think she was protecting me from questions later.

Dan thought the hotdogs were great and ate three. He likes his with everything on them. Mary just added coleslaw. Brittany chose chicken, having had hotdogs and hamburgers at a slumber party the night before (and no sleep, of course.)

We all thought the chocolate peanut butter pie was too sweet, but found that if you just ate the whipped cream and chocolate parts and left the peanut butter, it was really good. I have no idea why the peanut butter was so sweet.

After lunch, Dan and Brittany played pool – with Dan instructing as they went. Mary and I walked slowly from the dining room to the game room. Mary commented on how she used to have to wait for me and now I have to slow down for her. But it was ok. She made it.

Nothing profound. Just life shared for a few hours.

But precious to me.

I have realized that I must record these moments if I don’t want to lose them. My forgettery is working overtime these days so I will help my memory along.

Mary, Dan and Brittany came here for Memorial Day lunch in the dining room. We were having hamburgers, hotdogs, barbecued chicken and most of the traditional fixings.

Mary told Dan I was “tickled pink” that they were coming. It’s true. I’ve asked them before, but they had never come.

Mary wore her little camouflage head scarf. Not wanting to flaunt her nearly bald head before all the old folks, I guess. She doesn’t mind going to restaurants with me without head covering.

I think she was protecting me from questions later.

Dan thought the hotdogs were great and ate three. He likes his with everything on them. Mary just added coleslaw. Brittany chose chicken, having had hotdogs and hamburgers at a slumber party the night before (and no sleep, of course.)

We all thought the chocolate peanut butter pie was too sweet, but found that if you just ate the whipped cream and chocolate parts and left the peanut butter, it was really good. I have no idea why the peanut butter was so sweet.

After lunch, Dan and Brittany played pool – with Dan instructing as they went. Mary and I walked slowly from the dining room to the game room. Mary commented on how she used to have to wait for me and now I have to slow down for her. But it was ok. She made it.

Nothing profound. Just life shared for a few hours.

But precious to me.

I have realized that I must record these moments if I don’t want to lose them. My forgettery is working overtime these days so I will help my memory along.

How Glorious

Sometimes it’s a good thing that somebody else is in charge. Even if it’s only the Bible reading guide I use.

I read Zechariah recently and I’ll have to confess that I can’t remember the last time I read this book of the Old Testament. I know I have read it in the past because I have read through the Bible several times. But not lately – which could mean the last 10 to 15 years – and had no inclination to do so on my own.

In any case, I read it. And I found something there that delighted me.

This minor prophet was writing/speaking to the people who had come back to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon with the intention of rebuilding the temple. But things got in the way.

So they became discouraged and distracted from their first intention.

So God told Zechariah to remind them.

And they listened and set to work.

It turned out they had started on the foundation when they first came back from captivity. But it didn’t match the grandeur of the former temple. Nothing they could build was going to be able to match the temple Solomon built. That may have contributed to their wandering away from the job.

It would have discouraged me. For most of my life I have operated on the premise that it was better not to try if I didn’t think I could do something really well, well enough to garner some praise and maybe even a little glory.

Of course, some things you have to do anyway. Most things. And I did the things before me to do, but I was seldom really proud of my work. I wanted it to be better. Better, obviously, than I could do.

Zechariah had some good news for those temple builders. And for me.

He said it didn’t matter if their temple wasn’t going to be the ultimate in temples. It only mattered if they were obedient and did the best they could.

Because that would please God. And then He would come and be there. And His glory would be seen in and through it!

Of course. The glory always comes from God. And when He asks me to do something, what He is looking for is obedience, not perfection.

Not a new thing, just new to me at a time when I must have needed it.

Maybe I have believed a lie. Like Eve. Maybe I will believe other lies in days to come. But I won’t have to continue forever believing them. He has ways of providing opportunities to discover Truth.

And for now, I know this one thing better than I did before.

my meme list

Eight facts or habits about me. I’ll try.

1. I loved to whistle when I was about 11 or 12 or so, probably because my Daddy whistled. I’d be whistling away at a song and come to a part that was too high for me and I would hear him whistling the part I couldn’t reach. Then I got braces on my teeth and couldn’t whistle any more.

2. When I was a sophomore in high school my best friend was a senior. She lived in a three story house a few blocks from the Matanzas inlet. When I spent the night with her we would climb out of her bedroom window onto the roof and lie there looking up at starts and out at the water. I have always loved both the night sky and bodies of water.

3. In elementary school, I can’t remember what grade, I was Cinderella in a play by the same name. Although I had no trouble shedding a shoe during rehearsals, during the actual performance, it wouldn’t come off and I had to reach down and take it off while running off stage. It was my first and last starring role. I still enjoy being the center of attention, but only when I can “pull it off.”

4. The old fort in St. Augustine was one of my playgrounds – this was during the early days of WWII. There was a cedar tree right nest to one of the coquina walls surrounding the fort and it had a limb that stuck out making a perfect seat. It became my secret reading place. Now I can read almost anywhere and always carry a book in case I’m stuck waiting somewhere. People watching is almost as interesting, but you need a lot of people around so you won’t be conspicuous watching.

5. I took fencing in physical ed my first year at Duke. Freshman got the left overs. I lived on the third floor of the dorm and found I had muscles I never knew I had – or wanted to have. After that I signed up for archery and folk dancing. I walked two miles a day for exercise before I injured my foot. I miss it.

6. After teaching school for nine years, trying out a lot of different grades, I realized I would never make retirement in that field. I was fortunate to get a job with the local afternoon newspaper, filling the slot of the pregnant editor of a weekly teen section. I worked for that paper until it ceased publication 11 years or so later. Then I worked another 13 or 14 years for the morning paper owned by the same company. I never had a journalism classes in college – I don’t think Duke offered them way back then -- but I had a Phi Beta Kappa key, so I wore that to work . No one was impressed, so I put it back in the box. But I made it to retirement!

7. I lived most of my life waiting for tomorrow, when I was sure things would be better somehow than they were today. Then I finally realized that today is all there really is and I began to look at it instead of through it as if it weren’t there. Today’s troubles may be more real this way, but so are today’s joys.

8. I came to know God when I was 14 in the library of the boarding school I was attending. I was baptized and confirmed shortly after. But it was mostly just in my mind. I came to know Jesus as my Living Lord and Savior when I was in my late 40s. That must have been about the time item no. 7 came to pass. The rest is the story of the journey with Him and turns up here and there in my blog.

I can’t tag people. Sorry.

Eight facts or habits about me. I’ll try.

1. I loved to whistle when I was about 11 or 12 or so, probably because my Daddy whistled. I’d be whistling away at a song and come to a part that was too high for me and I would hear him whistling the part I couldn’t reach. Then I got braces on my teeth and couldn’t whistle any more.

2. When I was a sophomore in high school my best friend was a senior. She lived in a three story house a few blocks from the Matanzas inlet. When I spent the night with her we would climb out of her bedroom window onto the roof and lie there looking up at starts and out at the water. I have always loved both the night sky and bodies of water.

3. In elementary school, I can’t remember what grade, I was Cinderella in a play by the same name. Although I had no trouble shedding a shoe during rehearsals, during the actual performance, it wouldn’t come off and I had to reach down and take it off while running off stage. It was my first and last starring role. I still enjoy being the center of attention, but only when I can “pull it off.”

4. The old fort in St. Augustine was one of my playgrounds – this was during the early days of WWII. There was a cedar tree right nest to one of the coquina walls surrounding the fort and it had a limb that stuck out making a perfect seat. It became my secret reading place. Now I can read almost anywhere and always carry a book in case I’m stuck waiting somewhere. People watching is almost as interesting, but you need a lot of people around so you won’t be conspicuous watching.

5. I took fencing in physical ed my first year at Duke. Freshman got the left overs. I lived on the third floor of the dorm and found I had muscles I never knew I had – or wanted to have. After that I signed up for archery and folk dancing. I walked two miles a day for exercise before I injured my foot. I miss it.

6. After teaching school for nine years, trying out a lot of different grades, I realized I would never make retirement in that field. I was fortunate to get a job with the local afternoon newspaper, filling the slot of the pregnant editor of a weekly teen section. I worked for that paper until it ceased publication 11 years or so later. Then I worked another 13 or 14 years for the morning paper owned by the same company. I never had a journalism classes in college – I don’t think Duke offered them way back then -- but I had a Phi Beta Kappa key, so I wore that to work . No one was impressed, so I put it back in the box. But I made it to retirement!

7. I lived most of my life waiting for tomorrow, when I was sure things would be better somehow than they were today. Then I finally realized that today is all there really is and I began to look at it instead of through it as if it weren’t there. Today’s troubles may be more real this way, but so are today’s joys.

8. I came to know God when I was 14 in the library of the boarding school I was attending. I was baptized and confirmed shortly after. But it was mostly just in my mind. I came to know Jesus as my Living Lord and Savior when I was in my late 40s. That must have been about the time item no. 7 came to pass. The rest is the story of the journey with Him and turns up here and there in my blog.

I can’t tag people. Sorry.

Eternal Now

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I find I can pray for the world and all the people on it and all the things that are happening everywhere, but I cannot do much with specificity.

And I cannot watch the news on television. It overwhelms me and words refuse to be said. They just won’t come out. Why do they show the same pictures over and over? Why, if no one has been shot in my city, do they run film clips of a shooting in a city far away? Do they WANT to make us grow as numb as they are to pain and suffering, able to speak of a kidnapped child one minute and then laugh about the weather report the next?

I can think of tomorrow and next week and next month and list the things I have to do on my calendar. But I can’t think ABOUT them much, just that they are there to be done when I get to them.

Someone said that today is a knife edge gliding from the past into the future. It’s the knife edge we live on. It’s what NOW is.

God’s name is I Am. Now. Always and eternal Now.

As He was in the beginning, He is now and He ever will be.

As I was, I no longer am, now will I be. And that’s okay. He knows. I trust. Most of the time. It feels better when I do. It feels like rest.

Dinner with Friends

I ate my evening meal in the dining room of our Health Center – read nursing home unit – last night. I do this fairly often. I sit with two friends whose spouses live there.

I used to live next door to Julia in one of the independent living halls. Then I downsized apartments and ended up in another independent living hall where Dick lives. Got that straight?

Anyway, the five of us sit around one table and Julia and Dick eat their dinners and feed their spouses. I feed myself.

One of the CNAs offered me a clothing protector – read large bib – one evening when I dropped spaghetti sauce on my white shirt front. I do that every now and then, not regularly, so I declined the offer.

One day, maybe.

But we won’t go there right now. Or ever, I hope,

You can’t live in a continuing care facility – the kind that offers independent living, assisted living and a skilled care unit, read nursing home – without wondering sometimes what the future holds.

But mostly I don’t think about it. As Doris Day sang, “Que sera, sera,” or “Whatever will be, will be.”

I’m just glad I have more than that to hang on to. The Psalmist says: I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in Your hands ...

Scripture also says I will never be alone. Wherever I am, He is with me.

I find those thought very comforting.

In the meantime – which is also in His hands – I do what I can to make life more pleasant for others. At least that’s what I think I am doing. Maybe I should rethink the possibility that my company helps.

Nah. It helps. Having a friend there helps.