O Christmas Tree

     I walked out to the parking lot at Wal-Mart yesterday through their Christmas tree lot. They had about nineteen trees, three of which were standing upright, and there was no pine smell! I went over to one of the trees wrapped up in netting and sniffed it and…nothing. I don’t know what was up with that. I’m sure they were real because there were needles on the ground but, nothing!
     When you buy a “real” Christmas tree part of what you are buying is the smell. Our first Christmas tree cost the grand sum of seventy-nine cents and was about two feet tall. This was a good size for our student-housing apartment in college since it was the size of a bread box. And besides, we were going to be gone the whole Christmas break but we just couldn’t resist having a Christmas tree that first year we were married.

     We bought two boxes of little ornaments that were, I think, thirty-nine cents a box and dumped my brush rollers out of the bucket I kept them in….(what, you don’t know what brush rollers are?  Those instruments of torture like little porcupine logs women used to put in their hair at night and try to sleep with them sticking into their scalps so they would be beautiful in the morning but who could be beautiful with no sleep?  Do I have to tell you everything??)…Anyway, we dumped the curlers out of the bucket, set the tree stem, I mean trunk, in it and filled it with rocks and it made a pretty good tree stand. We were college students. They innovate. The teeny ornaments, the last one of which is on our tree today, made it one of the most beautiful trees we have had over the years.
     The next year when Dennis had graduated and we had real jobs we bought our first normal size Christmas tree and normal sized ornaments. Our angel looks like Carol Channing and is still on the kids’ tree. I made some lovely ornaments with little cork balls covered with sequins and beads threaded onto straight pins stuck  into the cork. Very chic.

     Tinsel back then was the aluminum kind that came in long strands and there were two schools of thought for applying it: laying it on strand by strand, the RIGHT way, which could take until Ground Hog's Day to finish the whole thing so usually the tree had tinsel about two-thirds of the way up. Or standing about three feet back from the tree and tossing it, which some people though was hilarious!  When we discovered those fat trees that don’t have room between the branches and the kind of tinsel that was like a furry aluminum rope you wound around the tree instead of hanging the silver strands it was quite a relief, I’ll tell you.
     Getting the tree home was another adventure unto itself.  The year we had a tiny Fiat convertible we drove it home in freezing sleet with the top down and the tree sticking up from the back seat. Usually it was crammed into the trunk of the car, the trunk tied down with rope borrowed from the tree lot guy, and we tried not to hit too many bumps. And then we had to get it into the house...wait! You’re supposed to saw some of the trunk off so it can absorb water...back outside, then into the house again, backing through the door so the branches don't all splay out on the door frame. Figure out which is the “good” side that will be facing the living room, and fit it into the tree stand.

     I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Dennis and I never fight. We did fight a lot before we were married. I guess we got it out of our systems then. But since we were married, we don’t. I have heard many times that if you don’t fight you don’t have a good marriage but that’s just the way it is.  We are never so adamant about something that it is worth hurting each others’ feelings and besides, when those guys who write the books about fighting have been married fifty years like we have and still want to be together, they can call me. Except---

     One time a year, when we would try to get the Christmas tree straight in the stand, something just came over us. Dennis would be lying on the ground twisting those pins into the trunk that are supposed to keep the tree up, I would be holding the tree and he would say “Move it over.” I would move it over. “No, I said over!”

     “I did move it over.”

     “The other way!  Not that much! Back the other way.”

     “Do it yourself then.” But, of course it took two people. And it went on until the thing was as straight as it was going to get and we were exhausted and soon the tree was beautiful again, at least in our eyes, and the annual fight was forgotten. 

      A real tree will give you pine needles in the carpet till Easter no matter how carefully you choose at the tree lot. I’ll tell you why. Unless you go out and chop it down yourself it is likely that your “fresh” tree was cut down in August. Really, August! I’m not making this up. I used to work for a railroad and typed up bills of lading for the trains bringing in the trees and they started shipping them in August. So you have to keep it watered really well and check it each day in case the tree was really thirsty that day or the dog has found it a convenient water bowl. 

     It’s been a few years now that we have had an artificial tree. The cost of the real ones just went through the roof and this one has paid for itself by now and it is really very pretty and we don’t have to go out in the freezing cold wandering through tree lots looking for one we both think is perfect and there won’t be pine needles in the carpet after we take it out.

     But I think I’m going to go find another lot when I go out today and walk through and sniff the trees.  Surely there are some out there that still smell like Christmas.

Run For Your Life, The TV News Truck Is In The Neighborhood!

A frightening trend has been going on according to the Television News reports:  Fat people have no heads. Have you noticed?  Every time the news does a report on obesity, which is about 3.2 times a week, they take their cameras to the streets, pan the crowd, and lo, and behold!  Not one fat person out there has a head.  There are plenty of huge stomachs, the approximated size of Volkswagen Beatles, plenty of legs like tree trunks stomping along, and the occasional, perhaps female, derriere whose owner, if asked to "Move your rear" would have to make four trips.  What has happened to these poor peoples' heads?  And if they have no heads how is it they are able to eat enough to maintain that girth? And why do I identify so closely with these headless creatures?  I have a head and the rest of their anatomies bear a sad resemblance to mine, so does that mean my head is endangered?  I worry about these things!

Television is a medium all to itself.  They are unusual creatures there.  We once had a white cat with blue eyes and everyone who saw her asked if she was deaf.  Apparently the gene that causes the combination of blue eyes/white fur also causes deafness most of the time.  I tell you this because I think that there must be a "Journalism/Attractiveness" gene since there are obviously no talented journalists who are not reasonably attractive or they would be on the national news programs.  Even when a correspondent  is reporting from a war zone, wearing a helmet like a turtle's shell and wind whipping sand around his or her head, the hair, though flying, still looks soft and supple, and the make-up is in place.

And, curiously, television journalists never age.  This would be a great gene to have.  Yesterday I saw Barbara Walters interviewing the president of Syria on Good Morning America.  Admittedly, she began her career when the standards for beauty were somewhat different than they are today, but, my gosh, the women is, I think, ninety-eight years old and she doesn't look a day over sixty.  Or maybe fifty in my case since people were asking me how I liked being sixty just a few days after my fiftieth birthday.  I may have the anti-journalism gene.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and television weather people, excuse me, meteorologists, are exempt from the need for the "Journalism/Attractiveness"  gene to secure a job unless they are in the major markets. The network weather reporters must cross-train so they can sit in the anchor seat on holidays when the Talent want the day off and they must also look good announcing the floats coming down the street at the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year's Day or holding onto poles with the wind knocking them off their feet when standing outside during a hurricane instead of high-tailing it out of there like sane people.  Willard Smith doesn't count.  He is a throw-back to another age, since he is over one hundred years old, and must have sneaked in from a station in Lower Boise.  Local meteorologists can, and do, look like real scientists, which they are. Their anchor desk partners, though, still adhere to the strict standards of beauty/reporting that the major networks do since they may, at any moment, be called up to The Bigs.

Another standard that television news people meet is that not one of them even approaches obesity even though the morning shows, at least have cooking segments with banquet tables laden with every food imaginable and they all gather round at the end of the show to taste oysters sautéed in champagne or some such by Emeril Lagasse at nine o'clock in the morning, for goodness sake!  And not one of them has ever said "Yuck, how can you eat this??" but finds it fabulously delicious.  It may be because they have no feet or legs. Perhaps they borrow  them for the trip out onto Rockefeller Plaza for the food. Or maybe only morning anchors have to have legs.  It is probably a temporary condition and they will shed them like tadpoles in reverse once they secure positions at the evening news anchor desks.  You've never seen legs on any of those people, have you?  I believe their bodies are intact only from the waist up.

Maybe there is radiation or something leaking from the television cameras. The anchors have been exposed to it for a long time, hence the elimination of their limbs.  Fat people are only photographed from afar, so it is just their heads....for now. Forget all that scare stuff you hear about watching too much TV.  It's being on TV that is dangerous.  If I see a news truck in the neighborhood, I'm out of here!

Language Arts

I'm going to start taking my own reading material when I visit Josh (otherwise known as "my-son- the-doctor") and Jerilyn.  They have a whole library of books but if you only have time to read a magazine it is true doctor's office style:  The first one I picked up Thanksgiving week-end was from May of 2008.  I think it was called POPULAR SURGERY or something like that.  There was a fascinating essay on "Preventable Morbidity in Mature Trauma Centers".  I just skimmed over it, of course.  I think there was an article called "Fun with Enterocutaneous Fistulas" and possibly "Whipples Gone Wild, A Panorama of Pancreaticoduodenectomy," but I may have those titles mixed up.

The pictures were equally mesmerizing, but I won't go into details because some of you may be planning on eating dinner right after you read this.  Suffice it to say they hit new heights in graphic portrayal.  Fortunately the captions under the pictures were written in Medicaleze, a language I have yet to master, so I wasn't sure if I was looking at the inside of someone's stomach, a swollen spleen the size of an SUV or a tumor in the shape of South Dakota recently removed, yet lovingly preserved for posterity through the magic of photography.

Josh began learning this language in his pre-med classes even before he got to medical school and he loved to regale us with it.  Show him a rash on your arm and he would nod sagely and say "It's probably raftdaftikitis, whobucktikitis, tillyumacknitis of the brain.  Your little flee-aflipper is very, very bad and your ring-a-tinga-tinger has been sprained."  Or something like that. And we bought it every time.  Well, his dad and I did. Brothers are a little less easily impressed and it didn't take Jake long to wonder if he was being wolfed. "Don't ask him!" he would say no matter what the question.  "We have to leave in an hour and a half and it will take more than that for him to explain it."

Fortunately, or maybe not, the further Josh progressed in his education the more taciturn he became and now it is not easy to get any information out of him at all.  Surgeons are trained to take everything in stride and unless there is arterial bleeding or near lack of brain activity he says "It'll be fine." and won't tell us anything. I hear him dictating over the phone sometimes but that is a dialect of  Medicaleze that they taught him in med school, called "Talking-Faster-Than-the-Speed-of-Sound" that only highly trained medical transcriptionists can understand.

What worries me is that this language thing may be hereditary.  While we were visiting, David, his sixth-grade son, was copying letters from the Russian alphabet and trying to learn how to pronounce them.  He had progressed to that after working on Greek last week and his mom said he asked about Latin today.  Can Medicaleze be far behind?

 I think it's because there are no good magazines to read at their house. What happened to the HI-LITES subscription David had?

The Top Ten Things I Am Thankful For

10.  THE CLEANERS:  Where else could I get 5,322 wire coat hangers and have them twist together into a mass the size of an oil rig and cling to the rod in my closet?

9.     SAM'S CLUB:  Where else could I purchase a bag of shredded cheese of a quantity to feed the whole Occupy Wall Street group and have it take up one fourth of my refrigerator?

8.     ATTORNEYS:  Without attorneys, how would I know not to use my electric hair dryer in the bathtub or not to eat the tempting little packages of silicone that come in shipping boxes?

7.     CUSTOMER SERVICE REPS FROM THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES:  They keep me humble remembering that they speak more English than I do Farsi and trying to devise new ways to communicate to them what I am asking that might be answered within the parameters of their written scripts.

6.     THIS LOVELY NEW BLOG SERVER:  When else would I have been able to recall a whole vocabulary that I thought I had erased from my mind after Junior High school?

5.     E-MAIL:  In what other medium would I be offered fantastic products that will enhance many amazing parts of my anatomy or learn about the dozens of,  uh,...physically needy young men in my very own community who are anxious to meet little old ladies such as myself?

4.      AUTOMATED RECORDED PHONE CALLS:  They give me hope that I am not as stupid as they may think because not once have I stayed on the line and waited for someone to come on and pitch a product I don't need or solicit for a charity that is wasting it's money on administrative services like them.

3.     TELEMARKETERS WHO CALL ME ON MY CELL PHONE:  Because of them I have an automatic check to make sure my phone is working and ready to receive calls and give employment to those nice folks at A T &T who make up my bills.

2.     MY MEMORY:  I'm so glad to be able to think back to when I was a kid and the fun things we did and ....What was the question?

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON I AM THANKFUL THIS THANKSGIVING SEASON******

1.     THIS BLOG:  Because no matter how often I do something else that makes me look and/or feel like an idiot, at least I can say to myself  "Well, it will give me something else to blog about."


Please enjoy this time to remember what you and I are really thankful for:  Our Lord, our families, our free country and the privilege of communicating with friends like you.

The Occasionally Friendly Skies

My sister flew in from St. Louis last week-end and I picked her up at the airport.  She came because it was her birthday and Southwest had $39 flights!  You just had to book them during a certain period of time, fly certain times, wear blue eye shadow when you flew and type with your left hand.  Okay, not the eye shadow.  But you get the picture.  There are great fares out there but you have to be savvy and flexible.  And she did miss the $39 window, but she was able to get a flight for $59.

Quite a contrast to last month when we were trying to figure out how we could all fly to New Hampshire to be there for our nephew's memorial service, but given the short lead time, $1600 to $2100 ticket prices for the two of us, and Dennis's physical limitations, it just couldn't seem to be done even though Dennis and Jake spent two whole days online and on the phone trying to make it work

Our son, Josh, was able to go from Oklahoma City, though, and he texted  "If you are ever in the Detroit airport at breakfast time, don't eat the food."  Yes, he had to get up at five in the morning to have a lay-over in Detroit to get to New England.  After seven hours in planes and airports he did make it to Manchester.  We flew to San Francisco for our twenty-fifth anniversary--no, it wasn't a bi-plane!!--and had to go from Oklahoma City east to St. Louis before we went west to California.  No wonder they complain about the cost of fuel. They add it to the price of a ticket, of course.

Yeah, I know I say this all the time, but things sure have changed since the old days. And, no, we didn't fly with Orville and Wilbur! There was a time when Dennis flew every week.  He got a certificate from United Airlines once because he had flown 100,000 miles in one year with them.  He looked up his old frequent flyer record to see if the points would still apply for us to fly to Manchester but when he called they said 1984 was a little too far back for them to honor them.

When we lived in California I flew much more often too.  There was a "Red-eye" flight between Los Angeles and  St. Louis. You left around midnight, flew through the night and arrived the next morning. There was a reason they called it the Red-eye, of course. You just thought you were going to sleep the whole way there and arrive refreshed and ready to go.

It was always exciting arriving back at LAX hoping to see a celebrity or two. We saw Walter Matthau and his wife once. She wore white make-up so pale she kind of glowed, like the moon, and had at least forty-five pieces of luggage.  They didn't fly in our part of the plane.  And there was a lady on one of our flights who had a role on "Dallas" but I didn't know her name. She didn't seem to know mine either. Can you believe we saw Bob Hope once, talking on a pay phone calling for someone to come pick him up? I wanted to offer him a ride but Dennis didn't think it would be a good idea.

Naturally I always dressed up for flying back then and looked very sophisticated and important.  I think people were looking at me wondering what TV show they had seen me on.  I just smiled slightly in acknowledgement so they would realize I was flying coach with the "little people" because I was researching a role or something.  Of course, that time I was five months pregnant and took my shoes off on the flight but my feet were too swollen to get them back on by the time we arrived and I had to walk through the Los Angeles airport barefoot, the sophistication level may have been a little low.

Children used to get to fly free up until they were two years old, and Josh was always excited to get to go when we flew. He would watch the plane come up to the window and jump up and down with excitement, but by the time we went down the concourse and got on he would say "Where's the plane? Where's the plane?".  It doesn't look as big or even much like an airplane from the inside, more like a city bus that has been micro-sized but smells worse.

There were meals served on flights back in the old days.  Real china plates and little Barbie-size silverware,   People joked about the food being bad but at least they gave you something.  Now you are lucky if you get half a can of Coke and a bag with 13 pretzels in it.  What's up with that, anyway?  You pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket and they can't give you the whole can?  Please!

So now American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. I think they should take a page from Southwest's book and offer some really good prices and get a lot of people flying.  I would even wear blue eye shadow for a $39 ticket.

Sam

I'm not feeling much like blogging today.  My heart is too heavy with the loss of our nephew, Sam, who was killed in a car wreck yesterday.  Just a few thoughts about his short life.

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Sam was a kid that the Lord really wanted to be born.

When I first started "going steady" with Dennis in my senior year of high school people at school would say "You mean OWEN Carey's brother???"  My future brother-in-law, was, how shall I say this?  A hell-raiser.  He was constantly in trouble with some authority or another. Even after he did a tour in Viet Nam and returned, when you thought he might have matured, he finally wound up fleeing to New Hampshire a few steps ahead of the cops.

He got married there, had a couple of kids and then one day we got a phone call from him. "Guess what!  I'm a Christian now!"

We turned to each other and said "Sure.  Wonder how long that will last."

But we were amazed and thrilled to find that God had done the changing, not Owen, and the guy who never did anything in a small way became an evangelist, a preacher, a church planter and is still, despite our  initial doubts, so "Radically Saved" that anyone around him wants what he has.

Along the way there were more kids born, five, in about ten years time.  Owen was gone a lot and Esther, his wife, was worn out!  In fact, there were difficulties with her fifth pregnancy and she had to be hospitalized for several months. It was time to stop.  No more kids.  Of course I was very discreet in my suggestions.  "Stop!" I said.  "You're crazy!" I said. "Owen, you need to take care of this." I said.  Not that I ever interfere in anybody's private life.

Owen just smiled and instead of telling me to mind my own business, said "I'm waiting on God."  And God wanted Sam to be born.

He was the last, the baby. He had some learning challenges so Esther spent more time with him than she had the others because she both home schooled him and drove him several hours a week to special classes.  Owen was able to spend more time with him as Sam's basketball career took off.  Did I mention he grew to be six feet, eight inches tall?

Sam was recruited to play basketball for the local college, then he played a season in Uruguay, a season in Germany, and then this year, with the NBA sitting out and Canada still going strong in basketball, Sam was recruited to play there.

In between basketball seasons Sam met Kayte and this summer Brayden was born.  I've been following them on Facebook and you've never seen a prouder daddy.  Brayden had some severe health problems when he was born, and Sam was constantly with him. When Brayden finally got to go home from the hospital and Kayte went back to work, Sam was a stay-at-home dad.  Brayden was no bigger than the palm of Sam's big hand at first, but Sam changed diapers, gave baths, rocked and fed, the whole nine yards.  Or is that full-court press?

The basketball season started and Sam left to go play basketball in Canada to support his family.  He couldn't be home every day but the communication was constant.  They Skyped so Sam could see Brayden and Brayden could see his daddy.  Then on Tuesday Sam had a few days available and he was headed home to his family.

We'll never know what happened next.  Was he hurrying too much?  Probably so.  Did he try to make the trip on too little sleep because he was so anxious to see Kayte and Brayden?  Maybe. The emergency crew did all they could do.  The doctors did all they could do.  It wasn't enough.  No matter what the cause here on earth, God was ready to take Sam home.
 
Twenty-six years is such a short time. Sam packed them full of life.  Our hearts are breaking here on earth but we are grateful for those twenty-six years.  They were exactly the length of time God planned for him.

Wedded Bliss

We went to a wedding last weekend and it was beautiful.  The bridesmaids wore pink, the groomsmen even wore pink vests and pink roses and didn't complain, the mother of the bride looked young enough to be the bride herself, the bride was stunning in the dress her mother had worn twenty-five years ago at her own wedding, and the dad had to gulp back tears more than once during the ceremony.  He was the preacher, so it was kind of hard for him to get the words out looking at his precious daughter and probably remembering his lovely wife in that same dress and wondering where in the world did the years go. I loved it.

As far as I could tell, there were no glitches.  Well, at the end of the ceremony the preacher pretended to have second thoughts about the groom kissing his daughter, so at the last he said  "Austin, you may now...keep holding Hayley's hands."   Hayley, however, knew just what to do.  She grabbed hold of her new husband's shoulders and laid a big kiss on him even without her dad's permission.  It was very cute.

Weddings always fill me with nostalgia. You too, I'm guessing.  We have been to quite a lot over the years.  A few years ago it seemed like we were going to one every weekend.  All of our friends' kids and all of our kids' friends were getting married at the same time.  Every one was special even though they ran the gamut from very simple to wildly elaborate.  I don't even want to know what some of them cost.

There was an old saying that if something went wrong at the wedding it insured that the marriage would go well, and even though we didn't know details, like when you listen to a piano performance and the pianist later says "Oh, I missed so many notes!" and you didn't know the difference, probably there was at least some small thing that happened at each to dispel the hex.  The air conditioning went out at the church during our wedding. You can see Dennis kind of dripping in some of the pictures. The florist showed up minus a couple of corsages and look how long we've been married!

At one wedding we went to the bride and groom knocked over the unity candle, there was a small fire and I think the video made it onto America's Funniest Home Videos. How the "disasters" are handled by the bride and groom probably has much to say about how well their marriage will go.  (The fire people are still married and it has been about seventeen years, I think)

The way my daughter-in-law, Robyn, responded to what happened at her wedding was one of the things that convinced me she would be great in our family.  One of the candle lighters, her small cousin, was having difficulty lighting the last of the candelabras.  She tried and tried till finally one of the ushers went up and took the lighter from her and tried to light the candle. He knocked against it.  It swayed left.  It swayed right. It swayed backwards and forwards and he finally made a heroic grab and caught it at just the moment before it went down.  All this time the pianist, who it turned out was mainly fluent in "honky-tonk", kept playing the same song again and again that sounded like it had originated in an Old West saloon.  After the wedding when Robyn got someone to confess to why she had been made to stand behind the door to the sanctuary forever hearing the same tinkly song over and over, said "Oh, good!  I was hoping something funny would happen."

Because I was the preacher's daughter and impossibly cute and red-headed (I'm sure that was why!  My daddy said so.) I was the flower girl in a lot of weddings when I was little.  It didn't take long till I was an old pro at it and hated to be slowed down by unskilled kids who were poky ring bearers, or extra flower girls who took forever to learn that step-pause-step thing.  I knew just how to dole out the petals so I didn't run out before I got to the front of the church and heaven help the other kid who might hesitate in fright when she was supposed to start down the aisle. I could pinch. I think the last wedding I was flower girl in was when the other flower girl made it to the front with me dragging her, then turned and stage-whispered to her mother right in the middle of the ceremony, "I have to go potty!"  I gave up the profession; working with amateurs was just too stressful.

The Flower Girl and her Daddy, the preacher.

The preacher who performed his daughter's wedding last weekend has two more daughters to go.  You might think he will get tougher as he goes along, but since I remember when my dad performed my wedding (I was the last of four) I kind of doubt it.  And that is the way it should be.

Travel Bag

I heard Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, say once that men buy cars for transportation (and, I might add, status) but for women a car is a big purse.  He is absolutely right.  What women, especially if she has kids and drives fourteen million miles a week, well, maybe a little less, like thirteen million, picking kids up from day care and/or school and taking them to music lessons and baseball practice and church and friends' houses in between driving to the grocery store, work, church, the cleaners and countless fast food drive-throughs because she doesn't have time to cook, she is driving for Pete's sake!, what woman has a clean car for more than an hour every six months?  That hour courtesy of the husband who sighs loud enough to be heard three states away, shakes his head and heads off to the car-wash.  Alone, of course, no kids in the car.

Why is this, you may ask.  I'll tell you why.  There has never been an art project made from macaroni and nine gallons of glue on a paper plate that has been sent home dry.  And there has never been a macaroni/glue/paper plate art project that has made it out of the car and into the house without first lying on the floor of the car, macaroni/glue side down, for about a week until someone misses it and wonders why it is not displayed on the front of the refrigerator.  No, it is in the car, glued firmly to the carpet, underneath three lost library books, forty-seven Happy Meal toys, minus the Happy Meal toy that went "Heee-hawww" each time its tail was pulled and the mom said "If I hear that one more time I am throwing that thing out the window!" and she made good on the threat. It's mixed in with ballet shoes, soccer uniforms from last year, folded camp chairs for watching soccer practices, a dozen petrified french fries, a hockey puck that used to be a hamburger patty, empty juice boxes (empty because the juice has oozed out of the cardboard and has pooled into the cup holder in a congealed mass, trapping the juice box like a dinosaur in the La Brea Tar Pits) and backpacks with notes from the teacher that have to be signed right now!  If there is a kid in diapers, multiply the quantity of these things by twenty-seven.

 And don't forget the car seats.  There are scary treasures under the car seats that will never be unearthed until  the kids are studying for their own drivers' licenses.  And don't worry about making sure the car seats are installed correctly.  They are held to the upholstery with something like Super Glue that probably came from one of those juice boxes before the rest of it was left in the cup holder. All of these things are in the back seats.

The front seat has Bibles, Bible study notebooks, grocery lists, re-usable grocery bags, cardboard coffee cups, change, hand sanitizer, movies, both the kind that were supposed to go back to the RedBox two days ago and the ones that you keep in the car if you are lucky enough to have a DVD player for the kids to watch for part of the thirteen million mile journey.  And a purse.

Now that I am a grandma my car is not as full as it used to be but there are certain things that I do keep there. There is a plastic bin between the two back seats that is supposed to hold the Happy Meal toys and markers and color books for the grandkids. Even though I also have a trash can in the front, the toy bin may occasionally get cookie crumbs and wrappers and gooey stuff, or so I have been told by someone who had to stick his hand down in there looking for the car keys once (Oh, just do your big sigh and go on to the car wash with the car if you're going to be that way).

 I also have a built-in bin that has scissors and scotch tape (you never know when you might need to wrap a present on the way somewhere) post-it notes, extra ink pens, fabric samples from all my upholstered furniture in case I need to match something, the DVDs we keep in the car for the kids, and a bunch of change. And an afghan and a small pillow in case someone needs to take a  nap while waiting for someone else to come out of work but he is still in a meeting and it's getting dark!  Or the cat can curl up on the blanket if he is thrown into the garage in the middle of the night for dancing a tarantella up and down the halls while decent people try to get some sleep.  And the aforementioned trash can, usually full of used coffee cups.  Somehow, though, I tend to get a call every week or so saying "Grandma, is my lunchbox in your car?"  It usually is.

I rode in my son Josh's car a few weeks ago.  It was so clean I might have been taking a test drive at a car dealer's. The kids were nowhere around, though.  I'm pretty sure they were in his wife's car.

Watch My Purse For Me, Will Ya,?

I don't know how men get by carrying just what is in their pockets.  Where do they keep their little packages of tissues or their used tissues or notebooks or extra pens or crayons for the kids or sunglasses?  Oh, that's right.  They hand their sunglasses and anything extra they have to their wives to put in their purses.

I see some young women carrying purses that aren't much bigger than my wallet, and I don't know how they do that either, but then they're probably single and don't have to carry the sunglasses for their husbands.  Here is what is in my purse right now: wallet, of course, containing my driver's license, voter ID, three credit cards, cards for movies, cards for discounts at grocery stores, cards for CVS and Toys R Us and Sam's, and memberships to a bunch of places and so on.  And a little bit of  money. There is also lipstick, a pill case, a comb, (yeah, I know you think I never use it, but it's there if I decide to) hand cream, eye-drops, a datebook, (I know, I know, but even if I could get the information into my phone I would never remember how to access it when I need it.)  another card case with more cards including my library card, keys, extra garage door opener in case someone is giving me a ride, coupon envelope, notebook for blog ideas, a bunch of extra pens, old receipts, crayons in little boxes you get in restaurants, pages of stickers and pipe cleaners for twisting into really cool shapes when kids have to wait a long time and be quiet, like in church, a package of Splenda in case they don't put enough in Dennis's coffee at McDonald's.

There is more but I am getting tired of listing things. How would I get all that into a fashionable purse the size of a pack of cards? I'm pretty sure my shoulder problem stems from the weight of all that stuff hanging there when I sling my purse across my shoulder.

Remember Art Linkletter? (He was on television about a hundred and fifty years ago)  He opened an audience member's purse and pulled out a breast pump once.  I don't have one of those in there. And I leave my sunglasses in the car and tend to keep my cell phone in my pocket now.

While I can't figure out how those teeny purses work, I can't figure out how women use those giant purses, the ones like big duffel bags, either.   Everything just falls to the bottom and it is like an archaeological expedition to find anything. (Oh, please! I've seen you dumping everything out onto the floor trying to find your keys.) I have to have purses with very specific configurations.  The right amount of pockets in the right places.  I know they look like old lady purses, but hey, I AM an old lady.  I try to put the same things in the same pockets all the times and once when I lost my keys while we were on a trip and called back, my sister looked everywhere in St. Louis for them and I finally had a whole new set of keys made.  It turned out later that they were in the bottom of my purse instead of the pocket where I ALWAYS put them.  Except that time.

When it comes time that I am forced to buy a new purse, usually because holes have worn into the lining and essential things creep in there and hide from me, taunting me with their jingling, eluding my grasp, I have a dichotomy of feelings.  I hate looking for a purse that fits my very exact needs because I look and look and cannot find one.  On the other hand, there is always the excitement of the hunt, the absolutely, fantastically perfect one may be out there; I just haven't found it yet.  I have several in my closet that I thought might be IT but they weren't and I had to start again. What I really wish is that I could design my own, have somebody make it out of industrial strength materials, and keep it forever.

Then there is the issue of the cost, of course.  On "Price Is Right" they often give away purses that they say are worth (a relative term) more than a thousand dollars.  Please!  I worked with a lady who said she paid $300 for a purse once but she was still carrying it seventeen years later. I guess at $17.64 a year it was not a bad deal but I'd still have a hard time laying out the initial cash.  My favorite purse so far, and I'm carrying it for the second year, is one I paid two dollars for at Goodwill.

I just read about the world's most expensive purse that is on display in Dubai.  It is made of 18 caret gold, encrusted with 4,517 diamonds and the price tag is $3.8 million dollars.  I don't think it's for me though.  It doesn't have the right pockets.  I think it might just be better to get my husband one of those "man bags".  (Men call them Messenger Bags but we really know what they are)  Then I can hand him things to carry for me instead of the other way around.

How Pink Became My New Favorite Color

I have a terrible confession to make, one that I would not have been able to make before my mom passed away last year: back in the early '70s I went braless. I wasn't a Radical Feminist or anything, not a Bra Burner. But they had not invented sports bras back then and bras are not that comfortable and, well, just because I could.

 There was certain criteria that had to be met unless you were doing it to make a political statement:  if you could put a pencil under your breasts and it stayed there, you were too big and had to wear a bra. Hard as it is to imagine today, I was a little slip of a thing back then, I passed the pencil test and I was bra-free for a couple of years. (I did wear band-aids under anything thinner than a sweatshirt; I wasn't completely clueless!) Then I got pregnant and went from braless freedom to maternity bras to nursing bras and the next thing I knew, I was in my sixties, gravity had done it's thing and not only could I have held a pencil under there, I could have held a rolled up newspaper....the Sunday Times.  (Stay with me. This is going to figure into the story.)

Thinking of that reminded me of a book written in the seventies, "All Things Wise And Wonderful" by a country veterinarian from Scotland named James Herriot and set in the time before World War II.  Just the other day I found a copy.  The vet wrote," 'This is the third time I've had to stitch Daisy up and I'm afraid it is just going to go on happening'....That was the worst of very old cows.  Their udders dropped so that when they lay down in their stalls the vital milk-producing organ was pushed to one side into the path of the neighboring animals....There was a long silence as Dodson and I looked at the cow, her broken down udder almost brushing the cobblestones."

So the last few years, boy did I identify with poor Daisy!  Oh, don't sit there looking so smug.  It happens to everybody if you live long enough, maybe not to that degree if you stay skinny and look like two fried eggs on a plate now, but Newton's law is always in effect, honey.

As you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and since next month is the three year anniversary of my story's beginning, I decided to nag you along with everybody else. "Let me tell you about my operation," as my grandma used to say.

Here is a tip:  If you ever notice certain changes, and you want to ask somebody about them but you really don't want to know, but your son is a doctor, and you kind of want to ask him but you don't want him to know it's you, don't go looking them up on his computer at his house when he can come up behind you and see what you are looking at and make you tell him.  Your whole denial thing doesn't have a chance after that.  I think maybe there was something to the "wanting to get caught theory", although I didn't realize it at the time.

So he made me go to my doctor and she sent me for a "diagnostic mammogram".  That office had a pink Christmas tree decorated with pink ribbons, pink chairs, pink scrubs for the techs and a little pink cape for me to wear while I waited for them to tell me I needed to come back for a needle biopsy.  More pink.  Then onto a surgeon with a nice beige office, who said "I really don't think this is going to be anything.  I see calcium deposits and that doesn't always mean cancer but let's go in and take a look just to be safe."

They would do a lumpectomy to test it. There wasn't any lump but I guess he meant they just wanted to take a chunk of something and get it under a microscope.  The surgeon assured me more than once that he almost never saw cancer in these kind of things. I  had had lumpectomies twice before when there were actual lumps and they were benign. Out-patient surgery, in and out the same day, and he would call us. The surgery was on Friday and by Wednesday he still had not called.  It was a little disconcerting not to hear from him but then, late on Wednesday evening the phone rang.  He had been surprised.  He gave me lots of details with words I didn't understand.  I took notes that I didn't understand.  Then I had enough presence of mind to ask him if he would call our son, Josh, who made me go to him in the first place and who spoke his language.

Here's where the eleven hours of labor and natural childbirth paid off:  Josh called back and explained everything in words I recognized:  I had breast cancer. It was not confined to a tumor but in the milk ducts. The margins of the sample they took still had cancer cells to the edges so they needed to take a larger sample, another surgery.

Long story a little less long, after two more surgeries getting more samples that never got clear edges, I finally had a full mastectomy and they did whatever they do so I could have reconstruction of that breast. There was a year of painful treatments for that (if you have to make a decision about reconstruction, message me. We'll talk) but, praise the Lord, I did not need chemotherapy or even radiation.  And here's the silver lining:  A year after the mastectomy I had another surgery to reduce the size of the other breast so there would be some sort of matching. (The law requires that insurance pays for this, also.)  And voila!  I could probably hold a pencil under there but not one of those fat crayons little kids use in kindergarten.  Not even a toothpick under the reconstructed one.  No parts of me any longer brush the cobblestones.

I read that Liz Higgins says to practice for a mammogram you should take two glass cutting boards, put them in the freezer, then put one on the floor of the garage and lie down with your breast on it.  Put the other on top and have someone run the car over them.

I promise you it is not as bad as all that.  By this time I have had maybe two thousand and forty-three mammograms, okay, maybe a two thousand twenty-three....they do a lot when you are having breast surgeries, and I have never had one that was really painful.  I already have mine scheduled for next month.  (Dennis thinks they should give it to me for half price but I already tried and they didn't go for it.)

 So do it.  Chances are that there will be nothing there, but if you catch something before there are any symptoms, how much easier will it be to fix?  And maybe in a year or two you, who knows?  It might not be fashionable to go braless any more but you could if you wanted to. And the only confession you will have to make is that you were smart enough to catch things early. And you might get a free pink t-shirt.  It will be your favorite color too.

The Long and the Short of It

I guess my boys were in Junior High when they first started standing next to me to see who was taller. We would stand back to back and someone would measure and I tried to stand as straight as I could and my hair was puffed up but they would put their hands up there and hold my hair down and before you knew it I was the shortest one in the family.  One Spring Break I had to work and Dennis took the boys with him to St. Louis where he was on a consulting job.  They were only gone a week but before they left Jake measured against me, nothing new, and when they got back he was taller than me.

And now it's happening with my grandkids.  The oldest ones are eyeing me, pushing down my hair, sidling up next to me to see if it would be worth measuring.  I think they are going to be having the advantage though, because it seems I'm shrinking.  Ever since I was a grown-up I have been five feet, three and three-quarters inches tall.  Then someone said, "Enough with the quarter inch, it is five-three and a half."  Now at the doctor's I'm suddenly just five-three!

It was inevitable, I guess.  I got my mom's short genes and when she and I stood together we were the same height. Then one time some years ago I noticed I could look over the top of her and by the time she died last year she was more than a head shorter than me.  What's up with that?  Is gravity just pulling us down toward the earth, trying to suck us into the ground?  I have to admit there are certain parts of me that started heading south sooner than the rest but I guess if you live long enough you wind up looking puppies in the eye!

When you are short you learn to compensate pretty early.  One of my prized possessions is a rolling stool, the kind they have in libraries, which I keep in the kitchen.  I went to Office Depot looking for one a few years (OK, decades!) ago and it was $50 so of course I didn't get it.  That week-end, though, I found one at a garage sale for ---I'm not making this up---forty-five cents.  I roll it all over the kitchen and laundry room when I need anything above the second shelves and carry it into the rest of the house frequently.

When I  stay at Josh and Jerilyn's I can't take my stool so if I'm there with just the grandkids I'm in trouble.  I used to pick up one of the kids and stand him or her on the kitchen counter so they could hand me things but at seven and eleven they are a little too big to lift up there now.  Last week I finally found the stool that Jerilyn had gotten for the kids when they were toddlers so they could reach the bathroom sink and I carried that around the kitchen.  They have those fashionably high ceilings with cabinets to match so I can hardly reach beyond the first shelf.  So the toddler stool is mine at their house now.  There's something wrong with this picture!!!

They say that the average height of women in the United States is five feet four inches. Where are they?  And since every one I know is, like, a foot taller than me, wouldn't there have to be a lot of pygmy-size women running around to make the average work?  And do they design things to fit this mythical "average" size woman?  No way.  I have to wear a seat belt extender in my car to keep the seat belt from strangling me since my neck is apparently where everybody else's shoulders are.  One of the good things about our current car is that there is a button on the steering column to raise the pedals so my feet can reach them, but the default setting, of course, is for someone at least six inches taller than me.

When you are short you have to be inventive. I have two sets of barbecue tongs in my kitchen.  I use them to grab things that are too high for me and pull them down.  And at Wal Mart the other day I was trying to reach a package of diapers (they were for Gus, our Yorkie---another blog some day) and they were at the back of the top shelf.  There was absolutely no way.  I only even spotted them because the shelf looked empty and I had backed way far away to try to look in.  I tried stepping on the bottom shelf to boost myself up but that didn't work.  While looking for someone tall enough to reach in I found a broom, took it back to the shelf, stood on my tiptoes and swept the diapers to the front of the shelf. 

I do know a few women who are shorter than me.  My friend, Pam and my niece, Christina are both about five-two I think.  I like being around them but here's the deal. They are teeny all over.  I don't know this for a fact but I'm pretty sure that neither of them would be able to give blood according to the Red Cross. There is a minimum that you have to weigh before they will let you give.

It is clear that there has been a mix-up somehow. Those kids never should have gotten taller than me. It's  very simple really.  I have checked the guidelines and according to the height/weight charts, for my weight I should be six feet-three.

Purple is the New Pink

There were four maintenance men getting ready to work in the church gym this morning when we were going up to ride the bikes.  They were all four biggish guys, the better to handle the scaffold or huge ladders or whatever they were trundling down the hall.  As we passed, I couldn't help but overhear part of the conversation: " Did you see Pastor Nick's shirt last night?  It was blue and looked great.  It had the logo in red and it really stood out. They did a great job with that."  "Yeah, it looked good on him." I couldn't hear a lot more but there was much nodding of heads and obvious agreement among them. And not one of them laughed.

So have men always been interested in fashion and such and they just hid it well, or is this something new that this Old Wife is just now noticing?  I've heard the term "Metro-sexual".  I think it was in a story about how Matt Lauer and Bryant Gumble like to go shoe shopping together.  I read it is any straight guy who is in a clothing or design store who hasn't been dragged there by his wife. Maybe that movement has been spreading while I wasn't looking.  But most of  the guys I know are happy if they have clean jeans and a few t-shirts and if you try to get them into anything more fashionable, they balk

One pair of black shoes, one pair of brown.  Tennis shoes. That's all most guys need.  Oh, and here in the Southwest, cowboy boots.  My sister visited our church once right after we moved to Oklahoma (she was from the East) and noticed that the preacher wore cowboy boots with his suit.  She was appalled!  But if you have cowboy boots you don't even have to bother with one pair of black and one pair of brown.  Cowboy boots, like jeans, go with everything..  A guy figured that out, I bet.

Sometimes guys find what they like and that is the end of the discussion, no matter what the fashion trend.  My husband will keep wearing the same button down dress shirts and the cuffed pants that he has worn since JFK wore them, no matter what style is "in".  That way he is in fashion about once a decade, since styles seem to come around again about that often.  The problem with this approach is that sometimes his styles are just not available.  He'd rather wear raggedy old things than succumb to something different.

Take his underwear.  Please.  He has worn it so long that it is almost transparent.  In fact once when we were at a doctor's office the nurse asked him to remove the undershirt he was "almost wearing."  It's not that he doesn't have new underwear in his drawer.  I have probably bought him a dozen new packages but he only wants the old ones.  Hello!  They just don't make them anymore!  Or if they do, they have not worn down to the thickness of a moth's wing, which is what he really likes about them.

 And socks?  We could outfit a man-sized centipede with the new socks that are in his drawer that he refuses to wear. I have declined to even try to buy him any more socks so he trolls the internet and orders them online if he thinks they will meet his particular specifications, but they don't and there they are in the drawer, not even worn, just tried on.  Usually only one sock per pair, in fact.

Except for TV newscasters and bankers you rarely see men wearing neckties these days.  Even preachers don't always wear ties when they are preaching and I think I heard a collective sigh of relief when that happened.  And yet the clothes that men do wear seem to be getting more colorful. Gone are the days when a white dress shirt was the only color available.  I noticed a few years ago that almost every guy I knew had a pink dress shirt and now I see on TV that the "in" color is purple---watch any newscast out of New York.  I suspect it will be awhile before the guys around here give in to that.  No matter what color the shirt, of course, if they aren't wearing jeans, the pants are still always, brown, black or khaki.  I'm not sure I'm ready for them to branch out on pants colors yet

If it happens I think I'll run it by the maintenance guys at First Baptist. Those fellows know when something looks good on a guy.

New-Fangled Contraptions

I like to think that I am smarter than most household objects---oh, all right, I admit that anything invented after the twenty-first century is a challenge, like if it has "bits" or "bites" or things like that, or any television that doesn't require a rabbit-ear antenna, but the normal, everyday household objects that we use each day should not be that difficult.  Like, I can work the electric can opener by myself.  And the microwave...that is a pretty modern thing that I can do.  So you would think that spending a week at our kids' house in Edmond would have been a no-brainer.

I've been taking care of a house for a few years now, you know, but I admit I have some limitations.  Right off the bat I knew better than to even turn on their security system when we left the house.  I've been there, done that with the thing.  A few years ago our son Jake, who lives in Broken Arrow near us, had to have emergency dental work and the only place that could fit him in quickly was in Oklahoma City so we arranged to take him and wait while he had his wisdom teeth removed and then go to Josh and Jerilyn's house for a couple of days for him to recover. Jerilyn had to be gone when we got there but she left the door unlocked for us. She forgot, however, what an automatic action setting the alarm is for her.

Jake was a little groggy when he came out of the dentist's and slept most of the way to his brother's house.  I got out and helped him to the door, reached for the handle and B-WATT, B-WATT, B-WATT!!!!!  He woke up. The alarm signaled our presence to all of Edmond and Northwest Oklahoma City.  And it would not stop!  Did I know how to disengage it?  Of course not!  I tried to call Jerilyn but she was at the gym, her cell phone turned off.  The telephone rang in the house; it was the security company.  I tried to explain  but they wanted a code-word to convince them I wasn't disguising my voice as a little old lady while my cohorts loaded up a van with all their clients belongings.  "I'll call you back" I said.  B-WATT, B-WATT, B-WATT!!! 

Somehow I remembered the YMCA where Jerilyn was, found the phone number and spoke to the receptionist, trying to make her hear me over the B-WATT, B-WATT, B-WATT!!! in the background.  "Just tell her that her mother-in-law called.  I'm bringing my son home from having surgery and I've set off the alarm.  Could she call me?"  The receptionist, now convinced that Jerilyn was blithely sweating on the treadmill while her husband was "under the knife", found her and Jerilyn called the security people with the code word.  I think they have the same security company at this new house but I'm pretty sure Jerilyn doesn't go to that gym anymore.

There is a lovely, stainless-steel, zero-clearance refrigerator in the kitchen there.  It apparently knows a lot more than I do about chilliness because one night after we had gone to bed I heard a soft "Ding" coming from the kitchen.  And another, and another. It seemed to be coming from the fridge but it refused to speak my language and I don't speak Ding. I opened the door and peered in.  Nothing.  Back to bed.  "Ding, ding, ding."  Again I looked inside. Somehow this time I noticed that the temperature of the freezer had risen to 17 degrees.  It didn't like that.  I set it back to zero.  It didn't thank me but we all finally had a good night's sleep.

Now I really know my limits when it comes to all things electronic, so our grandson managed the television for us. There are three remotes, different codes, timers, bells, whistles, international date lines, I don't know what all, but David can handle it.  We didn't even try to watch TV when the kids weren't home but the first night we were there David set it up for us to watch the baseball game and went upstairs to do homework.  Poor guy, he had to come back down,---I am not making this up---six times and get us back on track whenever Dennis, ill-advisedly, tried to push a button himself.

Now, I am not much of a sports person, but the week that I was in Edmond the Cardinals were in the World Series.  Even though Dennis had returned to Tulsa I decided to watch the game. David set it up for me.  I didn't touch the remote after that.  It was the sixth game, the Cardinals were down by three games to two and they were behind in the ninth inning, then someone got a run, the score was tied, they were going into extra innings in the World Series!! Suddenly a grey screen appeared  on the TV  "Parental  Control Has Blocked This Program Due to Time" (it was 11:00 p.m.) and the television was off.  I heard later that they went back and forth till the eleventh inning and it was the pivotal game, one that will definitely go down in World Series history. The most exciting game ever, some said.  Not that I'll ever know, of course.

I was quite proud of myself that I was able to use the washer and dryer, even though they are, like, twelve generations beyond my twenty-year-old Kenmores, and even the dishwasher, although Emily said "My mom never uses the dishwasher, she just does it by hand."  (Yes, Jerilyn, I hand-washed the knives and the pots and pans but that's where I drew the line) so I certainly thought I could manage the vacuum cleaner.

I schlepped the vacuum cleaner up the stairs while the kids were at school on Friday.
Due to old age, excess poundage, and arthritis in my knee, hauling just myself up the stairs each day was a job in itself, so it took me about ten minutes to get the vacuum up there.  That should have been enough work for that day, but no, I would persevere! It is a lovely vacuum cleaner, a Dyson.  You can see through it.  The guy on TV practically dances with it in the commercial.  Of course I should be able to experience the joy of dancing with it also. You would think.

Imagine a young, teen-age boy who has never been disciplined and is suddenly taller than his mother. He is bigger and stronger and yet she expects him to obey her.  Young Dyson was not in the mood to dance with his grandma.

I managed to unwrap the cord and plug it in but it would cooperate no further.  It stubbornly  refused to lower in the front so I could push it.  There was, instead, a long wand sticking up from the top and the suction seemed to be emanating from there.  I pulled on the wand.  It rose in the air. It would not leave its base in the handle.  Even though it was now a foot taller than me I could still tell that the suction was coming from the wand, not the rollers.  I pulled handles, I pushed buttons, I twisted, I turned.  It would defeat me!  But, no, I am the grown-up here and I do not give up this easily!  There was an attachment that fit on the end of the wand, about four inches across like a little sweeper but the wand remained firmly in its base.  Wood shavings  from the hamster cage were piled up on the carpet in Emily's bedroom.  I lay the vacuum down on its side, pushed the whole machine along, wand still attached to the handle, in front of me, and bending like a stoop-laborer in a cotton patch, vacuumed that whole floor while I was practically laying down, and got up the shavings.  Ha!  Just try and get the best of this little (stop smirking!) old grandma!  I left the vacuum upstairs in time-out until David came home to rescue it and left the shavings inside for Jerilyn to empty at her leisure.

After David got me started, the computer only defeated me slightly (I could use it for Facebook but not blogging), the garage door opener only refused to work once, the pull-down sprayer on the faucet...Okay, let's just say I'm glad I could use the dryer. I was able to use the oven to make chocolate chip cookies like Grandmas everywhere, although I just mixed them up by hand; I wasn't about to get into it with the big Kitchen Aide mixer.  And I dug around and found old fashioned cookie sheets rather than use that stone thing.  It is not electronic but it is completely beyond me!

So now I am at home in my poor, old-fashioned, twentieth century house.  I can use most of the appliances and if I come upon something that is smarter than me, I guess I'll call David.  He'll try to walk me through it over the phone.  I can mail him some chocolate chip cookies. The Post Office took over from the Pony Express, I heard, but I think they'll get to him before they get stale.

Halloween

Back when I was a kid---no, there were no dinosaurs, it was the 'fifties. It was just cars that were the size of dinosaurs---Halloween was always a confusing sort of day.  It was my sister's birthday so we could never go out trick-or-treating till after her birthday dinner which was continually interrupted by other kids trick-or-treating.  At the last clink of a fork on a plate we kids jumped up and ran for our costumes.

My big sisters were forced to drag me along with them for a little while and we hit the road, clutching---I am not making this up---pillowcases for our loot.  And my sisters' bags came back full! Mine not so much since they would stay out till practically midnight walking miles without street lights to get the best stuff. I didn't last quite that long. After the first skeleton costume I encountered walking toward us on the dark street I was ready to go home.  Heaven forbid there be a Frankenstein or a werewolf.

When my sisters finally came home we all sat on the kitchen floor and dumped out our bags.  You should have been there! We're talking full-size Hershey bars---the kind that cost a dollar today---homemade popcorn balls, apples on a stick covered in caramel and wrapped in waxed paper, homemade cookies, and if a neighbor was running out of goodies, nickels, dimes and pennies.  And guess what!  Nobody x-rayed the candy or even gave it a close inspection before we could eat it.

I was usually a gypsy or a hobo, costumes that were thrown together that day, and Danny Zinn from across the street always borrowed one of my dresses and went as a girl.  There were no costumes bought at the store.  If somebody's mom was the kind who cut the sandwiches into shapes before she put them in your lunchbox, she might have dyed a pair of your uncle's long underwear blue, put red shorts over that and with a red apron for a cape made a Superman costume, but that was as elaborate as anybody got.

By the time my boys were trick-or-treating things were in transition. Kids wore some home-made costumes but mostly bought ones.  Halloween costumes in our family, however, are like our  birthday cakes: they have to be homemade or your mother doesn't love you enough to go to the trouble.  Not that I ever sewed, but we had a few fun ones. We cut holes in boxes for arms and heads, covered the boxes in aluminum foil and made a robot. The year Ghostbusters came out in theaters we fashioned a costume out of boxes and the wand from our vacuum cleaner.  Once we did an astronaut costume made from a paper bag, arm and face holes cut out and a soda straw attached to the side for an antenna, then sprayed with silver paint.

Jake's best costume was the year he was about four and went as The Incredible Hulk.   He wore a long-sleeved green t-shirt of mine, stuffed with dish towels for muscles, with someone's green knee socks that came up to his thighs, under his shorts, and I mixed green food coloring in with my make-up and put it on his face and hands.(Who knew food coloring was a permanent dye?)  His skin had kind of a sickly pallor to it for a few weeks, but he was darn cute as the Hulk!

I did break down and buy a mask for one of Josh's most memorable costumes.  He was going to be CP3O from Star Wars and the mask was very realistic.  For the body I had gold gift-wrapping paper and we wound it around and around him, trunk, arms and legs.  He looked terrific for the parade they had at school every year, where the kids marched around the gym in their costumes first thing the morning of Halloween. There was only one problem.  He couldn't bend his knees to sit down in the car for the ride to school. Hey, I was nothing if not a resourceful mom. We had a two-by-six board in the garage and a station wagon.  We leaned the board against the back of the car, leaned Josh against that, then tipped it up and slid him into the car like a big pizza going into the oven.  I think he wore a different costume for trick-or-treating that night, though.  Something we made up on the spot, of course.

Tonight when I go to the door I'll drop candy bars about the size of your thumb into plastic pumpkins and  there will probably be very few costumes that were not purchased at Wal-Mart or Target.  I won't be wearing a costume myself, although I've seen adults do that for when kids came to the door. Okay, one time I dressed up like a dog, white sweats with black felt pieces for spots and fabulous felt ears pinned into my white hair, because the company I worked for at the time was having a contest.  The make-up was terrific and very dog-like.  Only problem,  it was on Jake's birthday and we didn't have time to go home and change clothes before we went out to dinner with him. He was in college and didn't seem to think it was that cute, but several little kids in the restaurant came over to see me.

Once when I was taking my kids around, a lady greeted us looking like a regular mom, but when she turned around to get the candy she bent over and was wearing a plastic derriere over her jeans and it had a big kiss mark on it. I think she was commenting on how Halloween has changed through the years. I don't blame her but don't think I'll do that.

A Wife's Prayer

When you've been married forty-five years you almost don't remember what life was like before you were married, it is such a big percentage of your life.  I keep trying to do the math (quit laughing): 19/65.  Is that, like, 7/8 of my life that I've been with this same guy?  Well, okay, it's not the same guy.  We've both changed so much, so many times that it's like someone new all the time.  It's never boring, that's for sure.  And yet, that old thing about "the two shall become one flesh", that's true too.  We are like two halves of a whole.  Especially when it comes to memory.  Dennis says we share one brain.  One of us is always saying "You remember when..."

 "Harry?"

 "Yeah, Harry.  Remember when he..."

 "Knocked the mirror off the side of the car? It was the..."

"Dodge station wagon.  He was here for a convention or..."  And so on.  It takes both of us to complete a memory or find the keys or take the right medicines.  Don't get me started about driving!

We were kids when we met each other (fourteen and sixteen) and even before that we lived in the same community: same drugstore on the corner, same library, our mothers shopped at the same National Grocery Store. It's kind of like we were always together.

I know it's a minor procedure, this heart thing, but I don't want them to take him into that O.R. without me today.  I'm supposed to be there with him.  When they put that funny shower cap on him (to keep what hair he has under wraps in the "sterile field") and wheel him through those doors I'll probably hold my breath till they get back.  We've been breathing the same air all these years, I'll just wait for him.

                      ********************************

While I don't usually write prayers, I must have once because this was in the things from 1979 that I found the other day, from another time when there was a health problem..  It seems very appropriate for today.   We were married about 13 years when I wrote this.  Feelings are still the same.

                     *********************************
                            
He's my rock, Lord.  I can't afford to lose him yet. We have come through so much, Lord.  We have changed and grown and he has become a man.  I'm not the only one who sees it.  He is always the leader, the solver-of-problems.  So many people depend on him.  Especially me, Lord.  Particularly me.

When I have spent all day till I'm in tears trying to decide between yellow wallpaper and green wallpaper, he says "Green" and it is always the right thing.

When the repair department has not heard a word I have said to them for three days running, he calls to be "firm with them" and is so nice and gets their names and they are laughing and are friends with him and they say "There'll be someone right out, will anyone be home?"

When it has been raining for what seems like a week and the kids are climbing one wall and driving me up the other, he walks in the door and suddenly it is a whole new day and there are lots of things to do indoors and they are fun when Daddy does them.

When I have been searching for an hour and a half for the error in my checkbook or my dropped contact lens he comes in and puts his finger right on the spot without even seeming to look for it.

When I call him at work when he's in a meeting with his boss to tell him I sideswiped the neighbor's pick-up truck with our new car he says "Are you sure you're okay?" before he says "How bad is the car?"

At night when it's cold he's my warmth.  When I don't think I can go any farther he's my strength.  When I am really down and there is no one I can talk to he's my friend.

He is all these things because of You, Father.  When I met him he was a shallow boy and then he came to know You. Now he is trying to be in the exact center of Your will.  He is the High Priest in our family, my spiritual leader. He seeks Your guidance in all that he does. He searches Your  Word.

I know You gave him to me, Lord, and me to him.  Let me keep him awhile longer.  I want us to grow old together.  I want him to be here until the boys grow up.

Please, dear Lord, please touch him with Your healing hand.

                    *************************************

Maybe I should retract that part about the boys growing up and us growing old together.  We're there now.  But I'm still not ready to lose him.  Did you hear that, Lord?

Soul Sister

Tomorrow my sister-in-law will be here for a few days so I will be taking some time off again from the blog.  Just letting you know.

I'm excited to see her for lots of reasons, one because she is six feet tall and I never have to drag my stool around to get things from the top shelves when she is here.  Another is that she totally gets what it is like living with a Carey. The first time we met we each said "...does he do that, too?" about four-hundred and fifty-six times.  It was like we had known each other forever.

Because of that six feet tall thing I have to get off the computer and go dust things that are way up there like the tops of the refrigerator and the bookcases.  My general motto is "If you can see it and it bothers you, clean it yourself" but I don't usually do that with her.  We only see each other a few times a decade and I want her to come back.  (She sometimes cleans when she is here anyway and it can be embarrassing if she finds things like pacifiers we lost when the last grandkid stopped using them five years ago or the mop water is blacker than the cat.)

I have watched her raise six children and start on grandchildren before her youngest was out of diapers,  and cook and clean for the" boomerang kids" still at home and  the two or three people down on their luck that her husband constantly invites to live with them "awhile", and do all the extras with the church and community that a preacher's wife is called to do and never stop finding humor in the situations.

She has been married to a Carey forty and years survived! It's a God thing.

A Still, Small Voice

Jesus said "A little child shall lead them," and "Let the little children come unto me," and there are some iconic pictures of Jesus sitting on a big rock and lots of little kids are grouped around Him listening to Him teach them.  Not a one of those kids is depicted picking his nose or trying to wiggle away. But they weren't trying to sit still on hard church pews, either.

There are lots of churches with wonderful programs called "Children's Church" where the teaching is geared to accommodate a child's short attention span and still get the message across.  And there are snacks involved. During the time that our children were that age we never belonged to one of those churches, although Dennis worked in one.  It was cool.  They demonstrated baptism with a fish tank and a doll once.  But we had moved by the time our kids got out of the nursery. They came into "Big Church" when they got to be four years old.

When our oldest son, Josh, graduated to Big Church he was very excited.  That nursery stuff just wasn't cutting it for him any more.  We talked ahead of time about being very still and you may color or do something quietly but you may not do anything to draw attention to yourself and away from the preacher, like talking out loud or standing on the pew and waving to someone in the choir. (When one of my nephews went into Big Church for the first time, he was shocked when the pastor stood up to speak.  In a loud voice he said, "Mom!  Did you know PawPaw's the preacher?")  And we got a drink and went to the bathroom beforehand so there were no incidents like the one my friend had when she was trying to get her four year old to wait for the bathroom so she wouldn't have to walk out during the preaching and he shouted "Do you want me to poop in my pants???" Josh understood.  He could hardly wait.

The big day came and he sat in his seat very quietly but when the hymn service started he was visibly upset.  He was holding a hymnal, looking intently and almost crying.  I found out later that somehow he had thought that when he graduated to Big Church he would magically be able to read the words in the hymnal. But does God care about little kids or what? The very next song was "Jesus Loves Me This I Know", a song that Josh knew by heart.  I honestly didn't remember it ever being sung as a hymn in a worship service before but it was that day and it made all the difference for him.

Still, it is a very long time for a child to sit still. I was the mom with the bag big enough to hold a pup tent slung over her shoulders, the one full of colors and coloring books and little toys, hopefully, quiet things, for the boys to do during the preaching.  The bag got fuller and fuller every week but there was never anything "good" in it.  Match-box cars were not really encouraged but they don't make noise when they are run along a padded pew so I didn't forbid them.  Not until after Jake, when he was about four, somehow let his red car loose on the slanted floor and we---along with the rest of the church---watched it roll down, down, down the aisle, across the front of the church and park itself right in front of the pulpit where it stayed until the closing hymn.  The preacher was the only one who didn't see it and probably the only one who didn't stare at it the whole rest of the service.

In one church we were in, a family thought their kids were old enough to sit by themselves while the parents sang in the choir but the mom spent the whole service making faces and gestures at the kids when they weren't being still.  She was the entertainment for the whole congregation that was watching her instead of listening to the preacher.  I always wanted to tell her the kids were less of a distraction than she was but I never got up the nerve.

This is how you handle the choir thing:  One of my strongest  memories, when I was about eight or nine years old, is of my mom getting up from the choir loft in the middle of the sermon and walking down to sit by me in the pew because I had been talking during church. She never said a word to me.  She just sat there in her choir robe getting the message across. No, really, you have to give up some things for awhile till your kids are old enough to sit by themselves.  Of course, nine is old enough.  I still remember.

I, of course, was always a perfect little angel when sitting in church. Well, there was that time when I was apparently making such a commotion, crawling under the seats or something--- I don't remember, but I have been told by reliable sources (my mom on her deathbed, who could doubt her?) and my older sister who was there---that my mom picked me up to carry me outside for a spanking.  I wasn't the preacher's daughter for nothing, though.  As she slung me over her shoulder and was walking up the aisle to the door I called out to the congregation.  "Pray for me!"

They probably did. I really needed it after that.

A Small Town Good-Bye

When I get ready to die I think I'll move to a small town. They throw a heck of a funeral. Sometimes people complain about small towns giving you no privacy but in the end, the real end, having them there for you is like a big, warm hug.  And there are a lot of those too.

My brother-in-law, who died last Saturday, had retired as the Chief of Police of a small town in Kansas a few years ago, but in a small town everybody has to step up and do things, so after he retired he was on the City Commission and then he was the Mayor.  He was buried in his police dress uniform.  His hat with the gold braid of chief on it and an American flag were on the casket.  Uniformed officers were the casket bearers and as we drove to the church and the cemetery we had a police escort and every police car in town was parked, and the officer, black band across his badge, stood by it with his hat over his heart.  It was very moving.  I guess it would have been a good time for somebody to rob the bank or something but they didn't have the nerve. They were probably at the funeral with everyone else, anyway.

People told stories at the funeral of when Bill was on the force.  One was about the time he had spent the whole day one step behind a man who was selling "hot" pots and pans that had been stolen from a warehouse.  He was so mad that he couldn't catch the guy that he was still fuming when he got home.  When he walked into the house his wife at the time said  "Look what I bought today.  Someone came by the office selling these pots and pans. They were a great price!"  So not only had he not caught the thief but then he had stolen property in his own house.

Earlier, the funeral director told us about the time his mother, Bill's secretary, had confided in Bill that he was running around with the wrong crowd and on the verge of getting into trouble.  Bill invited him and his friend to tour the jail, then locked them in and left for an hour. When he came back he said "Is this someplace you want to spend more time in?" and that was all it took for the young man to get his act together.  He obviously held no ill will because the service and all the care his funeral home gave us could not have been better.

In Kansas apparently, at least in this small town, people come to the house instead of the funeral parlor and they started coming in droves within an hour of finding out about Bill's death.  It makes me think I need to get up and clean house 'cause you never know.  Fortunately my sister is a clean-nik (don't know how that happened).  No one who came was empty handed.  Most everybody brought food of some kind.  A brisket that would feed---I'm not making this up---forty people, dueling KFC bucket meals that fed ten, (two people came in with those buckets at the same time), a six-pound pork roast for pulled pork with all the fixin's, two huge meat trays, a spiral-cut ham, cakes, chocolate chip cookies as big as your fist (we didn't put those out to share), and on and on.  And there were only my two sisters and me to feed until the day of the funeral.  My sister from St. Louis said it was like being on a cruise ship: every time you moved someone was trying to feed you.

Friends from Bill's daughter's church were bringing just as much food to her house plus they hosted a whole luncheon for our entire family just before the funeral. They must have cleaned out every grocery store in town.

There was a lot of sittin' and talkin' and since I didn't really know anybody I liked just listening.  Of course the conversation turned to funerals and so on.  One lady said she still has Charlie in the living room and it has been four years since he died.  I hoped she meant she had his ashes in a container or something but I didn't want to ask.  Another lady said she gets cold all the time so she has told her husband that she wants to be buried with an African to keep her warm. I don't know how the African will feel about that.  She may have meant one of those little, warm lap blankets though.  I'm not sure.

Now that I've been through this, I learned a few things for the future. It wouldn't hurt to wait a couple of weeks to take food to a family after a crisis. Put your name on your dishes, even if they are plastic & you don't want them back. (We lost track of who brought what and my sister was stressed about that.) One neighbor who came brought Kleenex and stamps.  If you don't have time or the inclination to cook, bring paper plates, napkins, Saran wrap, even toilet paper.  These are things you may need if there are hordes of people coming in and out and you had not known you were going to have company. Several people did that.  It was very thoughtful.  People just wanted to give to show they cared.

My sister's former employer not only brought breakfast for us but offered her extra bedrooms for the rest of the family that was coming in.  Construction workers stopped the street repair they were doing next to the cemetery during the graveside service.

I guess when someone leaves a small town there is a bigger hole left than from a large city. It was as though everyone in town was mourning with us.

The Neighborly Thing

We've had our share of pretty good neighbors over the years, particularly now when our across the street neighbors are rescuing us (okay, me) on a regular basis by closing the garage door when we've gone off and left it open, to letting the dog in and out, and much, much more.  (I'll let you in on more later, say, around Thanksgiving.)

But, probably the neighbors who put up with us most lived next door when we lived in Willow Creek in Oklahoma City.  We've had nodding-acquaintance-neighbors, hold-a-garage-sale-together-neighbors, even share-the-lawn-mower-neighbors, but Robert and Linda were key-swapping neighbors and beyond.

When Jake was a teen-ager and came home to what he thought might have been a break-in he went to their house and Robert went back over and went through the house with him. When a guy has dodged the empty Christmas boxes, and Easter baskets, and wrapping paper flying out of your closets at him without calling that Hoarder's Hotline, you know he's a real friend.  When Robert was out of town and water started spewing all over the kitchen floor at their house Dennis returned the favor by dashing madly (yeah, this was a long time ago) through their house looking under all the sinks to find the shut-off valve. It was in a closet, I think.  I didn't hear if he got hit in the head with anything falling on him when he opened the door.

They were in our Sunday School class and when Robert received a pair of old bowling balls (they were wrapped beautifully, the package the biggest, the heaviest, who could resist it?) in a gift swap at our class Christmas party he used them as Yuletide decorations on his lawn, then spent the next month turning them into lamps which he presented to me for my birthday. Such a sacrificial giver!

Oddly enough, our dish patterns and even some of our linen patterns were the same, so it was like having access to twice as much party ware when we needed extra. Linda's beautiful crystal serving platters held chocolate-covered strawberries and little cheesecakes on our dining room table when we had Jake and Robyn's engagement party at our house.  And the Tool Time wedding shower (HooYa!) for Jake was held at Robert and Linda's.

After Robert and Linda started working in the Youth Department at church they often had crowds at their house which spilled over into the shared yard between us and sometimes we would come home to find mysterious pans of lasagna in our oven, or big pots of chili simmering on the stove when Linda's kitchen was full and the kids were coming over.  Most of the time we resisted sampling. Really, we did. Mostly.

I promise I didn't send her over on purpose but after they moved in we didn't spend nearly as much on dog food.  Come to find out our dog, Roxie, was making regular forays to their house for her daily treat.  Linda bought dog biscuits for her even though they didn't have a dog. Jake's puppy even made his home on their porch a few times.  He seemed to think that Robert's shoes were a tree trunk.  Or a fire hydrant. Or something.

Of course we didn't take advantage of having their key or anything. Well, maybe except for the time we had a gas leak at our house and the gas company shut off the gas for almost a week and we had no hot water, so they did wind up feeding us several times and we trekked across the yards, dragging our towels and shampoo like kids in a college dorm, and took our showers at Robert and Linda's.  And, oh yeah, when we finally were moving away from our beloved neighborhood, I let myself in and went to sleep on their couch while the movers were hauling things to the truck. Robert had already left for work and Linda was still in bed but she didn't bat an eyelash when she came out and found me there, just headed to the kitchen to fix us some breakfast.

When Jake was moving into an apartment at college and someone told me boxes from liquor stores were the best for moving  I collected a lot (I went to the stores and asked!  I didn't save them up from our personal usage. I did not!) and was storing them in our garage.  I decided I'd better let Linda in on what was going on since they were fellow church members and Linda is a well-respected Bible teacher.  I didn't want her to see the garage door up and think "Aha!  The lushes next door have finally let out their little secret!"

"Oh, don't worry about it," she said. "I know looks are deceiving. When we first moved here I was looking for a present for Cassidy and went into Christy's Toy Box (note from Pat: an infamous "Adult" store in Oklahoma) to see if they had anything. Well, it said 'TOY Box'!  Then I had to stay in there for an hour because I was afraid someone would drive by and see me coming out."

It's no wonder that we got along so great.  Not that I ever do anything as embarrassing as that.  Usually. Well, okay, there is a little store here in Broken Arrow called "Sassy's" (the same people that own Christy's may own it)  They don't have manicures for little girls there even if you are only looking for a gift certificate for your granddaughter. I'm going to have to find a neighbor here who will come rescue me from there.

Filed Away

We have one big four-drawer lateral file cabinet, and two big regular four-drawer file cabinets in our garage, and a two-drawer lateral file in the study, not to speak of the file drawer in the desk. And we are running out of space. The other day I found that last year's tax records, unbalanced from on top of one of the cabinets, had dropped into the cat litter box that is in the garage and the cat had expressed his opinion of them right then and there.

When I told Dennis of this situation, (after I threw away the two front pages of the tax file which were just instructions anyway) he said "We need another file cabinet."  No-o-o-o-o!  He skirts the edges of the TV show "Hoarders, Buried Alive" by keeping all his papers hidden away in drawers and, for the most part, he knows how to find whatever he is looking for if you give him enough time. But if the garage is too full of file cabinets to get a car in, doesn't that count for the Hoaders thing?

I know you have to keep tax records for seven years in case of an audit, but----I am not making this up!----he has forty-five years of them! He has every tax return we have ever filed and the records to back them up.  He knows he doesn't need them; he just wants them. In case.

He has files on every house we have ever owned (seven), files about every car we have ever owned (twenty-two), every insurance claim we have ever made on houses and cars. There are files on all of our medical records going back to the blood tests for our marriage license, every picture of every ball team the boys were ever on even if our boys were out sick the day of the picture, everybody's birth certificates, and on and on and on.  There are files about every car accident, files that belonged to his mom who died seventeen years ago, and files related to all his businesses.  (He has owned three over the years). And now he has files for Medicare. That can fill a file cabinet all of it's own.

Sometimes these files come in handy. If you have a question about, say, what kind of tires did we purchase for Jake's 1985 Cougar, he can tell you.  Or who played third base on the Flyers when they went to that tournament in Midwest City?  Important stuff like that. You never know what you might need.  Okay, sometimes they have been useful.

 When Josh and Jerilyn were booking their honeymoon it included a cruise that went into Canada.  At the time you could use birth certificates in lieu of passports to enter Canada. No problem, dig into the file cabinet for Josh's birth certificate. An odd thing happened, though.  The legal copy of the birth certificate was not to be found.  We did send off to Sacramento to get one but the departure date was getting close and it still had not arrived.  Back to the file cabinets.  There were several Xerox copies of the certificate but no original. There was, however, a corporate seal from one of the old businesses. This is a device that looks kind of like a big hole-punch but it embosses the name of a company on official documents.  You've seen them on legal things.....like birth certificates.

Josh and Jerilyn left on their honeymoon with their birth certificates in hand.  Josh, though, did not know that his birth certificate was embossed "Agape Industries" instead of "State of California".  We held our breath. It looked like the real thing.  It felt like the real thing. You would have to hold it up to the light to tell the difference.  No one was going to suspect a clean-cut young, honeymooning, pre-med student of forging documents. They went into Canada. They returned from Canada. They had a lovely trip. It was not until after they were home a few days that we let them in on the secret. We were glad Josh didn't have possession of any scalpels or things like that yet.

I might give in on Dennis getting another file cabinet soon.  But I already told him, when he dies, the next vehicle after the hearse is going to be one of those big commercial paper shredding trucks.