Anticipation

If have ordered a new computer, but it will take about three weeks to arrive. Meanwhile, blogging from my Kindle is not as smooth as working with a keyboard. I just have to wait for better times.

Hair today

So I wimped out. The young lady who does my hair gave me a reminder call that I had an appointment Saturday morning, and that was enough to push me over the edge. After talking to my sister-in-law, I decided not to attend the Walk to Defeat ALS. Instead I got my hair done. It's a becoming shade of dark red now.

My computer crasheth

My PC seems to have given up the ghost. I'm doing this on my Kindle. I have to examine my bank account and determine my next move.

Year after year

Every September is the Walk to Defeat ALS in Bellingham. I've been there eight times now, and next weekend will be the ninth time, God willing. This year my immediate family did not set up our own team because, dreadfully, terribly, horribly, there is another family team we can join, that of my cousin who died of ALS last year.

Some years I have been the one to set up a team online at the ALS website. Always I do a moderate amount of fundraising. But this year I've been putting off even signing up at all. Every time I think about it, I feel an aversion, and I realize that the thought of it is depressing.

This evening, as I was walking my dog around the back yard, I wondered why I should find the idea of the Walk depressing, and the thought came into my head, Year after year I walk, but he's still dead.

He being my brother. I'm tired of my brother being dead. I've had enough of that.

The first time I participated in the Walk, in 2006, he was there.



He was there, but he had less than two months left to live. All the years since then, he's been gone.

2007



2008



2009



2010



2011



2012



2013



And, next week, 2014. Still gone.

I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. Someday we'll walk together, again, forever. (But the wait feels long.)

Crisp

Fall was in the air today, for which I was heartily thankful. Windy, with leaves blowing around. There's something wild and exciting about that. I did hear a rumor of hot weather again this weekend, but I hope it's not true.

The cool sequester'd vale

The long, hot summer drags on. Yesterday I was so hot! During the night I woke up feeling too warm to sleep, so on my cell phone I looked up Lynden weather. It said that Sunday was predicted to be much cooler than Saturday--yet the Sunday predicted high is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Saturday it was over 90! For my international readers who think in Celsius, that means that today it is going to be about 27 degrees and yesterday it was about 32 degrees. High humidity yesterday, too.

No wonder I felt crabby and irritable in the afternoon. Even my dog was getting on my nerves.

Right now on Sunday morning, it feels fairly pleasant indoors with the windows open. I am once again missing church. It's just so tempting to sleep in and have a slow, quiet Sunday morning by myself.

This is how I feel about almost every gathering except family:



I don't mind socializing at work, although even there I talk more to off-the-cuff knots of 3-4 people than at the full staff meeting. At church, I keep moving through the after-church coffee time, but I am happy to get together with my small group. And I like having extended brunch with one close friend, where we talk for hours. But I must say that I do love staying home alone and sometimes wish I could do it far more often, though I suspect it's a wholesome discipline for me to have to go out and interact with others.

My longing both for quiet and solitude and for cooler weather makes me realize why I so like these lines from Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

I want to keep the noiseless tenor of my way along the cool, sequestered vale of life, far from the madding crowd.

New possessions

There are two things I've bought lately that have pleased me very much.

A few weeks ago I ordered a silver bracelet from Monastery Greetings. It has the most famous saying of Julian of Norwich stamped on it:



"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." From the 13th revelation of the Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich:

But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said: It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

or:

Synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel and al shal be wel and all manner of thyng shal be wele.

I first encountered this saying in college, in a seminar on T.S. Eliot. In Little Gidding, one of his Four Quartets, he quotes it. I always liked the singing, round feel of it, as well as finding it a comforting saying.

For the past two years, almost, I've been looking for a renter for the upstairs of my house, so that I can continue to live here. In July, that was accomplished, so in August I bought myself this bracelet as a celebration.

The second new possession, which I just bought this week, is an oak sideboard for in my kitchen.



My kitchen has less than ample counter and cupboard space, so I was looking for such a piece of furniture. I searched the local craigslist under "buffet table," but realized from the search results that I needed to look for a "sideboard." One of the first things that came up was this beautiful oak sideboard.

I had received an oak table from my parents when they moved into their retirement home, and I felt that this sideboard would go with it perfectly. I wanted it so badly that I almost wanted to pray for it, but I didn't know if it would be right to pray for a material possession just because it is beautiful. Anyway, the Lord blessed me with the ability to buy it, and with dear family members who helped me move it into my house, and I love it.

So I hope I am not materialistic to love these things. Instead I will claim the rabbinic saying that God will hold us accountable for every good thing he provided that we did not enjoy.

Knitting up that old ravell'd sleave of care

Tonight I hope to sleep the night through and wake refreshed. Lately, I either don't fall asleep or fall asleep for a few hours then wake up for a few. It doesn't help that I can't resist turning on my phone and opening my Kindle to see if anyone in my family has written an e-mail or if any friend has either posted something on Facebook or "liked" a post of mine.

I got back out my light-thingy, as the technical jargon goes, to help regularize my sleep schedule.



After I came back from my travels in April, I had favorable jet lag, and then the days started getting wonderfully long and the mornings beautifully light. Now the sun does not come up quite as early, and it's been a long time since I travelled into an earlier time zone, so I need to train myself to wake up again with this light.

It has a timer so that the light turns on after my alarm (aka my cell phone) rings. I see that and think, "Oh, good, now I can wake up," then my eyes roll up in my head and I start snoring. Fortunately I have a small furry backup alarm that sticks its nose in my face and perhaps even gives me a hearty kiss. Being woken by a kiss makes me just like Sleeping Beauty.

Anyway, I am mostly getting up on time, but I want to get up more easily and feel less tired during the day, so I'm trying to train my body to sleep for 8 or more hours a night. Here I go.

Mowed the lawn

That always gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Ordinary time

In the past two weeks, I've had beloved visitors, first my brother then my sister and her husband. I've been relaxing and enjoying the family time.



Yesterday, my sister and her husband left, bringing a close to the family visits for a while--of family out of town that is; the nearby family is still get-at-able. Now the festive season is over, and I return to ordinary time. Fortunately--or I should say providentially--my ordinary life is one that I enjoy.



Today I went back to work. A good number of my co-workers are on vacation, so it was a relatively quiet day, a good day to clear paperwork off my desk. Over the next few days, co-workers will return, and soon work will be busy. That's good, too.

So I guess I have many blessings to count.

All living things are messy

A cousin of mine put up a quote on Facebook by someone named William Leal: "It's all messy. The hair. The bed. The words. The heart. Life..."  It reminded me of something I used to say to myself at a certain stage in life, which was, "All living things are messy." If you have living plants in your house instead of fake ones, the pots will leak when you water the plants and ruin rugs and wood finishes. If you have a dog or cat instead of a stuffed animal, the dog or cat will pee on the carpet, poo on the floor, vomit on the upholstery, and shed their hair on every surface in the house. (Also, I can testify, smear their nose on every window in your car.) Babies are messier than dolls. You and I are messy. We do all the same things dogs and babies do, albeit in a more contained fashion. (Okay, maybe we don't smear our noses on the car windows.) So, if we are going to have any living things in our lives--plants, animals, friends, family--we will always have messes. And if we are alive, we will be messy.

And so to bed

Today I mowed the lawn.

I was going to write more about my day, and although the events were mundane, the writing would have been light and amusing, even witty. Take my word for it.

But I'm kind of tired, so forget it. Instead, good-night.

Rain and Wind

I guess I was so tired the last time I posted that I took a 2-week break. We had a lengthy spell (several weeks) of hot weather (hot for Northwest Washington), but today we're getting well soaked with rain. That'll green up the lawn again.

My dad seems to be doing fine with his pacemaker.

I'm having good developments in my own life, but some of my friends and relatives are facing challenges. I have lots of reasons to pray for lots of people. I told one of them last Saturday night we should remember that when we don't know what to pray for the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. Then the next day I went to church, and here was the text:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

The preacher pointed out that the text does not assume that most of the time we do know what to pray for but on those occasions when we don't the Holy Spirit intercedes for us; rather, it says simply, "We do not know what we ought to pray for." That's our state of being. And all the time the Spirit intercedes.

He also pointed out the Trinity in this passage: God the Father is listening to our prayers, God the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us in accordance with God's own will, and God the Son, Jesus Christ, is "he who searches our heart" (cross reference Revelation 2:3: "I am he who searches hearts and minds"). The preacher suggested much of our praying should be listening for the Spirit to teach us the will of God so that we can pray for it. Also, that God chooses to act through the prayers of his saints -- thus we are his partners in accomplishing his will.

Good stuff.

Courage

Sooooooooooooooooooo tired. Saturday took my dad to the emergency room, and yesterday he had a pacemaker implanted to regulate his heartbeat. Today he came home. I've been spending a lot of time away from home, either at the hospital or with my mom at my folks' place. My sister-in-law (my hero) is still with my parents tonight.

I can remember an era when my bedtime was 8:30 p.m. I'm going to revisit that scene.

Happy Fourth

This evening I had a very relaxed, low-key celebration of the USA's Independence Day. My dad and mom came over, and so did my sister-in-law, and I made dinner: spaghetti, salad, warm French bread with butter. The spaghetti sauce was Prego traditional; I browned some mild Italian sausage meat to put in it. The French bread I simply buttered generously, wrapped in foil, and warmed up in the oven. My sister-in-law can't digest garlic, so I didn't make it garlic bread. The salad was a pre-made green salad, and I put out some different dressings, some croutons, and some sunflower seeds to put on it. For dessert, we had vanilla ice cream with raspberries and blueberries on it, to strike the red, white, and blue note. (I added chocolate syrup to mine, which has no symbolic significance. I just like chocolate.) The berries were local and in-season. The ice cream was from a local dairy business, Edaleen. My dad likes their ice cream the best, and he ought to know because he grew up on a dairy farm.

I had bought a nice Chianti to go with the spaghetti. While I was opening the bottle, I broke the cork, so that half was still left in the neck of the bottle. I went back in with the corkscrew, and when I managed to pull the remaining cork out, some wine splooshed out of the bottle, with some drops going on the floor and a few on my shirt. While sitting at the table, I at one point dipped my sleeve into the sauce on my plate. And during dessert, as I discovered afterward, I dribbled some chocolate on the neckline of my shirt and even inside my shirt on my bra. So, basically a typical meal for me.

My shirt and bra are in the washing machine even now.

Now it's later in the evening, and fireworks are popping all over the neighborhood. My dog, who is utterly neurotic about some things -- such as being left alone -- has no response at all to the booms and bangs. He is sleeping quietly.

Flowers, saint

I put two pots of New Guinea impatiens behind Saint Francis.



I think it looks nice.

Bob, bob, bobbin'

Two robins on the lawn.



That's all.

Requesting quiet

This afternoon I went to the grocery store (Food Pavilion) and while I was shopping I noticed that the piped-in store music was instrumental and melodic, older tunes that I recognized but that were from my parents' era, sort of big-bandish. It was almost like Muzak, the store music of my youth. I liked it.

There are times when I'm in a grocery store and the music is so pounding that I think, Please. We're rocking out a bit too much, here.

Coincidentally, I recently read an article about supermarket music that linked to a much longer article by Mark Steyn about Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. It contains this paragraph:

But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine. To the pre-Bloom generation, it’s very weird—though, as he notes, “It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.” Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score.

I don't like loudness in general. I dislike it in restaurants when music plays so loudly that you have to bellow at the friends with whom you dine. It's not just loud music; I like less noise in general. I commute about half and hour each direction to work, and I generally don't turn on the radio. Even audio recordings of books get on my nerves after a while--this voice going on and on.

So I guess my attitude toward background music is: If you must have it, then let it be as unintrusive as possible.

Breather

This evening I planted some things. First, three snapdragons by the mailbox post.



I saw these at Rite-Aid a  couple days ago, and they were such a beautiful glowing red color I couldn't resist. Some of them were flopping over, but I chose the three most upright ones there.

Then, two yellow rudbeckia.



My sister-in-law has some flowers much like this that she calls "brown-eyed Betty." I'm not sure mine are exactly the same, but they're close.

Next, I planted this purple salvia splendens.



I chose this one for its intense color, too.

All those were near the mailbox. Next, alongside the east side of the house, I planted two ornamental grass clumps of a kind called "sedge."





They were super-duper root-bound, so I hope they settle in okay. I tried to "stimulate" the roots (i.e., tear them loose) before I planted them, but they were really packed.

Finally, I planted five "woolly" sage plants by the guest room window.



In the spring, I had a big bush torn out of that place. It was a pretty bush, but I didn't want the window completely covered up, which it was doing.

Tomorrow I have guests coming, including my elderly parents, who both walk with canes, so I want to trim these bushes that are making the steps into an obstacle course.



However, I needed a break, so I came inside, drank lots of water, and edited these pictures, looked at Facebook, and so on until now it's too dark to work outside, so I'll have to do the trimming tomorrow. Meanwhile, there are plenty of tasks inside that I can do, most notably loading the dishwasher full of the dishes that are currently crowding my counter and sink. The wonderful thing about my home (dis)organization is that if you ever want to do housework, there are always plenty of jobs ready to do.

Tricky

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But sometimes they invent goofy ones. By doing lots of mental arithmetic (at which I stink), I've estimated that my dog may very well be 10 years old. Incredible!

[Reminds me of a Jeeves/Wodehouse snippet:

"Incredulous!" I said.

"I believe you mean 'incredible,' sir," said Jeeves.

Or something like that.]*

Anyway, my dog has, thus late in life, developed a taste for tissue. Bathroom tissue. Facial tissue. Or, for something with a bit more roughage, paper towels and napkins. It started when he used to chew up such items when they were infused with food, oil, or nameless substances, but now he doesn't care whether the paper is flavored or plain, he just likes to chew on it and ingest shreds of it (evidence of which he later presents while we're on our walks).

But here's the tricky part. He attempts, sometimes successfully, to pull kleenex out of the box. And he has learned to unroll toilet paper. I may be sitting in the living room or kitchen, and I'll hear him nosing around down the hallway, and when I walk there I find a long strip of toilet paper extending from the spindle in the bathroom across the hall into the library or my bedroom.

On the one hand, for a dog, it takes some intelligence to figure out how to pull tissues from the pop-up box and unroll toilet paper from the hanger. On the other hand, both are darn silly behaviors, consistent with a certain level of stupidity.

Smart or stupid? You decide.

*