Click Scrunch

I took my brace to Hanger Orthotics and Prosthesis on Tuesday because it was going click clack.

Now it goes click scrunch.

Not an improvement.

Today I will take it back and see if they can repair it by tomorrow. In the meantime I get to wear the old black boot with Velcro closings that they gave me when I first tore the tendon that held up my arch. And now doesn’t.

Getting old really is rough on the body.

There is a lady here who celebrated her 103^rd birthday last month. She still rides a three-wheeled bicycle (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) and writes poetry and volunteers here and there. She must have drawn on a very good gene pool and been much more careful and active and all that stuff.

Ah, well.

There are, of course, others in my shape or worse. When we greet each other and say, How are you? we usually just say, Fine. Meaning fine for the shape I’m in.

However, I am in better shape now than I was when I moved here five years ago. Isn’t that interesting. Compliments to my doctors and thanksgivings to my Lord.

I think it’s a combination of the right medications – heart condition – and prayer and praise. As I increase the latter I may be able to decrease the former. If you can follow all that.

If not. I enjoy life more because of the prayer and praise. And that’s worth a lot.

Art class this morning! Joy, joy.

Hanger after.

Not stupid, not smart

I can’t begin to tell you how stupid I feel when I can’t get the copy to come out the right size! No one will believe I used to work on a computer every day at the newspaper. But I only learned how to work their program. I didn’t learn anything about computers. Oh, well. I guess I am, well, if not quite stupid, at least not smart.

I received a post card from Switzerland yesterday. It was a picture of a hotel tucked in the crack between snot capped mountains with lots of flowers and trees around. Very beautiful and very cool. COOL. With temperatures at 95 or higher, cool is very attractive.

The card came from Margaret Peattie, who lives in Scotland and is vacationing with her younger sister and her brother-in-law. Margaret and I began writing to each other when we were in high school, right after WWII actually. I remember sending CARE packages to her.

But she is the one who has kept us in touch with each other. When my marriage failed, I quit writing. She sent Christmas cards every year until I finally sent one back. She and her husband visited me some years ago, before I retired. I visited them the summer after I turned 65 and no longer on the job. I called her the night before she left for Switzerland – it’s five hours later there so I have to remember to call early enough not to get her out of bed.

She was my only pen pal. I was not her only one. She visits another pen pal in France and may have others I don’t even know about. But I’m glad she did not let me drop off the face of her life.

Tomorrow’s schedule starts with picking Mary up and taking her for her weekly blood draw. Then I go to the brace place to see if they can find out why my new brace clicks. That will be followed by a meeting of the officers of the residents’ council.

Doesn’t that sound fine? Well, it will keep me out of trouble.

Nighttime serenade

I ate grilled tuna for the first time today. I have eaten canned tuna for years – when did they start canning tuna anyway? – but raw tuna looked so unappetizing I avoided it. Until today.

I went out to lunch after church with a few friends. I’m such an in-a-rut person that I almost always order a particular thing at each restaurant I go to. Tuna was not on that list. But somehow, I felt out of ordinary today and ordered a salad with grilled tuna on top. Asked how I wanted it cooked, I told the waitress I had no idea, never having eaten grilled tuna before. She suggest medium rare and that’s what I got.

Delicious! Who would have thought it!

Other than that things are very much the same as they have been for the past 22 months. My primary focus has been on my 47-year-old daughter’s fight against small cell lung cancer. She is such a fighter. She has done everything they ask her to do – except get a port. As long as they can find a vein, she will go that route. I drive her to appointments, sit with her while she has a treatment and occasionally cook a meal.

I took her Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago. She used one of the carts with a scooter attached and went aisle by aisle amassing items for everyone on her list. This is not a result of her cancer, but her usual practice. She hates Christmas shopping in December. Too many people in the store.

My secondary focus has been on my son’s off and on struggle to get to the other side of an injury from a motorcycle accident that happened when he was 20. He was 50 last month. This was at one time a primary focus, but it has gone on so long I am often numb about it. There have been so many starts that petered out, so many chances for change that never happened. But I hang in. Positive things are happening now. Maybe this will be the time when that continues.

Any time left over from all this has been occupied by writing minutes of meetings. I don’t know why I can’t stop being secretary of the Residents’ Council here. It’s a volunteer job. All I have to do is say I resign. I just haven’t done it. I’m numb about this too.

Oh, yes. Once a week I spend a morning in an art class, along with half a dozen old folks who live where I live and an old teacher who also lives her and who really knows her stuff. Just lately I have been going back to the arts and crafts room by myself to paint. When I tried a hobby art class 40 years ago I had expectations of really doing good work. Now I have no expectation except enjoying myself. And I am.

It helps with the thoughts that leap into my brain if I wake in the middle of the night. All negative. Maybe just realistic, but not welcome in any case. My son-in-law says there will be no negative speaking around here. And I told the Lord I really didn’t want to give room to the thoughts I was fighting off. I told Him if He didn’t take my load it would squash me flat. I remembered that all I really had to do was give it to Him and leave it there. It. The outcome. The solution. The rescue and restoration. I can do nothing about any of that. But He can.

So I sing to Him – out loud in the middle of the night. The noise interrupts my other thoughts and I believe somehow that it sounds beautiful to the One who listens. And loves and works and accomplishes – whatever it will be. Who better?

Miles of Thanksgiving

It rained all day yesterday. And I drove through a lot of it.

I picked Mary up at her work place and drove to Baptist South for her chemo.

On the way there, she called a doctor’s office downtown and asked if they had any samples they could give her of a very expensive medicine she is using. They said they did. We would have to pick them up today, because they wouldn’t be open tomorrow.

Getting out of the car under the overhang at the front entrance of the medical building next to the hospital, she realized she had left her purse at work – too many other things in her hands to notice.

So after they started her treatment and I brought lunch up from the hospital snack shop, I left to pick up purse and medicine.

A co-worker came out in the drizzle to bring the purse and, smiling, wished us a good Fourth.

I left my car in valet parking at the downtown hospital and told them I was just picking up something and would be right back, in hopes they wouldn’t actually take it off to the fifth floor of the parking garage, which would mean a 15 minute wait when I got back.

The medicine was waiting for me at the sign-in window and the car was waiting for me at valet parking, which is under a roof. So far I was dry and speedy.

Back to Baptist South, where the rain dropped again to a drizzle as I found a parking space near the back door.

Upstairs, Mary’s various IV bags had run dry and she was ready to leave.

On our way to the back door, she stopped outside her radiologist’s office and asked if I had time for her to try to move her Monday appointment up so she could get the results of the MRI of her brain and not have to wonder all weekend. (Her cancer had appeared in her brain months ago leading to surgery and radiation and this was her first test after treatment)

They moved up to right then! The doctor was just finishing a conference and had time to see her. The news was good. Nothing new at all!

So out to the car and off to her home. The rain started again as she got out to go in, but she made it to the porch without getting very wet. And I headed hone, but stopped at the library on the way because they had a book in I had requested.

It stopped raining as I parked at the library and started again to drizzle as I came out with my book.

Home at last, I don’t know how many miles, but seven hours later.

Today, my body is tired, but my spirit is content.

Thank You, Lord, for the safe miles driven, the good report on the MRI, the fact that the nurse found a vein on the first stick for Mary’s chemo, that her co-worker was willing and happy to help, that the car park people were kind, the doctor’s office helpful, the library filled my request for the book so promptly and the check-out lady didn’t mind going to find in on the bottom shelf of the Will Call place (I can’t read the bottom shelf and can’t get down there to find my name on the wrapper).

Thank You for this land and all it offers.

Thank You for raining on the just and the unjust. Thank You for loving us all and making it possible for us to love You, too.

What's humorous?

Do you know what you get when you cross a termite and a mantis? A bug that prays before it eats your house.

One of the retired ministers in residence here told that joke before saying grace over our meal yesterday.

As jokes go, it’s not bad. It’s not good either, but it’s not bad.

His contention is that we need humor, that laughter is good for us. And I certainly agree with that.

And I laugh – or groan with faint humor – at most of his jokes. But I’m also just a little uncomfortable.

I never know what he is going to say. Sometimes when he can’t find a G rated joke, he strays over into whatever the rating would be for sexually suggestive language.

I know God laughs. He must or we wouldn’t know how to. I don’t know what He laughs at or about. I wonder if He doesn’t often find us laughable in gentle, loving ways, as a father or mother might with a loved child.

And He surely knows all about sex. He may understand our infatuation with it and our use of sexually suggestive language to produce laughter. But not when it demeans anyone.

Besides, I can’t help feeling the timing is a bit off. To me “saying grace” is praying; it’s offering thanks to the Giver of all we have and that’s serious business.

Prayer does not have to prim and proper. Honest and real are much better than that. But sexually suggestive?

And when grace is being said over a public meal, the “audience” is kind of trapped into listening.

I did ask him to draw a line he wouldn’t cross in telling jokes before saying the blessing. He didn’t answer. Just walked away.

Most people don’t seem to mind.

I think I will suggest we set aside time for a “humor hour,” a time for jokes and laughter. And everyone who wants to tell jokes can come and do so. And if anyone cracks a joke someone else doesn’t like, well, that person can just get up and go home.

I haven’t done that yet in the dining room. I stay and finish eating.

And come here to complain.

Dear Lord, help me not to take offense – even if it is intended, and I don’t think it is. My sense of humor may be rusty. Help me, instead, to say a blessing over him.

Murmur, Murmur, Grumble or Not

While driving over to have breakfast with John, I suddenly realized the name of my malady. It is Discontent!

I’ve had a bad case of this for several weeks now, if not longer. But in the last few days it has really begun to take me over. All I can think about is how this is not right and that is wrong.

But with my attention diverted by paying attention to my driving, a thought arose from my subconscious – or somewhere -- that my problem has a name and it is Discontent.

I don’t think I discovered that. I think it was revealed to me.

Meaning , I was being given the change to deal with it and not just keep on grumbling things like:

“My memory is shot. I spend too much time going back for things I’ve forgotten!”

“I don’t know what to say. If I say anything, it comes out wrong. I just make a mess of it.”

“All these people have problems and want to tell me about them and I’m tired of listening.”

And on and on and on. And these are only the “nice” ones.

So I took a look at what Discontent was hiding:

“God, You really haven’t been doing a good job for me lately.”

Wow. That’s what I’ve really been saying. And that really isn’t what I want to say.

Let’s try again.

“I sure do forget a lot, but I remember more than I forget. And I am physically able to go back for the stuff I’ve forgotten. And when I see it, I know what it is and what it’s for. Not so bad after all.”

“I don’t know what to say. Maybe silence is the right thing here. Maybe if I think a bit before I talk, I won’t say so many foolish things. Thank goodness I already know I can be wrong!”

“When people tell me their problems, I don’t have to have the answer. As a friend reminded me one day, the name of the Savior is Jesus, not Barbara. Listening can be all that is required. Really listening, not waiting for the other person to stop so I can start.”

When I think about it, I do trust God to be doing very well by me. Of course, God’s definition of good may not match mine sometimes. I can’t see far enough ahead to realize it. But, well, He’s God and I’m not. And He has proved faithful in the past.

And I really like my second set of thoughts better. I like me better in them.

I suspect I will fall back into discontent again, because it’s an old enemy. But for the moment, I see it for what it is and I choose to turn it around and show it the door.

It’s not just playing Pollyanna. It’s letting the Lord have His way instead of insisting on my own.

While driving over to have breakfast with John, I suddenly realized the name of my malady. It is Discontent!

I’ve had a bad case of this for several weeks now, if not longer. But in the last few days it has really begun to take me over. All I can think about is how this is not right and that is wrong.

But with my attention diverted by paying attention to my driving, a thought arose from my subconscious – or somewhere -- that my problem has a name and it is Discontent.

I don’t think I discovered that. I think it was revealed to me.

Meaning , I was being given the change to deal with it and not just keep on grumbling things like:

“My memory is shot. I spend too much time going back for things I’ve forgotten!”

“I don’t know what to say. If I say anything, it comes out wrong. I just make a mess of it.”

“All these people have problems and want to tell me about them and I’m tired of listening.”

And on and on and on. And these are only the “nice” ones.

So I took a look at what Discontent was hiding:

“God, You really haven’t been doing a good job for me lately.”

Wow. That’s what I’ve really been saying. And that really isn’t what I want to say.

Let’s try again.

“I sure do forget a lot, but I remember more than I forget. And I am physically able to go back for the stuff I’ve forgotten. And when I see it, I know what it is and what it’s for. Not so bad after all.”

“I don’t know what to say. Maybe silence is the right thing here. Maybe if I think a bit before I talk, I won’t say so many foolish things. Thank goodness I already know I can be wrong!”

“When people tell me their problems, I don’t have to have the answer. As a friend reminded me one day, the name of the Savior is Jesus, not Barbara. Listening can be all that is required. Really listening, not waiting for the other person to stop so I can start.”

When I think about it, I do trust God to be doing very well by me. Of course, God’s definition of good may not match mine sometimes. I can’t see far enough ahead to realize it. But, well, He’s God and I’m not. And He has proved faithful in the past.

And I really like my second set of thoughts better. I like me better in them.

I suspect I will fall back into discontent again, because it’s an old enemy. But for the moment, I see it for what it is and I choose to turn it around and show it the door.

It’s not just playing Pollyanna. It’s letting the Lord have His way instead of insisting on my own.

Babe Ruth sparks memories

I bought a Babe Ruth candy bar yesterday. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

But I can remember when I used to do it regularly. It was when I was in high school.

My friend and I would go to the drug store after seeing a movie and we would each buy a candy bar. Mine would always be a Babe Ruth. I can’t remember right now what hers was. I’ll have to ask her next time we talk, which we d not regularly but pretty often.

I bought it yesterday because Mary bought a Payday and I couldn’t find anything in dark chocolate except a Mounds and I don’t like coconut and chocolate a whole lot.

We bought candy and a small bag of chips to share while she received her chemo treatment. They were running late because all the Monday –a holiday, remember – people had to be inserted into the schedules on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

Anyway, her 11 a.m. appointment to see the doctor was delayed until 12 and he suggested we go get lunch before coming back to the procedure room. We did and bought stuff on our way back in.

It was 2:15 before they had her all hooked up, and I ate my candy bar.

I told her I couldn’t remember what was in it or whether I would still like it after all these years. She assured me I would.

And I did. In fact, I ate the whole thing.

Then I sat with an open book in my lap and watched her work her cross word and word search puzzle book.

And thought about how much and how little I know about her, my daughter.

And about the fact that I know next to nothing about any of the other patients in their recliners except that they have sne kind of medical problem and are receiving some kind of chemotherapy.

I was reminded of trips by train from Jacksonville to Atlanta when I was a girl and shared a lower birth with my mother. I would wake early and let the window curtain up just enough to watch the countryside go by. And I would wonder about who lived in the houses where lights we on and whether they wondered about who was on the train speeding by.

Not deep thoughts. Not new thoughts. But I thought again about the staggering wonder that God can know all this about us and about everyone everywhere.

I understand it’s called omnipresence – being everywhere at one time. Or omniscience – knowing everything. Or both, I guess.

But the long words don’t matter really. They are just short hand for something much bigger than they are.

Jesus knew all about the woman at the well. He knew all about the hearts and thought of all the people He met while on earth. And He still does. He knows all about me and all about you.

And He loves us anyway. In spite of ourselves. And anywhere. Everywhere.

Including my friends David and Deborah who are right now in South Sudan living with a native family of a tribe that had seen no white people until about two months ago. Them, too.

And all the rest. All at one time. All at every time.

Beyond my comprehension. But not beyond my desire -- sitting there, full of too much sugar -- to give Him thanks and praise.

So I sang a little love song to Him, quietly in my head.

NOTE: I started this Thursday and finished it today. In between, the computer decided not to work. I don’t know why. Along with a lot of other things I don’t know.