I was thinking today about the WT and King David's response to Absalom's death. Of course, Faulkner used that idea of son rising against father as the title for his book "Absalom Absalom" about the Sutpen family in what is considered his greatest southern gothic work.
I have not read that or much else by Faulkner. It just didn't come up in my coursework, and big surprise, I did nearly all my coursework on women writers when I could.
Women just interest me more from a literary standpoint.
So, I was thinking about David losing the child he made with Bathsheba and his grief over that (but that was his fault) compared to Absalom (who plotted rebellion against the anointed of Jehovah). Big difference, that, but here is another: David didn't know the baby he lost; he did know the man.
Two weeks ago the WT was about Jehovah being the most important person in our lives. For David, that is all that got him through losing Absalom. Trusting in Jehovah. Psychologists say that losing a child is the #1 most stressful experience a human can go through.
I do have to say that hanging from tree branches by your hair sounds pretty undignified. Absalom got to see his death come to meet him. Another lesson: don't plot rebellions against parents or Jehovah's chosen ones.
Here's the best thing I learned today. Our WT conductor was talking about the paragraph on meeting attendance and one of the anointed told his brother, at Bethel, that there were only three good reasons to ever miss a meeting.
1. You are as sick as Job.
2. You are as old as Methuselah.
3. You are as wise as Solomon.
Thank Jehovah I got my sleepy butt out of the bed this morning and was even on time!
Time to get back in it. Long day grading, but there is daylight coming at the end of this tunnel.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Sanibel Island
The comforter I bought for $22 at Target is too hot right now. So I went looking for another quilt and there it was at TJ Maxx. It's called Sanibel Island. There was only one sham to match though on clearance. So I bought it in case I find another in Altoona or Greensburg, et al.
Other than that, a busy day of just getting my ducks in a row. That's what grading is like when a session ends. WT time, and then meeting in the morning, then right back at it.
Sorry I'm not better company this weekend. Carly and I walked into a restaurant today and the windows were very dirty. I looked at her and said, "Boy, they need Tim up here." Tim is Rene's husband in Arkansas, a brother who will figure prominently in a couple of my stories when I get time to tell you. At any rate, our favorite line from that faux "you might be a redneck" Foxworthy routine that goes "you might be a JW if you..." is the one about "you might be a JW if you wash windows for a living but you own seven suits."
The world is a lot cleaner where we are.
Other than that, a busy day of just getting my ducks in a row. That's what grading is like when a session ends. WT time, and then meeting in the morning, then right back at it.
Sorry I'm not better company this weekend. Carly and I walked into a restaurant today and the windows were very dirty. I looked at her and said, "Boy, they need Tim up here." Tim is Rene's husband in Arkansas, a brother who will figure prominently in a couple of my stories when I get time to tell you. At any rate, our favorite line from that faux "you might be a redneck" Foxworthy routine that goes "you might be a JW if you..." is the one about "you might be a JW if you wash windows for a living but you own seven suits."
The world is a lot cleaner where we are.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Have a Supersonic Day!
Made it to Pitt. Feeling pretty good about life. I've been so overwhelmed sometimes since moving here that I didn't recognize myself. I think I see me now.
Went through Greensburg on the way home - zipped through Sam's, swooped through Target, and had a $20 groupon for Old Navy who had all their good t-shirts on sale for $4.00 (yes, from $10.96 to $24.96). A good time was had by me all alone, jamming home with the radio blasting.
Came home only to be reminded I am the only person with the manual dexterity to load the toilet paper on the spindle and then align the spindle in the holder. I am also the only person here who can fold laundry. While I knew that, I did not know that anyone was fool enough to take the clothes out of the dryer so the next load could be ran without noticing the clothes coming out were still damp.
I am not going to comment further on these issues. Not tonight. Too tired. Got a white shirt with black polka dots to go with my $2.00 Gabriel Brother's shoes. Went to Sonic coming and going. Had two vanilla Coke Zeroes today - even the caffeine is wearing out on me now. The sun was out and I got a good look at my gray in the rear view mirror a couple of times, which combined with my fatigue leaves me with only one spiritual thought tonight: I won't mind getting younger in the new world after all this getting older in the old one.
The second time I drove through Sonic, the server told me to have a Supersonic Day!
Went through Greensburg on the way home - zipped through Sam's, swooped through Target, and had a $20 groupon for Old Navy who had all their good t-shirts on sale for $4.00 (yes, from $10.96 to $24.96). A good time was had by me all alone, jamming home with the radio blasting.
Came home only to be reminded I am the only person with the manual dexterity to load the toilet paper on the spindle and then align the spindle in the holder. I am also the only person here who can fold laundry. While I knew that, I did not know that anyone was fool enough to take the clothes out of the dryer so the next load could be ran without noticing the clothes coming out were still damp.
I am not going to comment further on these issues. Not tonight. Too tired. Got a white shirt with black polka dots to go with my $2.00 Gabriel Brother's shoes. Went to Sonic coming and going. Had two vanilla Coke Zeroes today - even the caffeine is wearing out on me now. The sun was out and I got a good look at my gray in the rear view mirror a couple of times, which combined with my fatigue leaves me with only one spiritual thought tonight: I won't mind getting younger in the new world after all this getting older in the old one.
The second time I drove through Sonic, the server told me to have a Supersonic Day!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Complicated
Tonight we are in a thunder storm which should cool things off, all the rain, but will probably turn it into a steam bath tomorrow, a regular Pennsylvanian sauna.
I missed the meeting tonight. It's the first one I've missed since the DC. Not over the weather either.
Tomorrow I have to go to Pittsburgh over my job. The main campus calls. And it's payday and I have things to do. And this morning, the man needed someone to take him to the doctor.
I call him the man, David, the girls' father, never call him the baby daddy (too slangy) and also hardly ever my ex. Ex is a stupid way to talk about people. He may be my former husband, but I still had babies with him. I have known him 30 years.
In all that time he has never voluntarily gone to a doctor. I called and they said head for the ER.
We did. Good thing I went, because he had two doses of morphine and one of dilaudid and could not drive himself home. We were only there 3.5 hours, which for an ER is something like record timing in my experience.
He is passing a kidney stone, and the doctor said it's like cutting off your arm. Kind of funny because the girls were watching that movie 127 Hours and I watched parts of it, and cutting off your arm looked worse.
But this was pretty bad. I had never seen him in pain like that and it hurt me. Because he has never been sick or asked to go to a doctor, and then he complacently agreed to the ER, I was scared he was going to die. Seriously, this is probably more than you want to know, but my bowels evacuated before we could leave I was so shook up.
They thought it might be his appendix. So they had to do tests. He is better tonight and we are taking care of him. Maybe it is not my place to do so, but he has no one else, and I'm not going to leave him with no help. He moved to Arkansas from Oklahoma, away from all his family, when I was accepted at the University of Arkansas. He came to Pennsylvania, 1100 more miles, because he thought the girls would make lives here, and he wanted to be where they were He helped us move.
Neither one of us has parents or siblings to help us out on anything. Once, a brother in Arkansas was interested in me but he told my best friend that he thought I still loved my ex and he was not getting drawn into some complicated mess.
He may have been right. All I could think of today was I'd be the one to have to call what disinterested family he has back in Oklahoma, that I would be the one to make arrangements, that I would have to tell my girls what happened to their father. I am so relieved it was a kidney stone, even if it felt like his arm was chopped off.
If loving someone means you want them to have their life, and you do not want them to be suffering or in pain, and you want your children to be part of that life, then I still love him. I'm glad he is now resting comfortably. I am sorry I missed the meeting, but I think I did right by this man tonight, knowing there were times when I was married to him that I did not do right by him. There is no perfect marriage because there are no perfect people to join in marriage.
This is what I do not understand about my mother, or sometimes even my sisters at the hall. How can we call ourselves members of a worldwide organization of united brotherhood, of bearing the fruitage of Holy Spirit, if we treat each other unkindly? I would have taken a stranger to the ER if it became necessary. I would never leave this man stranded no matter how many times he did not do right by me either. It's complicated, but I've known him nearly 30 years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my mother.
And I'm just glad tonight that he is okay.
I missed the meeting tonight. It's the first one I've missed since the DC. Not over the weather either.
Tomorrow I have to go to Pittsburgh over my job. The main campus calls. And it's payday and I have things to do. And this morning, the man needed someone to take him to the doctor.
I call him the man, David, the girls' father, never call him the baby daddy (too slangy) and also hardly ever my ex. Ex is a stupid way to talk about people. He may be my former husband, but I still had babies with him. I have known him 30 years.
In all that time he has never voluntarily gone to a doctor. I called and they said head for the ER.
We did. Good thing I went, because he had two doses of morphine and one of dilaudid and could not drive himself home. We were only there 3.5 hours, which for an ER is something like record timing in my experience.
He is passing a kidney stone, and the doctor said it's like cutting off your arm. Kind of funny because the girls were watching that movie 127 Hours and I watched parts of it, and cutting off your arm looked worse.
But this was pretty bad. I had never seen him in pain like that and it hurt me. Because he has never been sick or asked to go to a doctor, and then he complacently agreed to the ER, I was scared he was going to die. Seriously, this is probably more than you want to know, but my bowels evacuated before we could leave I was so shook up.
They thought it might be his appendix. So they had to do tests. He is better tonight and we are taking care of him. Maybe it is not my place to do so, but he has no one else, and I'm not going to leave him with no help. He moved to Arkansas from Oklahoma, away from all his family, when I was accepted at the University of Arkansas. He came to Pennsylvania, 1100 more miles, because he thought the girls would make lives here, and he wanted to be where they were He helped us move.
Neither one of us has parents or siblings to help us out on anything. Once, a brother in Arkansas was interested in me but he told my best friend that he thought I still loved my ex and he was not getting drawn into some complicated mess.
He may have been right. All I could think of today was I'd be the one to have to call what disinterested family he has back in Oklahoma, that I would be the one to make arrangements, that I would have to tell my girls what happened to their father. I am so relieved it was a kidney stone, even if it felt like his arm was chopped off.
If loving someone means you want them to have their life, and you do not want them to be suffering or in pain, and you want your children to be part of that life, then I still love him. I'm glad he is now resting comfortably. I am sorry I missed the meeting, but I think I did right by this man tonight, knowing there were times when I was married to him that I did not do right by him. There is no perfect marriage because there are no perfect people to join in marriage.
This is what I do not understand about my mother, or sometimes even my sisters at the hall. How can we call ourselves members of a worldwide organization of united brotherhood, of bearing the fruitage of Holy Spirit, if we treat each other unkindly? I would have taken a stranger to the ER if it became necessary. I would never leave this man stranded no matter how many times he did not do right by me either. It's complicated, but I've known him nearly 30 years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my mother.
And I'm just glad tonight that he is okay.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
School Daze
Summer school is officially over. I'm so glad. I'm ready for a month off. It won't feel like that long because I have to prep my fall classes and I have to finish grading for this term, and so it's already whittled down to three weeks. And I'm having a garage sale . . .
The lovely university decided in an effort to cut costs to program the AC to turn off at 5:00 p.m. My night class (Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:00 to 9:30) was roasting every evening by about 7:00. I would stick it out till 7:30 mostly and let them do their workshopping or "in-class" writing out of class. Go home, put on pjs, turn up fan, do work then.
Tonight they came to my house for dinner. I had a bunch of corned beef brisket in the freezer (five, all point cut) and I put them in my big roaster. I made a pasta dish, a cucumber salad, pico de gallo and chips, 40 egg rolls, deviled eggs, rice Krispy treats in six flavors, another dessert made by putting Rolos on top of those little waffle looking pretzels in a 250 degree oven for four minutes then squishing a walnut down on top and making the warmed up caramel ooze out and make it all "stick" and yes, Carly looked at me last night and said really, you should be able to buy Rolos without wrappers, very tedious. Carly made macaroni and cheese and four loaves of beer bread (made with Rolling Rock) and a student brought a cake, another brought a big giant gob which is a Pennsylvania thing and ribs, and another student brought a chocolate cheesecake. It was a nice buffet.
One of my students is named Renea. She writes like a dream. She has five children ages 2-12. They are Ryan, Cheyenne, Ashley, Donald, and Katie. Her husband Mike came with her. I told her it was okay. They were adorable kids.
I was really taken with all of them. I had seen the baby before. Usually I am into the girls, and this was no different, but I liked her two boys a lot too. Ryan was hanging out with the adults. You know that age when the kids don't want to run around sugared up but would rather fringe around the adults and listen in on their conversations - he is right there on that cusp. A good looking young man.
The baby had a tow headed blonde ponytail and she finally warmed up and was running laps around my island all sugared up on strawberry rice Krispy treats. Donald had on a green shirt, and he was just a little mess. He just had a little sparkle about him. He was five but very tall. I thought he must be seven at first. He spotted the dogs' toy box and promptly went through it. The Chihuahuas have a rubber tarantula and two stuffed snakes (very small) from Ikea. I don't mind toy snakes, haha. Well, some of them are not good. These look like cartoon snakes. Not very realistic.
So Donald has the first one in his hand and he doesn't know I'm watching him and he turns it over and over checking it out, really studying the thing. All these college kids eating and talking and he is just amusing himself and giving in to his curiousity.
And I don't want you to take this wrong, but I love this boy's mother. It isn't like sisters or daughters or friends. But as a teacher, I have students I love. I have cried twice this semester reading Renea's essays. She moves me. She is good, and she works so hard. But it isn't that I love her because she is talented. I have other students who write well and I don't always even like them. Some of them are brats. But I have a handful of students that are wonderful.
Renea is one of those. I was looking at her kids and her husband, big dimpled guy going thin on top, and I thought oh Jehovah, let me find a way to witness to her. Let her like what I say. She wrote an essay about losing her dad. Let me tell her how she can see him again. Let her come into the truth and see these five wonderful babies live forever.
I'm so tired tonight. I'm getting too old to cook all day and clean all night and then write about it. I think most of the time that the new world, well, like a bad country song, if you're waiting on me you're backing up. I think I'm ready but I also make progress on some of my problems and I think well, you ain't as good as you thought you were. But I want a little more time in this system. I want to try to talk to Renea. I want my girls to get motivated. I want that little boy with the aspirin bottle full of dimes to live.
I do not want to regret that I didn't try harder to talk to someone about God's kingdom. I don't want to think about Renea telling me she's Catholic and get lost or something like that. I don't think she is from what I have observed, but with five kids, she might be. However, she is going to college to become an elementary school teacher because she likes little kids. But imagine the suffering if she doesn't get life, and her children don't get it along with her, because I didn't try.
So when I return her final portfolio, there will be a Bible teach book coming her way, and a YPA and a Bible Stories book.
We'll see. Jehovah wants me to try. I know, because Jehovah loves to give life. He is so generous with the gift of life. I think Renea would appreciate that with five kids. I want her to have her life forever. Wouldn't that be cool, to talk about how she came into the truth a million years from now?
In the meantime, I am tired. And I still have one more run of the dishwasher. Whew.
The lovely university decided in an effort to cut costs to program the AC to turn off at 5:00 p.m. My night class (Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:00 to 9:30) was roasting every evening by about 7:00. I would stick it out till 7:30 mostly and let them do their workshopping or "in-class" writing out of class. Go home, put on pjs, turn up fan, do work then.
Tonight they came to my house for dinner. I had a bunch of corned beef brisket in the freezer (five, all point cut) and I put them in my big roaster. I made a pasta dish, a cucumber salad, pico de gallo and chips, 40 egg rolls, deviled eggs, rice Krispy treats in six flavors, another dessert made by putting Rolos on top of those little waffle looking pretzels in a 250 degree oven for four minutes then squishing a walnut down on top and making the warmed up caramel ooze out and make it all "stick" and yes, Carly looked at me last night and said really, you should be able to buy Rolos without wrappers, very tedious. Carly made macaroni and cheese and four loaves of beer bread (made with Rolling Rock) and a student brought a cake, another brought a big giant gob which is a Pennsylvania thing and ribs, and another student brought a chocolate cheesecake. It was a nice buffet.
One of my students is named Renea. She writes like a dream. She has five children ages 2-12. They are Ryan, Cheyenne, Ashley, Donald, and Katie. Her husband Mike came with her. I told her it was okay. They were adorable kids.
I was really taken with all of them. I had seen the baby before. Usually I am into the girls, and this was no different, but I liked her two boys a lot too. Ryan was hanging out with the adults. You know that age when the kids don't want to run around sugared up but would rather fringe around the adults and listen in on their conversations - he is right there on that cusp. A good looking young man.
The baby had a tow headed blonde ponytail and she finally warmed up and was running laps around my island all sugared up on strawberry rice Krispy treats. Donald had on a green shirt, and he was just a little mess. He just had a little sparkle about him. He was five but very tall. I thought he must be seven at first. He spotted the dogs' toy box and promptly went through it. The Chihuahuas have a rubber tarantula and two stuffed snakes (very small) from Ikea. I don't mind toy snakes, haha. Well, some of them are not good. These look like cartoon snakes. Not very realistic.
So Donald has the first one in his hand and he doesn't know I'm watching him and he turns it over and over checking it out, really studying the thing. All these college kids eating and talking and he is just amusing himself and giving in to his curiousity.
And I don't want you to take this wrong, but I love this boy's mother. It isn't like sisters or daughters or friends. But as a teacher, I have students I love. I have cried twice this semester reading Renea's essays. She moves me. She is good, and she works so hard. But it isn't that I love her because she is talented. I have other students who write well and I don't always even like them. Some of them are brats. But I have a handful of students that are wonderful.
Renea is one of those. I was looking at her kids and her husband, big dimpled guy going thin on top, and I thought oh Jehovah, let me find a way to witness to her. Let her like what I say. She wrote an essay about losing her dad. Let me tell her how she can see him again. Let her come into the truth and see these five wonderful babies live forever.
I'm so tired tonight. I'm getting too old to cook all day and clean all night and then write about it. I think most of the time that the new world, well, like a bad country song, if you're waiting on me you're backing up. I think I'm ready but I also make progress on some of my problems and I think well, you ain't as good as you thought you were. But I want a little more time in this system. I want to try to talk to Renea. I want my girls to get motivated. I want that little boy with the aspirin bottle full of dimes to live.
I do not want to regret that I didn't try harder to talk to someone about God's kingdom. I don't want to think about Renea telling me she's Catholic and get lost or something like that. I don't think she is from what I have observed, but with five kids, she might be. However, she is going to college to become an elementary school teacher because she likes little kids. But imagine the suffering if she doesn't get life, and her children don't get it along with her, because I didn't try.
So when I return her final portfolio, there will be a Bible teach book coming her way, and a YPA and a Bible Stories book.
We'll see. Jehovah wants me to try. I know, because Jehovah loves to give life. He is so generous with the gift of life. I think Renea would appreciate that with five kids. I want her to have her life forever. Wouldn't that be cool, to talk about how she came into the truth a million years from now?
In the meantime, I am tired. And I still have one more run of the dishwasher. Whew.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Deviled Eggs
I've no idea, really, why we call foods deviled eggs or devil's food cake. Why does he get anything good? I think we should call rotten meat devil's food. Angel food cake at least makes sense. For some reason I always thought manna was probably very close to chunks of angel food cake with maybe some honey sauce.
I made deviled eggs tonight. My recipe is simple, and the best ever. Mix the yolks with Hidden Valley Cole Slaw dressing and nothing else. Use your mixer to make it smooth. Can't be beat.
I also made rice krispy treats with coconut marshmallows. And another batch with strawberry marshmallows. It's pretty cool.
We moved to Pennsylvania in August 2008. In August 2009 we went back for a visit. For that whole year, Loretta did not have chocolate pie and her husband Scott did not have coconut. So, I made them in her kitchen and she learned to do it with me. Everything went fine till we got ready to beat the egg whites.
Loretta did not have a mixer. Well, she had one, and we found two beaters, but they did not match and neither one of them fit the mixer.
I made meringue beating egg whites by hand.
In September, I finally got circulation back in that wrist.
I did not kill Loretta.
I've been thinking all day about sisters and trying to decide what is the best thing I've done for one of mine. That comes pretty close.
In July of 2009, before we went to Arkansas for our only so far visit back home, I was in JCPenney's and found a purse for Beverly, a sister here. It's hard to buy purses for someone if you do not know what you are doing. I can't say for sure that I could get it right for my daughters or them for me, although Carly got a 75% off bag at Target last week that we nearly fought over. She got it, of course. So Beverly had specified what she likes about this or that pocket, and there it was in the mall for half price. It just so happened that I had gotten paid for summer teaching and could afford it.
I gave it to her. She carried it till it wore out. A month after, we went back home to visit. We detoured from Arkansas to go see my mother in Oklahoma.
My mother likes purses and shoes. She likes things. Once she showed us a belt that was $300 and she said she saw it on Dr. Phil's wife and she just had to have it. It had never been worn. She has over 400 pairs of shoes, and she has an armoire that for most people would hold all their lingerie and maybe some t-shirts, but for her it is a jewelry box.
I am not kidding. I could sit here all day and detail just what I know is in her house. So, we got there and she goes into the "old" closet and brings out four purses and tells each one of us we can choose one of her purses she isn't using anymore. They are all two years old. Carly, with her eye for purses, says they each retailed for about 100-140 dollars each when new. Keep in mind that my mother has a "new" closet full of Dooney & Bourke and Coach, and she considers the brand Tiganello okay for everyday.
So we did not get Coach, but she offered us something comparable to Tiganello. I thought all four of them were ugly, but you know how hard it is to pick out a purse for someone else. However, my mother never offers us anything in the way of gifts, charity, help, nothing. So I let the girls pick a purse and I took the least ugly of the other two just to say she gave me something.
She took my brother out for dinner the day before we got there, and she had to tell us all about the restaurant and what everyone ordered. It's comparable to TGIF or Applebee's. The name of it is Cheddar's and everyone got Monte Cristo sandwiches. So we go to meeting with her on Sunday morning and we come home afterwards and she makes bologna sandwiches for our lunch.
If she could only afford bologna, I would be fine. If she could only afford bread and water, I'd buy her lunch. But my step father left her very very comfortable when he died. She can now buy three Dr. Phil's wife's belt in one week if she wants.
It hurt my feelings that my daughters have to hear all this about their uncle and his dinner out and then we have sandwiches. Not even ham, just bologna.
By 8:00 p.m. that night she is throwing us out. She did that to me the time before when we visited and I ended up driving back to Fayetteville and arriving at 2:00 a.m. I'm getting old and that drive hurts me. I'm scared I'll fall asleep and kill my children, and how dare she put them at risk that way.
Here's what my last straw was. She went into the room the girls were sharing as we were packing to leave, and she took her purses back. Not only that, but she unceremoniously dumped their wallet and other stuff out of the purses onto the floor.
Carly says to her, "Go ahead. You know my mother just bought a purse for a sister in our congregation, and it didn't cost that much, but she treats us like a sister. You go to the Kingdom Hall and you don't treat us like your family and you don't even treat us like sisters. Jehovah is marking this day down."
Well, that made her even more mad. Evidently Kimberly was not moving fast enough on the way out, because at the top of the stairs leading to the den, about four stairs, she shoves Kimberly who thankfully didn't fall, and I didn't see it, out loading the car or I might have lost my temper. Throughout the whole event, I never lost my cool or yelled at her. But I can't say I would have held it through that.
So we ended up back in Arkansas two days early, which meant two extra nights in motels and eating out. Jehovah provided. My sisters in Arkansas seemed to invite us over enough to pick up the slack. Jennifer had us over and also did our laundry the whole trip. Loretta had us over, although I had to make dessert, so I'm not sure that counts! Thea took us out and so did Pepper. I'm probably leaving someone off the list. I got home with a $20 bill in my pocket and it was a long month. My mother had also told me she would pay for the gas from Arkansas to Oklahoma and back, but she did not fulfill that promise either, so I was down $80.
I know, I am whining in a way. But I got over it. Here's my problem. Well, I have a lot of problems. For one, that is her deviled egg recipe I just gave you and it's good, but I hate making them because I learned it from her. And I love the irony that she has the best deviled egg recipe ever. My other problem is that she treated my children with so much petty disdain. We are her daughter and granddaughters, the only ones she has. We are also her sisters.
I can't think of many situations in which I would dump my sister's purse out. Loretta's mother-in-law Sandy is a diabetic. There are some stories on her that are funny/scary. If she needed insulin in one of those situations, I would not hesitate to dump her purse out to find her medication.
Other than that, I'm drawing a blank. Sometime next month when I'm free of grading, I'm having some sisters over to introduce them to my coconut cream pie. I guess I'll make them deviled eggs too.
I made deviled eggs tonight. My recipe is simple, and the best ever. Mix the yolks with Hidden Valley Cole Slaw dressing and nothing else. Use your mixer to make it smooth. Can't be beat.
I also made rice krispy treats with coconut marshmallows. And another batch with strawberry marshmallows. It's pretty cool.
We moved to Pennsylvania in August 2008. In August 2009 we went back for a visit. For that whole year, Loretta did not have chocolate pie and her husband Scott did not have coconut. So, I made them in her kitchen and she learned to do it with me. Everything went fine till we got ready to beat the egg whites.
Loretta did not have a mixer. Well, she had one, and we found two beaters, but they did not match and neither one of them fit the mixer.
I made meringue beating egg whites by hand.
In September, I finally got circulation back in that wrist.
I did not kill Loretta.
I've been thinking all day about sisters and trying to decide what is the best thing I've done for one of mine. That comes pretty close.
In July of 2009, before we went to Arkansas for our only so far visit back home, I was in JCPenney's and found a purse for Beverly, a sister here. It's hard to buy purses for someone if you do not know what you are doing. I can't say for sure that I could get it right for my daughters or them for me, although Carly got a 75% off bag at Target last week that we nearly fought over. She got it, of course. So Beverly had specified what she likes about this or that pocket, and there it was in the mall for half price. It just so happened that I had gotten paid for summer teaching and could afford it.
I gave it to her. She carried it till it wore out. A month after, we went back home to visit. We detoured from Arkansas to go see my mother in Oklahoma.
My mother likes purses and shoes. She likes things. Once she showed us a belt that was $300 and she said she saw it on Dr. Phil's wife and she just had to have it. It had never been worn. She has over 400 pairs of shoes, and she has an armoire that for most people would hold all their lingerie and maybe some t-shirts, but for her it is a jewelry box.
I am not kidding. I could sit here all day and detail just what I know is in her house. So, we got there and she goes into the "old" closet and brings out four purses and tells each one of us we can choose one of her purses she isn't using anymore. They are all two years old. Carly, with her eye for purses, says they each retailed for about 100-140 dollars each when new. Keep in mind that my mother has a "new" closet full of Dooney & Bourke and Coach, and she considers the brand Tiganello okay for everyday.
So we did not get Coach, but she offered us something comparable to Tiganello. I thought all four of them were ugly, but you know how hard it is to pick out a purse for someone else. However, my mother never offers us anything in the way of gifts, charity, help, nothing. So I let the girls pick a purse and I took the least ugly of the other two just to say she gave me something.
She took my brother out for dinner the day before we got there, and she had to tell us all about the restaurant and what everyone ordered. It's comparable to TGIF or Applebee's. The name of it is Cheddar's and everyone got Monte Cristo sandwiches. So we go to meeting with her on Sunday morning and we come home afterwards and she makes bologna sandwiches for our lunch.
If she could only afford bologna, I would be fine. If she could only afford bread and water, I'd buy her lunch. But my step father left her very very comfortable when he died. She can now buy three Dr. Phil's wife's belt in one week if she wants.
It hurt my feelings that my daughters have to hear all this about their uncle and his dinner out and then we have sandwiches. Not even ham, just bologna.
By 8:00 p.m. that night she is throwing us out. She did that to me the time before when we visited and I ended up driving back to Fayetteville and arriving at 2:00 a.m. I'm getting old and that drive hurts me. I'm scared I'll fall asleep and kill my children, and how dare she put them at risk that way.
Here's what my last straw was. She went into the room the girls were sharing as we were packing to leave, and she took her purses back. Not only that, but she unceremoniously dumped their wallet and other stuff out of the purses onto the floor.
Carly says to her, "Go ahead. You know my mother just bought a purse for a sister in our congregation, and it didn't cost that much, but she treats us like a sister. You go to the Kingdom Hall and you don't treat us like your family and you don't even treat us like sisters. Jehovah is marking this day down."
Well, that made her even more mad. Evidently Kimberly was not moving fast enough on the way out, because at the top of the stairs leading to the den, about four stairs, she shoves Kimberly who thankfully didn't fall, and I didn't see it, out loading the car or I might have lost my temper. Throughout the whole event, I never lost my cool or yelled at her. But I can't say I would have held it through that.
So we ended up back in Arkansas two days early, which meant two extra nights in motels and eating out. Jehovah provided. My sisters in Arkansas seemed to invite us over enough to pick up the slack. Jennifer had us over and also did our laundry the whole trip. Loretta had us over, although I had to make dessert, so I'm not sure that counts! Thea took us out and so did Pepper. I'm probably leaving someone off the list. I got home with a $20 bill in my pocket and it was a long month. My mother had also told me she would pay for the gas from Arkansas to Oklahoma and back, but she did not fulfill that promise either, so I was down $80.
I know, I am whining in a way. But I got over it. Here's my problem. Well, I have a lot of problems. For one, that is her deviled egg recipe I just gave you and it's good, but I hate making them because I learned it from her. And I love the irony that she has the best deviled egg recipe ever. My other problem is that she treated my children with so much petty disdain. We are her daughter and granddaughters, the only ones she has. We are also her sisters.
I can't think of many situations in which I would dump my sister's purse out. Loretta's mother-in-law Sandy is a diabetic. There are some stories on her that are funny/scary. If she needed insulin in one of those situations, I would not hesitate to dump her purse out to find her medication.
Other than that, I'm drawing a blank. Sometime next month when I'm free of grading, I'm having some sisters over to introduce them to my coconut cream pie. I guess I'll make them deviled eggs too.
Different Flowers
I discovered in all that cleaning and redoing that after two years with a quilt and now having a comforter, that a comforter is much warmer than a light quilt. Why do I figure this out in the dog days of summer? Other than that, I like the new colors a lot. I really don't understand how someone has the same thing for 30 years. Having said that, I don't "redecorate" to big expense every few months. I just rearrange. I may put a few new prints in the same quality frames. Carly and I did some bargaining - she went a little more green and me a little more blue, so we traded some accessories. And those accessories were all 75% off at Target to begin with.
But in letting go of the purple and green theme, I discovered that I had a little picture frame that was purple and green with a photo of the girls, and it went into my closet by the Barbie dolls. I am not giving it up. For one thing, it is near impossible to find green and purple together accessories. I found purple, and I found green, but not both, not very often.
The frame says: Sisters are different flowers from the same garden.
A sister in Arkansas, Heather, is a pansy. She loves them. When the post office issued pansy stamps last year I had to send her a card just to use one of them on the envelope. Kim likes roses. I wish she didn't. My mother's favorite flowers are yellow roses. I promised her husband I would send her yellow roses on their anniversary every year after he died and now I don't do it. We went to visit her a few months later and she threw us out of her house, literally, and I can't do it even for him. So I wish that Kim liked something else, but that is not based on the flower, but my experience with them. Life is stupid a lot.
Carly likes poppies even though they are red. Red is not her favorite color. She's into greens and blues. Purple and black. For years, my favorite flowers were tulips. I want to like peonies. I love the white and green of a row of them. When my parents bought their first (and only) house together when I was 12, my mother planted a row of white peonies in the front yard by the porch. They were so pretty! I had never heard of peonies before that. It is one of very few peaceful memories I have of my mother, and for that reason I want to blame the peonies and not like them either.
Imagine getting all the sisters in the world together and then dividing them into sections based on their favorite flower. What on earth for? It might be interesting to see who you ended up sitting by, but it is still a crazy idea. But we divide people up by how much money they have, and what color skin they have, and hair and eyes, and education and height and brains and looks.
No, we don't do that in our organization. But the world does, and it rubs off on us sometimes. Here's an example. Let's use the metaphor of walking down a hallway full of doors to figure out who we are, how we see ourselves and thus those around us. There are big doors that lead to smaller and smaller doors until I could end up in a room with fat redheaded girls well versed in poetry who liked tulips and spoke English.
The hallway always starts with the big doors: race, gender, class. The question is in which order do we go through the doors? I always go through the gender door. I always see the world in those terms, female, not male. Oprah does not go through the woman door first. She goes through the black door. She identifies herself first as black, and second as female. She thinks she has more in common with black males than white women. She may be right. It isn't for me to decide. I wish we all just sorted ourselves through the HUMAN door.
Carly was watching a John Grisham movie this weekend starring Matthew McConaughey. A verdict is being rendered by a jury in a racially charged capital case. Around the courthouse, members of the KKK have placards reading: God is White.
No he isn't, and he isn't a guy either, ya'll. It's just useful in patriarchal society to view God as having the qualities of a good father. But spiritual creatures do not have gender nor race. Classifications, yes. Seraphs, cherubs, messengers, et al.
I learned this door early. I had Barbies and Kens. I had a little brother. I had the life I had that focused on little girls. I write this blog for me, to focus me on something spiritual every day, but I don't ever think of any males reading it or being interested in it and I have no desire to reach such an audience. It's about sisters. My PhD is in gender studies. I like brothers, sometimes too much as you know, but they have their own resources and we have fewer. They have so many privileges and we have a smaller number.
I don't mean that we have a lesser place in the congregation or with Jehovah. But it is obvious Satan has some profoundly wicked acts to use in the gender wars to exploit us. Someone sent me an email last week with a parody book cover picture. I am not sure how I felt about it, because it parodied a book published by our faithful discreet slave. But it was funny. It had a beer-bellied brother and a gray-haired sister on the cover, and a few other pictures of adults on it, and the title was: Questions Middle Aged People Ask, Answers that Work.
Well, that might be a good topic. But I thought how about one just for sisters? My husband always had money for fishing equipment. I would go without to make sure the girls had everything. One day I bought a book and a blouse at regular price. We must have gotten a tax refund or something for me to be so extravagant, but I did it.
Of course, he questioned our ability to afford such a thing. I said: "You like it? It's my new Zebco rod and reel." And he shut up. That makes me not a very good wife, but I figured out finally that no one was going to take care of me except me.
I still feel that way about marriage, that if someone is not going to take care of me, I'm not interested. I'm not baking all the pies and cleaning all the toilets and someone isn't looking for a way to make me happy. And when someone makes a mistake, I don't want excuses for why it isn't his fault. I want an apology. If you don't start out with that, and you are a woman like me, you end up being the one who does all the apologizing, and as Grandma always said, it takes two to tango. I'm not going to dance alone the next go around.
Someone else emailed me and said can I share your blog link address with a dear sister in Oregon - you and she would get along famously.
Yes. Of course. Send me to everyone you know and love if they have time to read. I love roses and tulips and zinnias and dahlia and baby breath and poppies and pansies and peonies. I love dandelions and daisies, both shastas and gerbers. I love all flowers. Sisters are different flowers in the same garden.
Once, someone gave me a card with lotus blossoms on the cover. Inside, she wrote that lotus blossoms will thrive even in mud, and that I reminded her of lotus blossoms, because I have bloomed despite a muddy beginning. One of my favorite poems is by Gwendolyn Brooks, where she speaks of a Chicago gang girl by saying: Mary is a rose in a glass full of whiskey.
You pick a flower, it lives a while in a glass of water. But if you put it in whiskey, poison to flowers (and humans in the right quantity) it will absorb the liquor and die faster
Satan picked us all and here we exist in mud, in whiskey, in water at best, when Jehovah meant for us to be in Eden. Whatever we can do to help each other thrive, let us do.
But in letting go of the purple and green theme, I discovered that I had a little picture frame that was purple and green with a photo of the girls, and it went into my closet by the Barbie dolls. I am not giving it up. For one thing, it is near impossible to find green and purple together accessories. I found purple, and I found green, but not both, not very often.
The frame says: Sisters are different flowers from the same garden.
A sister in Arkansas, Heather, is a pansy. She loves them. When the post office issued pansy stamps last year I had to send her a card just to use one of them on the envelope. Kim likes roses. I wish she didn't. My mother's favorite flowers are yellow roses. I promised her husband I would send her yellow roses on their anniversary every year after he died and now I don't do it. We went to visit her a few months later and she threw us out of her house, literally, and I can't do it even for him. So I wish that Kim liked something else, but that is not based on the flower, but my experience with them. Life is stupid a lot.
Carly likes poppies even though they are red. Red is not her favorite color. She's into greens and blues. Purple and black. For years, my favorite flowers were tulips. I want to like peonies. I love the white and green of a row of them. When my parents bought their first (and only) house together when I was 12, my mother planted a row of white peonies in the front yard by the porch. They were so pretty! I had never heard of peonies before that. It is one of very few peaceful memories I have of my mother, and for that reason I want to blame the peonies and not like them either.
Imagine getting all the sisters in the world together and then dividing them into sections based on their favorite flower. What on earth for? It might be interesting to see who you ended up sitting by, but it is still a crazy idea. But we divide people up by how much money they have, and what color skin they have, and hair and eyes, and education and height and brains and looks.
No, we don't do that in our organization. But the world does, and it rubs off on us sometimes. Here's an example. Let's use the metaphor of walking down a hallway full of doors to figure out who we are, how we see ourselves and thus those around us. There are big doors that lead to smaller and smaller doors until I could end up in a room with fat redheaded girls well versed in poetry who liked tulips and spoke English.
The hallway always starts with the big doors: race, gender, class. The question is in which order do we go through the doors? I always go through the gender door. I always see the world in those terms, female, not male. Oprah does not go through the woman door first. She goes through the black door. She identifies herself first as black, and second as female. She thinks she has more in common with black males than white women. She may be right. It isn't for me to decide. I wish we all just sorted ourselves through the HUMAN door.
Carly was watching a John Grisham movie this weekend starring Matthew McConaughey. A verdict is being rendered by a jury in a racially charged capital case. Around the courthouse, members of the KKK have placards reading: God is White.
No he isn't, and he isn't a guy either, ya'll. It's just useful in patriarchal society to view God as having the qualities of a good father. But spiritual creatures do not have gender nor race. Classifications, yes. Seraphs, cherubs, messengers, et al.
I learned this door early. I had Barbies and Kens. I had a little brother. I had the life I had that focused on little girls. I write this blog for me, to focus me on something spiritual every day, but I don't ever think of any males reading it or being interested in it and I have no desire to reach such an audience. It's about sisters. My PhD is in gender studies. I like brothers, sometimes too much as you know, but they have their own resources and we have fewer. They have so many privileges and we have a smaller number.
I don't mean that we have a lesser place in the congregation or with Jehovah. But it is obvious Satan has some profoundly wicked acts to use in the gender wars to exploit us. Someone sent me an email last week with a parody book cover picture. I am not sure how I felt about it, because it parodied a book published by our faithful discreet slave. But it was funny. It had a beer-bellied brother and a gray-haired sister on the cover, and a few other pictures of adults on it, and the title was: Questions Middle Aged People Ask, Answers that Work.
Well, that might be a good topic. But I thought how about one just for sisters? My husband always had money for fishing equipment. I would go without to make sure the girls had everything. One day I bought a book and a blouse at regular price. We must have gotten a tax refund or something for me to be so extravagant, but I did it.
Of course, he questioned our ability to afford such a thing. I said: "You like it? It's my new Zebco rod and reel." And he shut up. That makes me not a very good wife, but I figured out finally that no one was going to take care of me except me.
I still feel that way about marriage, that if someone is not going to take care of me, I'm not interested. I'm not baking all the pies and cleaning all the toilets and someone isn't looking for a way to make me happy. And when someone makes a mistake, I don't want excuses for why it isn't his fault. I want an apology. If you don't start out with that, and you are a woman like me, you end up being the one who does all the apologizing, and as Grandma always said, it takes two to tango. I'm not going to dance alone the next go around.
Someone else emailed me and said can I share your blog link address with a dear sister in Oregon - you and she would get along famously.
Yes. Of course. Send me to everyone you know and love if they have time to read. I love roses and tulips and zinnias and dahlia and baby breath and poppies and pansies and peonies. I love dandelions and daisies, both shastas and gerbers. I love all flowers. Sisters are different flowers in the same garden.
Once, someone gave me a card with lotus blossoms on the cover. Inside, she wrote that lotus blossoms will thrive even in mud, and that I reminded her of lotus blossoms, because I have bloomed despite a muddy beginning. One of my favorite poems is by Gwendolyn Brooks, where she speaks of a Chicago gang girl by saying: Mary is a rose in a glass full of whiskey.
You pick a flower, it lives a while in a glass of water. But if you put it in whiskey, poison to flowers (and humans in the right quantity) it will absorb the liquor and die faster
Satan picked us all and here we exist in mud, in whiskey, in water at best, when Jehovah meant for us to be in Eden. Whatever we can do to help each other thrive, let us do.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tabula Rasa
The Romans had wax tablets they used for taking notes. When they were finished, they would melt it back down and erase it, thereby gaining a blank slate. The Latin term for that is tabula rasa, and when it comes to theories about how human identity works, it means that we are born without any mental content, and that we gain our knowledge through experience and perception.
I don't think we are totally blank slates. But we sure are not born with built-in knowledge like say, deer have. A baby deer is able to stand within minutes of birth and instinctively knows a lot about its environment. When Carly was about ten and crazy about dolphins, she was reading in her room and called down the hallway asking, "Mom, isn't the umbilical cord the thing that ties the baby to the mommy in her belly?"
"Yes," I called back. I waited for more. Silence. I stood it about 90 seconds then called again. "Carly Darly, what are you reading?"
"It's about how the baby dolphin is born in the water. The mommy dolphin has to break the umbilical cord with her snout, get the baby up to the surface to breathe, and then get out of there fast because Orcas will be attracted to the scent of the blood from the placenta."
Frankly, after considering what that was like, I felt kind of puny as a birthing creature. I just laid there. Being a double Cesarean mom, I never even pushed.
But babies are born with all kinds of instinctive knowledge. Carly was born early following a short and troubled pregnancy and did not latch onto a bottle for about six weeks. It was hard to get her to drink long enough to sleep more than an hour or two. As soon as she got a few ounces, she lost interest.
Kim was born over a month older gestationally speaking, and she slept through the night (11:00 p.m. to 5:45 a.m.) her first night home from the hospital. Nobody had to teach her anything. She continued that schedule throughout their babyhoods. Carly walked at 14 months, Kim at 10. Carly got teeth at 9 month; Kim was a biter early and often. Once, I was standing at the sink washing dishes in a pair of shorts and she came up and wrapped her arms around my knees, facing my back, and clamped onto the back of my right thigh with her little piranha teeth. I wanted to knock her to kingdom come because it HURT, but I didn't want to break her neck. I was dancing like a chicken trying to disengage her teeth from my leg. She broke skin and it was bruised like plum pie for nearly a month.
On Facebook, Nathan and Sara just posted a picture of their daughter Keirra pushing a miniature steel shopping cart in a store. She's about 16 months, cute as pie. I wrote a caption for the photo that said: "Give me the credit card and the keys and get out of my way."
Jennifer, in Arkansas, heavy with Jordyn and spending her last days as mother of an only child, Jace, emailed me without knowing any of this about Keirra in Pennsylvania that Jace is copying her walk. However much blank slate he might have been starting out, he has absorbed everything about his parents. He puts his hands on his hips and pooches his belly out as much as possible, not much, so I imagine him all swaybacked, and he came downstairs today and said: "I need my keys and my credit card. I'm going to Wal-Mart and the doctor."
Oh how I miss that baby boy. And he's almost three and no longer a baby at all. At this rate, he'll be old enough to date Keirra and move here by the time I get another row of wrinkles.
Tonight Carly made green beans and baked cod. I don't know what she did exactly. I was tired and hungry and she made a nice crust (bread crumbs, spices) on top of the cod. Also potatoes, fresh yeast rolls. Yesterday it was cheeseburger pizza. That's right, Pennsylvanians, we gave up a lot to be here, and one of the best things was cheeseburger pizza. I last had it in a restaurant with Pepper in Farmington at Ye Olde King's Pizza Shop. We have a stand mixer and it has a dough hook so now we get pizza at home with yeasty homemade crust.
One night as I sat grading (summer school ends Wednesday, the grading shortly thereafter, then a month off, oh man yeah!) the cartoon Jem and the Holograms came on and we watched it. Hasbro made dolls of the characters. The girls played with them a lot when they were little and I also would like to collect dolls myself if I was feeling materialistic. (Okay, I have four Barbie dolls in my closet.) During the ending credits, Kim says boy, if I ever had the money, I would have a set of those dolls again just because. I said oh yeah, me too. And Carly looked at us like we done lost it.
Kimberly has no recollection of my grandmother without Alzheimer's (hardly any at all to be honest). Yet she laughs and smiles like my grandmother so much I want to cry sometimes. Carly laughs like my brother and is tall like my mother. Both of them have a good two inches on me and I'm 5'8". Kim is 5'6" again like Grandma who was 5'3" but still, there is some DNA for you. She didn't get short from anywhere else.
I'm sure they've forgotten all sorts of things from their childhood, and there is no answer at this time for how much of who we are is nature, dna, instinct, and how much is nurture, environment, learned. But everything imprints on us. I wonder sometimes if, in the new world, when we have perfect brains, if we will have perfect memories. If we can fan back through our synapses and remember everything about a certain day. And if those days bring pain, as for all of us there are days such as that, and Jehovah is going to satisfy the desire of every living thing, will those days go missing? Yes, I over think myself sometimes.
I don't know the answers. The word essay comes from the Latin word essais, and is closely related to assay, which is what kind of office they had in the Gold Rush to assess the value and weight of gold nuggets. When writing an essay, one attempts to assess the qualities of something. It also implies that it is an attempt, which may or may not be successful. I write to attempt to figure things out. For me, writing is a way to think. But I don't always get an answer to the problems I think on. It isn't math where you do a whole big equation and end up with x=2 at the end.
Some kids have to go to Sheetz with aspirin bottles full of dimes to get a hot dog. Some kids have it a lot better, and some have it a lot worse. Some kids end up being psychopaths and criminals and some kids grow up to be nurses and artists. There are so many variables in the equation identity. Why are we the way we are? Our parents form us, our friends, our race and gender and economic situation. I am shaped by having red hair, by loving words, by being born in Texas and talking with this here accent ya'll.
I like reading accounts like when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. He could discern her identity. Humans can't do that. I was wondering today if Jehovah loves me. I shouldn't wonder, but I have my own insecurities to deal with. And that is one thing I figured out I think for sure. If Jehovah had the limitations of a human, well, I'd be in a hot mess probably. I was thinking about who I am in relation to where I came from and what I had to work with, and I felt okay about my life like that. I can't compare myself, or try to figure out how lovable I am, compared to anyone else. Nobody but me grew up a girl in my house, had my DNA, lived through my experiences. And the person who saw everything is Jehovah, so like the WT the week before yesterday, there are good reasons for Him to be the most important person in our lives. We have all that shared experience. And though the world scribbles upon our wax, he can melt it and make it smooth in the new world.
I don't think we are totally blank slates. But we sure are not born with built-in knowledge like say, deer have. A baby deer is able to stand within minutes of birth and instinctively knows a lot about its environment. When Carly was about ten and crazy about dolphins, she was reading in her room and called down the hallway asking, "Mom, isn't the umbilical cord the thing that ties the baby to the mommy in her belly?"
"Yes," I called back. I waited for more. Silence. I stood it about 90 seconds then called again. "Carly Darly, what are you reading?"
"It's about how the baby dolphin is born in the water. The mommy dolphin has to break the umbilical cord with her snout, get the baby up to the surface to breathe, and then get out of there fast because Orcas will be attracted to the scent of the blood from the placenta."
Frankly, after considering what that was like, I felt kind of puny as a birthing creature. I just laid there. Being a double Cesarean mom, I never even pushed.
But babies are born with all kinds of instinctive knowledge. Carly was born early following a short and troubled pregnancy and did not latch onto a bottle for about six weeks. It was hard to get her to drink long enough to sleep more than an hour or two. As soon as she got a few ounces, she lost interest.
Kim was born over a month older gestationally speaking, and she slept through the night (11:00 p.m. to 5:45 a.m.) her first night home from the hospital. Nobody had to teach her anything. She continued that schedule throughout their babyhoods. Carly walked at 14 months, Kim at 10. Carly got teeth at 9 month; Kim was a biter early and often. Once, I was standing at the sink washing dishes in a pair of shorts and she came up and wrapped her arms around my knees, facing my back, and clamped onto the back of my right thigh with her little piranha teeth. I wanted to knock her to kingdom come because it HURT, but I didn't want to break her neck. I was dancing like a chicken trying to disengage her teeth from my leg. She broke skin and it was bruised like plum pie for nearly a month.
On Facebook, Nathan and Sara just posted a picture of their daughter Keirra pushing a miniature steel shopping cart in a store. She's about 16 months, cute as pie. I wrote a caption for the photo that said: "Give me the credit card and the keys and get out of my way."
Jennifer, in Arkansas, heavy with Jordyn and spending her last days as mother of an only child, Jace, emailed me without knowing any of this about Keirra in Pennsylvania that Jace is copying her walk. However much blank slate he might have been starting out, he has absorbed everything about his parents. He puts his hands on his hips and pooches his belly out as much as possible, not much, so I imagine him all swaybacked, and he came downstairs today and said: "I need my keys and my credit card. I'm going to Wal-Mart and the doctor."
Oh how I miss that baby boy. And he's almost three and no longer a baby at all. At this rate, he'll be old enough to date Keirra and move here by the time I get another row of wrinkles.
Tonight Carly made green beans and baked cod. I don't know what she did exactly. I was tired and hungry and she made a nice crust (bread crumbs, spices) on top of the cod. Also potatoes, fresh yeast rolls. Yesterday it was cheeseburger pizza. That's right, Pennsylvanians, we gave up a lot to be here, and one of the best things was cheeseburger pizza. I last had it in a restaurant with Pepper in Farmington at Ye Olde King's Pizza Shop. We have a stand mixer and it has a dough hook so now we get pizza at home with yeasty homemade crust.
One night as I sat grading (summer school ends Wednesday, the grading shortly thereafter, then a month off, oh man yeah!) the cartoon Jem and the Holograms came on and we watched it. Hasbro made dolls of the characters. The girls played with them a lot when they were little and I also would like to collect dolls myself if I was feeling materialistic. (Okay, I have four Barbie dolls in my closet.) During the ending credits, Kim says boy, if I ever had the money, I would have a set of those dolls again just because. I said oh yeah, me too. And Carly looked at us like we done lost it.
Kimberly has no recollection of my grandmother without Alzheimer's (hardly any at all to be honest). Yet she laughs and smiles like my grandmother so much I want to cry sometimes. Carly laughs like my brother and is tall like my mother. Both of them have a good two inches on me and I'm 5'8". Kim is 5'6" again like Grandma who was 5'3" but still, there is some DNA for you. She didn't get short from anywhere else.
I'm sure they've forgotten all sorts of things from their childhood, and there is no answer at this time for how much of who we are is nature, dna, instinct, and how much is nurture, environment, learned. But everything imprints on us. I wonder sometimes if, in the new world, when we have perfect brains, if we will have perfect memories. If we can fan back through our synapses and remember everything about a certain day. And if those days bring pain, as for all of us there are days such as that, and Jehovah is going to satisfy the desire of every living thing, will those days go missing? Yes, I over think myself sometimes.
I don't know the answers. The word essay comes from the Latin word essais, and is closely related to assay, which is what kind of office they had in the Gold Rush to assess the value and weight of gold nuggets. When writing an essay, one attempts to assess the qualities of something. It also implies that it is an attempt, which may or may not be successful. I write to attempt to figure things out. For me, writing is a way to think. But I don't always get an answer to the problems I think on. It isn't math where you do a whole big equation and end up with x=2 at the end.
Some kids have to go to Sheetz with aspirin bottles full of dimes to get a hot dog. Some kids have it a lot better, and some have it a lot worse. Some kids end up being psychopaths and criminals and some kids grow up to be nurses and artists. There are so many variables in the equation identity. Why are we the way we are? Our parents form us, our friends, our race and gender and economic situation. I am shaped by having red hair, by loving words, by being born in Texas and talking with this here accent ya'll.
I like reading accounts like when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. He could discern her identity. Humans can't do that. I was wondering today if Jehovah loves me. I shouldn't wonder, but I have my own insecurities to deal with. And that is one thing I figured out I think for sure. If Jehovah had the limitations of a human, well, I'd be in a hot mess probably. I was thinking about who I am in relation to where I came from and what I had to work with, and I felt okay about my life like that. I can't compare myself, or try to figure out how lovable I am, compared to anyone else. Nobody but me grew up a girl in my house, had my DNA, lived through my experiences. And the person who saw everything is Jehovah, so like the WT the week before yesterday, there are good reasons for Him to be the most important person in our lives. We have all that shared experience. And though the world scribbles upon our wax, he can melt it and make it smooth in the new world.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Cleveland
Our meeting was not so crowded today. A lot of friends are gone to Cleveland to the DC. We are on the border for DC assignments - East Hills is assigned to Cleveland and we are assigned to Reading, Pennsylvania. We got to go earlier to a city with less major highways, a boon to this navigator all around.
Who really uses the word boon? Who really types the word Cleveland and thinks that would be a good land for us to cleave to each other? Yesterday, after all that cleaning, Carly put something in my clean microwave and I said, "You'd better not splatter anything in there."
She replied, "Hence, the paper towel." Who says hence? Hooray, that's MY kid.
All that cleaning meant that I went to bed tired. Carly says she heard me cut my alarm off. I slept till 9:10 a.m. and the meeting is at 9:30. Is late better than missing? I decided so. The brother giving the talk was discussing Satan right there in the middle of the meeting, and how Satan gets to know us. He studies us and he knows therefore how to tempt us with the most success.
Which, I knew that, but it was good to hear it and I hadn't thought of it quite like that. Satan gets to know us. I don't want him to, and most of the time I think I am beneath his notice. But I got that new car radio and all the songs are about love. On the way to meeting I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot sing but you won't read that book again because the endings just too hard to take ... I don't know where we went wrong but the feelings gone and I just can't get it back. I have always loved that song. But instead of reviewing the WT in my head, I was driving along and thinking about last year when I had my eye on a brother. I have to have a name for him here, but I am not going to use his real name. He asked me once not to ever write about him. I said that is a promise you cannot have, but I can write without using his name. So, since I like A names, let's call him Abel.
I'm thinking Satan got me the new car stereo. Everything I hear is stupid or wrong or bad. There is also a line in that song I quoted earlier about a ghost from a wishing well. I know that it doesn't mean a literal ghost in this instance. What the song means is that I used to wish for love with you, and now that love is dead, like I'm a ghost there, and I am no longer alive to your love. Abel never loved me, but I was hanging out at the well anyhow. And now, I don't know. He can have the microphone behind my shoulder all meeting and I can forget he is there. Last year, I had to focus so hard to comment when he was holding the microphone for me that I'm not sure what I said sometimes. Now, I can go over and talk to him and give him toothpaste (long story) and it doesn't go through my mind to be nervous. And I'm sad about that. I wanted to matter to someone.
And I could forget about that if those songs weren't reminding me. So between that and the Christian rock stations and the anger that wells up inside me over all those macho excuse songs, egghghghghghg. That's my phrase for all the songs that excuse men from having to take any responsibility for a relationship. The one I heard this morning after the meeting was Brad Paisley singing that "I'm still a guy." I'm a guy so you can't expect me to behave better than this.
Yeah, okay. Not all women are Lucille either, so you and Kenny Rogers need to get together and figure the world out.
But there was also that part in the WT, in the opening section, about being in harmony with Jehovah's standards, being known by him, and I was thinking does Jehovah love me? Cherri Randall? I have always thought about Him loving mankind, all of us, but I don't know if I ever articulated the idea as: does Jehovah love me individually?
I've been trying to get better, live in more harmony with His standards. Something from the DC really helped. There are some things I had issues with that I didn't know if I could get over them. I do have a four-letter word that used to pop out of my mouth too often. And I couldn't make myself be too bothered by it. But I started thinking that it makes Jehovah sad, that I am not pleasing my heavenly Father when I do that, and that is more motivation for me than thinking whatever things are chaste and of serious concern.
Doesn't matter if it bothers me or not. It matters how Jehovah feels. It's been a month now, and I feel improvement. I'm not saying that word never pops up, but it is showing up a lot less often, and when it does, I am aware of it. I taste that word on my tongue, it is bitter, I am conscious of it, and I am sorry.
I have always felt like Jehovah loved me when I was a little girl. I came into the truth when I was nine years old. My grandmother was a witness, and I would go with her to meetings every now and then. In 1971 she brought me a book called "Listening to the Great Teacher." I didn't read it that summer. I was not that good of a reader yet. Then in fourth grade, we started a program called SRA. I have no idea what the letters stood for, but the system was based on individual reading. We took tests and then were given a color so we'd know what section to start reading and taking tests over. I was green all three years after that. A lot of kids started at red, brown and orange. Maybe that is why green is my favorite color. Maybe the Great Teacher Book is why pink and green is a favorite color combination of mine.
I learned reading comprehension and I fell in love with school all over again. I was so bored with reading as a class. Baby books. And by the spring semester I was reading way above fourth grade level. I was reading voraciously, and one Saturday there was nothing else in the house to read but that pink book.
I got to chapter ten: One Leper Gave Glory to God. And when I finished, I was sorry that I had not been going every Sunday with my grandmother to meetings. Even then, I knew she didn't go to "church." But that was the only religion I had any association with, and I was loving that pink book. So I called her. I still remember the number. All the phones in Frederick had the same exchange number: 335. We were 5092 and my grandmother was 5720. I called her and asked to be picked up in the morning for meeting.
I read the rest of the book and asked to go the following Sunday. Grandma asked me if I wanted a Watchtower. I said yes, but if I could only have one thing, get me a pink songbook. The paperback was 25¢ and the deluxe leather cover was 50¢. I had a dollar in my wallet and I asked for a deluxe. Grandma said nevermind, she would pay for it. The Watchtower was a nickel. I got a green Bible too.
That week at school, one of the other girls said she was going to choir practice for her church that night. We were talking about religion because I invited her to the Kingdom Hall with us. I guess I thought my grandma would go pick her up. She said no, but it worked out well for me because when I found out she went at night too, I called my grandmother (this being Wednesday) and said can I go with you tonight? Especially did I want to go if there was singing practice. I was trying to learn 119 songs.
Thursday night, Grandma said. And Tuesday.
I had one dress only. I didn't care. It was blue cotton with a sailor collar and red necktie. After a few weeks my mother decided I was going to need a few dresses, and she started sewing. The summer of 1973, a pioneer sister moved to Frederick to work all that vast seldom-worked territory, and I promptly adopted her and she me, and she became my Aunt Margaret. When she met my mother, she offered to study with her.
My mother declined.
"Okay," Aunt Margaret said. "But let me see your hands," she prompted.
My mother looked perplexed but held out both hands. Aunt Margaret was that way. Like Lydia, she would just make you come or do anything else she took into her head.
"Okay," she said, letting my mother's hands go. "I just wanted to get a good look at your wedding ring, so when I see it on a skeleton after Armageddon I'll know it was you. But don't worry, me and Ida will take care of this lovely little redhead." Ida was my grandma's name.
Well, my mother started a study after that. I got baptized on April 14, 1974, and she got baptized at the DC in July of 1974. I remember when the elders asked her for permission for me to get baptized since I was a minor. I was mad about that. Who was she? I never did recognize her as a spiritual head, and I'm sorry for that sometimes now, but we let each other down in this and many other profound ways. To this day, I am a sorry disappointment to her.
When Ida is back, I can't wait for ya'll to come over and eat her fried chicken and if we are not carnivores in the new world, I'm thinking it'll be alright to have her yeast rolls by themselves. I'm having my Little Ruth over and Dot and Jo and it's going to be wonderful. Aunt Margaret will be there. Once, I was at the door with my grandmother and this old goat told her our Bible was not right, that the name Jehovah was added there, and so Grandma said well, get your Bible. So the guy brings the KJV to the door and she says look up Psalms 83:18. The guy did, (took him awhile but I was 11 by then so I kindly pointed out Psalms was in the middle of the Bible) and when he read it silently to himself, he looked up like a raging bull, and ripped that page out and said, "Well it isn't there anymore."
My grandma smiled her sweetest and said, "Well, it is there three other places."
When we got back to the car and she told this story to Aunt Margaret, Aunt Margaret said, "Well, you didn't tell him where the other three places were, did you?"
"Oh heck no," Grandma replied. "I told him it might do him good to read through there and look for it himself."
We all laughed. That's the kind of girls we were in the 70's.
Who really uses the word boon? Who really types the word Cleveland and thinks that would be a good land for us to cleave to each other? Yesterday, after all that cleaning, Carly put something in my clean microwave and I said, "You'd better not splatter anything in there."
She replied, "Hence, the paper towel." Who says hence? Hooray, that's MY kid.
All that cleaning meant that I went to bed tired. Carly says she heard me cut my alarm off. I slept till 9:10 a.m. and the meeting is at 9:30. Is late better than missing? I decided so. The brother giving the talk was discussing Satan right there in the middle of the meeting, and how Satan gets to know us. He studies us and he knows therefore how to tempt us with the most success.
Which, I knew that, but it was good to hear it and I hadn't thought of it quite like that. Satan gets to know us. I don't want him to, and most of the time I think I am beneath his notice. But I got that new car radio and all the songs are about love. On the way to meeting I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot sing but you won't read that book again because the endings just too hard to take ... I don't know where we went wrong but the feelings gone and I just can't get it back. I have always loved that song. But instead of reviewing the WT in my head, I was driving along and thinking about last year when I had my eye on a brother. I have to have a name for him here, but I am not going to use his real name. He asked me once not to ever write about him. I said that is a promise you cannot have, but I can write without using his name. So, since I like A names, let's call him Abel.
I'm thinking Satan got me the new car stereo. Everything I hear is stupid or wrong or bad. There is also a line in that song I quoted earlier about a ghost from a wishing well. I know that it doesn't mean a literal ghost in this instance. What the song means is that I used to wish for love with you, and now that love is dead, like I'm a ghost there, and I am no longer alive to your love. Abel never loved me, but I was hanging out at the well anyhow. And now, I don't know. He can have the microphone behind my shoulder all meeting and I can forget he is there. Last year, I had to focus so hard to comment when he was holding the microphone for me that I'm not sure what I said sometimes. Now, I can go over and talk to him and give him toothpaste (long story) and it doesn't go through my mind to be nervous. And I'm sad about that. I wanted to matter to someone.
And I could forget about that if those songs weren't reminding me. So between that and the Christian rock stations and the anger that wells up inside me over all those macho excuse songs, egghghghghghg. That's my phrase for all the songs that excuse men from having to take any responsibility for a relationship. The one I heard this morning after the meeting was Brad Paisley singing that "I'm still a guy." I'm a guy so you can't expect me to behave better than this.
Yeah, okay. Not all women are Lucille either, so you and Kenny Rogers need to get together and figure the world out.
But there was also that part in the WT, in the opening section, about being in harmony with Jehovah's standards, being known by him, and I was thinking does Jehovah love me? Cherri Randall? I have always thought about Him loving mankind, all of us, but I don't know if I ever articulated the idea as: does Jehovah love me individually?
I've been trying to get better, live in more harmony with His standards. Something from the DC really helped. There are some things I had issues with that I didn't know if I could get over them. I do have a four-letter word that used to pop out of my mouth too often. And I couldn't make myself be too bothered by it. But I started thinking that it makes Jehovah sad, that I am not pleasing my heavenly Father when I do that, and that is more motivation for me than thinking whatever things are chaste and of serious concern.
Doesn't matter if it bothers me or not. It matters how Jehovah feels. It's been a month now, and I feel improvement. I'm not saying that word never pops up, but it is showing up a lot less often, and when it does, I am aware of it. I taste that word on my tongue, it is bitter, I am conscious of it, and I am sorry.
I have always felt like Jehovah loved me when I was a little girl. I came into the truth when I was nine years old. My grandmother was a witness, and I would go with her to meetings every now and then. In 1971 she brought me a book called "Listening to the Great Teacher." I didn't read it that summer. I was not that good of a reader yet. Then in fourth grade, we started a program called SRA. I have no idea what the letters stood for, but the system was based on individual reading. We took tests and then were given a color so we'd know what section to start reading and taking tests over. I was green all three years after that. A lot of kids started at red, brown and orange. Maybe that is why green is my favorite color. Maybe the Great Teacher Book is why pink and green is a favorite color combination of mine.
I learned reading comprehension and I fell in love with school all over again. I was so bored with reading as a class. Baby books. And by the spring semester I was reading way above fourth grade level. I was reading voraciously, and one Saturday there was nothing else in the house to read but that pink book.
I got to chapter ten: One Leper Gave Glory to God. And when I finished, I was sorry that I had not been going every Sunday with my grandmother to meetings. Even then, I knew she didn't go to "church." But that was the only religion I had any association with, and I was loving that pink book. So I called her. I still remember the number. All the phones in Frederick had the same exchange number: 335. We were 5092 and my grandmother was 5720. I called her and asked to be picked up in the morning for meeting.
I read the rest of the book and asked to go the following Sunday. Grandma asked me if I wanted a Watchtower. I said yes, but if I could only have one thing, get me a pink songbook. The paperback was 25¢ and the deluxe leather cover was 50¢. I had a dollar in my wallet and I asked for a deluxe. Grandma said nevermind, she would pay for it. The Watchtower was a nickel. I got a green Bible too.
That week at school, one of the other girls said she was going to choir practice for her church that night. We were talking about religion because I invited her to the Kingdom Hall with us. I guess I thought my grandma would go pick her up. She said no, but it worked out well for me because when I found out she went at night too, I called my grandmother (this being Wednesday) and said can I go with you tonight? Especially did I want to go if there was singing practice. I was trying to learn 119 songs.
Thursday night, Grandma said. And Tuesday.
I had one dress only. I didn't care. It was blue cotton with a sailor collar and red necktie. After a few weeks my mother decided I was going to need a few dresses, and she started sewing. The summer of 1973, a pioneer sister moved to Frederick to work all that vast seldom-worked territory, and I promptly adopted her and she me, and she became my Aunt Margaret. When she met my mother, she offered to study with her.
My mother declined.
"Okay," Aunt Margaret said. "But let me see your hands," she prompted.
My mother looked perplexed but held out both hands. Aunt Margaret was that way. Like Lydia, she would just make you come or do anything else she took into her head.
"Okay," she said, letting my mother's hands go. "I just wanted to get a good look at your wedding ring, so when I see it on a skeleton after Armageddon I'll know it was you. But don't worry, me and Ida will take care of this lovely little redhead." Ida was my grandma's name.
Well, my mother started a study after that. I got baptized on April 14, 1974, and she got baptized at the DC in July of 1974. I remember when the elders asked her for permission for me to get baptized since I was a minor. I was mad about that. Who was she? I never did recognize her as a spiritual head, and I'm sorry for that sometimes now, but we let each other down in this and many other profound ways. To this day, I am a sorry disappointment to her.
When Ida is back, I can't wait for ya'll to come over and eat her fried chicken and if we are not carnivores in the new world, I'm thinking it'll be alright to have her yeast rolls by themselves. I'm having my Little Ruth over and Dot and Jo and it's going to be wonderful. Aunt Margaret will be there. Once, I was at the door with my grandmother and this old goat told her our Bible was not right, that the name Jehovah was added there, and so Grandma said well, get your Bible. So the guy brings the KJV to the door and she says look up Psalms 83:18. The guy did, (took him awhile but I was 11 by then so I kindly pointed out Psalms was in the middle of the Bible) and when he read it silently to himself, he looked up like a raging bull, and ripped that page out and said, "Well it isn't there anymore."
My grandma smiled her sweetest and said, "Well, it is there three other places."
When we got back to the car and she told this story to Aunt Margaret, Aunt Margaret said, "Well, you didn't tell him where the other three places were, did you?"
"Oh heck no," Grandma replied. "I told him it might do him good to read through there and look for it himself."
We all laughed. That's the kind of girls we were in the 70's.
***
Later, when I moved from West Fork to Farmington, Arkansas congregations, we had a get-together and someone had a karaoke machine there and we had microphones and sound. And another couple had just moved back to West Fork from a Fayetteville Congregation, although they had lived in Arkansas their entire lives and everyone knew them. So one of the elders interviewed this new couple, the brother also being an elder, asking how they came into the truth, welcoming them back to the congregation.
On the way home, Carly says: "We are new in this congregation. Nobody interviewed us."
Hence, the worst part was that I was thinking the same thing as my baby girl. How much I love that story of how Jehovah drew me at age nine with that little pink book.
I have always known Jehovah loved that girl. I have always prayed fervently for him to love my two little girls. And I was thinking on the drive home after shutting the volume off on stupid songs was that Satan knows me too well. I have never been tempted by smoking or drugs or alcohol. I have not had a problem with gambling, and so far I've managed materialism pretty well. I fought off eight hands from a forward brother successfully and once, when Kimberly was five and heading for emergency surgery in the middle of the night, I told the doctor he did not have my permission to give her blood. He said if she needed it he would pump her full of it and get a court order. Thankfully, she didn't need it, but I still remember standing there as her gurney slid through the doors marked authorized personnel only praying for that outcome.
It's always feeling like I don't belong. That no one loves me. That I'm unlovable. My mother hates me, no brothers want me, and it is hard to remember I have value to Jehovah in the face of all this negativity, especially when it's a week when even my daughters hate me. This morning, coming in late, I headed for a row that looked empty. When I got there, on the seat was a song book, and on the floor, a book bag.
I picked the speaker's row. After he finished, he came and sang the song and then left. He did not stay for the WT. For a moment I thought did he really leave rather than sit by me? But he drove quite a distance, and maybe his own meeting was in the afternoon. I don't know. I was both relieved and upset that he left. I didn't take it personally, not everything is about me, but I couldn't help noticing, could not stop that from being the first thought racing through my head. He left? His bag is gone?!
I'm not really a blogger. I suppose you have noticed by now I'm an essayist with a blog. And I cleave to the strength it brings me as I write. I live for the emails some of you send back saying me too.
You are going to love having yeast rolls with us someday.
Hence, my girl:
Hence, my girl:
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Book Before Obadiah
I forgot this. I was reminded looking up a scripture in Nahum. We had a circuit overseer once who joked he had a twin named Hohum. My mother said really?
So this morning one of the crossword clue's was Book before Obadiah. I knew it was Amos of course, my favorite name. Doesn't mean anything, but human brains look for patterns. This was just random. And after all that cleaning, I have to say I want to be in Saipan in my own little grass hut. When you live alone and you are a neat freak, stuff stays neat. You just have to dust.
So this morning one of the crossword clue's was Book before Obadiah. I knew it was Amos of course, my favorite name. Doesn't mean anything, but human brains look for patterns. This was just random. And after all that cleaning, I have to say I want to be in Saipan in my own little grass hut. When you live alone and you are a neat freak, stuff stays neat. You just have to dust.
Next to Godliness
I cleaned today, the kind where you rearrange and do drawers and wash curtains. We've lived here 51 weeks, and it's about time. One time Kimberly told me she didn't like cleaning and I said well who does? And she shot back: You do.
I laughed. I told her no one likes to clean. People just prefer cleaning to living on an episode of hoarders. They like the results. It's like dental surgery. Nobody wants it, but it's better than living with pain and losing your teeth.
I kind of lied. I don't mind cleaning. I just sometimes mind that I'm the only one who does much of it or that I have too much to do between that and other things. But doing it clears my mind. I also like driving, alone, with the radio. I like to have time to think.
I scrubbed shower curtain liners today. Carly said for $6.00 we could just buy new ones and not scrub. Welcome to disposable society. I'm guilty myself. On episodes of Andy Griffith you can sometimes see Emitt's Repair Shop window or even see someone inside with a toaster or fan. I recycle appliances, but I don't fix them very often.
Carly told me as I was ironing a new comforter (75% off at Target, pictures to be posted next week after I find curtains) that ironing is a lost art. I remember my grandmother soaking stuff in starch and ironing with an appliance she sat on the stove to get hot. She also had a 1962 Maytag on the back porch with two rollers on it and a crank although it would also work on electricity. She always cautioned me to keep my fingers clear of the rollers. Sometimes though she would let me slide Barbie clothes through there. They came out like little pancakes of calico and gingham.
I like to iron. I like to press. I worked in a laundromat before the girls were born and I could operate six presses at once doing blue jeans. What I don't like is for anyone to expect me to do those things and not be capable of other skills. Once my sister-in-law tried to get me to change a flat on my car so we could go shopping when I was still married. I said oh Girl, are you kidding? If I had changed that flat, I'd have changed every other flat after that. And it may be sad that I feel that way about men, but I do.
One night the girls were watching some matchmaker show, and the matchmaker was telling a girl not to cook on the first date, that the first date sets the precedent for the entire relationship. And if you cook on the first date, he will expect to be served every day henceforth.
I like that girl. Patti is her name and she also has a lot of rules that you cannot have sex for a long long time (well, she is worldly after all) and you can only have two drinks on the first meeting and you can't go on a first date anywhere you have to wear a bikini or be casual, and the man has to plan the first date, all the details.
In the animal kingdom, the females of the species generally don't do any work in courtship. The male peacock sports his plumage for the peahen. The deer and rams butt antlers and horns to be first for the privilege of mating. I think this is Satan's best tactic, to make women compete with each other for male attention and to run around skimpily clad so men will know they can be satisfied by them. The thing is, that only satisfies one thing.
So, the upstairs is spotless and there is no laundry. The downstairs, well I did the fridge and cooked. There were bananas almost overripe so I did banana bread, and I made a nice chicken and rice meal. After Wednesday, I am finished with school for the summer except grading final portfolios - and only 20 of them unlike the first session where I had 31 students. A lot less work.
And, I think the girls can finish down there. Just the living room, kitchen/dining and a half bath. That's a lot easier than I had it with my mother. I'm going to study my WT. Tomorrow I'm wearing green. It's a good feeling to see clean for all my hard work. Good night, Sisters.
I laughed. I told her no one likes to clean. People just prefer cleaning to living on an episode of hoarders. They like the results. It's like dental surgery. Nobody wants it, but it's better than living with pain and losing your teeth.
I kind of lied. I don't mind cleaning. I just sometimes mind that I'm the only one who does much of it or that I have too much to do between that and other things. But doing it clears my mind. I also like driving, alone, with the radio. I like to have time to think.
I scrubbed shower curtain liners today. Carly said for $6.00 we could just buy new ones and not scrub. Welcome to disposable society. I'm guilty myself. On episodes of Andy Griffith you can sometimes see Emitt's Repair Shop window or even see someone inside with a toaster or fan. I recycle appliances, but I don't fix them very often.
Carly told me as I was ironing a new comforter (75% off at Target, pictures to be posted next week after I find curtains) that ironing is a lost art. I remember my grandmother soaking stuff in starch and ironing with an appliance she sat on the stove to get hot. She also had a 1962 Maytag on the back porch with two rollers on it and a crank although it would also work on electricity. She always cautioned me to keep my fingers clear of the rollers. Sometimes though she would let me slide Barbie clothes through there. They came out like little pancakes of calico and gingham.
I like to iron. I like to press. I worked in a laundromat before the girls were born and I could operate six presses at once doing blue jeans. What I don't like is for anyone to expect me to do those things and not be capable of other skills. Once my sister-in-law tried to get me to change a flat on my car so we could go shopping when I was still married. I said oh Girl, are you kidding? If I had changed that flat, I'd have changed every other flat after that. And it may be sad that I feel that way about men, but I do.
One night the girls were watching some matchmaker show, and the matchmaker was telling a girl not to cook on the first date, that the first date sets the precedent for the entire relationship. And if you cook on the first date, he will expect to be served every day henceforth.
I like that girl. Patti is her name and she also has a lot of rules that you cannot have sex for a long long time (well, she is worldly after all) and you can only have two drinks on the first meeting and you can't go on a first date anywhere you have to wear a bikini or be casual, and the man has to plan the first date, all the details.
In the animal kingdom, the females of the species generally don't do any work in courtship. The male peacock sports his plumage for the peahen. The deer and rams butt antlers and horns to be first for the privilege of mating. I think this is Satan's best tactic, to make women compete with each other for male attention and to run around skimpily clad so men will know they can be satisfied by them. The thing is, that only satisfies one thing.
So, the upstairs is spotless and there is no laundry. The downstairs, well I did the fridge and cooked. There were bananas almost overripe so I did banana bread, and I made a nice chicken and rice meal. After Wednesday, I am finished with school for the summer except grading final portfolios - and only 20 of them unlike the first session where I had 31 students. A lot less work.
And, I think the girls can finish down there. Just the living room, kitchen/dining and a half bath. That's a lot easier than I had it with my mother. I'm going to study my WT. Tomorrow I'm wearing green. It's a good feeling to see clean for all my hard work. Good night, Sisters.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Sweet Love Hangover
After at least five years in the Focus with no working music, I now have a cd player and radio again. I don't know what broke on the original system, but the speakers worked and the system did not. The girls had some cassette with a wire on it that they could hook up to their iPods and play music that way, but most of the time they just put their iPods on their heads and left me in peace.
About the time the music broke, they were listening to junk. I had no motivation to fix it. In fact, I might have broken it faster had I realized the peace and quiet I was going to get once that occurred.
Today was strange in some ways, especially driving around with music blasting away. I started to think at first that I really had been in silence too long because I didn't recognize (but liked) three songs in a row. However, my hearing is shot and I couldn't tell what the words were. Finally I did know some of the words, and I figured out I had tuned in a Christian rock station. So I listened to a little country and then some classic rock.
I am big on the classic rock. I grew up with Boston and Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller Band, Eagles. I love Fleetwood Mac especially. I like a lot of music. Foreigner might be my favorite. Hard to say. I caught Layla by Eric Clapton today. Not my favorite song, but it was just so good to have music. So naturally I will be burning cds of Sing to Jehovah this weekend. That's the best music.
And I sure need to practice. I had a lot of bronchitis this past winter and my singing is not where I want it to be.
The first time the DJ was talking (I hit scan almost immediately but this time he got a few words in on me) and he said Pennsylvania and the call letters beginning with W, I nearly fainted. All my life radio stations began with the letter K. Who likes W better than K? The only W I like is the WDVE on the building in Pittsburgh because it looks like the abbreviation for Wildeve, the surname of a fictional witness family I adore in the books of Thea Phipps, one of my best sisters in Arkansas. (If you are a reader, check her out on Amazon.)
Who do you want to meet in the resurrection? I do want to meet Bathsheba and Abigail. Got a thing for Ruth too. For a guy though, I would say Jubal and David. Jubal was the founder of pipes, and his name is the root for a favorite word of mine: jubilation. David, as you know, was a harpist. Like, you may think of him primarily as King, adulterer, shepherd, all kinds of roles, but I always picture him first as a musician. The main thing I want to do in the new world is hear all the Israelite music by the Israelites. I want the real thing. I have fantasies that we'll have music conventions in the new world just to have music all day long. Why talk if you can sing?
So today I had music in my life. I was wondering who I am anymore. I don't recognize myself a lot lately. I have gained weight here during these hibernational winters. I have been depressed or sad or something over my job being stupid and the climate being frozen. I am going to try and get back where I was, but it isn't just that. I'm missing music, and I just haven't been myself. I don't feel right. I never have felt like I had my feet back under me from moving. Today, I thought I might find me again, that I'm getting closer.
Last year, I was thinking about a brother here and that I liked him enough to think about eternity with him. One time we were talking on the phone and I said, as crazy as it might sound, that I liked to make meatloaf not so much for meatloaf for dinner but for cold meatloaf sandwiches for breakfast the next morning, and he said oh me too. Every time I mentioned liking some 80's rock, he had it and burned a CD for me.
There's a poem by Cornelius Eady that I have always loved. It's called "I'm a Fool to Love You" and it is the story of how the poet's mother chooses his father after having first been with a no-account man, how that first love was so bad it made his father look like "an island in the middle of a stormy sea. He made my father look like a rock." And she ended up with this man even though he was cruel, and that is how the blues work their sorry wonder. The poem ends by saying the blues make trouble look like a feather bed, makes the wrong man's kisses a healing.
If your whole life is about a father who is messed up, a few guys who will say anything to use you, and a husband who thinks you ain't got half a brain, then maybe a decent brother comes along and his kisses would feel like a healing. One of my friends wrote me after one of these posts and says her father was messed up in some different ways, verbally abusive, emotionally manipulative, and he was a brother. My mother used to say that she would not trade my father in for about half the brothers in our congregation.
I don't want a worldly man, but there are a few in the truth I couldn't abide either. One time I actually told a brother in Arkansas that the way he walked into the hall ten minutes before his wife entered (she was getting the baby in the baby seat and the toddler out of the toddler seat and carrying a book bag and a diaper bag) was a disgrace, that it set a bad example for my daughters. He laughed.
I don't know why his wife put up with that either, except I do know as hard as it is to change yourself, it's even harder to get someone else motivated. And by the time you have two babies with a man, you are so invested in them, that you don't really count sometimes, or at least you can't afford to let yourself count.
Today I was listening to music, what I wanted to hear. What I wanted mattered. I realized that the worst part about figuring out last year that I was on a one way street of romantic interest was that for a little while, I entertained the idea that I mattered to someone, and really, I didn't. Not much. Ain't even got the kisses of the wrong man. At the meetings, sometimes he shows up in the same color I'm wearing. Oh, if it's green it doesn't mean anything because I wear green all the time. But I hardly ever wear purple, and then if we show up both in purple, I want it to matter, but it doesn't. I'm being superstitious or something else equally disapproved.
One Thursday night about a month ago, we both showed up after meeting to get gas at the local Get Go. He was on one side of the building and I was on the other. We had driven through the Rambler for ice cream cones in Windber, so we sat there and finished them before I got out and pumped gas in Johnstown. I didn't want to see him. Sometimes I feel so stupid and it rises up like lava and I think bring it on, overflow and melt me down into oblivion so I die from this and I never have to hurt again.
I'm getting better. I spoke to him after the last meeting, and he spent most of the meeting behind my right shoulder holding a microphone. I didn't listen for the sound of his breathing and I didn't care that my book didn't look studied. I've gotten into the habit of reading the material on my computer and doing the Bible reading in my office, so the book doesn't get underlined a lot on these summer Thursdays. I didn't care if he thought I studied or not.
Today on the radio, they played I've Been Waiting for a Girl Like You. This is one of my favorite songs to sing, but of course I change it to Guy like you. I ruined the song for myself by singing it karaoke to a brother named Harley in 2005, he of the eight hands I had to keep pushing off, which was difficult having only two hands myself. It was on one of the cd's I got burned last year. I realized he was never waiting for me. It doesn't make him a rotten scoundrel. I have never been able to think of him in those terms. I still respect him and care what happens to him. And I was happy to realize I'm not waiting anymore. I'm ready to go on and live my life. I'm going to matter to me.
The next song on my car radio was Sweet Love Hangover which goes not only do I have a sweet love hangover but I don't want to get over. Don't want the cure for this. I always liked that song (Diana Ross) because it was written by two women. Why do men think they can write songs for women to sing? Maybe the problem is there is no cure, that whole and your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you, and he will think he can write songs for you and you will be so grateful you will make meatloaf whenever he asks and welcome his eight hands and he can pick the music on the car radio.
Still, I do not plan on wearing purple to the meetings anytime soon. Maybe when I get to Saipan and the coast is clear.
About the time the music broke, they were listening to junk. I had no motivation to fix it. In fact, I might have broken it faster had I realized the peace and quiet I was going to get once that occurred.
Today was strange in some ways, especially driving around with music blasting away. I started to think at first that I really had been in silence too long because I didn't recognize (but liked) three songs in a row. However, my hearing is shot and I couldn't tell what the words were. Finally I did know some of the words, and I figured out I had tuned in a Christian rock station. So I listened to a little country and then some classic rock.
I am big on the classic rock. I grew up with Boston and Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller Band, Eagles. I love Fleetwood Mac especially. I like a lot of music. Foreigner might be my favorite. Hard to say. I caught Layla by Eric Clapton today. Not my favorite song, but it was just so good to have music. So naturally I will be burning cds of Sing to Jehovah this weekend. That's the best music.
And I sure need to practice. I had a lot of bronchitis this past winter and my singing is not where I want it to be.
The first time the DJ was talking (I hit scan almost immediately but this time he got a few words in on me) and he said Pennsylvania and the call letters beginning with W, I nearly fainted. All my life radio stations began with the letter K. Who likes W better than K? The only W I like is the WDVE on the building in Pittsburgh because it looks like the abbreviation for Wildeve, the surname of a fictional witness family I adore in the books of Thea Phipps, one of my best sisters in Arkansas. (If you are a reader, check her out on Amazon.)
Who do you want to meet in the resurrection? I do want to meet Bathsheba and Abigail. Got a thing for Ruth too. For a guy though, I would say Jubal and David. Jubal was the founder of pipes, and his name is the root for a favorite word of mine: jubilation. David, as you know, was a harpist. Like, you may think of him primarily as King, adulterer, shepherd, all kinds of roles, but I always picture him first as a musician. The main thing I want to do in the new world is hear all the Israelite music by the Israelites. I want the real thing. I have fantasies that we'll have music conventions in the new world just to have music all day long. Why talk if you can sing?
So today I had music in my life. I was wondering who I am anymore. I don't recognize myself a lot lately. I have gained weight here during these hibernational winters. I have been depressed or sad or something over my job being stupid and the climate being frozen. I am going to try and get back where I was, but it isn't just that. I'm missing music, and I just haven't been myself. I don't feel right. I never have felt like I had my feet back under me from moving. Today, I thought I might find me again, that I'm getting closer.
Last year, I was thinking about a brother here and that I liked him enough to think about eternity with him. One time we were talking on the phone and I said, as crazy as it might sound, that I liked to make meatloaf not so much for meatloaf for dinner but for cold meatloaf sandwiches for breakfast the next morning, and he said oh me too. Every time I mentioned liking some 80's rock, he had it and burned a CD for me.
There's a poem by Cornelius Eady that I have always loved. It's called "I'm a Fool to Love You" and it is the story of how the poet's mother chooses his father after having first been with a no-account man, how that first love was so bad it made his father look like "an island in the middle of a stormy sea. He made my father look like a rock." And she ended up with this man even though he was cruel, and that is how the blues work their sorry wonder. The poem ends by saying the blues make trouble look like a feather bed, makes the wrong man's kisses a healing.
If your whole life is about a father who is messed up, a few guys who will say anything to use you, and a husband who thinks you ain't got half a brain, then maybe a decent brother comes along and his kisses would feel like a healing. One of my friends wrote me after one of these posts and says her father was messed up in some different ways, verbally abusive, emotionally manipulative, and he was a brother. My mother used to say that she would not trade my father in for about half the brothers in our congregation.
I don't want a worldly man, but there are a few in the truth I couldn't abide either. One time I actually told a brother in Arkansas that the way he walked into the hall ten minutes before his wife entered (she was getting the baby in the baby seat and the toddler out of the toddler seat and carrying a book bag and a diaper bag) was a disgrace, that it set a bad example for my daughters. He laughed.
I don't know why his wife put up with that either, except I do know as hard as it is to change yourself, it's even harder to get someone else motivated. And by the time you have two babies with a man, you are so invested in them, that you don't really count sometimes, or at least you can't afford to let yourself count.
Today I was listening to music, what I wanted to hear. What I wanted mattered. I realized that the worst part about figuring out last year that I was on a one way street of romantic interest was that for a little while, I entertained the idea that I mattered to someone, and really, I didn't. Not much. Ain't even got the kisses of the wrong man. At the meetings, sometimes he shows up in the same color I'm wearing. Oh, if it's green it doesn't mean anything because I wear green all the time. But I hardly ever wear purple, and then if we show up both in purple, I want it to matter, but it doesn't. I'm being superstitious or something else equally disapproved.
One Thursday night about a month ago, we both showed up after meeting to get gas at the local Get Go. He was on one side of the building and I was on the other. We had driven through the Rambler for ice cream cones in Windber, so we sat there and finished them before I got out and pumped gas in Johnstown. I didn't want to see him. Sometimes I feel so stupid and it rises up like lava and I think bring it on, overflow and melt me down into oblivion so I die from this and I never have to hurt again.
I'm getting better. I spoke to him after the last meeting, and he spent most of the meeting behind my right shoulder holding a microphone. I didn't listen for the sound of his breathing and I didn't care that my book didn't look studied. I've gotten into the habit of reading the material on my computer and doing the Bible reading in my office, so the book doesn't get underlined a lot on these summer Thursdays. I didn't care if he thought I studied or not.
Today on the radio, they played I've Been Waiting for a Girl Like You. This is one of my favorite songs to sing, but of course I change it to Guy like you. I ruined the song for myself by singing it karaoke to a brother named Harley in 2005, he of the eight hands I had to keep pushing off, which was difficult having only two hands myself. It was on one of the cd's I got burned last year. I realized he was never waiting for me. It doesn't make him a rotten scoundrel. I have never been able to think of him in those terms. I still respect him and care what happens to him. And I was happy to realize I'm not waiting anymore. I'm ready to go on and live my life. I'm going to matter to me.
The next song on my car radio was Sweet Love Hangover which goes not only do I have a sweet love hangover but I don't want to get over. Don't want the cure for this. I always liked that song (Diana Ross) because it was written by two women. Why do men think they can write songs for women to sing? Maybe the problem is there is no cure, that whole and your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you, and he will think he can write songs for you and you will be so grateful you will make meatloaf whenever he asks and welcome his eight hands and he can pick the music on the car radio.
Still, I do not plan on wearing purple to the meetings anytime soon. Maybe when I get to Saipan and the coast is clear.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The "V" Key
I blew out and kaputted a computer right after moving here and was saving that lovely keyboard for the day I got a new computer. After two years I figured out that was not going to happen. I took the keyboard out of storage and put it on my office computer. My employer provides a very wonderful computer, but the keyboard is the $5 job.
Today, the "V" key stopped working. Being in storage is not good for electronics. So I put the cheap keyboard back on. For the first few emails it felt weird, but after that I put my hands straight and typed away. Now, at home, I have one computer in the basement (thanks to Jason for fixing it) and then a laptop upstairs and the girls both have their own Apples. Why is all this stuff named after fruit? One of them has a Blackberry too. I did not think I would use this laptop for much other than checking email, because I hated the little crowded keyboard, and now I type at my normal speed on it without any problem, in the dark.
For a few moments, I thought I could do without using the letter v. But I was wrong. Half my user ids and passwords use something with a v. I have a one vanilla orchid thing going on and I got that from the Awake! magazine, about 2003 or 2004, an article about how out of over 10,000 species of orchids, the vanilla orchid was the only one which produced an edible fruit. I like that idea. And there are so many nice words with that letter. I would be unable to write about love, clover, vigor, avenues, venues, or vermilion without that key. But I also could not write about vices, violence, or viruses. I could have no friends named Vincent, Victoria, Victor, Veronica, or Valerie. And I confess, my children were almost named Valerie and Veronica. I love V names better than A names, but their father's first girlfriend was named Valerie, so I vetoed that very quickly.
Of course, that letter shows up in slave, which is bad in American history in the 17th to 19th century, but good if you are faithful and discreet. The letter is lovely in ovulate, because I had to do it to have my daughters. And v shows up in some superb verbs: strive, arrive, derive, drive, give, live, save, and plenty of adverbs as well: vacantly, vainly, vaguely. I could never write about veins or any medical conditions with vena in them. I could describe no vehicles nor their velocity, ventricles, valves, vacuums, vacations, no various vases nor vast ventures. No violins, even though the older they are the sweeter the music.
We had a very nice meeting tonight. Aren't they all? Well, the program is always good because this is a spiritual paradise. Sometimes I leave feeling unloVed. Tonight I just left feeling very happy and like I belonged there. I am homesick a lot, and while we all speak the pure language, some of ya'll speak it with a weird twang. We have a lot of friends visiting here working unassigned territory. They are from New Jersey. They got a twang, but something else. They're all black. And it felt a lot like being in Lawton, Oklahoma again. I had some of the best friends ever there and our hall was always comprised of a lot of diversity. It was an army town so the soldiers would bring home German and Korean wives who later became our sisters. One was from Australia and pronounced God's name "Jehover."
In Arkansas, Tyson Foods, Inc., moved half the people off the Marshall Islands to pluck chickens. We had to get up a language group to speak Marshallese to witness to them. In 2005, we had the largest Memorial in that language outside the Marshall Islands. And the area continues to grow. Here, this is the whitest place I've ever been. A few weeks ago eating at Main Moon on a Sunday after meeting, I saw a priest. This is the most Catholic place I've ever been. I don't recall ever seeing a priest before. I must have, but I sure can't put my finger on the event.
Now I've seen Baptist preachers to beat the band. And, we had a lot of Muslims in Arkansas, and me, having studied Arabic literature, I got a lot of calls there that I will never have here. Sometimes I leave thinking no one really talked to me and I don't sound like anyone here and this group doesn't even look like a congregation I've belonged to before. I don't think Satan is chasing Cherri Randall personally, but I do think he has a minor demon assigned to this area, and sometimes I come up as the prime target in his rotation, and also my children do. The other day, Carly points out that brother so and so has not spoken to her this entire month nor greeted Sara at the hall. Tonight, I want to feel hard hearted at brother so and so.
Instead, I remind us both that brother so and so has responsibilities and even if he hates us, he ain't worth dying for. The Hall is the place to be.
In Arkansas, every year we had this big talent show and we'd have a lot of acts, and one of them was always me reading poems I wrote. The first year, I wrote one about every member of the West Fork congregation. I read it and had big ole deer hunting brothers in the audience crying. Those are the same events at which we put on the dramas with all the young ones doing the acting. I was always busy and I never doubted that I belonged in the middle of the excitement. I was thinking about that first poem tonight when we had our closing prayer. In that poem, I mentioned how I used to cry at meetings, just a little, when Bob (of my earlier blogs about his falling asleep in death) would say the prayer. Not just because they were heartfelt prayers, but because I would peek at his face and watch him as he prayed. I think sometimes that is not a nice thing to do, but I loved doing it with Bob.
I learned that from my grandmother. She told me if I was ever to marry a brother, to look at his face when he prayed and I would know if he was worth his spiritual salt or not. So I thought it sounded like a good idea to do to everybody. I'm pretty sure my grandmother was a smart cookie. Bob's face would be so earnest, so loving and kind that I would feel my throat closing up on the tears that rose up from my heart, my lowly heart throbbing between two pink frothy lungs trying to breathe without letting a sob escape.
For the first time since I've been here, I wanted to write a congregation poem. I have written a few individual poems, anniversaries, thank yous, just being thoughtful, but I have not done anything on the scale of Arkansas. So maybe I will write one in August when I am through teaching this summer session and get caught up. Maybe not. Brother so and so gets on my nerves and I have to include everyone in the poem. But tonight it sounds like a good idea.
What this really means is that the local demon pool has rotated duty to someone else, and whoever it is, I am sorry, but it is so nice that I am not quite on my maximum stress load for the first time in about a year, that I am just going to enjoy the peace for however long (or short) it lasts.
Tonight I sat by Pam, and I have missed Pepper in Arkansas for three years especially when it came to singing. Now there are new songs, and we sang two of my faVorites tonight, and I sang better with Pam like I used to sing better with Pepper.
Maybe I'm like the V key. It seems like such a little used letter that at first you think you can do without. Then when you think about it, you want the V too. Whatever key you are, there are some words that cannot be written without you there, no matter what key it happens to be.
Get down here right now!
Just got this from Dana, 26 seconds. Reminds me of Kimberly, haha, when she was little and in trouble. You can even see "Carly" at the foot of the tree thinking I'm the good little bear.
Dragged 80 Feet
I was thinking this morning about Sara, of course. One thing I didn't say in last night's blog was how for about a week, there were drag marks and blood in the street. Finally it rained and washed it away, but each time we drove down Curtis Avenue, it hurt.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
In the Pitts
I ended up going to Pittsburgh today. Carly said in the car later that it was bittersweet. I thought a lot of sweet on my end. My problem is I want to be a fixer. I want to fix all the wrong things in Sara's life. About four years ago, she and her mom were having a garage sale before moving from Fayetteville to Hot Springs. A woman bought their tv cabinet and of course, she is trying to figure out how to load it at the end of the driveway in a little stick shift rice burner. Her son is in the car, he's maybe 11, and he accidentally puts the car in gear and promptly knocks Sara's mother down, breaking her knee and giving her two years' worth of surgeries and physical therapy, and knocking Sara down under the car and dragging her for about 80 feet.
Imagine being a mother with a broken knee and you can't go 80 feet to your child. The EMTS, when they arrived, thought Sara was dead, until she finally groaned. She had a broken hip, looked scalped by Indians, road burned skin everywhere, and more bruises and concussions and sprains than I can recount. The garage sale customer had no insurance, and neither did Sara or her mother. The convalescent center checked her out early, against the doctor's wishes, because she could not pay to remain.
I could sit here all night telling you the things wrong with Sara. And me and my kids and some of you and I am still thinking about that little boy running across the road to get to Sheetz with his dimes in his old aspirin bottle and wishing I could fix him too. I don't like living sometimes. I don't mean I wish to discontinue living, merely that it is overwhelming at times to consider all the ways we are suffering. I am ordinarily a glass half full kind of girl, but this is what I thought of today when Carly said Sara's parting was bittersweet. I was so relieved for me and so sad for Sara.
When the faithful & discreet slave says to set realistic goals, I take their admonition to heart. I have figured out I cannot fix myself, and really the only true help I can give anyone else is to tell them how God's kingdom is the only real "fix." Thinking about what it means to be made in God's image makes me believe that while Jehovah is not overwhelmed ever, he is sad over the condition of his children and wants to fix them. I love the new song about the resurrection and how Jehovah has a longing to do the work of his own hand. I think if I had been an apostle and could heal people, I'd have done it right and left, but the focus was on the future, not the present. Jesus would have counseled me for setting up a clinic and dispensing cures. But I long to see us all fixed.
All this makes me tired in a way that sleep does not restore. And right now I'm going on six hours. We moved last year, and Lana's parents helped us. Frankly, I was jealous of Dana, her mother's, ability to work like a mule. We went off for a load at the old house and came home and everything dumped in the garage had been moved to the rooms where it belonged AND she and Amy had completely unpacked my kitchen. With one exception, all the cabinets remain arranged exactly and perfectly the way they did it. (Carly bought more Rubbermaid, so we had to switch that with casserole dishes and pie plates.) She's only a dozen or so years younger than me, and I remember when I was that age being able to go like a racehorse and do it several nights in a row, and now one night of less than eight wears me out. I want to be perfect of course, but tonight, I would settle for being 39 again instead of 49.
There's a column in the new issue of Reader's Digest this month (I can never sit still without writing or reading, so in the checkout line or at the dentist's office, I am reading) called "Advice I Would Like to Give Myself Twenty Years Ago."
Who wouldn't want that opportunity? The funniest one (to me) said: Buy Apple Stock.
I guess I would tell myself to stop trying to fix everyone else (it mostly annoys people, unless you are Sara and someone is buying you shoes) and use that energy to fix me. Stop baking pies for brothers and start doing pilates for you.
Twenty years ago there weren't blogs. But I should have told myself to start one. It is helping me to spend part of each day anticipating this writing, and it is good for me to write each day. I go into withdrawal if I go too long without writing. It's a strange and thunderous feeling, like I am bottled shut and about to blow my lid from fizz. Under pressure. It helps me to have the rule that this writing has to incorporate something spiritual everyday. In studying women's literature, there are not as many examples from certain historic periods as there are of men's writing. Women weren't allowed, often had no time, and frequently had no education or ability to write. So what we know of women's lives from those eras comes from their diaries, their household records, and their personal correspondence. They weren't producing journalism or plays or publishing poems.
And I was thinking about the word blog, which is coined from "web log." A log you keep on the world wide web. Like William Shatner's character Captain Kirk says in the opening sequences of old Star Trek episodes: Captain's log, stardate yada yada. And he gives an account of the journey the Starship Enterprise is embarking on.
I'm trying to track my journey through these last days when Satan is trying everything to add me to that list of names to taunt Jehovah my God with. And he has a lot of names of people who have never embraced true worship, but I am sure he reserves the best of the list for those he has enticed away. Crazily, sadly, sometimes I glimpse some true value in myself by how hard Satan has tried to sidetrack me. He must want me pretty badly because he's done some wickedly impressive feats.
I don't want to make Satan's "A" list. And I don't want to have to quit blogging either. So it's a win/win for me.
Carly and I had lunch at Ikea. They have ribs on Wednesdays for $4.99 and that chocolate wave cake is impressive too. We bought three replacement bowls to our set and just looked around. I held her hands at the table and told her we had to start being kinder to each other.
It's been a very peaceful and kind and even a little bittersweet day. I owe some emails and I can't do it. I miss you if you are reading this, but I am going to bed. I'll get back to you tomorrow, and I look forward to having infinite tomorrows of perfection to be with you someday.
Imagine being a mother with a broken knee and you can't go 80 feet to your child. The EMTS, when they arrived, thought Sara was dead, until she finally groaned. She had a broken hip, looked scalped by Indians, road burned skin everywhere, and more bruises and concussions and sprains than I can recount. The garage sale customer had no insurance, and neither did Sara or her mother. The convalescent center checked her out early, against the doctor's wishes, because she could not pay to remain.
I could sit here all night telling you the things wrong with Sara. And me and my kids and some of you and I am still thinking about that little boy running across the road to get to Sheetz with his dimes in his old aspirin bottle and wishing I could fix him too. I don't like living sometimes. I don't mean I wish to discontinue living, merely that it is overwhelming at times to consider all the ways we are suffering. I am ordinarily a glass half full kind of girl, but this is what I thought of today when Carly said Sara's parting was bittersweet. I was so relieved for me and so sad for Sara.
When the faithful & discreet slave says to set realistic goals, I take their admonition to heart. I have figured out I cannot fix myself, and really the only true help I can give anyone else is to tell them how God's kingdom is the only real "fix." Thinking about what it means to be made in God's image makes me believe that while Jehovah is not overwhelmed ever, he is sad over the condition of his children and wants to fix them. I love the new song about the resurrection and how Jehovah has a longing to do the work of his own hand. I think if I had been an apostle and could heal people, I'd have done it right and left, but the focus was on the future, not the present. Jesus would have counseled me for setting up a clinic and dispensing cures. But I long to see us all fixed.
All this makes me tired in a way that sleep does not restore. And right now I'm going on six hours. We moved last year, and Lana's parents helped us. Frankly, I was jealous of Dana, her mother's, ability to work like a mule. We went off for a load at the old house and came home and everything dumped in the garage had been moved to the rooms where it belonged AND she and Amy had completely unpacked my kitchen. With one exception, all the cabinets remain arranged exactly and perfectly the way they did it. (Carly bought more Rubbermaid, so we had to switch that with casserole dishes and pie plates.) She's only a dozen or so years younger than me, and I remember when I was that age being able to go like a racehorse and do it several nights in a row, and now one night of less than eight wears me out. I want to be perfect of course, but tonight, I would settle for being 39 again instead of 49.
There's a column in the new issue of Reader's Digest this month (I can never sit still without writing or reading, so in the checkout line or at the dentist's office, I am reading) called "Advice I Would Like to Give Myself Twenty Years Ago."
Who wouldn't want that opportunity? The funniest one (to me) said: Buy Apple Stock.
I guess I would tell myself to stop trying to fix everyone else (it mostly annoys people, unless you are Sara and someone is buying you shoes) and use that energy to fix me. Stop baking pies for brothers and start doing pilates for you.
Twenty years ago there weren't blogs. But I should have told myself to start one. It is helping me to spend part of each day anticipating this writing, and it is good for me to write each day. I go into withdrawal if I go too long without writing. It's a strange and thunderous feeling, like I am bottled shut and about to blow my lid from fizz. Under pressure. It helps me to have the rule that this writing has to incorporate something spiritual everyday. In studying women's literature, there are not as many examples from certain historic periods as there are of men's writing. Women weren't allowed, often had no time, and frequently had no education or ability to write. So what we know of women's lives from those eras comes from their diaries, their household records, and their personal correspondence. They weren't producing journalism or plays or publishing poems.
And I was thinking about the word blog, which is coined from "web log." A log you keep on the world wide web. Like William Shatner's character Captain Kirk says in the opening sequences of old Star Trek episodes: Captain's log, stardate yada yada. And he gives an account of the journey the Starship Enterprise is embarking on.
I'm trying to track my journey through these last days when Satan is trying everything to add me to that list of names to taunt Jehovah my God with. And he has a lot of names of people who have never embraced true worship, but I am sure he reserves the best of the list for those he has enticed away. Crazily, sadly, sometimes I glimpse some true value in myself by how hard Satan has tried to sidetrack me. He must want me pretty badly because he's done some wickedly impressive feats.
I don't want to make Satan's "A" list. And I don't want to have to quit blogging either. So it's a win/win for me.
Carly and I had lunch at Ikea. They have ribs on Wednesdays for $4.99 and that chocolate wave cake is impressive too. We bought three replacement bowls to our set and just looked around. I held her hands at the table and told her we had to start being kinder to each other.
It's been a very peaceful and kind and even a little bittersweet day. I owe some emails and I can't do it. I miss you if you are reading this, but I am going to bed. I'll get back to you tomorrow, and I look forward to having infinite tomorrows of perfection to be with you someday.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Well, if it's love, make it hurt
Tonight I was out with two of the three girls, the third one declining our presence and I think we've had too much togetherness this past month. I saw one of my favorite students from my very first semester here. He was wearing a neon green shirt and he had a tattoo peeking out of the neck. It had kiss kiss lips and it followed a curve and said, well, if it's love, make it hurt.
I read things in his essays enough to know he's had plenty of hurt. Not just from girls. His mother died of cancer two years ago, his father passed before that. Oh, there have been girls, and friends, and society in general has just let him sift through the cracks and to his credit, he is trying to crawl up and out. I have told him about God's kingdom, but he is a Darwinist. Cannot believe God would let all this happen.
My students are not allowed to use the phrase love is like a rose. It's cliche. It has been said too many times since the first poet wrote that (Robert Burns, 1759-1796) to be fresh anymore. But I can't help thinking that eventually some cynic like me read that poem in the 18th century and said oh yeah, love is like a rose all right. It smells pretty and feels soft. And then you reach your hand in there to pick it and the thorns get you.
All love in this system eventually hurts, doesn't it? I am not saying it isn't worth the pain. I would not give up the girls for anything but at the same time I am still feeling a little blue this week over the Greensburg trip and certain comments about not having conditioner in my shower. And even if you marry a wonderful brother or sister, and no one ever raises a harsh word, or looks at another, or forgets an anniversary, eventually someone is sick, and there is the pain of watching someone you love suffer.
Or living without them, which is very real in this old system. I have watched many sisters I love lose their husbands, husbands they hoped to be with eternally. I watch many other sisters worry, reconciling the clocks, the one counting their husband's years and the one counting down this system. Will he make it? Can he live long enough?
I'm not sure we really know very much about love at all. I was thinking about my student and his pain, the way it has shaped who he is, the way I am messed up in some profound ways (yes, I knew this about myself, fear not). I was wondering when the girls argue how much of this I am accountable for, in how I have raised them, what I did not do correctly, how I shorted them and what need I could not meet. And I've had so few of mine met. Oh, I am doing great on groceries, but love, I don't know. I have the girls and I had my grandmother and I have some sisters, a few brothers. That's about it though.
Sometimes I am attracted to brothers because they have extended families in the truth. I want to belong that way, even though I know plenty of others do not share much DNA at the hall and they do fine.
Everything in society messes all of us up. It's Satan's system. TV, movies, books, video games, surfing the web, advertisements, music videos, there is an endless stream of mind-boggling mental junk food and once we consume it, our minds are bloated or starved or stupid. Materialism, sex, everything disguised as the need for love.
When I was 19 and had been out there in Satan's world for about a year, not that one day I was in and one day out -- hardly anyone runs away from Jehovah. It's usually a slow slide downhill, and it was for me. But I woke up one day and realized I was in a sinful messed up state and wanted to come back. By that time I had had a couple of guys break my heart, and I told the committee of elders everything.
They told me I was going to have to curb my fleshly appetite if I was going to make a success of repenting. I just sat there, mouth agape. I bet I looked like a red-headed puffer fish gasping for air on land.
"Are you going to be able to do this?" an elder asked sternly. And I mean stern. He leaned towards me with his elbows on his knees, his Bible in his right hand, his face so filled with distaste it was a palpable thing.
It was 1981. Not a lot of sensitivity training back then I am thinking. I told them I would be fine.
And I was, sort of. The thing is, I had not been in a relationship just for the physical aspect. I didn't really enjoy that part so much. It seemed to me that was the price you had to pay for a guy to tell you that you were pretty and he loved you.
I needed to hear that so much.
The congregation I was in was in Odessa, Texas. I wonder sometimes where those brothers are now, 31 years later, thinking one of them at least is ancient or his wife is no longer thinking of a mutual eternity. I remember their names of course, and it was a long time before I learned to make peace with the assumptions made about me that day.
So it is with rejoicing that I consider the prospect of anointed sisters to judge sisters on earth. Even congregational love can hurt. The ways in which we are sidetracked by such pain is the craftiest act of all.
I read things in his essays enough to know he's had plenty of hurt. Not just from girls. His mother died of cancer two years ago, his father passed before that. Oh, there have been girls, and friends, and society in general has just let him sift through the cracks and to his credit, he is trying to crawl up and out. I have told him about God's kingdom, but he is a Darwinist. Cannot believe God would let all this happen.
My students are not allowed to use the phrase love is like a rose. It's cliche. It has been said too many times since the first poet wrote that (Robert Burns, 1759-1796) to be fresh anymore. But I can't help thinking that eventually some cynic like me read that poem in the 18th century and said oh yeah, love is like a rose all right. It smells pretty and feels soft. And then you reach your hand in there to pick it and the thorns get you.
All love in this system eventually hurts, doesn't it? I am not saying it isn't worth the pain. I would not give up the girls for anything but at the same time I am still feeling a little blue this week over the Greensburg trip and certain comments about not having conditioner in my shower. And even if you marry a wonderful brother or sister, and no one ever raises a harsh word, or looks at another, or forgets an anniversary, eventually someone is sick, and there is the pain of watching someone you love suffer.
Or living without them, which is very real in this old system. I have watched many sisters I love lose their husbands, husbands they hoped to be with eternally. I watch many other sisters worry, reconciling the clocks, the one counting their husband's years and the one counting down this system. Will he make it? Can he live long enough?
I'm not sure we really know very much about love at all. I was thinking about my student and his pain, the way it has shaped who he is, the way I am messed up in some profound ways (yes, I knew this about myself, fear not). I was wondering when the girls argue how much of this I am accountable for, in how I have raised them, what I did not do correctly, how I shorted them and what need I could not meet. And I've had so few of mine met. Oh, I am doing great on groceries, but love, I don't know. I have the girls and I had my grandmother and I have some sisters, a few brothers. That's about it though.
Sometimes I am attracted to brothers because they have extended families in the truth. I want to belong that way, even though I know plenty of others do not share much DNA at the hall and they do fine.
Everything in society messes all of us up. It's Satan's system. TV, movies, books, video games, surfing the web, advertisements, music videos, there is an endless stream of mind-boggling mental junk food and once we consume it, our minds are bloated or starved or stupid. Materialism, sex, everything disguised as the need for love.
When I was 19 and had been out there in Satan's world for about a year, not that one day I was in and one day out -- hardly anyone runs away from Jehovah. It's usually a slow slide downhill, and it was for me. But I woke up one day and realized I was in a sinful messed up state and wanted to come back. By that time I had had a couple of guys break my heart, and I told the committee of elders everything.
They told me I was going to have to curb my fleshly appetite if I was going to make a success of repenting. I just sat there, mouth agape. I bet I looked like a red-headed puffer fish gasping for air on land.
"Are you going to be able to do this?" an elder asked sternly. And I mean stern. He leaned towards me with his elbows on his knees, his Bible in his right hand, his face so filled with distaste it was a palpable thing.
It was 1981. Not a lot of sensitivity training back then I am thinking. I told them I would be fine.
And I was, sort of. The thing is, I had not been in a relationship just for the physical aspect. I didn't really enjoy that part so much. It seemed to me that was the price you had to pay for a guy to tell you that you were pretty and he loved you.
I needed to hear that so much.
The congregation I was in was in Odessa, Texas. I wonder sometimes where those brothers are now, 31 years later, thinking one of them at least is ancient or his wife is no longer thinking of a mutual eternity. I remember their names of course, and it was a long time before I learned to make peace with the assumptions made about me that day.
So it is with rejoicing that I consider the prospect of anointed sisters to judge sisters on earth. Even congregational love can hurt. The ways in which we are sidetracked by such pain is the craftiest act of all.
Monday, July 18, 2011
I love you more
This is a real tattoo, and the person who got it used to always say "I love you" to her grandmother, and her grandmother would always reply, "I love you more."
After the grandmother passed away, this was a way to remember her.
I had a wonderful relationship with my grandmother. She brought me into the truth. Someday I'll write about that. She is the only person who ever loved me no matter what.
And I always answer the girls "I love yous" with "I love you more."
Lately, I think they say it less. I have bent over backwards to show Carly's friend a good time, spent so much time and money that I could have taken a vacation by now had I kept it all for myself, and all I have done is frustrate myself and have the girls take me for granted. I hate to see them upset at each other or me, and one of the worst things as a parent is seeing your child hurt and upset, but knowing they brought it on themselves, that what they are dealing with is a natural consequence.
I live by the concept, one of the laws of thermodynamics, that "energy used for one purpose cannot be used for any other purpose." I am trying to use my resources wisely, both time, money, nerves if you want to call it that, all of that is my "energy." And today, I am tired. I have to go teach right now, and after that, I will probably have to play bookworm for hours to get over all the bickering that went on in my house this morning.
Funny thing, I was rushing from the grocery store back home before my three o'clock class, because we were out of a few things, and I was running through all the complaints I was going to voice while yanking groceries out of my trunk into the garage. And I passed a deer right there next to the road behind the Richland theater. A beautiful doe, standing there so serene. And I calmed down and said thank you Jehovah for that little bit of beauty to slow me down in my angry day.
Tonight on the way home I figure there will be a herd.
snakes in a dream
I'm not complaining, but anytime the WT has a serpent picture, I get bad dreams. I dreamed there was a tiny worm coiled on my green bathroom rug. It was a grayish ashy brown, and I picked it up with a wad of toilet paper to flush it, and when I did, it uncoiled and was a baby snake hissing at me and unwrithing towards my face.
I woke up shook up. But nothing is worse than a picture I found by accident on the internet when I was looking for posters to redecorate my office.
http://www.art.com/products/p10399747-sa-i790801/sandy-skoglund-walking-on-egg-shells-1997.htm?sorig=cat&sorigid=0&dimvals=0&ui=fae907e089464044bcd8a92936bb134f&searchstring=walking+on+eggs+snakes
I don't know if that link will work, and I don't know if you want it to. It is at www.art.com and the photograph is titled "Walking on Egg Shells" and the artist (I use the term loosely) is Sandy Skoglund.
It took about a month to get over that, and I understand art, and I see what she's doing here, but why? Why is this art? Nobody, I daresay, will decorate anything in the new world with that.
Obviously I have not watched Snakes on a Plane or Anaconda and I know when to go use the bathroom during certain Indiana Jones film sequences. I did write my dissertation on Black Snake Moan and Monster's Ball. But there isn't a snake in either one, haha.
I do have trouble believing Eve was perfect sometimes.
I woke up shook up. But nothing is worse than a picture I found by accident on the internet when I was looking for posters to redecorate my office.
http://www.art.com/products/p10399747-sa-i790801/sandy-skoglund-walking-on-egg-shells-1997.htm?sorig=cat&sorigid=0&dimvals=0&ui=fae907e089464044bcd8a92936bb134f&searchstring=walking+on+eggs+snakes
I don't know if that link will work, and I don't know if you want it to. It is at www.art.com and the photograph is titled "Walking on Egg Shells" and the artist (I use the term loosely) is Sandy Skoglund.
It took about a month to get over that, and I understand art, and I see what she's doing here, but why? Why is this art? Nobody, I daresay, will decorate anything in the new world with that.
Obviously I have not watched Snakes on a Plane or Anaconda and I know when to go use the bathroom during certain Indiana Jones film sequences. I did write my dissertation on Black Snake Moan and Monster's Ball. But there isn't a snake in either one, haha.
I do have trouble believing Eve was perfect sometimes.
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