Love me, love my dog

I'm taking a little break from housework, which is unusual for me—not taking a break (that's usual), but housework. I've been washing by hand some pots and bowls that have been in my sink for an incredibly long time. If I told you how long they've sat there, you wouldn't even believe it, but it would be true.

In a little less than an hour, I will drive to the Fred Meyer store in Bellingham to pick up some groceries I ordered online. This has pretty much become my standard method of grocery shopping. I pick out everything I want online, pay for it with my debit card, and schedule a time (an hour window) to pick it up, usually the next day. The nice thing is that I can take my dog with me because I just sit in my car in the specified parking lot, call the store on my cell, and they bring it out, all bagged, and put in in my trunk. They charge me less than $5 for the service.

I have not left my dog in his crate at home alone since we vacated my house more than a year ago. When we lived in a hotel, at first I took him to work with me every day. I had permission to do that for the three months it was supposed to take. After that, I took him every day to doggy day care at the Hyline Hotel for Dogs. I could not leave him in the hotel room because he has separation anxiety and would certainly have barked and howled the whole time I was gone. At Hyline, he has company, which is all he needs. It has made him less neurotic.

When I moved back into my house, I did not have the heart to resume the crate routine we used to follow, where he was in his crate for nine hours while I was away at work. So I have continued bringing him to Hyline. He likes it there. I can tell because he happily jumps out of the car and willingly walks in with his tail up. (As opposed to at the vet, where he nervously jumps out of the car, and has to be coaxed or carried into the exam area, with a droopy tail, and in fear and trembling.)

This close bond between us to some degree limits what I do. If I am going somewhere in the evening or on the weekend where dogs are not welcome, then I have to arrange extra time for him at Hyline. Their drop-off and pick-up hours are 7:00-10:00 a.m. and 3:00-6:00 p.m. So, for an evening outing I have to put him in Hyline's boarding service overnight, which means packing up his medicine and food for them to feed him.

If putting him at Hyline is not feasible, then I don't go wherever I might have otherwise. I know with my mind that putting him in his box for just an hour or two while I would go away really wouldn't do him any harm, but I can't do it. I guess I'm the one now with separation anxiety. Although I don't fear separation for myself, I just feel like I would be betraying his trust. I'm doubtless projecting something on him.

Asparagus fern

I brought a plant to my office. I've had it a long time. I can't even remember when I got it. It used to stand among a number of other plants near my kitchen window, just to the left of the sink. There's a small bit of counter there that's fairly difficult to reach and make useful, so I put my plants there, where they could receive light from the west-facing window over the sink.

My sister used to ask if I really wanted plants there and why. This was when she was helping me get more organized than I usually am. She suggested that, since I had so little counter space to begin with, I should not waste any of it on a bunch of potted plants. When she asked why they were there, I said it's because that's where the light is.

I have one western window (in the kitchen) that gets the afternoon and evening sun. I have one eastern window (in the guest room) that gets very little sun because of trees outside. I have two sunny southern windows (in my bedroom and library), but when I tried to keep a plant in the bedroom my dog knocked over the stand it was on and the pot broke. That was not the first time my dog had caused the destruction of a flower pot. And my library was still in transition from being my dad's office to becoming a library, so I didn't spend much time in there and didn't have a place to put plants. (I have no northern windows, because that wall is underground.)

Then there's my living room. My "front room" as we often call it in Lynden, except my "front room" happens to face the back yard. It also has south-facing windows, but they get no sun, because the upstairs deck overhangs the lower deck there. That's nice for my container gardening on my deck; I have both a sunny, hot south-facing area, and a shady, cool area, so I can grow both sun-loving and shade-loving flowers. But my living room does not get enough sunlight to grow anything. I tried keeping some plants that require very little sun, but even they could not hack it.

Anyway, when my house was torn apart for water damage, my indoor potted plants got shuffled around the place as work progressed. I used to come to my house every Sunday afternoon and walk through to see what was happening. At first, I watered the plants wherever they sat. When they got covered by tarp, I gave up on them. Eventually the pots ended up outside on my deck. Two hardy plants survived this treatment. One was my asparagus fern and the other was a spider plant.

The asparagus fern actually throve once it spent the summer out in the shady side of the deck. This past week, we did go down to a freezing temperature one night. The asparagus fern (let's just call it "Gus") was sheltered enough by the overhanging deck that it did not die in the frost. But the next morning I took it with me to work, cleaned the pot off, pulled and cut out any remaining dead twigs, and set it with my other work plants on the bookcase that serves as a partition for my workspace.



It's a pretty purple pot, as you might see. The glass globe for watering was already in the pot all the whole time since it had been in the kitchen, so I kept it with. I washed it off and filled it up for this fresh start in a new space.

In the smaller, dark-to-light purple pot is a somewhat struggling succulent. It's getting a little spindly, but it hangs in there. And then is my African violet, which does very well in this space and blooms a lot. I believe I bought the African violet to put on my brother's grave at one one time and then brought it into work. The light source here is a skylight in the ceiling above, so the African violet (let's just call it "Vi") leaves reach upward to the light more and don't lie as flat as they usually would. But the beautiful dark purple blooms keep happening.

So, to make a short story long, that's how "Gus" came to live in my office.

It happens that way sometimes

I took my dog out this morning to walk him around the back yard to take care of his needs. It was a lovely autumn morning. The lawn is covered with yellow and brown leaves, and some still hang in the trees, but the branches and twigs are becoming more visible. The sun shone and every dew-covered thing sparkled. I paused, as I often do, near the opening in the shrubs where I can watch the creek flowing by. It's getting fuller and swifter. As I stood enjoying the beauty, my dog suddenly chucked up his most recent meal. We moved on to complete his walk.

Life.

Twenty years after

It's a very rainy Thursday in Lynden, my home town. I've lived in this town, and this house, longer than I ever lived in one place continuously before. Actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of my 20-year anniversary in Lynden. I vacated my apartment in San Jose, California, on October 31st, a Saturday, and I preached a farewell message at my dearly loved church, Friendship Agape, on Sunday, November 1st, and, on Monday, I started the drive up to Lynden, Washington. It was a two-day trip, so I guess November 3rd is really my 20th anniversary of living in Lynden. I moved into this same apartment I'm living in now, in the downstairs of my parents' home.

I had been a part of Friendship Agape Church for seven years, helping out a small, young congregation by teaching and assisting in any way I could. It was thrilling work to see people come to Christ and witness their transformation and growth. The work led me to seminary. I went two years to Fuller Seminary's Northern California Extension Campus. I went to school half time while working full time, which was exhausting. Also, as much as I loved Friendship Agape Church, I felt drained. One day I was sitting in traffic in San Jose. It was the morning commute, and I was in a line of cars waiting for the metering light that would let us on the freeway at 30-second intervals, where we could crawl along at half the speed limit. I thought, Why do I live here? I had moved there a couple years after college because my sister and her family lived there. But I was spending half my wages on rent and putting in almost an extra work day per week in commute time. Meanwhile,  my parents were in Lynden, I had a brother and his family in Lynden, I had extended family in Lynden, and I had always loved Lynden. When I was a girl and moving from place to place every few years, I dreamed of living in Lynden forever.

I considered that I would only go to seminary one time in my life and that to be too worn out to learn well and study deeply was a waste. I remembered that my dad had always told me that if I ever needed a place to live I could live in their downstairs. It has its own kitchen and bathroom, a living room, two bedrooms (one of which was my dad's office), and its own door in and out. So I called my folks and told them I wanted to move to Lynden, live in their house, and go to seminary full time at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lynden is just a few miles from the Canadian border, and Vancouver is closer to us than Seattle. Because they were wonderful parents, my dad and mom were actually thrilled by the idea. My dad immediately went out and bought a gas stove to keep the basement warmer and had gravel laid along the side of the house so I could park there. I told them I thought I would probably move the next spring, around March or April 1999.

But, looking back, I think the Lord saw how tired I was. At the end of September I was laid off from my job. I didn't think it practical to look for a new job when I was planning to move in six months anyway, so I brought my plans forward early. I gave my landlord a month's notice that I would vacate at the end of October. My parents came down from Lynden to help me move.

On October 31st, my sister and her husband, my dad, and kind members of my church packed my worldly possessions into a U-Haul moving van. I had two cats at the time, who both hated riding in the car. Whenever I drove them to the vet, their desperate claws would cling to the lattice of their carriers, and they would yowl the whole way. So I consulted the vet and got some tranquilizers to give them, so they could sleep through the drive.

My church, which was still small and relatively young, was sorry to see me go. When I spoke to them that Sunday, it was the one time when I preached when I really felt the Holy Spirit gave me the message. I spoke more fluently than I can now remember to encourage them to rely on God, the true builder of the church.

The next morning, we started out in two vehicles. My dad and my kind, generous brother-in-law drove the U-Haul. Or, more accurately, my brother-in-law drove and my dad kept him company. I drove my car with my mom as a passenger and my two doped-up cats in their carriers in the back seat. We drove all day Monday, and stopped somewhere to stay in a hotel Monday night. I don't remember where. Then drove all day Tuesday and got to Lynden. I remember bits and pieces of the unpacking.

I put my cats into an unfinished little room that housed the furnace and hot water heater. I didn't want them to be scared by all the coming and going of people with furniture and boxes. My cats were frightened of most people except me. They had been feral kittens when I took them in. Even in the furnace room, they apparently were terrified and disappeared into the walls behind the drywall that didn't quite meet the ceiling. After everyone had left and I was calling them, I could hear them meowing inside the walls. I wanted to keep talking so they would hear my voice and come to it, but I ran out of things to say, so I sat on the floor in the hallway and sang the verses of Amazing Grace until they came creeping out to me, their whiskers full of cobwebs.

Boo

So, because of Halloween, I surmise, my Kindle store has been coughing up a lot of ghost stories and the like under "Recommended for You." I don't like creepy or gory things, but I did see a title I decided to buy: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. When I was a kid, there was a (probably regrettable) TV series of this name. I remember watching it, but I don't remember the show itself. In the 1940s a good movie version was made with Rex Harrison as the ghost. I bought the book and read it. It was quite short. I think I read it in the course of a day (breakfast, lunch, and evening). A likable book.

Changeable as the weather

The skies were busy today. When I got up (rather late) and took the dog out, the ground was wet from overnight rain. When I drove to my sister-in-law's house at about half past noon, the sun was out and all the leaves were gleaming from the rain. With the fall colors, it was gorgeous. After I ate dinner with my sister-in-law and her grandson, she and I got out our needlework. I looked out the window and commented on how it had clouded over during my visit. Pretty soon, we heard thunder. It started to rain, then it hailed. We went and stood in the doorway to watch it. We could see the lightning flash and heard more thunder. After a while the hail stopped, and the storm blew past. By the time I left for home, around 3:30 p.m., half the sky was blue again. As I drove through the countryside, I went through some patches of light fog. As evening fell, fog rolled in. If variety is the spice of life, this was a spicy day, weather-wise.

So very accomplished

I accomplished several things today.

1. I set up my wifi. When I first moved back into my house after the deluge and subsequent repairs, I could not get on the internet at all. Then my co-worker educated me as to using my phone to create a wifi hotspot. I used this for a while. My phone would ding every few minutes with a message from my provider that I had used up my data but they'd added more at my expense. Eventually I realized (I'm slow on the uptake) that I could at least connect my laptop directly to the cable, and I did. So my laptop had internet access but my Kindle did not. Whenever I wanted to download a new Kindle book (which happens frequently) I either had to be at a place of business that offered wifi or use my phone again.

Part of my slowness in setting up my home wifi was ignorance. I had never set it up myself in the first place. My sister visited a few years ago and, discovering I had no wifi, went to Radio Shack, bought whatever was needed and set it up for me. She even set up a network name and password that would be ridiculously easy for me to remember.

When I had to vacate my home, at first I left my wifi, phone, etc. in place, thinking they could sit around during the process, but the workers ended up having to put them aside, so two phones for my landline, an external hard drive, a surge protector power strip, my wifi thingy, and a number of cords and cables ended up just bundled into a small wastepaper basket, where they became coated with dust. Really coated. So when I did come across them, I was reluctant to touch them, thinking that first I'd have to clean them off and then perhaps just be frustrated by being stupidly unable to set them up correctly.

But today I finally did it. I was motivated by the fact that I heard a good speaker on Friday and I wanted to buy her book, but my phone was being wonky and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot set up with it. So I decided I had to take on the wifi job. With wet rags and disinfectant wipes (or as we call them in my workplace "wipies") I got everything cleaned up, although it made my hands feel gross.

Then I found (to my relief) that it was ludicrously simple to plug everything in correctly. Easy on the brain, that is. Somewhat hard on the body when it came to getting down on the floor, crawling under my desk to plug and connect things, and then getting back up again. Try not to picture it.

2. I went to the vet and bought a renewal of my dog's medicine. I had a pill for today and one for tomorrow, which is a Sunday, when the vet's office will be closed, but none for Monday morning. My vet's office is open just until noon on Saturdays, so there was a good chance I'd forget to go get his meds on time. But I remembered. I rock. This medicine is called Denamarin, and it addresses my dog's liver problems. Without it, he gets sick and shivers and curls up and is miserable. With it, he is just as goofy as he always has been. He has to take it in the mornings before he eats, so it was important I remembered.

I'll spare you the lengthy account of what it takes to get a pill inside my dog.

3. I voted. My ballot came in the mail and I filled it all in this evening. I put it in its "security sleeve" and then in its mailing envelope. Tomorrow I can just drop it in the mail. I consider it my duty to vote my conscience.

Given my low spirits and general sense of exhaustion, lethargy, and acedia over the past year and more, accomplishing three things is a good sign that perhaps I am climbing out of an emotional hole. Does accomplishing things make me "accomplished"? Mr. Darcy might not think so.

The basic necessity of coffee

A couple days ago, I ran out of coffee K-cups at home. To backtrack, when I moved back into my home this spring, I bought myself a Keurig coffee maker as a housewarming gift, and I gave my drip coffee maker to charity. Thursday and Friday, I picked up a cup of coffee at a stand on my way to work. Saturday, I made a special trip in the morning just to buy a cup of coffee.

Today I didn’t feel up to leaving the house. I did have to take the dog into the back yard, and I will have to do that again. Also, I’m scheduled to pick up groceries from Fred Meyer in Bellingham in a little while, so I’ll have to go there. (A box of coffee pods will be among the items I bring back.) But mostly I’ve been either on the computer, or reading, or knitting (two rows), or contemplating. Thinking a lot about my parents. While I was trying to knit, I realized how uncomfortable, headachy, and crabby I was feeling. I finally made the brilliant leap of diagnosing my ill-ease as a lack of coffee.

When we had our family reunion in August, I bought a little container of ground coffee to use in the big coffee urns to provide coffee for my relatives.



I still had some, so I put a couple cups of water in a pan and spooned in some coffee and put it on the burner to boil. Eventually it did so, and I tried to pour it through a paper coffee filter into a mug. I made quite a mess, but I did get a cup of coffee out of the experiment. Also, when I mopped up the spilled liquid, my stove top was cleaner than it had been before.

Now that I’ve had coffee, I do indeed feel better, physically.

Old dog, old tricks

My dog comes up to me when I’m sitting at the computer, and he makes some noise so I notice him. I reach out my hand to pet him but he dances away and prances around as if I’m about to get up and take him for a walk. Which I’m not.

Hair care

I can think of at least two movies in which women radically changed their hairstyles as a mark of a new stage in their lives. One was Waiting to Exhale. Angela Bassett's character goes from long, flowing hair to a very short cut after her husband leaves her. The other was Sliding Doors, with the same change (long to short) along with a color change for Gwyneth Paltrow's character after she breaks up with her boyfriend.

I've been through a few. Just to go back to my early 40s, I was without regular employment, and therefore without regular income. I grew very long hair without much intention just by not having enough money to go to the hair salon.



After I became a legal assistant, I got my hair cut. I pretty much stuck with shoulder-length, more or less, first with bangs and then growing them out, and gradually I colored my hair. I would go more dark red in the winter and more strawberry blond in the summer. Going to the hair salon every six to eight weeks was a symbol to me of my prosperity.



In July, 2016, my mom went to the hospital. I had to cancel a hair appointment because I was taken up with my concern for her. I never rescheduled. My mom went from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, my dad moved into the assisted living facility next door to hers, my mom went into hospice care, my dad became more ill and weak, my dad went to the hospital and then to the skilled nursing facility, my dad went into hospice care, my dad died, and my mom died. By that time, it was April, 2017, and I had not had my hair professionally done in nearly a year. It was getting long, with blond ends and darker root (but the "roots" were pretty long, too).



I went to Super-Cheap Clips & Cuts, or whatever it's called, and had it cut to shoulder length. That took away most of the blond, but there still was an inch or two. Finally yesterday I went back to Super-Cheap and had it cut again. There may still be a fraction of an inch of color, but mostly the artificial color is gone.



This current haircut symbolizes my desire to simplify my life. I'm ready to go gray, if it's time for that. (Hiding gray was never the reason for my coloring; I colored because I thought my own color was uninteresting.) I'm going to let it grow. I look forward to being able to put it in a simple french braid or some easy updo. No fuss.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. (I Peter 3:3-4)

Something in the air

Can you tell the difference between the two photos in this post? They both show the road in front of my car (picture taken through my dirty windshield) in the hazy north Whatcom County countryside.

In this one, taken August 21st, the haze comes from smoke from wildfires in British Columbia:

Air quality: Unhealthy, perhaps even hazardous

In this one, taken August 25th, the haze comes from clouds, mist, and rain:

Air quality: good

They may look alike in photos, but what a huge difference in the experience.

For weeks, it seems like, we had hot, dry weather with smoke drifting and blowing into Northwest Washington from fires in B.C. My sister was visiting and as we drove through the county I said, "If this were mist and rain, it would be just the kind of day I like." The smoke gave a weird cast of light to everything and induced headaches. Public notices kept increasing about the bad air quality and what do in response (stay inside, close the windows, run air conditioning on recirculate, get a HEPA quality air filter). Yuck.

Finally, late last week, the wind shifted so that it was blowing in from the ocean, pushing the smoke away from us. Then yesterday, O frabjous day, it rained. It was even chilly! What a relief. Today it's still rainy, cloudy, and cool. Yay.

Doggy, come home

A Facebook "reminder" came up today that it was 8 years ago today that my dog went missing. He got out of the house while I was at work, and I didn't find him all evening, although I was out looking for him both on foot and in a car.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I was online looking up the Humane Society and finally figuring out that in the City of Lynden animal control is handled by the police department. The next morning I talked to the animal control officer, and he had picked up my dog on Front Street at about 7:30 p.m.

I was so relieved that he was alive and found. If he had just disappeared, I would have tortured myself imaging how he might have suffered. As it was, I just had to pay a fine and pay for a license for him and get him back.

My dear parents were also relieved for me. They knew how sad and upset I would have been, and, like me, they feared he was gone forever.

Here he is earlier that same year:

Complaining about the heat

What could be more boring than complaining about the weather? But I'm going to do it anyway. It's been hot and dry for weeks now. On Friday I read that a big change was coming: cold air and showers and thunderstorm. Hooray! I hoped for no lightning strikes in our dry timber, but I did hope for cool, cloudy, rainy weather.

So this morning it still felt kind of warm and muggy. After a while, it cooled a bit and a breeze rang my wind chimes. Finally, I smelled rain. Ah. It rained just enough to wet the pavement.

An hour or so later, the sun came out and the cool, cloudy weather system was done for. I just looked at the 10-day weather forecast, and while tomorrow should be a reasonable mid-70s temperature, after that it's 80s and even 90s as far as the eye can see. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I hate the heat. And have I mentioned that I hate the heat. When will it end?

Meanwhile, I'm in a continual state of inelegance.

Hours and days and years and ages

Sometimes on Fridays, on my commute home, I'll repeatedly check my dashboard day/time display just to verify that it really is Friday evening. It seems too good to be true.

I love Friday night and Saturday morning because I don't have to care what time it is. If I wake up, I can get up or not, as I choose. If I doze, it doesn't matter; it's not like I'm going to be late somewhere.

When were clocks invented? According to Wikipedia, the first mechanical clocks were made in the early 14th century, which would be the 1300s—is that right? The 1900s were the 20th century, so, yes, the "hundreds" are one less than the "century."

I wondered about the timing (ha, ha) of clock inventions because I want to say my aversion to "clocking in" anywhere is the natural state of humanity, while structured and strict time are an unnatural aberration of the industrial age. For millenia, people woke up and did what they needed to do and went where they needed to go but without precision as to when they got there.

Biblically, timing was by the sun. Each day ended (and the new day began) when the sun went down. Rather than a specific time for sunset, I seem to have read that, for instance, a woman ceased her sewing for the Sabbath when she could no longer discern the difference between certain thread colors.

In the New Testament, there are references to the "3rd hour," the "6th hour," and so on. According to Wikipedia, the Romans had 12 hour days and 12 hour nights, but the length of the hours varied by season. In the winter, daylight hours were shorter and nighttime hours longer, and in the summer the other way around.

Another Wikipedia article fascinatingly says that for ancient Jewish people, it was considered night when the first three stars appeared in the sky. I love that. The third star begins the 1st hour of the night, and like the Romans, Jewish folks had 12 hours each for day and night, again varying in length according to season. Daylight began at dawn, prior to sunrise. The sixth hour of daytime was when the sun was at its zenith.

That's so much more natural than clock time. In the winter, when the mornings are dark, I have such a hard time waking up to get to work by the precise hour required. How much nicer if I could wait until daylight to get up. I would have to get up earlier in the summer, but that's easier. But then in the summer I would spend longer hours at work—but there would be the payoff of shorter hours in the winter.

Office life as it's experienced today—seven or eight (or more) hours of sitting at a desk—is a product of mechanized time. In pre-industrial times, only scribes and scholars, I would guess, sat for long period of time. In monasteries, though, the monks who copied manuscripts probably did not do so for seven or eight hours. Monasteries generally have a balance of time for study, physical labor, and prayer. Desk work does not engulf the whole day.

I guess pre-industrial women sat for long times when they sewed or wove or spun, but if they were doing that as part of the overall task of housekeeping, they too would not have the sedentary work taking up the whole day.

I am very sedentary. I sit at a computer most of the day at work. I sit for meals. I sit in my car. At home, I sit and read or sit some more at my computer. Sometimes I sit to do needle work of one kind or another. Not natural or healthy, but hard to change. This is especially true for these recent years of sorrow as my parents' health declined and then they died. Even mild exercise, like gardening, is hard for me to make myself do because grief and chronic depression have drained my energy. It becomes a cycle: I don't want to move, so I lose conditioning, which makes it harder to move, which further decreases my desire to move, which causes further loss of strength. I should make changes, but it's hard to summon the will. I don't know if even my spirit is willing, but certainly my flesh is weak.

Jesus said that his disciples' flesh was weak, though their spirit was willing, when they fell asleep while he agonized in Gethsemane. I like this prayer that covers us whether we sleep or whether we lie awake: Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in His peace.

What's in a name?

Most mornings, I listen to the daily readings that are put online by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Today's gospel reading was Matthew 16:13-23:

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
and he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Then he strictly ordered his disciples
to tell no one that he was the Christ.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."
He turned and said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

I was struck by the parallel conversations our Lord and Peter have, which are recorded right next to each other. Let's start with the two things Peter says initially:

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."

And then in the Lord's replies:

"Blessed are you....You are Peter [Petros]."
"Get behind me, Satan."

"Upon this rock [petra] I will build my church."
"You are an obstacle [skandalon = stumbling block] to me."

"Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you."
"You are thinking...as human beings do."

"My heavenly Father [has revealed this to you]."
"You are not thinking as God does."

So, first Peter identifies the Lord correctly as the Christ (= Messiah = Anointed One = one chosen for a certain task, e.g., prophet, priest, or king). Then Peter mis-identifies the Lord, he incorrectly says that Christ is not the crucified one. He does not perceive that the task for which the Christ is christened is to suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised.

In response to the first, the Lord blesses Simon Barjonah and gives him a new name, Petros/Rock. In response to the second, the Lord utters what at first sounds like a curse and gives him a different name: Satan/Adversary.

The Lord responds to the correct identification by saying that on this petra/rock he will build his church. He responds to the incorrect identification by saying that he could trip on this skandalon/stumbling block. I looked for the literal meaning of skandalon and I found that it goes back to the thing one trips over that brings a trap down on one. And it developed so it could mean a stone sticking up out of the ground that could trip one. So when Peter identifies Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, he is the foundation stone of the church, but when he mis-identifies him as not the crucified, he becomes the stone that could trip Jesus and cause him to miss his calling.

Skandalon, you may know, recurs in 1 Corinthians 1:23: "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block/skandalon to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."

When Peter correctly sees Jesus as the Christ, he is not thinking like an unaided human—flesh and blood has not revealed this to him, but he is thinking in the way revealed by the Father in heaven. When Peter incorrectly sees Christ as uncrucified, he is thinking like a human/anthropos, and he is not thinking as God does.

This is pretty much what came to me as I listened to the Gospel passage this morning and thought about it through the day. I went to online lexicons, dictionaries, translators, etc. to confirm what I thought (was "obstacle" a translation for skandalon? What does skandalon really mean? Am I recalling correctly when I think that Satan means "Adversary"?—by the way it also means "Accuser.") And while I was looking around, I came across a blog entry from 2011, by a gentleman named Brant Clements, who, according to his profile, is a Lutheran pastor.

He writes of the final verse in today's passage, specifically about the saying, "Get behind me"/Hupage opiso mou, and then looks at the next verse (not included in today's passage) in which Jesus says: If anyone desires to come behind me"/Ei tis thelei opiso mou elthein...he must take up his cross and follow me. The NIV translates "If anyone desires to come behind me..." as "Whoever wants to be my disciple..."

So when our Lord says to Peter "Get behind me," he's not saying "Get lost," he's telling him, "Go behind me, which is where my disciples are," and later he says, "If you want to get behind me, you too must take up your own cross and follow in the way I am going—the way of the cross." He's not cursing Peter, he's calling Peter back to his role as Christ's disciple. Christ's task for which he is christened is to suffer, die, and be raised. That is also the task for which Christians are christened.

When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus said simply, Hupage, Satana. "Go, Adversary." But to Peter he says, Hupage opiso mou, Satana. "Go behind me, Adversary." Change from Adversary to disciple, to Petros.

When we oppose the way of the cross for Christ or for ourselves, we are Christ's adversaries. When we follow him in the way of the cross, we are his disciples, the building blocks of his church.

The next question is, What is the way of the cross for each of us?

Co-inkydink

Twelve days ago, I blogged about "a tisket, a tasket...I wrote a letter to my love, etc." and three days ago I blogged about the author Mary Stewart. Last night, finishing up the Mary Stewart book I mentioned, I came across, as a chapter epigraph:

I wrote a letter to my love,
And on the way I lost it;
One of you has picked it up,
And put it in her pocket.
(Traditional)

Sometimes when things recur in my life I ask myself if it's a sign of any kind. For this, I can't imagine much meaning, but still it's a coincidence. Maybe it's just an alternative answer for my curiosity about the words to that old song.

Ritual

My browser was on the youtube site when I sat down to it after dinner. That's left over from last night. At night, I go to youtube and start a video an hour or more in length that plays instrumental hymns, and generally by the time it finishes playing I'm asleep.

One of the suggested videos that came up after the hymns finished was for an episode of "What's My Line?" This one said a guest was the Trapp Family Choir, so I took a look. It was the same number and style of children as in the movie, but not the same actors. Turns out they were the kids from the Broadway play, starring Mary Martin. The "What's My Line?" episode was from 1960.

There were three other what's-my-liners on the show, each time a set of twins, although their twinness had nothing to do with their "line," except for the coincidence that both twins were in the same line of work. Anyway, what I noticed was that all the women on the panel and who were guests wore pretty dresses—mostly with flared skirts—and at least one set of girl twins wore gloves. Every time the panelists either guessed the line, or failed to guess in the allotted number of tries, then, as they left, the guests shook hands with each panelist. The emcee stood up as the guests stood to leave, the two male panelists (Tony Randall and Bennett Cerf, by the way) stood to shake hands, and the two female panelists remained seated while shaking hands. I liked that there was a correct way to do it and that everyone knew it and did it. I liked the formality; it was a cordial, courteous formality.

I once worked with a lawyer who told me that part of the reason she liked practicing law was because of the ritualism of court proceedings. You stand, you sit, you use certain forms of address, all according to ritual. She said that if she ever joined a church, it would be the Roman Catholic Church for the sake of the ritual.

I also have a Facebook friend who is a Catholic, who said that he joined that church because he is religious, but not spiritual. I like that.

I am tied to my church by ties of belief, affection, family, and culture. If I ever did change churches, it would be to Catholicism. What draws me is the sacramental nature of it. I am powerfully drawn by the doctrine of trans-substantiation.

I belong to the "holy catholic church, the communion of saints," the "holy catholic and apostolic church," from within the Christian Reformed Church. I am thankful for Article 35 of the Belgic Confession, which says:

Christ has instituted
an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of his body
and wine as the sacrament of his blood.

He did this to testify to us that
just as truly as we take and hold the sacrament in our hands
and eat and drink it with our mouths,
by which our life is then sustained,
so truly we receive into our souls,
for our spiritual life,
the true body and true blood of Christ,
our only Savior.
We receive these by faith,
which is the hand and mouth of our souls.

Now it is certain
that Jesus Christ did not prescribe
his sacraments for us in vain,
since he works in us all he represents
by these holy signs,
although the manner in which he does it
goes beyond our understanding
and is incomprehensible to us,
just as the operation of God’s Spirit
is hidden and incomprehensible.

Yet we do not go wrong when we say
that what is eaten is Christ's own natural body
and what is drunk is his own blood—
but the manner in which we eat it
is not by the mouth, but by the Spirit
through faith.

...we say that we should be content with the procedure
that Christ and the apostles have taught us
and speak of these things
as they have spoken of them.

He said "Take and eat....Take and drink," not "take and understand, take and explain, take and debate."

It's too hot to blog

I searched for a good quote about hot weather and finally found this one: "What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance." - Jane Austen

Mary Stewart

Lately I've read a few novels by Mary Stewart. They've floated across my Amazon page as "Recommended for you." I vaguely remembered her name from maybe high school. I read one or two of her novels now, and then I saw the title Touch Not the Cat. Now that one I was pretty sure I had read. I remembered that the heroine talked telepathically to the man she loved before she met him. She thought he was one of her distant cousins. I also kind of remembered something about a mosaic of a tiger or some other wild cat under water. So I re-read it now, and those details were there, along with a lot I didn't remember.

Just today I started reading The Ivy Tree, which I thought I had never heard of. But in the first chapter, when a man mistakes the heroine for someone he used to know, it started to seem familiar. I thought, if he says the woman he knew was a horse-whisperer, then I've read this book before. Sure enough, he said it. Whenever I read this book previously, probably in high school, I think it was the first time I'd ever heard of a horse-whisperer.

Oh, my goodness! I just googled her and found out she's the author of The Crystal Cave and the other Arthurian sequels! Now, those I remember very well. I love the Arthurian legends in all their permutations, with the possible exception of movies starring Keira Knightley. I loved the movie Camelot, with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave. I loved the T.H. White novel The Once and Future King, although it was a sad book that I read at a sad time in my life, so I've never re-read it. I loved the Howard Pyle versions. I also read some Jungian interpretations by Robert A. Johnson in my 20s, when I went through a phase of being fascinated by Jung.

Well, good. That's a good discovery. I don't know that I'll go straight back and read The Crystal Cave. Right now I'm only buying really cheap books on my Kindle. I got The Ivy Tree for $1.99, I believe. I can remember the premise of the book and a certain plot twist, but I don't remember how it all goes. If I read it in high school, and I think I did, it's been about 40 years since then. Wow, my adult life is middle-aged.

I'm older than I think I am. I was talking to some friends a couple weeks ago about getting new pets. We're all the same age, and the male half of the couple said that by the time a new kitten was 13, we'd be 70. No, I said. (Remember how good I am at math?) I was thinking that if we're in our 50s, then our 70s are 20 years away. But he pointed out that, since we're 57, age 70 is just 13 years away. I know he's correct, but it still just doesn't sound right. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Historical fiction

August. Named, presumably, for Caesar Augustus, aka Octavius, aka Octavius Caesar. July was named for his great-uncle Julius Caesar. Those guys. Should I be ashamed to say that a lot of what I know about them and about the events leading up to Rome changing from a republic to an empire comes from a series of historical novels by Colleen McCullough?

Back in the day, meaning when I was young, she wrote a huge bestseller called The Thorn Birds. Later it was a made-for-TV movie that starred Mr. Mini-Series himself, Richard Chamberlain.

The Roman book series is called The Masters of Rome, and I think I did read them all. I bought the first few in paperback and the later ones on my Kindle. Although there is a pulpy quality to the writing, I think that her historical details are correct. At any rate, it helped me get those characters straight in my mind and know what they did: Marius, Sulla, Pompey the Great, Crassus, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, and Augustus.

Historical fiction is not all bad. In high school, I read some novel about Elizabeth I, and developed enough interest in her that I went on to read many non-fiction biographies of her and her contemporaries, the history of the time, and history and biographies of the English monarchs before and after her, and then a few about the rest of Europe.

Actually, I just read The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV, by W.H. Lewis, the brother of C.S. Lewis. He, too, was a member of the Inklings and read his works in progress at their meetings. It was a pretty good read.

There, too, I have previously met Louis XIV in the pages of historical novels. First Alexandre Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask when I was in high school, to the best of my recollection. As an adult I read a novel about Madame de Maintenon, but I can't remember the title right now. In that book, she secretly married Louis XIV after the death of his royal wife, and I thought that was a little fictional detail. But it turns out everyone seems to accept that this happened. She was his maîtresse-en-titre, but troubled by the adulterous nature of their relationship. When the king's wife, Maria Theresa of Spain, died, he privately married Madame de Maintenon. She was not of suitable birth to become the Queen of France, and he could negotiate with foreign powers for a 2nd queen if he found it useful for a ruse.

Isn't that interesting? I find it so, but perhaps others would not.

C'mon, get happy

On my drive home, while still in Bellingham, I saw a doe and two fawns walking across the street. They happened to be in a crosswalk. Pedestrians in a crosswalk always have the right of way. They made me smile.

Today I was googling terms involving the word "happy." I found a twitter page called Cute Emergency, which features adorable animal videos and photos. There is also a Cute Emergency Instagram page.

Another reason for happiness is that the weather is cooling down. We had several days at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but today the high was down to about 80—still higher than I like it, but better than 90—and it's forecast to drop down into the mid-70s as the week goes on, and maybe even some rain showers later in the week.

We could use rain. Not only is the ground dry, but we have smoke in the air from fires in British Columbia, Canada. Not as bad as last year, but just hazy. You can't see the mountains.

Another reason to be happy is that in 16 days my sister will come visit me. The day she arrives is our folks' wedding anniversary. If they were living, it would be their 66th anniversary. When my folks had been married 62 years, I told my dad that if their marriage were a person it could collect social security.

Gifting my thoughts to the world

I saw this headline on the web: "The Queen Reportedly Gifted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle an Unbelievable New Home." I'm not interested in the content of the article. What I'm wondering is: Why did the writer say "gifted" instead of "gave"? The Queen "gifted" them a house; the Queen "gave" them a house. What is the difference except that "to give" is a verb that has been around for centuries and "to gift" a permutation that has shown up lately for no good reason.

I know, I know. Kids today and their crazy music. Get off my lawn! This country is going to hell in a handbasket. Etc.

Speaking of baskets, the other day I was singing, "A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love and put in my basket. My basket, my basket, my green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I lost it." But I was not really sure of the words or the storyline. I tried using a search engine and discovered that Ella Fitzgerald had a jazz song called "A Tisket, a Tasket." Also, everyone who makes or sells baskets uses "A tisket, a tasket" as their tag line. In youtube videos for kiddies, a lot of them sing, "I wrote a letter to my mom" instead of "to my love." Most of them say, "I dropped it" instead of "I lost it." This is the version most like what I remember (I found it at Wikipedia):

A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my mom
And on the way I dropped it,
I dropped it, I dropped it,
And on the way I dropped it.
A little boy he picked it up
And put it in his pocket.

I still think it was "love" not "mom" and "lost" not "dropped."

And that's the name of that tune. Who used to say that? Columbo? Kojak? Baretta?

I searched online again, and it was Baretta.

Columbo used to say, "Oh, one more thing." My parents liked that show. Just when the criminal thought they'd made it through their conversation with Columbo without giving away their guilt, they'd be walking out the door, and then he'd say, "Oh, just one more thing," and then ask questions that would lead up to revealing their crime.

Just for the heck of it, I also looked up Kojak, and his trademark line was, "Who loves ya, baby?"

I didn't actually watch these shows much, but they were in the atmosphere in my youth. You just heard about them. Just like I know most of the laugh lines from Young Frankenstein even though I've never actually seen the movie. My peers found it so hilarious they quoted it all over my high school.

High school. What a strange world that was. I'd rather be in my late 50s earning my living than in my late teens going to high school. Good thing that's how it's worked out.

Math whiz (not)

After work today, I stopped off at a grocery store to pick up a birthday card for my great-niece. By tradition, I put as many dollars as the child is turning inside the card, so when I made the purchase I also did the cash-back thing to pull $20 out of my checking account. That's one of the convenient amounts they offer. I actually needed $13.

I said to the cashier, "I did $20 cash back. Could I please get a ten, a five, and five ones?"

She said, "I don't have any tens, so I'll give you..." and she trailed off.

"Two fives," I said. "No, uh, three, um...Suddenly this is a lot of math."

She agreed with me. I did receive three fives and five ones, which (carry the one) does add up to twenty dollars.

Where does it go

I recently passed the fifth anniversary of starting my current job. The executive director of the firm mentioned the milestone in his monthly newsletter, along with some nice compliments my co-worker friend had drafted for him. I read it and thought I would forward it to my parents, and then I remembered. It's those little instinctive things, when you would naturally say something to the gone loved one, that cause a poignant pain.

My parents blessed me by being so interested in what I did. About 30 years ago, I worked for a company that published automotive information and textbooks. My first project was editing a textbook for potential mechanics (PC: automotive technicians) about automatic transmissions. My name was in the front pages as "Assistant Editor," if I recall correctly. I told my folks about it during a phone call, and my dad told me to find out how he could buy a copy of the book. So I went to the production manager next day at work and said that my dad wanted to buy the book. He thought that was so funny. I said, "Hey, if my dad didn't think I was wonderful, who would?" The production manager gave me a free copy to give to my dad.

I wrote the above a few days ago. Then I read a memoir of sorts by a cousin's son. My cousin lost her husband at (his) age of 59. Her son mentioned in his writing that weeks after his father died, he took out his cell phone to call him before he remembered he no longer could reach him that way.

Emily Dickinson wrote:

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –

As it turns out, you can't really put that love away. It's there. I don't believe it is without use or purpose, though. In some way, I trust it reaches the ones I love. But it is a loss that I can no longer say it simply and directly to a physically present person, or show it by a hug, a touch, a look, an act of service.

Jesus said that when we do loving things for the people around us, we do it for him. That is the use we have for our love for the Christ and the saints in heaven, is to show it to others. Years ago I read in a book about Benedictine spirituality that the questions to ask yourself after an encounter with another person are: Did I see Christ in him? Did he see Christ in me? May it be so.

Good to know

Recently, I stopped at a grocery store to pick up some supplies, and one item I bought was a box of dryer sheets. I like to use those because they reduce static, but I don't care for any fragrance.



These are not only fragrance-free, but all-natural, blah, blah, blah, "Made for Sensitive Skin." Now, one of the myriad ways that I am an exceedingly delicate flower is that my skin is as sensitive as all get-out. Shopping for clothes, I'm all about 100% cotton because that's the most comfortable for my skin. And shopping for laundry supplies, I'm looking for as little as possible besides the actual product. But even I have never thought to check for this:



"Gluten Free." Although I am delicate in a thousand ways, I don't happen to have celiac disease, but, if I did, I would certainly want to know whether my dryer sheets contained gluten, just in case I decided to snack on one.

Hot spot

I'm back. They moved everything back in on a Friday. Now the house is jam packed with boxes and odds and ends. In the week since it all came in, I've managed to get one room clean and usable, and that room is the bathroom. The kitchen is usable but not clean.

When I tried to log onto the internet on my laptop, I couldn't get on. At first I thought, Oh, no, something's happened to my cable service while I've been gone. But after a little while I realized that what's missing is the little box and antenna thingy that passes on the wireless signal. It's in any one of a hundred boxes.

So all week my internet browsing was limited to my phone, which has 4G. I couldn't get new books for my Kindle and had to re-read from those already on the device. On my laptop, I just played solitaire and mah jong. When I looked at Facebook, I had my tiny phone screen, and when I wrote an email, I had to use the little screen keyboard on the phone. I'm not as fast at that as I am at touch-typing, as it was called, back when I took typing class using a machine originally owned by Fred Flintstone. I was going through kind of an internet withdrawal.

I was complaining to a co-worker and she asked if I couldn't use a hot spot. I said I had looked them up, but the hardware was expensive and you had to subscribe to some phone plan to use it. She asked if I couldn't use my phone as a hotspot. I indicated that, as far as I knew, I could not. She asked what provider I use and then asked to see my phone. She briskly found the place where I could turn my phone into a hotspot. We  tried it on my kindle, and it worked.

Well. File that under "Learn something new every day."

Just this evening after work, a man came to hook up the washer and dryer, which both use gas. When he turned on the dryer to try it out, it ran with a loud squeaking sound. I said it had done that before the accident behind it all. He took the dryer apart, vacuumed out all the lint (with his own vacuum), replace a few parts, and now it runs better than before. So not just restoration, but improvement!

My house saga: 5th installlment

Well, last week the contractors did have to move my date back to this week. Now, they expect to finish up on February 28th. I'm not hearing any noises like that won't happen. They really are on to the finishing touches.

I went to my house this weekend. I had bought a bathroom faucet at Lowe's for them to install, so I dropped it off when I looked around. The tile is all done and grouted, and it looks wonderful:



The piano was the first major item to come back home. It was moved by Kelly's Piano Service, rather than the company that did the rest of the moving, and Mr. Kelly moves pianos only on Saturdays, so back it came this past weekend. I mentioned to him that it probably would need tuning, too, after moving, but he said to let it sit and acclimate for a month before having it tuned. Interesting, huh?

In the above picture, you can also see the new wood on the stairs, and the new trim that is in the process of being installed. New paint, too, for that matter. (From reading British novels, I've learned that the British call the trim "paint" and the walls, just "walls." I read a story where a woman had xx-color walls with yy-color paint, and that confused me for a while. But, here, paint is on the walls, and the baseboard is part of the trim, which also goes around the doors and windows.)

In the library (used to be my dad's office), they're re-building the shelves on the east wall:



And in the bathroom, I have a new vanity, very pretty:



They still needed to put the mirror back together and install the faucet when I took this picture.

The movers are not available until Friday, March 2, so that (I devoutly hope and trust) should be my move-in date. I am taking the day off from work to be there, and then I'll have the weekend to make a start on settling in. I will probably sleep Friday night still at my sister-in-law's until I'm set up for sleeping at home. What a concept: sleeping in my own house. I can hardly believe it.

Home! Sweet Home!

Mid Pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

An exile from home, spendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gaily, that come at my call;
Give me them, with that peace of mind, dearer than all.

Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

To thee, I'll return, overburdened with care,
The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there.
No more from that cottage again will I roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Words by John Howard Payne, music by Henry Rowley Bishop.

My house saga: 4th installment

Okay, so this is not about the water leak. It's about my trees.

Last fall (long, long ago...when I had just moved out of my house), I became aware that a creature had been busy in my yard. Yes, "busy as a beaver." In fact, it was a beaver. I've never met him (or her, or them) face-to-face, but I've seen their work. I was going to say "handiwork," but of course beavers don't use their hands so much as their teeth. I saw their toothiwork?



I didn't quite know what to do about it. I did call my town's animal control, which is a division (well, one person) of the police department. He told me he didn't trap beavers. All he wanted to know was if the damaged tree was on private property. Once he knew that it was, it was obvious it was my problem, not his.

As time went by, the beaver more or less cleaned up after himself, chewing the log and branches into pieces and dragging them away into the creek. I knew this tree was a goner, because he chewed all around it, so it was bound to die.

Okay, yes. This tree is a pussywillow. A pussywillow destroyed by a beaver. Oh, grow up.

Well, just at the end of December, when I was living with my sister-in-law, we had an ice storm. Branches and trees were breaking and falling down all over the north county, including my back yard.



And by the way, my sister-in-law's house lost power for 46 hours.

Anyway, when it was all said and done, a good number of trees in my back yard had sustained damage or been destroyed. I had to call a tree guy to come out. He was getting lots of calls, but he did meet me—and my sister-in-law, who knows practical questions to ask—out at my place to see what I needed and make an estimate. A week or so later, his crew came out to deal with the mess.

A large pin oak, almost as old as the house, standing right behind it, did not (mercifully) come down, but branches had broken and fallen:



We had the tree guy just prune that tree extensively:



Another pin oak, not ask old or big, but quite large enough, had split and fallen right onto my neighbor's chicken coop:



My neighbor told me that no chickens were harmed, but naturally she and her husband were eager to see my tree removed. So we had that one just taken down:



One next to a shed fell over, root ball and all, so we asked him just to get rid of it:



I'm not sure what kind of tree it was. I have lots of trees because my dad liked to plant trees. He would say, "Old men plant trees, and young men sit under them."

A birch tree by the creek went down:



A neighbor's tree with a double trunk had already been causing me concern by how one side of it leaned toward my garage, so we obtained the neighbor's permission to have that part of the tree removed:



We asked the tree guy just to get rid of the doomed pussywillow:



And I sadly gave the word to take down a Deodora cedar that was not damaged by the storm but had failed to thrive since a neighbor's trees had grown tall enough to block the sun from it:



My dad had liked that tree very much, when it was in its prime.

Have I mentioned we had a lot of rain this winter? When the tree guy's crew came into the yard with their equipment, they left their mark:



The tree guy felt pretty bad about it and said that when the weather was suitable he would come back and try to fix it as much as he could.

So, indoors and out, it's been quite the year for my house. That's my house saga so far. I hope the story has a happy ending.

My house saga: 3rd installment

After all my belongings were removed from my house and placed in storage, I came back from Ashland (where I had enjoyed seeing Julius Caesar, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Beauty and the Beast) and moved into a hotel in Bellingham. An "extended stay" hotel.



My homeowner's insurance booked the place. My dog and I moved in on Labor Day, and we were there until shortly before Christmas. It was a nice enough place, but it's a weird feeling to live in a hotel. It's a kind of limbo. It's not home. I made my own meals, using the microwave and stove top in my room. There was no conventional oven.

One nice thing was that because the hotel was in Bellingham, where I also work, I could drive there for lunch. It took about 15 minutes each way, so I had about half an hour to spend in my own space.

Sometime in December, my dog's special dispensation to come to work with me expired. The first estimate I received, back in August, for how long it would take to fix my house was "probably three months." Well, three months was up, and I needed to find a new place for him to be while I worked.

I enrolled him in the doggy daycare program at Hyline Hotel for Dogs. That's where I boarded him when I went on vacation. They play with the dogs and give them attention, so he's been pretty happy there. He goes in willingly with his tail wagging, unlike at the vet's where (although they are very kind people there) his tail drops, he trembles, and he tries to hide behind me.



At one point, I became depressed about living in a hotel, so the dog and I spent a weekend with my sister-in-law. Then, at Thanksgiving, we spent that whole 4-day weekend with her again.

Close to Christmas, my dog became ill. He was droopy and sad at all times and had no appetite. So I had to take him to the kind vet's office, where it turned out he had elevated counts of liver enzymes and white blood cells. So I came away with an antibiotic and a liver pill (Denamarin).

Also close to Christmas my insurance company felt they had paid for my lodging quite long enough. They had approved three months, then added one more, but that was it. They decided the reason for the delay was the choices I made for having tile installed instead of just replacing the laminate and carpet that I previously had. They were probably right. Anyway, I was on my own for lodging. Once again, my sister-in-law to the rescue. I moved into her house just before Christmas, and here I still am.

So what has been happening with my house? you may ask. Well, workers came in and installed new drywall.* This involves multiple stages, putting there, taping it, "mudding" it. I really don't know anything about the process. I'm just trying to drag out the description to match how long it took to get done.



Then painters came in and painted all the walls and ceilings in the place. I told them to match the wall color as much as possible to the old one and do the ceiling the same color but a few shades lighter. I have read that a lighter ceiling looks higher. My ceilings are low. Some of my taller relatives can touch the ceiling just standing on the floor. I come from a tall family, although I am not among the tallest.

This winter we had tons and tons of rain, and after the dry-walling and painting were complete, In December, I received an email from the contractor that water was seeping in through the north wall. Have I explained that I live in a daylight basement? The front of the house faces north, and on that side the upstairs front door is at ground level. The ground slopes down to the back yard, and on the south wall my downstairs entry door is at ground level. So the north wall of my place is part of the foundation, and behind the drywall is cement.



The contractor believed the water was seeping in because of all the rain we'd had. They needed to open up some of the just-installed drywall to find the leak. It turned out to be coming in through a "snap-tie" hole. That was a hole left over from when the cement was poured into the mold when the house was built. Snap-ties held the mold in place and when the cement was set then the mold and presumably the snap-ties were removed. This hole was a ways up the wall and probably leaked this year because of the exceptional amount of rain we had, so that the ground water went up that high.

The Pacific Northwest is famed for being rainy, so when you have exceptional amounts of rain, you know it's a lot.

Well, what with the holidays and all, it was mid-January before the hole was sealed up and the drywall replaced and repainted. Meanwhile, I had picked out the floor tile and also a wood flooring for the stairs to the upstairs unit.



The floor guys had to do some leveling before laying the tile. The southwest corner of my house has sunk a bit in the 35-plus years since the house was built, and the floor tilts visibly in that direction. But they got it prepped and they laid the tile. Just this past Friday I met them there to choose a grout color. I think they were grouting this weekend. Then, workers will put my bathroom fixtures back in place, including a new "vanity." And they'll put in the baseboards and door trim. And they'll clean up the drywall dust.

I've recently been told my place will be ready for my stuff to come back in by Thursday of this week! I'm going to confirm that Monday or Tuesday. (Monday is Presidents Day; I'm not sure if the contractor's office will be open.) I did tell the mover guys that date already. I want to make sure it's still good. I mean, I was told three months back in August, then mid-December, then mid-January, then early February. So I have a slight trust issue about completion dates.

I will say, however, that the new paint and the tiles, even without grout, look great. I am SO looking forward to moving back in.



* Another word for "drywall" is "sheetrock." My uncle, my dad's oldest brother, was a contractor, and he once told my dad that all sheetrockers are crazy. My uncle was given to sweeping statements.

My house saga: 2nd installment - Supplement

I should mention that during the time they were packing up and moving all my stuff out, I was stressed out by the state of my leg. I wrote back in August about knee pain and the feeling I had one day that something popped in the back of my knee. My lower leg swelled up some, and then one afternoon at work I had a pop in the back of my knee or calf again and it hurt quite badly. I went to the doctor that same day, and he said that, although they had to test for a blood clot, he thought most likely I had a Baker's cyst.

So the next morning I went to an imaging clinic and they did an ultrasound of the leg. The woman performing the ultrasound said that I did not have a Baker's cyst or a blood clot.

A day or so after that, I had a phone call from my doctor's office telling me to have an MRI on my leg. The woman making the call said we needed to find out what the "lump or mass" in my leg was. Lump or mass? My mind immediately told me: CANCER! I began googling symptoms of bone cancer.

I went for the MRI. It's not a comfortable procedure. A friend of mine was talking about the claustrophobic feeling of sliding into that tube, but that was not the issue. As a matter of fact, they only inserted my lower half into the tube. I simply was uncomfortable lying on the thin metal shelf they place you on. They did their best to stuff pillows around me so that I could relax, but I was not comfortable, and when they're doing an MRI you have to remain as motionless as possible. It's not a quick snapshot, like an X-ray, it's multiple sessions of loud bangs and thuds surrounding you.

It was a couple days for the results. I continued googling my symptoms frequently and carefully reading the most horrifying results I could find. While the workers were boxing up all my belongings, I thought, "What if all this trouble is for nothing because I am going to die of cancer?" I pretty much made myself ill with worry.

Finally my doctor's office called me with the diagnosis: a hematoma. (Just an aside: Spell check wants to change "hematoma" to "tomato." Ha, ha. A tomato in my leg would be serious issue.) I said, "A hematoma. That's basically a bruise, right?" Right. I didn't bump into anything. But the woman at the other end of the phone call said that sometimes a blood vessel breaks spontaneously. She said the blood would be reabsorbed by my body. Gross. I mean, what a relief. And I was relieved, very relieved. I was grateful to get the good news before I went to Ashland with my sister-in-law.

It took some time, but eventually my leg unswelled (that should be a word) and the pain went away. I think it took a couple or few months, but it finally happened. And that's the story of my leg.

My house saga: 2nd installment

My insurance company referred me first to a local water-damage mitigation company. I made an appointment with them, and they came out and made their recommendation: Pack out almost all of my belongings, cut away the drywall to a height of four feet on every wall touched by the water (technically that water was considered sewage), take out all the carpet and laminate and have it replaced, then they'd come back after contractors fixed the walls and installed new floors. So a huge truck came to my house, near the end of August, and they packed boxes and boxes and boxes of my stuff. In addition to my own not inconsiderable accumulation my house contained a fair amount of my parents' belongings that I and my siblings had not decided what to do with--they cleared out each of my folks' dwellings after each death and some stuff we knew right away to give away or who would take them, but whatever we didn't know whether to donate, toss, or keep, stayed at my house for me to decide. After my parents died, I was pretty sad and down and did not leap to the task. So I had a lot of stuff.

They took out most, but left the large appliances, my piano, and various pieces of furniture and odds and ends, assuming the contractors could move those from room to room as they made their repairs. Then they tore out the floors, cut away the walls as determined, ran fans to dry everything out, and treated all the exposed wall studs with mold preventative.



By this time, it was September. My insurance company next referred me to a local contractor. They came and made their estimate for the insurance company, which covered the cost of restoring my house to what it had been like before: wall repair, laminate flooring, and carpeting. That's how much the insurance would pay.

I had already been thinking of replacing my floors...someday...with either hardwood or tile. I had been thinking I'd do that in a few years. But it would be silly not to do it now. To have new laminate and carpet installed and then later replace them would be just dumb. So I told the contractors what I wanted. I decided on tile. Tile is a lot more expensive to install than laminate and carpeting, so the estimate for the difference between the insurance payment and what I'll have to pay is substantial. But it's time to bite the bullet and do it.

The first thing the contractors needed was for the cleaning company to come back and take all the stuff they'd left behind: the large appliances, piano, and so on. The guy who talked to me about it said that in the course of the repairs drywall dust would infiltrate any furniture in my place and it would be difficult to get it cleaned up. So there was about a week's delay until the cleaning company had a crew available to come and take everything else.



Once that was finally gone, it seems like there was a gap of a couple or few weeks until the contractors actually got started on the repairs. I guess their crews were still finishing other jobs.

As for me, right about Labor Day I moved into a hotel in Bellingham where the insurance company had arranged for me to stay. It was dog-friendly, as the phrase is. So the two of us moved in there. It was like a very small studio apartment. It had a bed, a couch, a desk, a full bathroom, and a little semi-kitchen with a 2-burner stove, a microwave oven, a fridge, and some cupboards and drawers with plates, pots, and silverware. I eventually worked out a pattern of shopping online for groceries from Fred Meyer on Friday night and picking the order up on Saturday morning. They brought it out to my car, so I didn't need to leave my dog in the car or in his kennel in the hotel room. If I had done that, he would have barked and cried and generally made a nuisance of himself. For a few months, I had special dispensation to bring him to work, where he spent my work day under my desk.



I had packed what I thought I would need for 2-3 months, so that even though it was August when I moved out, I took a big sweater. But I did not take my winter coat or the fuzzy robe I often wear in the house in the winter. I was vaguely given to understand that I would be out probably until Thanksgiving.

This is as much as I have energy to write tonight. I'll continue with the next installment when I feel up to it.

My house saga: 1st installment

I keep wanting to tell the story of my house damage and repair, and I keep putting it off until I have time and energy because it feels long, and then the longer I put it off the longer the story grows. So I'll just start. Blogs don't have to be highly crafted; they're just a place to dump some ideas out of a bucket onto the grass, so you and a few others can look at them.

So last August, a pump failed at my house. I live in a daylight basement and my housemates live above me. This daylight basement is below ground on the north, street-facing side, and at ground level on the south, backyard-facing side. That is because of the slope of the ground. So I have a deck and my door in the "back" of the house. Anyway, because I'm below street level, all my wastewater has to be pumped up out of my dwelling to the water lines above. There is one pump for this job. The one I had was installed in 1988 when my folks retired to Lynden and finished the basement in this house.

So on a certain August evening, I got out of the shower and there was water on the floor. The water was not just on the floor of the bathroom, but of the furnace & laundry room (where the water pump lives), of the kitchen, the hallway, and -- I did not realize at the time -- the bedrooms. I threw down every towel I owned to soak up the water and called a plumber. People who answered the phones at the plumbing places assumed that my pipes were backed up and I needed a rooter, but I strongly suspected the pump because a couple years ago I had some water spillage when the pump was unplugged. Anyway, it took me a while to find a plumber who wasn't booked out several weeks, and finally got one who could come in a few days. In the meantime, with no way for the pump to handle waste water, I essentially had no plumbing. It was the weekend by the time I got ahold of a plumber and received a promise of someone coming the following week. Each morning I got up and threw on some clothes and drove to the public restrooms in downtown Lynden to use the toilet. I did not shower until the plumber had come and installed a new, functioning pump.

My niece, who cleaned house for me every other week, let me know a while later that the bedroom I use as a library smelled bad. I keep that room closed off when I'm not in it, so that my dog can't wander in there unsupervised. I got a name from a friend of someone to call to tear out the carpet, which I assumed had been dampened by the water, and while I was on the phone with him I went into the room to pace out how big it is, and I discovered that the carpet was more than damp, it was saturated. Blech. I had my sister-in-law and her grandkids come over to move furniture out of that room into my guest room so I could have the carpet out. They discovered that the carpet in my guest room was also saturated. My sister-in-law said that my laminate flooring was also bubbling and suggested I start an insurance claim. So I did.

One year

One year ago today, my father died. I still feel the shock of losing him. I still love him so much.

Today I drove to the Muddy Waters coffee stand in Lynden and bought a 16-ounce mocha. When my folks were still living, every Saturday I would go to Muddy Waters and get a 16-ounce latte with a package of raw sugar for Dad and a 16-ounce mocha (no whipped cream) for myself. Mom's order changed over the years from mocha to tea.



I had already stopped at Blossoms flower shop in Lynden and bought an African violet in a little pot. So I drove to Monumenta Cemetery, where the folks are buried. From Front Street, I turned in at the gate closest to their grave. From the road in the cemetery, I could see their stone. It has a plaque on the back commemorating Dad's service in the Air Force.



I parked as near as I could then took the violets and my mocha and went to their grave.



I stood before their grave while I drank my mocha. I told them they had been good parents to me. I thought about some of the Saturday visits with them. I stood just feeling my love for them. I said the Lord's Prayer. When I left, I quoted a few words from a hymn: "Till we meet at Jesus' feet, God be with you till we meet again."

I sat in the car and cried just a few tears. It's hard to have them gone. Death is such a strange thing. As I drove away, I sang the hymn, although I mis-remembered some of the words. I sang:

God be with you till we meet again,
In his arms securely hold you,
With his sheep securely fold you,
God be with you till we meet again.

Till we meet, till we meet,
Till we meet at Jesus' feet.
Till we meet, till we meet,
God be with you till we meet again.

Here's a more correct version: