Snakes

Of course, the thing yesterday about elephants got me to thinking about critters in general.  When I think about animals, I think about Loretta.  She could have been on a certain TV show starring as Ellie Mae.  She has every kind of rabbit in the back shed, a big Pyrenees Mountain Dog in the yard, an apricot poodle named Woody in the house, some cats, chickens, guineas maybe, guinea pigs for sure.  It's a certain kind of Eden at her house.  The last time we were there, she put a baby chicken in my hands and I had to cup it.  I don't know who was more scared, me or that bird.  It was ugly and bird poop is ugly and I just wanted the itchy little feeling out of my hands.

Loretta has big plans for the animals she is going to hang out with in the new world.  I do too of course.  Mostly a tiger.  However, I do like elephants.  Carly called them elefunks as a baby.  Elefunks, boonies, puppa dogs, and boydees, she had her own word for every animal before she could really speak well.  She thought long and hard about vet school.

I wonder of course if that whole curse to snakes means there won't be any in the new world or they will all have legs then.  Like, we have lizards now, so a snake is not merely a lizard minus legs.  They have an entire system of transportation that, if it wasn't so gruesome to look at, would be mesmerizing.  I'm pretty sure I would not get around that well if I lost my limbs.

Last night as I left my office, the earthworms were on the sidewalk and one of them was the size of a pencil and he was hustling up the concrete like he had places to go and people to see.  I watched for a moment as his segments distended with his stretch, and then contracted to propel him forward.

And then it started grossing me out and I got out of there.  He's lucky I didn't squish him good, but because he was so big I figured he'd be a mess on my shoes.

One time in Arkansas we were out in service, me and Carly and Jennifer and Sara Rowe, only she was Sara Bowen then.  So anyhow, my Focus was in the shop as someone hit me with their car and I had a rental.  It was spring break, thus we could be out and about on a weekday.  The weather is cool there in March, but it had been just that kind of fake out warm that you thought it was spring but it was still chilly.

A snake was stupid enough to come out, and then his cold blooded self was cold.  So at the first door out in rurals, we pull in a driveway and Sara opens the door and right about where she was going to put her foot, a coiled up snake was trying to warm himself.

She yanked the door shut and we wanted to see of course so we backed the car up.  There he was, a pretty big coil which undoubtedly was the reason he thought he could venture out to start with.

Well, he's about that far from the car, so I pull forward only about a foot closer to him, trying to run him over. 

We backed up, and he was still coiled up cold.

I went forward again, all of us looking that way (the people were not at home.  Sara and Jennifer being pioneers in frequently worked territory already knew this) to see where he was.

Backed up.  Still coiled up, but we are closer.

Pulled forward.  Put it in reverse, backed up.  Still coiled.

Went rocking back and forth trying to get closer and he just stayed coiled.  Finally I thought I had to be on top of him and as we backed up, he had finally uncoiled and was unhurriedly slithering away.  I put the car in drive and gunned it, aiming right at where I expected him to be.

It occurred to me about then that I had two pioneers in my car and I was trying to kill one of Jehovah's creatures.  About the time that thought whizzed through my head, as I was moving forward, I heard a splatting sound. 

In the backseat catty cornered to me as the driver, Sara says:  "Oooh yeah!  We got him!"

I didn't worry about having to talk to any elders about animal cruelty after that.  I'm not saying I'm proud of what I did.  I am saying I can't stand snakes, and who better to understand that than Jehovah?

There are no land snakes in New Zealand (sea snakes, a few swim up there, but they cannot live on land) and no snakes in Ireland.  Some good comes from being an island.  That's reason enough for me to consider moving there.  When I took the girls to Sea World in 1999, we saw a big 20' or so green moray eel in the reef aquarium and that made me feel slickly sick at my stomach to see him gliding around. 

I was thinking about all the animals I love.  I am very fond of those little tasmanian devils.  I know, they are called devils for a reason, but in the new world, I think I'd like to have some as I reside snakeless in New Zealand.  I like mammals.  I like rodents.  I love things with fur.  When we were moving to Arkansas the girls and I were looking at apartments and we asked one potential landlord about pets.  She said nothing with fur.  Carly said well, that leaves Dad out.  (Yeah, he's a hairy one, except the top of his head). 

I just don't like any reptiles and am not much more interested in amphibians.  I don't know if Jehovah is going to get me over that or give snakes legs or what.  I know it'll be okay, but I still don't think I'll ever really be able to laugh if I see a baby playing on a cobra hole.

Isn't that funny?  I can imagine climbing up on an elefunk and hanging on for a full out galloping charge. 

The Emotional Lives of Elephants

Suzie sent me this link today:

http://www.dogwork.com/relp8/%20

I don't know if it will work from this blog.  http://www.dogwork.com/relp8/%20

Well, I posted it hitting the link icon so maybe one or the other will work.  If not, and you want to see it, google Shirl and Jenny elephants reunited after more than 20 years.

Can you imagine being the only elephant and never seeing another of your species for over 20 years?  Elephants have extremely complex emotional lives that zoologists are only beginning to understand.  For example, elephants make low growling sounds to each other that they can hear from a distance of 5/6 miles but that humans are unaware of because it falls out of our decible perception levels.  They form close knit families, and are said to weep and mourn a death, particularly a matriarch for her calf.

They live 70 years or so and they die typically, if they die of old age, of a unique combination of factors related to their teeth - their teeth replace themselves till the last set is worn down and then the inability to take in nutrition hastens their end.

Anyway, I was thinking in watching this video what it would be like in the new world when all the zoos and fences and pounds and borders were done with, when all the animals were unchained and free.  We think of the benefits of God's kingdom for us.  But for them too, what a sweet result returning to paradise will have for them as well.

***

Giants

LIKE a mischievous little boy, the elephant calf wandered away from its herd and began strolling along the edge of an African water channel. Ignoring the warning trumpet from a nearby adult, the independent little calf suddenly slipped into deep water! But four anxious elephant cows rushed to the rescue. Two of them waded in and managed to lift the panicky baby with their tusks until two others stationed on the bank could pull him to safety.

Once her baby was safe, mother elephant carefully examined the whimpering, water-blowing little delinquent with her trunk, and, finding no damage, used it also to deliver a mighty wallop of discipline. Had any human mother witnessed the incident, she surely would have felt a common bond with that angry pachydermatous mother, who then chased the little rascal away from the water, loudly venting her motherly concern.

Similar to a human child, the baby elephant learns from such experiences and parental teaching. In fact, a young elephant is dependent on adult guidance for at least ten years, a length of time highly unusual in the animal world. Accounting for this may be the fact that, like human infants, an elephant is born with its brain only about a third of grown-up size. Hence, much of its behavior is developed as it grows, rather than primarily by instinct, as with most animals.

A young elephant’s parents may have had a “courtship” and a “honeymoon” that lasted for several months. When the female eventually becomes pregnant, she loses interest in her mate. Later, she seeks the company of another cow, who goes off with her to a secluded spot and stands by protectively while the infant is being born. Pregnancy has lasted up to twenty-two months. And no wonder! The baby that comes forth is all of three feet (1 meter) high and weighs about 200 pounds (90 kilos)!

The

Amazing Trunk

It takes the better part of a calf’s first year to learn how to use its most valuable asset—the trunk. The sight of a clumsy baby tripping over its own ungainly nose extension, stepping on it or otherwise awkwardly twisting and turning it, can make for some hilarious moments.

A baby elephant does not suck from mother’s breasts with its trunk, but, rather, lets it curl back over its head and nurses by mouth. But in three or four years, when mother can no longer stand the jabs of her juvenile’s sprouting tusks, she weans the thirsty youth forcibly. And comedy may again ensue when the baby tusker sticks its trunk into its own mouth in apparent desperation, acting like a thumb-sucking child. As the little one gets older, its trunk may even intrude into an adult’s mouth to investigate the food being chewed there.

Though an adult’s trunk may weigh about 300 pounds (135 kilos), the thousands of muscles along its six-foot (2-meter) length and flexible “fingers” at the tip make it very versatile indeed. It houses a highly sensitive nose, and, due to the animal’s very limited hearing and sight, the trunk is always moving around, sniffing out the environment like a sensitive antenna, and feeling for shape, texture and temperature. An extended trunk is also a typical greeting among elephants in what appears to be a measured motion of affection. When humans gain their trust, an extended trunk is accepted as a sign of mutual confidence.

But this combination nose and upper lip by no means serves only for delicate duties. It is also a powerful tool, scooping up sand loosened by tusks and feet when the elephant is digging for water, plucking grass and beating dirt from the roots, reaching into trees for fruit or tearing off bark, dousing the body with water or dusting it with dirt for cooling, and, together with the tusks, lifting objects weighing as much as a ton. It is even used as a snorkel when the elephant wades in deep water.

By means of its hoselike trunk an elephant can suck up as much as a gallon and a half (6 liters) of water for spraying itself or drinking. Drinking merely requires squirting the water into its mouth, where it can be heard gurgling stomachward. In this way up to 50 gallons (190 liters) or more of water may be consumed in a day, along with the 500 to 600 pounds (some 225 to 270 kilos) of food that the versatile trunk also stuffs into its owner’s mouth. Hence, if the trunk becomes damaged, as in a poacher’s snare, the animal has a real survival problem. Some elephants with such a handicap have been seen eating grass on their knees.

Enormous

Teeth and Tusks

Chewing these immense amounts of food calls for something unusual in the way of teeth. Strangely, only one tooth on each side of each jaw—a total of four—is in use at any one time. But what teeth they are! They may weigh eight or nine pounds (4 kilos) apiece and be at least a foot (30 centimeters) long. In a lifetime, six sets of these giant molars are used up, in addition to the first milk teeth.

As if on a conveyor belt, the huge grinders move into position, the new tooth pushing out the worn stump. The last set comes in when elephants are about forty years old. When these finally wear down, the great creature loses his chewing power and eventually dies, apparently from a form of malnutrition, at sixty or seventy years of age.

However, elephants are most noted for their other, far more visible, “teeth.” You might say that they have the world’s most extreme case of protruding teeth, since their great tusks are actually the upper front incisors. They are the longest and heaviest teeth of any living animal. Since they continue to grow all through the elephant’s life, it has been estimated that their length could reach as much as sixteen feet (5 meters) in the female and twenty feet (6 meters) in the male.

But these protruding “teeth” take quite a pounding as they dig up soil in quest of salt or food and water, lift heavy weights, or are used to fight for the attention of a comely cow. Invariably, one tusk bears the marks of more wear and may even be shorter due to chipping and breaking. We might, therefore, think of a right- or left-“handed” elephant.

When he died at fifty-five years of age in 1974, Ahmed, the largest known bull elephant in Kenya, had tusks each weighing an estimated 148 pounds (67 kilos). Ahmed’s giant incisors would be worth upward of $10,000 on the ivory market; so it can be readily understood why he was protected by a special decree of Kenya’s president. His price was on his head!

Growing

Up

As young male elephants get older, they do not become fearless protectors of the herd, as you might be inclined to think. Instead, the young bulls generally remain only until they begin to show signs of asserting their “masculinity” in some obstreperous manner. When this occurs, usually at around ten to thirteen years of age, the herd’s females react by forcibly ejecting the youthful upstarts. The young bulls then go off into a somewhat bachelor-type existence, though they may congregate in smaller bull herds. Mingling with cows comes only when they have “amorous” intentions toward the ones ready to mate.

As you may have guessed, main herds are largely a matriarchal society, usually led by a cow related to every other member of the herd as mother, sister or aunt. The strong bond between the cows cements the herds and makes for survival of the young.

When an African elephant reaches full growth, it is impressive indeed, the world’s largest living land animal. African bulls stand an average of over eleven feet (3 ¹⁄₂ meters) high at the shoulder and weigh about seven tons. However, one African bull killed in 1955 stood over thirteen feet (4 meters) high and was said to weigh twelve tons—a real giant!

Death

of the Giants

Do so-called “elephant cemeteries” really exist? Well, elephants do seem to have an interest in the bones and tusks of a dead comrade. To test out this curious behavior, carcasses were placed in the vicinity of a browsing herd. When they caught the scent, the beasts approached with an industrious enthusiasm, carefully surveying the remains with their trunks.

Some observers have even noted attempts by the elephants to remove the tusks, and others have reported their actually carrying bones for distances of up to half a mile (1 kilometer) from the carcass. But there have been no recent confirmations of “elephant cemeteries” where aging animals are said to die in secret. In fact, the foregoing would seem to indicate just the opposite, a scattering of bones and tusks, rather than a gathering of them to one place.

In one sad case some time ago, a newborn calf had died. A game warden saw its mother carrying the dead baby on her tusks for about three days, with her trunk draped over the limp form to hold it in place. Later the mother was seen alone, at a tree, not eating, and charging anyone who came near. When she finally left after some days, the warden found that the cow had scraped a small grave under that tree and buried the little body there.

The very intelligence of these marvelous creatures is now said to be a factor in current threats to their existence. Elephants are learning that Africa’s national parks offer some refuge from the widespread slaughter being inflicted by the guns and poisoned arrows of illegal ivory hunters, as well as farmers and ranchers who are taking over much of the elephant country. The result of this man-made upset of nature is that, rather than ranging over hundreds of miles, elephants are crowding into the park sanctuaries. Overbrowsing often follows, stripping the forests of trees and turning these areas into open grasslands unsuitable for the elephant.

It is unfortunate that the existence of creatures that are such a magnificent testimony to the wisdom and ability of the One who created them is now threatened. Their fascinating characteristics are just another evidence of His generous provision for humans, who delight in observing them and their habits. We can be grateful that the Creator, the Owner of “every wild animal of the forest” and the “beasts upon a thousand mountains,” has provided such creatures for mankind’s eternal pleasure and benefit.—Ps. 50:10.

g77 7/8 pp. 20-23 Giants of the African Forests *** of the African Forests

BY “AWAKE!” CORRESPONDENT IN KENYA

Homesick

I've neglected my blog and my writing of late.  That's what school does to me.  I have whittled the grading down to something manageable at least.  I went from 67 papers down to a handful.  Whew.

I would like to go back to Arkansas and see Jace and Jordyn and Ty Ger Woods.  I would like to see Will and Alex and Rene's niece.  Bob's granddaughter - I can't remember how to spell her name but it is some form of Madelyn.  My little Ruth is in Texas now.  I was born there and I sure wouldn't mind visiting and/or moving there either.  I miss people in Oklahoma too. 

Today when I walked through the parking lot I passed a brand new silver Cherokee Chief with, of all things, Oklahoma plates.  I was almost upon the bumper when I spotted it, and I took two more steps and gently laid my hand across the state.  I wasn't feeling patriotic for the government there.  I was missing friends, flat land to drive on and long hot summers when the weatherman told old people and babies to be careful or they'd die in the heat but there was never any snow in winter worth mentioning.  I wanted to eat Korean food and real BBQ and have someone tell me where to get fried pickles without looking at me crazy.  (Although to be fair, they serve them two places here.  They just aren't very good and they cost out the wahoo.  I mean, it's pickles and breading and frying.  CHEAP!)

It doesn't help that I'm miserable in my job from an administrative standpoint.  Teaching and students are fine.  Bosses and committees are turning me into an insomniac with panic attacks.  I am watching the listings for new positions, but Carly has another year of school here.  So it's a pain to look and it's a pain to move and/or be separated and it's a pain to wait and see if my contract gets renewed.

My zip code my whole life started with a seven.  A one is just so extremely a big marginal difference.  When we moved here I put off getting a Pennsylvania tag as long as I could because I was broke but I didn't want to give up that last visible reminder of who I used to be.  Finally, I got the Pennsylvania tag and the number (still today) is HBR 3440.

Now, I am word oriented as you have probably noticed so as a memory device to get the tag number in my recall, I have always invented something to go with the letters.  I have had a KZR in Arkansas that was for the poet Carolyn Kizer.  Once I had a DCR tag and that stood for David and Cherri Randall.  Easy enough to remember.  I always wanted a tag that was something like JON 316 or PSL 8318.  Now wouldn't that be cool?  The absolute best would be ISA 4310 but so far all I have is HBR 3440.  I wish Hebrews had a swanky scripture to match that, but there are not 34 chapters and so it won't work for that.  On a side note, once I was with a sister here at the ER and she used her debit card to pay and the pin number was 8318.  No guesswork about where she got that number.  Which reminds me that I have a number I use for everything, and when I was talking to Abel one time, I told him what his pin number was - I actually gave him three possible combinations, and sure enough, one of them was the right one.  He kinda laughed.  I just knew him so well in some ways, but I don't know if he ever knew me.  I don't know if anyone does.  I got bosses not wanting to renew my contract because they think I'm an idiot.  Seriously, don't you know me better than that by now?

Anyhow, I came home from the tag office that day and asked the girls if they could think of anything for HBR and Kim spouts off, without a moment of hesitation:  Hell Bent Redhead. 

That's pretty much been the gist of my life since moving here.  Looking back over 37 months, Abel is one of my better mistakes.  It's been catastrophe after catastrophe here.  Crazy bosses, jerk off landlords, and some just stupid random stuff all coming together in the worst possible ways.  So part of me keeps looking at new job listings thinking on each one, oh please, let me go there and leave here.

But I hope for another year's contract so Carly and I can stay together that last year.

Of course, the thing is, I don't believe in hell as a bad place, so being hell bent, just means I'm a sinner and bound for the common grave of all mankind except for the ransom of the Christ.  Tonight, I am thankful for that ransom.  If I don't have to die, and get to survive into the new world, that will mean that Jesus died so I did not have to experience death.  And let's be real.  Nobody wants to experience death even with complete faith of coming back in the resurrection.  On the other hand, if I do die before the resurrection, I know I will be back in a much better world, with the prospect of perfection and being sinless.  I cannot buy back what Adam and Eve lost even with my death - I had no perfect life to offer in exchange, so even with my own death, the prospect of perfect eternal life is only afforded to us via that death on the torture stake.  What a gift beyond words.

Technically I am no aunt . . .

But I could not be prouder of Jennifer and Jamie's baby girl.

Acai Berries

I'm not sure the acai is a berry.  Seems like it is.  It's the new wonder food.  Food has fads just like fashion and music.  So do diets.  Anybody remember Atkins shakes?  Oh they were funky.  So we went to Rite Aid and they had a bunch of stuff 75% off, which is my favorite you know, and it didn't expire till way into 2012 so I bought a lot, including some Acai supplement.  And I feel pretty good except I also bought some probiotics and it is detoxing my digestive system very thoroughly.  TMI!

I wonder if we were in the new world, and if we don't have mass transportation because 18 wheelers and the like all burn carbon fuels and pollute, so if acai berries have something unique that we need, how are people not in the rainforest going to get it?  Yes.  I think about these things, but then again, I lived over 40 years before I ever heard of them; obviously, we can live without it.

I'm going to do my WT.  It's late.  But I felt pretty good today so something was missing that I am now taking.  Might be selenium.  Slept like a log.   Who says slept like a baby?  Nobody that has had one, that's for sure.

Jordyn is here!

Seven pounds and ten ounces.  Jace is officially a big brother!

My Favorite Color

is not green really - it's 75% off.  We went to Target and hit the bedding/linens department pretty hard.  Rugs, comforters, all the stuff stocked for college dorm rooms marked down.  We each got a rolling file cabinet marked from 40 to 10 bucks - and the fact that it is green is a plus for us.

Of course we bought so much stuff we could not go anywhere else because the trunk was full.  That's a funny problem to have.

I wonder what Jehovah had Adam and Eve sleeping on before they figured out they were naked.  I can't see us going back to that.  I wonder if it is just cultural conditioning.  But I love textiles and sewing and clothing and colors.  I like having houses and dressing the bed.  Both the girls inherited that from me too.  Yeah, you should have seen us tonight.  We hardly left a thing for anyone else. 

We hit the sock rack too.  Nothing else was on mark down.  But that's our philosophy.  Don't pay retail and don't buy when you need something.  Buy when the store needs to get rid of something. 

And of course, we went to Sonic while we were over there.  I am sitting here with a lovely cup of crushed ice and diet vanilla coke beside me.  We also had a Steak and Shake shake.  Carly got the new caramel apple and it tasted crisp just like an apple if you can believe it.  I had banana, Kim chocolate.  I have never been a chocolate girl much unless it is donuts.  I don't care about ice cream either.  Let me tell you, if they had Krispy Kreme over there, I would have to drive through.

Especially if the light was on. 

So I wonder sometimes what the angels think looking down here at us, if they like us with clothes and living inside structures or if they have sorrow over that.  Is that what being sinless and perfect means, not covering anything up?  What plan did Jehovah have for Eve to have maxi pads?  I guess perfect childbirth would mean never an umbilical cord around a baby neck, but were we just going to carry babies around on our hips and nurse them in the open and how was that cord going to be cut?

I just don't know.  I guess I'll find out in the new scrolls, and this is just speculation that probably keeps me from doing serious research on Bible topics.  But I do this kind of thinking when I have no access to the WT library or reading a book.  Mostly I think these things while I'm driving and the girls ignore me with their earbuds/iPods plugged in. 

So you can tell I drove home from Target today, and I thought and thought all kinds of child birthing things because Jennifer is going slow getting Jordyn here, but she is going.  And I am glad she is having her inside and has maxi pads for after, and blankets for the baby and good nursing bras.

There's probably two angels laughing at me right now because I don't know that perfect boobs don't need bras to fight gravity.  And they're right.  I have no experience with perfect anything.  But I am pretty happy nonetheless with my $12 rug that someone else paid $48 for a few months ago.

I get my happy where I can.

drive-through laundry

I have a short story I published called "Drive-Through Laundry."  You can get convenience in cooking and you can skip cleaning for a few days, but there is no substitute for laundry.  I think this as I write here because my desk is at the dead end of the landing upstairs by the utility closet so I frequently write while listening for the dryer to buzz or the washer to finish spinning.

If I go back downstairs pretty fast, I can get all that clean and be free this weekend a little bit to grade haha.  And I am actively working the new job listings as they come out on Friday and it takes time to go over a posting and see first if you are right for them perhaps and next if they are right for you.  One place I checked in 2008, everybody in their department looked like Ken or Barbie and not a day over 30.  I didn't bother applying there.  I would not match.

Satan is trying to keep me busy, too busy for anything, so I am forcing myself to sit here and think of something to say.  I mean, I went to meeting tonight, so it should not be hard.  I'm glad we had the part from the OR book on the service meeting about being forgiving and letting love cover a multitude of sins.  I always think woo hoo ya'll got to put up with me a little longer.

It was a very good meeting.  As I was leaving, I spoke for a few minutes to Lana Jae and Dana.  Now, there is something to say.  Lana Jae is just doing smashing after her tonsillectomy.  She has a fresh haircut, and a beautiful print block dress on tonight.  It had six or seven tiers/layers - floral and zebra prints, and it matched and then she had white tights and new black mary jane shoes.  She was adorable.  And her mom had on a zebra stripe skirt and black top, so they looked especially darling together.  And walking out I got to commiserate with Frankie, a professor at Conemaugh, about papers to grade, and his mom, Beverly, about car payments.  It was just nice.  Part of me does not want to load up and start all over anywhere else.  Part of me says oh heck yes, especially since all the days here are getting shorter and it rained a lot today.  I got soaked once.  I nearly broke my neck/car/umbrella trying to shut the backseat door on the umbrella today.  But my contract is ending this year and so far it has not been renewed so I think I have to go elsewhere. 

And we got to sing that middle song, 60, and I love it.  I needed to hear/sing that one more than anything else that went on tonight.  I nearly cried by the end of it - it's been a long stressed out week again.  And I sat by Pam and a lot of people were happy to see me.  So, I get through another day.  Each day's suffering is sufficient for that day.

Goodnight my sisters.

I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way.

Those are the words of Jessica Rabbit in that crazy movie that mixes animation with live action called "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."  Sometimes I want to say I'm not bad it just looks that way.

I missed a blog yesterday.  I nearly went to bed just now, but I need to honor my commitment as far as is possible.  So many things are going on.  I checked email all day to see if Jennifer had baby Jordyn today.  She probably could have been induced but the hospital ended up not having room in labor and deliver, so they are now aiming for Friday.  Ah, delayed expectation.  I want the baby now safe, but you know, I believe Jehovah designed the maternal body to know when to kick in and let the baby deliver.  So if she isn't trying to get out of there yet, I'm okay with waiting.

But it's hard work!  Harder for Jennifer than me, for sure.  And my little Ruth is in the middle of packing up and heading for Texas.  She and her siblings are all going to be relocating and closer together and it's going to be a better deal for all of them.  I'm so excited for her, but it's also a lot of work for four people - actually five, since Neva Joy and Jearold are a couple.  Moving is awful for young people.  For senior citizens, it's got to be multiplied.  First, they've lived longer so sometimes have more stuff.  Second, they've lived longer so the body gets tired easier.  I'm not picking on them.  I really hope this system doesn't go long enough for me to reach any of their ages, because I will not be in that good of shape if I could live that long.

I was so busy last night I forgot to take all my pills and vitamins and my chest felt heavy all day.  I went to the dentist this morning and they said get an electric toothbrush or your gums are going to be sorry.  I want to say well, I'm not going to live much longer until I start getting better everyday.  But I guess I ought to price sonic care toothbrushes for the heck of it.

So tonight I'm tired, but I feel better because I took all those pills about five hours ago.  And my teeth still feel slick and clean.  I like that. 

I have been looking at the job listings for professors in the areas of specialization that I can teach.  I cannot, for example, teach British Literature.  I don't really like it and while I took the survey courses of it, I am not qualified to teach it except in the most general freshmen level kind of way.  I think the British are pretty arrogant.  Why is their literature from that small country considered a whole subject?  It's just not that good even if it is English.  American Lit is a lot bigger country you know.  I specialize in gender and African American Lit and can also do all creative writing, and some Arabic and American lit and film.

But the medieval lit, Asian, composition and rhetoric, I cannot do period.  And American lit I can really only do 20th century.  Before that, I don't really like that old stuff.  Some is okay, but not enough to get a degree in it.

It is interesting to consider all the jobs I might interview for, and the places I could end up moving.  I would miss somethings about here, but snow/winter is not one of them.  Argh.  I would miss the friends, but the people I work with, well, I would not miss some of them.

And that is all I know.  I wanted to come to Pennsylvania and be needed and valued.  I had such high hopes.  Maybe something is wrong with me and I am not going to match anywhere.  But I did not match here and I am older, heavier, tireder, and have lost spiritual ground with the girls, in this place.  I am more in debt than when I got here - thank you heating oil bill in the first house that was not insulated properly and everyone kept telling us it was US southern girls being cold rather than an issue with the construction of the house.  I am still trying to pay interest and principal on those credit cards.  I see daylight, but it's been a very long night.  I don't know if I didn't let Jehovah direct me in coming here, or I was headstrong, or I want too much out of a place to want me back.  While the work of moving again is daunting, the actual trying again in a new place fills me with hope.

sunrise, sunset

I came home from my office, early for me on a Monday, at about 7:00 p.m. and it was getting dark.  We had a picnic, long story why it was so late in the year, but no other time for it, and it was nippy.  That's a dandy southern word.  I brought home a list of places I had applied for a job next year and the girls were reading it and saying Auburn!!!  Alabama!!!  Bring it on.  Can you say hardly any snow?

What I was thinking was that in the pre-TV and computer days, people generally went to bed when it got dark and woke up at daybreak.  Now, electric lights have rearranged our lives, that and factory shift work.  One of the girls asked me one time why do factories bother with shifts when nearly everybody prefers day work.  And I said, duh.  They would need 3x the amount of equipment to operate if everybody had their own machines.  This way, you punch out of the seal placer valve pressurizer and the next person punches in and the thing never slows down.

Yeah, there is a Goodyear tire factory in my hometown.  We just turn into hibernating bears here in winter, and I wonder if that is the way our DNA is programmed, if that was Jehovah's purpose.  Then I think well this snow was not what he had in mind but the nephilim and that whole flood thing meant that the canopy came down and in Europe somewhere, a mammoth got caught and flash frozen with food in his mouth.  I'd have like to have seen that.  One minute, lunch, the next, hello freezing temperatures.  That was one very surprised but only momentarily mammoth herd.

I like night time.  I like dark.  I like stars and the moon and the whole panoply of nighttime things.  I love the sunset.  The sunrise is pretty, but where exactly is it in all these mountains?  Here I am, the zip code of my youth starting with seven, and sunrises here do not thrill me at all except for the regularity of their occurrence in the number one region of the zip code world.

There used to be (could still be, I dunno) a man on corners in Boulder, Colorado, called zip-code man.  People gave him tips the same way they give musicians dollars in parks, but he didn't sing and play an instrument.  If you yelled out a town in the U.S., he would tell you the zip code.  If you gave him a zip code, he could name in reverse and give you the town.

ALL of them.  Can you imagine?  Oh, the great capacity of the human brain.  But why did he spend it on zip codes?

Which makes me wonder if all the five-digit combinations are used up.  If you shouted 43996 and there was no town for that number (I don't know; I made it up) would he say hey, you're trying to fool me but there ain't one.

So I'm turning in now.  I will sleep past the sunrise, and I get more done in summer, but I'm feeling pretty good today about where I am.  I almost see daylight at the end of my to do list.  The pressure has alleviated somewhat.  I don't know if Jehovah will get rid of snow in the new world.  Some people like snow boarding and bundling up.  In the new world, I will visit them in June but I will live in Alabama or Arkansas or Texas, yee haw the rest of the time.  I don't know if we will have alarm clocks or get up with the sun or if I will still want to hang out and look at stars.  I think so.  Me and David, well, I want to herd a few sheep and sing a few songs by the light of a silvery moon.  I mean other people can be there too.  I don't expect to go unchaperoned with such a lady killer even when I am Sarah beautified.  I'll be happy to get there and see what happens next.  Probably won't call anything Alabama either.  They must have a moon thing there to pull the crimson tide.  ;)

white-collar tragedy tour

Yeah, nothing funny you could sell tickets for to that.  That's the story of my life lately though.  I had insomnia last night and did not go to sleep till nearly five a.m., or about the time my little Ruth is getting up.  So I slept like I was on drugs till 11, missed meeting totally, decided to get caught up in my office.

Well, I did.  Adminstratively, a lot of big projects.  Student project, you name it.  I came home feeling pretty good about how much I accomplished but I realized I still have stuff to ready for Jennifer and mail and stuff to email back to Thea.  So now I feel like a double slug loser.

Seriously, a slimy big slug oozing around trying to get my life together.  I got a lot of people trying to squish me flat or pour salt all over me at school.  Worldly people are mean.

How about:

The United Brotherhood Perfection Tour?  Let's get tickets for that.  In the meantime, I am so tired I feel like I am swimming in the caramel swim lane of a new Milky Way candy bar commercial.  Goodnight, Sisters.

time

Remember when you were a kid and you would say you were eleven and a half when you turned eleven two months ago?

Yeah, I did that.  My kids did it.  "I'm nearly 16."  I would bite my tongue and not say no, you are 15.3.

Tonight, I am swamped.  I cleaned the house last night, did a little more this morning, went to my office, Carly called, and she offered to take me and Kim to Red Lobster for endless shrimp.

I am still full.  It was lovely, but by the time I left my office, got car, got home, waited on girls, drove to restaurant, ordered, waited, ate, waited on next kind of shrimp, waited on payment transaction, drove home, drove back to school, parked, got to office, well, it took three hours.

Kim called tonight on Carly's behalf, as I had gone back to my office, and said bring home Pepto.  We're out and Carly didn't feel so hot.  She takes that stuff like her dad.  Me, I have to cut something down to bone to take Tylenol.  I felt like a moron when the girls were little because I actually thought to myself once that if either of them was going to be sick ever, let it be Kim.  Carly had to have general anesthesia for a hangnail.

We were talking about that at Red Lobster, about the year Kim got her tonsils out, got lice, got stitches, got sprained and a wheelchair.  She had a bad year, but it was way after I had that stupid thought about if one of them is going to be sick.

I wish I had a time machine.  I wish I could go back and fix a few things.  I wish I could just have today again or more.  I did not get everything done that was on my list, so tomorrow I am already backed up.

Tonight I am thankful for the idea of eternity.

Tyger Woods

Well, it's no secret that either next year or the following year, I'm going somewhere else for a job.  I have been looking at the job listings, which are just getting started (I have about 11 to apply for so far, but in 2008 I applied for about 400 positions).  There is a listing at the U of A in Fayetteville, but I am not qualified for it so it would be pointless to even waste the paper sending my curriculum vitae.

I would love to be back in Fayetteville though, eating ceviche at El Camino Real with Loretta, Scott, and Ty.  Ty is their baby boy born, I love this part, on June 4, 2007.  The thing is, that was my 45th birthday.  It was the Monday morning after the DC, a scheduled C-section, and we were there that afternoon to hold his little newborn self.  When Loretta told me his name was going to be Ty, I said Tyler, or Tyrone, or what, and she said just Ty.  I said, because their last name is Woods, how about Ger for a middle name?

That's me.  Always a joker.  Tomorrow I'll post my favorite picture in the world.  It's on my work computer, but it's Kimberly holding Ty when he's about four months old.  Of course, when people see that picture they say oh, your daughter has a baby?  That's how good the picture is.  It looks like they were posing in a studio.  But Loretta was out with Scott and we lived down the road, and we got to have him all the time that summer.

When we moved to Pennsylvania, Ty was 14 months old and he played in my empty living room while Mike Wisdom and Ian Smith and Allan Bonner loaded boxes in a 28-foot U-Haul and me and his mother were upstairs shampooing carpet.  I wanted to go have lunch with everyone but we ended up on the road and all the way to Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri, before nightfall.

I have a favorite picture of Ty that Thea sent from a BBQ get together and he's wearing cowboy boots.  I've been looking through my pictures lately and thinking about moving again and wondering about the future.  We have girls here we love and a few boys.  I wonder if I will be writing about Lana from the standpoint of missing her in a few years when I have gone elsewhere.  I'd miss her red hair - I can always find her during the meeting just by looking for that splash of color.


Birthdays are meaningless from a celebratory standpoint, and there is no good reason to laud a person just for being born.  I hate shows like "Clean House" and "Hoarders" where people get all that help cleaning and decorating when they have already proven themselves lousy at keeping up with a house.  Why reward them?  That's what birthdays are - rewards for being born, as if anybody had a hand in it.  Doesn't every kid tell his/her parents at some point:  I didn't ask to be born?  My answer for that was now that you're here, take responsibility for making the most of the opportunity.  Life is a beautiful gift.

Still, it is good to take stock of one's life.  Voltaire said the unexamined worth is not worth living.  Of course, we are supposed to know the truth and it will make us free, and to keep on making sure of the most important things.  All good philosophies merely echo a truth found in God's word.  Why not the date of one's birth?  I think about Ty when that day rolls around each year.  I think about him being a million years old someday and I will be 1,000,045 but surely we won't count that many?  I don't know.  Whatever we are doing, I'll just be happy to be there doing it.

And the earth will still take 365.25 days to orbit the sun, and me and Loretta are still going to be having chocolate cream pie.  Yeah, we'll probably still have to make coconut cream pie for Scott. 

Prejudice

A good meeting tonight, some good songs to sing too, and the part about Peter giving the four examples of Jehovah saying let the Gentiles in already and who am I to hinder Jehovah?  That sounds just like Peter.  I would have liked knowing Peter, only I would have died in first century childbirth and never known Peter had I been alive back then, so it's just as well.

There was a public talk once about this very subject back in Arkansas, and the brother was saying how we treat all our brothers the same no matter where they are from.  He said we love them and respect them, never saying jokes about their ethnicity, whether they are from Poland . . .

or Australia, or China . . .

Or Texas.  And I kind of felt funny over that.  Texas?  The people from Texas not being good enough to the people in Arkansas?  Who did those Arkies think they were, anyhow?

And I make a joke over and over that if when I lived in Oklahoma I was an Okie and in Arkansas was an Arkie why I now am not a Pennie, but the truth is, I'd be delighted to be in Texas or Arkansas right now and I will never be a real Pennie.  The zip code of your childhood influences you for the rest of your life.  I don't know if that will be true in the new world, but for now, I am a seven living with all these ones, if you go by the first zip code digit.

I am watching the job listings right now, and applying for next year.  The big lists aren't out yet, but there is a posting at Ole Miss that sounds perfect for me.  I've never been to Mississippi, but it has to be better than this for snow.

And I interviewed on-campus in Georgia, which means I was one of the top three candidates, but unfortunately, not #1.  #1 has now quit the job and they are hiring again.  Maybe I'll make the top three again.  I sure mean to try.  I loved that town, and a half hour to the beach.

I am trying to figure out, in the drive home from the meeting, if I am being progressive or this is just about my zip code or what.  I still think about Saipan and all that sunshine, so it's got a lot to do with weather.  Today it was 54 when I went to school and 44 when I left.  And I just had the AC on a week ago, and now I'm thinking where are the cords to the electric blanket.  Already.

The jobs in New Hampshire, even for the same thing, somehow don't sound as good, so maybe I'm wrong-headed.  My students all love to snowboard.  I said well, if you were from Oklahoma you'd probably like swimming more.

Maybe Jehovah will put that canopy back up like in Noah's day and it'll be paradise earth-wide.  I don't know what the polar bears will do or what they did before either.  It's like that other part on the meeting program from the Yearbook, about you never know what impact your service may have.  Of course we don't know.  We're not omnipotent or even perfect.  So I'm trying to stay humble because I know so little.

But I also want to stay warm when I leave here.  Don't mind me.  I always get whiny like this on the first day I wish I had a sweater with me.  I did it in the South too - but I just didn't do it there until November usually. 

Learning the Language

One of my sections of composition is comprised by 23 medical career majors.  So I decided to change their assignments over to all medical topics so they'd be interested in what they were writing about.  Their first article is called "Learning the Language" and it is written by a first year med school student who talks about all the words and acronyms she has to memorize, but when she finally accomplishes the task, she feels like she belongs.

When our friends were here from Miami, one brother read a little vignette from the days of party lines on the phone, and it was someone who was listening in on witness conversations and then telling a friend how dangerous we were.  We were always talking about a ransom for one thing, great crowds, etc.

Isn't it cool how we have our own pure language?  One of the acronyms the doctors used was CTD, which stood for circling the drain.  As in about to die, just lingering.  That's pretty callous, and of course now I have to hope I never overhear a doctor or nurse saying it about me or someone I love.  Medical people have to keep some professional distance.  Otherwise they couldn't stand their job.  Ultimately, they lose all their patients.

Language works so that you "grow" new words when you need them.  Like the Inuit who have seven words for snow - something we never needed in Oklahoma but I wonder about this place.  And we recognize the different Greek words for love, but the secular use of it is always just love, and you have to add words to it to modify it into the kind of love you want to express. 

Jennifer is very pregnant right now with Jordyn but I hope Jordyn holds off a few days because her mommy has a sinus infection and so does her dad and brother.  Get well soon!  I want to be in Arkansas this week helping my little Ruth move (long but happy story about a cluster of four siblings all going home to Texas) and helping Jennifer till the baby arrives.  Jennifer is a medical transcriptionist and knows medical terms and the pure language too. 

Every group has their own words.  You hear a few brothers in the corner it doesn't take long to figure out if they are talking about fishing or cars or football.  Sisters, well we know plenty of great words when it comes to cooking or shopping, and I don't mean to limit us by gender.  I know a lot of car words and I know a few guys who understand the difference between tbsp and tsp.

And even when someone falls out of the truth, or jumps out of it or walks away from it, often that person retains the language of it.  It reminds me of Bryan's poem about the subconscious jukebox in his head that still played Kingdom songs sometimes even though he forgot half the verse to "We Thank You, Jehovah."

Here is my new word of the week.  I got it from a book title called "Walking the Wrack Line".  Guess what a wrack line is?  It's the line where the tide comes in an deposits stuff from the ocean on the beach.  Who knew they had a word for that line?  Maybe you did, but Okie girl did not know.  And I'm fascinated by that lovely word.

Tonight I am thankful for new words, for knowing that if I am blessed with eternal life, I will never get tired of the pure language.

New twist on an old song

At least the sun was out today . . .

The problem is, I wasn't out anywhere.  It was on my mind to blog about that incredible WT yesterday, but I had a long day at school and now my brain is dead.  Three times in the fall semester we have a visiting writer come to our campus and we extend hospitality.  The writer gives a master class, then a reading then we all go out to dinner.

I had about $18 in sushi on the departmental dime, so I am thrilled about that.  California roll and spicy tuna if you are wondering.  But that means from six p.m. till ten p.m., my schedule was eaten alive.  I came home, graded a set of journals, and now to bed.  And Tuesday/Thursday I have a 9:30 class.  I never volunteer to teach that early, but it is an override class meaning I am teaching one extra for bonus money to pay tuition for a future cosmetologist.  So I must be up and going early tomorrow.

I suppose I am whining.  The third week of school and I'm already ready to be finished!  I like what I do but I wish it was not so intense or something.

I wish I just had time to hang out with sisters all the time.  That makes my heart happy, but doesn't pay these stupid bills.

Jennifer went to the doctor today and no change as of yet.  She had Jace early.  Jordyn may go longer.  As long as everyone is healthy, I won't mind.  I was packing up the baby stuff I've been buying lately (did you know they make little pink knee pads for crawling?  I am a sucker for the stuff I never saw when my girls were babies).  I have a great sturdy box but it isn't full.  So I asked Jennifer did she stock up on maxi pads yet for the postpartum period and she said no, she forgot that part. 

It is so unfair that the one biological fringe benefit of pregnancy (no monthly cycle!) is paid back after the baby arrives.  I understand it, but it is such a complicated struggle to be nursing a baby and feel like you need to change your own diaper.  Do you just sit there and try not to breathe? 

So I stuffed the top of the box from our coupon store in the basement.  It's nice how Jehovah uses me in small ways from time to time.  I'm getting them in the mail tomorrow, parcel post, so anytime after five or six days Jordyn can arrive!  Oh beautiful baby I wish I could be there.

unlimited

We watched a movie the other night called "Limitless".  I think the screenwriter must have studied with us at some point.  The premise of the story was there was a new designer drug - came in a cool little clear pill - and it gave the person taking it 100% use of their brain instead of what we have now.  In the movie they said we use 20% now.  I thought it was more like 3%, but I could be mistaken. 

Haha, I googled it.  The truth is we really do use 100% of our brains now.  You cannot remove 80 to 97% of it and still function.  However, we do not use the full potential of our brains.  How much of it is not being utilized is the point.  It's like the difference between average and normal.  It is average to be able to run half a mile.  It is normal for the human body to run 20 miles.  Soldiers consistently are capable of this as are athletes.  It is not an abnormal feat.  But on average, we can't do that.

On my knees, the half of a mile is out of the question.  I can walk, but bouncing impact, oh no.  It hurts to bang my knees around.

So I would like 100% of the rest of me too.

Anyhow, the side effects of the drugs were eventual death after staggering headaches.  One of the guys in the movie who was taking it was not swallowing the pill.  He translated the drug into a liquid that he shot up intravenously.  It lasted longer, got there faster, and had less side effects.  Eventually the main character has figured out how to take the drug - no alcohol with it, remember to eat (how is that ever a problem?) and a few other things. 

In other words, he was stuck in this system, but he was living like the new world.  The thing is, he was the only one or one of very few and it gave him, naturally, a tremendous advantage over everyone else.  Towards the end of the movie, he puts his hand on another guy's chest and can tell his aorta needs repair (or some medical gobbledygook, now I don't remember the exact phrases).  I thought about how Jesus could tell that power went out of him when the woman touched the fringe of his outer garment.  How he could discern people's motivation and intent. 

It made me think about what the new world will be like.  I don't mean to be distracted with false stories.  But I am mindful of the need to "just see yourself, just see me too, see us all in a world that is new."

Some things cannot be shown on the pages of the Watchtower magazine.  You can see all the khaki-panted guys in the universe eating big clusters of grapes while all the kids frolic over cobra holes, and it will not show you what that man is able to think while he is viewing the vista.  Imagine if we use our brain to process sight, and 40% of the brain is dedicated to sight - what if our ability to process visual images improves from 3 or 20 to 100%?  Just looking around will be more joy than we can stand at first.  We love looking at Discovery channel now.  What if we could see more, better, with more intensity and more ability, then?

And if that improves, imagine how those grapes might taste, what the sound of that baby laughing will be like, and how warm the sunshine will be on the back of your hand.

Busy Bugs

My friend Jennifer is ready to have her daughter any time now according to the obstetrician.  Jace is three now and ready to be the big brother.  I have been watching the shelves in stores to pick things up for him and of course stuff for his sister.  I about have a box ready to go.  I wish I could mail myself in it.

Of course, all the cutest little flip flops were marked down in Target last time we were there so I got some for next summer.  I never pay retail and I never buy anything until the store needs to get rid of it.  You can't live by that for groceries, but just about everything else, oh yeah.

I also buy coats in April.  At any rate, toys don't go out of season much so they are harder to buy.  I found one called Busy Bugs and I got it although it says for ages 3 and up.  I don't know if it is for Jordyn or Jace or for Jace to wind up to play the song for Jordyn.

The song is Beethoven's Fur Elise.  I have always loved that song.  It's just a little wind up music box and the top, instead of a ballerina in place, it has two lady bugs that waltz around, only they aren't attached.  They are made with egg-shaped bottoms like those toys in my childhood with the commercial that went:  Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.  So the little circle top dance floor rotates and the weeble lady bugs whirl.  It's pretty nifty.  We had to take it out of the box and make sure it worked and of course, observe how it worked.

I like it so much I wouldn't mind having one of my own.  But I totally have no use for it.  Still, all this week, every time I was in my room I'd wind the Busy Bugs up and listen to the song and watch them spin.

Kim said I am being juvenile.  I said I am A.) being pensive; B.) gloating; C.) bonding with Jordyn from afar; or D.) all of the above.

The answer is D.  I am pensive and homesick for Jennifer and her babies.  I am gloating because the toy is so cool, and I am thinking that this same little music box will be somewhere in her house, that Jace will keep winding it up for her even after he loses the lady bugs outside, she will like the song too, and something that was part of me for a week will be just a little bitty part of her babyhood.  Since I can't be there.

I'm going to mail it this week.  The only thing wrong with it is it doesn't wind up for very long.  Seemed to me like I couldn't fold half a load of laundry before the song wound down.  I'm counting on Jace to keep the tune tapping.

It's all I got right now.  Since I can't be there, it'll have to do.

Superwoman

I love this song from the 70's by Karyn White that goes:  "I'm not your superwoman.  I'm not the kind of girl that you can let down and think that everything is okay.  Boy I am only human.  This girl needs more than occasional hugs as a token of love from you to me."

I just love that song.  I'm thinking it works for motherhood too.  I feel like singing it to half my daughters tonight.  No one had school or work today but me, and I worked four hours (which drained my brain for what I was teaching today was new to me) and then I came home and feeling good after the episode with the cannonball and sleeping eleven hours last night, I cleaned the entire house top to bottom and went to Walmart.  So when I got back, said daughter had eaten leftovers and placed dishes in the sink of a spotless kitchen.  I was ticked off.  There was room in the dishwasher so why couldn't she load it?  She said she loaded and ran the dishwasher earlier in the day.

Is that some kind of quota she is meeting?  She's a legal adult now.  I know.  I should enforce some kind of demand for help around here.  I think I've just given up and am circling the airport in a landing pattern waiting for them to empty my nest.

I want them out, the parts of them that smart off and back talk and play video games and act like the dishwasher is a major chore when they dirtied their share of the dishes.  I want them to stay forever, the parts of them that scratch my back unexpectedly and knows right where the itch is, that lines up 19 bottles of BBQ sauce and 12 jars of peanut butter on the bar for me to see when I get home, that they are helping out with groceries, the part of them that laughs at my stupid jokes still.

All that cleaning made me tired and I have to work tomorrow.  You think school is Monday through Friday, but it ain't necessarily so.  When I get everything up to my standard (the house) it means something else is behind (the office).  And I don't even want to talk about finishing that new book from the DC.

Goodnight.

cannon ball vs. bowling ball

At 5:00 a.m. I woke up and my first thought, wonder of wonders, was not hey, let's go tinkle, which, at my age, waking up in the middle of night is all about making a tinkle, but this morning my first thought was:

I am pregnant with a 27 pound bowling ball.  No wait, a cannon ball, and it is about to ignite.

Then I realized, stupid girl that I can be, that I did not have pain in my reproductive parts but rather in my digesting parts.  So I wasn't pregnant, but I did have a full belly.

I ate chicken but so did Kim.  I'm the only one sick.  And I did it to myself - when I went to bed I had extra saliva like I wanted to hurl, but I made myself ignore it.  Till 5:00 a.m. at least.

Once, I actually hobbled around till someone pointed out to me that I was limping and I looked and sure enough, I had an infected ingrown toenail.  I had breast discharge when I was five month's pregnant with Carly or I might have been one of those idiot girls who shows up at the hospital with no idea what is about to come undone only to be told:  You are in labor, moron.

How on earth can someone not hear what her body is saying? 

The simple answer is you have to be trained not to hear it, to have it say something so unbearable that you make yourself not listen.  It's the ultimate denial, to not hear one's biological self.

And lots of girls can do it.  It's the only way to get through a childhood when your body says someone is doing things to me that are wrong.   You're a kid and powerless to help yourself so you quit listening.

Then you can't listen when you need to.  I am better at it.  I at least knew I should have let myself vomit at midnight.  Today, I have not had any appetite at all and I'm so tired from waking up hurting.  I have some vicodin downstairs and I hurt to bad to go down there and get it.  I bet I move it to the bathroom upstairs after this. 

I feel pretty old.  Carly is on her way to pick me up and I am going home to bed.  I am 49 years old and my father died 14 years ago, and still this hurts in new ways.

Storage Wars

I stayed in my office after I finished teaching for five hours and got a lot done.  All administrative tasks.  Correspondence.  I came home and Carly had made spaghetti and I had dinner and ate too much.  I felt blah and just sat on the couch for a half hour watching the new episode of "Storage Wars".

How it works is people bid on storage units for which the rent has not been paid.  The facility will break the lock and the bidders have five minutes to look inside without touching or opening anything and then they bid.  Sometimes they lose money and sometimes they start opening boxes and discover a fortune in coins, football cards, you name it.  Tonight the guy had Vera Wang shoes he thought were worth $200 but I got news for him, those are several seasons old and no longer in style but not old enough to be vintage.

I like looking at weird stuff and wondering who leaves all these lockers?  I would empty it somewhere before losing the stuff.  How many people die or get sent to prison to leave their storage unrenewed?

I don't know.  But there is one bidder on there named Barry who is evidently somewhat wealthy and older and likes to collect things.  A couple of the bidders have second-hand stores and are providing for their families.  This guy just discards everything and tosses it around like it's junk because he is looking for a Strato Caster Guitar or carved jade Buddhas.

What bothers me is how he throws stuff away because he doesn't want it.  Can't he donate it to people who need it?  Today, my students in my seminar class read an essay about an immigrant from Sudan named Siba who was seeking political asylum in the US after being tortured as a rebel suspect.  He was not a rebel, but he did want better conditions for his country.

I got home late and the girls had dinner earlier with their dad who delivers appliances and televisions for Best Buy.  Best Buy has a pretty good discount for employees but they have just capped the discount at 50%.  For some accessories, employees used to buy them for cost plus 5%.  You might cry over the mark up in say, headphones and ear buds for iPods.  Anyhow, he delivered 14 TVs to a man building a mansion who wants to watch cable in every room including the bathroom.  Someone is watching Cribs.  David told the girls the guy had a rug from an art gallery in NY and the price tag was still on it for $20,000.

I don't know what to think of that.  I appreciate nice things.  If I ever have a best selling book, I want a swanky Prada purse and wallet.  But I think I like some of the $500 rugs at Lowe's and I could put $19,500 towards some other purpose.  I am wondering how many pioneers that would support for how long.  How many Kingdom Halls that would build in Sudan.  My mother had a stack of bills from QVC last time we were there, August of 2009, and of course the girls picked them up and looked at the total, and it was about $2500 for the last six months.  I could not serve my daughter a bologna sandwich with that kind of jewelry bill.  If you say anything to my mother, she will tell you Jesus appreciated nice things and his garments were so costly the guards cast lots over them.

I never saw the point of telling her that Jesus did not have a house with a walk-in closet filled with more such garments and he could also turn water into wine and one fish into many, so he would probably not give us a bologna sandwich either.

The guy in the essay, Siba, from Sudan, part of the process he went through in seeking asylum was the doctor had to examine him and document his scars so they knew he wasn't making up the torture part just to get a free ride to the land of the free.  He had to measure the depth and width and degree of the scars.  Siba described how his torturers placed the glass and tightened the ropes so you couldn't bleed to death and die, but every few hours the cuts were a little deeper, at the back of the knees so you couldn't walk, the bend of the back, between the shoulder blades.

The scars were ridged with more scars, over and over.

He was happy working as a sandwich delivery boy in NY.  Probably not bologna.  I don't know what he would think of a $20,000 rug.  I don't know why Barry can throw nice furniture away simply because he doesn't need it.  Doesn't he know someone else does, or they are so far beneath his notice he doesn't care?  Does Siba get any tips?  David did not for the 14 televisions.

Sometimes the big things that are wrong are so hard to bear I have to ignore them to get by.  Sometimes all the little things accumulate until I am depressed.  Sometimes I wonder how Jehovah can handle all these burdens I throw on him, along with everyone else's.  One of my students sent an email today that says when God answers your prayers, you have faith in his abilities.  When he doesn't answer them, He has faith in yours.  Sounds like something worldly people would say, and I know Jehovah knows me better than I know myself, but any ability I have comes from Him.  So today I pray to be fortified despite the insensitivity that surrounds me.

The Global Village

I gave my freshmen a quiz this morning based on a book called "If the World Were a Global Village".  It was published in 2003 so is a little bit dated, but the figures are still good enough to give one an idea about the composition of humans on the planet.

The premise is that over six billion humans is a lot of math, so presume that the earth has only 100 people in a village, but the math proportions stay the same.  It's so easy to do percentages when it's out of 100.  The predominant religion is Christianity at 32% with Islam composing 19%, Judaism 1% and no religion = 15%.  A lot of Hinduism and Confucianism, et al, aside from that.  Chinese is spoken by 22 people in the village, whereas only 9 speak English.  Only 24 people in the village always have enough to eat, and only 76 have electricity.  There are 42 radios and 14 telephones in the village. 

A lot of people are not texting all day everyday but they are not on my campus.

Forty percent of the villagers do not have adequate sanitation.  Not everyone has clean air to breathe, and if the population growth rate remains constant, in 2200 there will be 1600 people in the village.  There will be shortages of natural resources, shelter, and food. 

One of my students said, "Thank God we won't be there to see it."

I want to be alive 187 years from now, only I think we will have a new way of numbering time, probably covered in the new scrolls.

Today I am more than thankful that I live in the 60% of people who have a toilet that flushes whenever necessary.  Sanitation is a beautiful thing.  I am even more thankful that I know the truth, that death is not natural, and if I am not alive in 187 years, I hope you are looking for me in the resurrection before long.

There's a reason they call it labor

When the girls were infants, newborns, changing their diapers seemed to hurt.  They didn't want to have their legs opened, held up.  Not much room in my belly for calisthenics towards the end, and for Carly especially, she spent several hours in a birth canal wedged like an overripe cantaloupe.  She was a cone-head for about a week afterwards.  So long I got nervous.

So now the unions are responsible for getting this holiday for workers.  Labor day, a day not to do it.  Man may work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done.

And then there is Proverbs 31.  There's a verse in there that makes me sigh.  Get out of bed and be at your work before the sun comes up.  Thanks Solomon!  Women are never tired or need to sleep in.

How many women are so busy taking care of someone else, a lot of other elses, and no one is taking care of them?  I need a pedicure something fierce, and while the house is clean right now, I go back to school tomorrow and the weeks just fly by and I spend all my time with work and grading and meetings and teaching and rush home and do laundry (the washer is filling to rinse right now, about five feet behind me, as I write in a landing upstairs and how blessed am I not to have a basement laundry facility).  How blessed I am not to be alive in Solomon's day and do laundry at the riverbanks.

Somebody always has it worse and somebody always has it better.  I can't buy a blouse this month from Fashion Bug because A.) my closets are full and B.) I can't afford it.  Everything is accounted for.  The man said he fixed my check engine light in the car, but he only cleared the code and the light is back.  The part is nearly $200 (some core to go with it, a mass air sensor?  some such thing) plus putting it in.  Hello Firestone!  I can't get that credit card paid off.

It's getting colder, but I have that comforter so warm and an electric blanket, so I don't need more laundry, someone wanting dinner on a schedule that revolves around his belly and not my job, and I sure don't need help to keep warmer.

This is not how we are supposed to live our lives.  Technology is amoral, and it brings a lot of time saving devices with it and upgraded communications.  But I am not sure it isn't a bad thing used against us by Satan  at every turn.  I love the girls and they coupon a lot.  I get the largesse of the savings on my budget.  I am glad they can contribute.  But they send me emails to prints coupons at school.  Somehow the coupons are all able to figure out your isp number so you reach your print limit.  An added computer means we can get two more coupons on the good buys.  I don't mind clicking on a link and hitting the print command.  But I can't sign up for things, fill our surveys, or like stuff on facebook and spend a half hour a day on the computer getting to the coupons, and the girls resent me for acting like I'm too important to do it.

That blog is not paying for anything and this is, so spend your time on this.

I want to scream.  It's MY time is the issue.  I need to take care of me.  I need a pedicure.  I need to put those clothes in the dryer but I am going to bed so in the morning that load will be wrinkled.  It's mostly towels, but sometimes it is not.  And I need to write the way some people need to drink water.

That's why babies are so cute when you have them even though they are all sore just like you from the process of separating them from your body.  If they came out 20 years old telling you what to do, you'd give them all up for adoption and tie your tubes on the first one.

Who knew it was going to be this much work for this long?  Mother's Day, Labor Day, Giving Thanks.  None of that is reasonable, right, or even adequate.

Too cold for flip flops anyway, so I guess the pedicure can wait.  Sigh.

hibernating

When I turn my computer on after a long time away, if I did not turn it off, the screen says hibernating in those few seconds before it goes back into wake up mode.

After I shake the mouse of course.  Now, I am trying to shake my own mouse.  Labor Day is just another holiday in the south, let's have a day off good, but here it's like a signal to batten down the hatches; winter is coming.  So we decided to make the best of it and go out of town.  Didn't get far, 80 miles, but we got close to malls, theaters, and Sonic, so we were happy.  As we were coming home tonight, arriving at 9:00 p.m., I couldn't help noticing it was full dark.  The days are shorter.  We used to come home from a day of gallivanting in Greensburg and get home at 9:00 in daylight.

That's in June.

At any rate, it was good to be away from working, from the house that I am always cleaning, from the office I am always in.  I don't know that we accomplished much other than of course I bought school supplies at Target for 75% off.  I have always been a lover of school supplies and Target has the coolest.

So no progress spiritually or economically or educationally.  Just vegged out.  Sometimes I think of Job.  Those days when all he could do was sit and scratch what itched.  I am not as hard up as Job, but the weight of this system is like a malignant boil on all of us, on our hearts, our attitude, our desire to keep going.

I scratched and prayed a lot.  Not much else.  Was it enough?  I want to keep going.  Some days I am not sure that is the case.  Today, yes.

So that is all I have gotten done of late.  I am trying to get back into my usual swing of things tomorrow.  Goodnight, my sisters.

polka dots

The baby pictures are of Adalyn.  She is five months old, and if I remember right, 19 pounds now.  She has those cute little thighs that you just want to pinch like the Pilsbury Dough Boy.

Her mother's name is Gianna, and Gianna is close to Carly's age, and they used to be pretty good friends in Arkansas.  Gianna is now in Texas, which is where I would like to be, but I would like to be anywhere else but here.  As we draw closer to winter, that feeling will get worse.

Anyhow, Gianna is also my friend but to be honest, we've hurt each other a few times.  I don't know why that is.  I always want to do right by Gianna, but sometimes I think my relationship with her is just to keep me humble.  It's like Jehovah said, "Cherri Ann, you've gotten a little too big for your britches.  You think you can just make everything okay, but you can't.  Case in point, Gianna."

She's doing pretty fine without me by the looks of her baby girl.  So I am humbled yet again.  Sometimes I think the trouble between us is being too much alike.  Having a lot of energy and no outlet for it.  Spinning wheels and not having a chance.

It's a funny feeling now to see how she dresses her baby - because it is how I knew she would dress her and how I would dress her.  Funny how her name is Adalyn and we have an Adelaya in our congregation (Addy) who's mother dresses her the same.  Sunday, Addy had on a green dress with a horizontal stripe in the skirt - graduated green then white then purple.  Now one of my favorite color combinations is green and purple.  Yes, you have to do it right, but Addy was right.  And then I noticed she had a hair bow that married green and purple and it was just fabulous.

Gianna dresses her baby in all these cool lady bug print hats, feathery boa-like headbands, and polka dotted pants.  Panda bear sleepers and frou frou onesies.  Part of me feels funny, because Carly is about Gianna's age and she is still at home, no husband, no baby.  I could be a grandma by now.  And Gianna takes good care of her baby and puts her first.  Somehow, that has made her grow up fast.  I wish there was a little more growing up around this house some days (most days.)  Maybe not from that, but anyhow.

I would never oversimplify life and say a baby solves problems, but I am grateful I had my babies and I got my act together on their behalf.  I loved them more than I loved myself.  I didn't care about or take care of me, but them, oh them.  All that self-sabotaging behavior had to stop for me to be a mom.

I have heard that when two people are very much alike, they don't get along.  Opposites attract.  Maybe that is why Gianna and I have gone round and round.  Maybe we won't anymore.  I would like that.

I'll give you one reason, though there are many, for why I feel that way.  We used to have these talent night get togethers in Arkansas.  I have posted (way back in June I think) photographs of the Hannah play I wrote and directed for our congregation youth.  I always got up and read poems written for the occasions as well.  Well, the first one we had, Gianna got up to sing with a karaoke back up band.  And right smack in the second verse, she forgot the lyrics for about four lines.  And she stood her ground, hummed, and when the chorus kicked back in, she went right back to it without a second glance.  She did not run off the stage or step back.  She messed up over nerves, but she owned it.  She took responsibility and got on with the business of singing what she did know.

I admire that.  It's tough to do.  Plenty of other girls would have left as soon as the show was over so no one could snicker about them, and you know how a bunch of teenaged girls are, sadly, even in the congregation.  She got a few snickers, but she stayed there.

Someday me and Adalyn are going to have to go out for ice cream and talk about these blessings. Plus, I gotta tell her, I love that funny looking monkey her momma bought her in the picture.

hats