Summertime

Off the beaten path this time. I have a need to talk about summer and the sun. This is not just a need like “I need a diet coke” this is a need like “I need oxygen”. I am afraid that if I do not give in to this compulsion, I will go splat against the wall as my brain explodes like a june-bug when you step on them because something that freaky looking ought not be.

First let me begin by saying that my husband and I have an agreement. I get to whine all summer and he gets to whine all winter. Seems fair…on the surface. You see I am convinced that my seasonal hatred is much more arduous than his. These are the things I compare. In winter I do not have to be afraid to cuddle up to my hubby. It is, in fact, a pleasurable experience because he has a little furnace in his body called a working metabolism, I do not. So cuddling up is wonderful and cozy. In summer there is a distinct possibility that our skin will actually meld together from the insane heat and the parting of our two bodies may do lasting and irreparable damage. Plus, the added heat from his internal furnace may just be enough to cause my eyeballs to melt. Only in summer do I have to risk my life to snuggle up to him.  

Then there is this little factoid. In winter, one can always put on another layer of clothing. In fact, I can keep going until I look like the long lost daughter of the stay-puft man. In summer you can only take off just so much before becoming illegal (in public). Although if the shorts on these little girls get any shorter, we may have to arrest them all.  So if your internal temperature is as delicate as Scarlet O’Hara in the early years, then you are just out of luck. You are going to melt just by putting on your eyeglasses.

Then there is the evil orb. Most people call it the sun. I prefer to refer to it as the scorching, moisture sucking, eye-blinding, temperature pushing, evil round thing in the sky. In winter, this orb is much more reasonable. It gilds the snow with diamonds, sparkles on the frost covered limbs of the trees, changes ordinary landscapes into a pristine fairyland. In summer a horror-fest is unleashed upon hapless mankind. Suddenly the sun is right on top of you. You walk out the door and it pounces on you like a stalking cat. It seeps into your pores instantly heating your skin, until you feel like you’ve been spitted and are slowly roasting over the universe’s fire. Your eye’s automatically close as they are assaulted by light so bright one expects to hear a voice demanding to know where you were last Tuesday night. Forget breathing, that ain’t gonna happen. In fact there is the very real threat of charring your lungs into some sort of carbon simply by taking too deep a breath. Then there is the actual burning. Because it is not content to simply make your skin FEEL like it is burning, oh no, it is going to ACTUALLY try to burn the skin right off your body. Those of us with pale, delicate skin attempt to foil this evil design by wearing spf that could protect a suitless astronaut standing directly on the surface of said orb, however, even this is not enough to spare us the spread of unwanted freckles and painful redness. Not nice.

Let’s talk about sweat. Some of us are blessed with the ability to daintily perspire, a gentle glow, a sweet flushing…and some of us are not. I am not. I sweat like a farmhand. Now that is just what you want your new husband to think of when he sees you. Instead of standing there in a gentle glowing aura channeling Scarlet in that pretty white dress, my beloved sees a hairy knuckle, shirtless, overall wearing, chaw-chewing, sweat-stained, sticky, farmhand with sweat pouring down like a waterfall…charming.

You may now have the idea that I hate summer and pretty much everything about it. You are incorrect. I loathe it, I abhor it with every fiber of my being. There is only one thing I like about it and that is between 70 and 75 degrees and the song made famous by Ella. Everything else is icky.

Whew, there I feel better! Now I have officially declared war on the icky sticky of summer!

Happy air conditioning!

Sincerely,

Your mildly opinionated host. 

Marriage the First Year - The Lawn

The Lawn – I have spent my adulthood living in Townhouses. As a single girl, I saw no reason why I should mow and shovel. I do not have the putter with the lawn gene, so purchasing a single family home seemed counter-intuitive. Because of this decision, I have missed one very important fact.

You people are crazy about your lawns! Seriously!

There is an old movie called the Stepford Wives, it is about this community where the women are programmed to be perfect wives. I have further stretched this concept to include those freaky-deaky little neighborhoods where a builder came in and spit up 18 identical homes, including identical landscaping. My situation is a little more subtle. As you drive through the neighborhood, a trend appears out of the mist. Each and every lawn is perfect. Now I’m not talking a rough approximation of a golf-course, I am talking weirdly, utterly, perfect. I keep expecting to see Willy Wonka walking towards me, telling me that each blade of grass has been manufactured and lovingly tended to by its very own Ommpaloompa. This scares me. The only variation in these sparkling emerald lawns is the shade of emerald. It is as if each homeowner had a personal consultation with a color specialist at the Home Depot. “No I don’t like the Emerald Isles, I’ll take the Pea Puree Green.”

As you progress through a 3 block stretch, you will notice that ALL the lawns look like this. Until…(insert ominous movie music here) all this sylvan splendor comes to a screeching halt, not a mild stand on your brakes halt, but a roadrunner and Wylie Coyote kind of cliff halt. Now in front of you is a lawn that looks like it has been tended to by a demented flock of sheep. While there looks to be some form of mowing done, one would posit that either the sheep or a scythe was used. As you may have guessed, this verdant mass is my lawn.

Now to be fair, there are reasons. Yes, they are mostly lame excuses, but here they are none-the-less. 1. There is a patch of totally untended, unmowed weeds by our patio. We call this the game preserve. There is a fearless baby bunny living there who loves to sit under the screened patio windows and look my cats dead in the eye while enjoying dandelion leaves. Now honestly, if you had the cutest baby bunny living in your weed patch and thoroughly enjoying the wild salad that has been spared the blade, would you cut it down? I think not…I hope not…maybe?  2. My youngest son has inherited the mowing duties this year. Our lawn is large, so we do one side of the house each week. Since my boy is a genius, he has figured out how to s-t-r-e-t-c-h that week into almost two. This means that the lawn fights back when he mows it. Now is it fair to fault him for the weird tufts that get missed between each row? He precisely lines up the lawnmower, not the blades of the lawnmower, just the lawnmower. We are correcting the difficulty, but that means the lawn has a trendy multiple mohawk look at the moment. Then there is the need to not hit the tree roots at the base of the trees, so they all sport a foot high skirt of what passes for lawn at my house. Strangely, the root circumference seems to grow each week. In only a few more weeks, he won’t need to mow at all.

Then there is the slight problem of not really having a lawn at all. While my neighbors could all passably be in a great lawn spread of Better Homes and Gardens, ours is not really grass, it is a lovely viney substance called creeping Charlie. Believe me when I say that Charlie is a creep. Then there is the clover, the violets, the stalky stemmy things that look like prairie grass. Basically, we are the botanical garden of weeds. Unfortunately, I have a hard time summoning up the desire to care that our lawn should be condemned, or possibly torched, or perhaps the earth should be salted and not grow anything for the next 100 years. Instead I have this weird fatalism about it. I drive through the pristine neighborhood and pull into my driveway and survey the land before me. Then I snort. Not a ladylike titter, no a rip roaring snort while saying “Wow, that’s a really bad lawn!” Is it wrong to take pride in being the best of the worst? I feel so deliciously anti-establishment…hmmm…perhaps I should have stayed in the townhouse.

My biggest problem is that I have a reoccurring nightmare that the neighbors will rise up, gather their pitchforks and torches and come after us for lawn abuse…it could happen…after all, it is the suburbs…

The ART of Mommy Hood

When I was a little girl I would proudly bring home my art projects to be displayed on the refrigerator until they were mysteriously eaten by the cat and disappeared, now why the cat wanted to eat my artwork I never did quite understand. To be fair, my mom still has my attempt at an elephant from 2^nd or 3^rd grade. The elephant’s nose never quite worked out, so it became a squashy-legged dog instead. When I reached high school my most creative endeavors were neatly stored in a folio.

Now I know that times change and things progress, but I must protest some of the progress! As a newly minted mother of three boys, (my new sons, by my new marriage) I must ask you, what has possessed our school system? Really! I have about 8 vase thingies of varying sizes, shapes and colors. I’m not sure if you can actually put water in them, or even if they are really vases. Perhaps they are the mysterious vessels for some sort of teenage ritual I know nothing about. How would I know, I’m new at this. Then there are the short pottery thingies … what on earth is a pinch bowl?!? And what is it for!?!

Today, I became the proud recipient of a life-size plate of a paper mache rueben, complete with potato wedges. No, seriously! The plate is better than my own dishware and the reuben could feed a small third world nation. What am I supposed to do with this? Am I now required, under some mommy oath that I never got to hear about until it was too late, to keep said paper mache sandwich until….oh my gosh, how long am I required to keep this?!  I’m now looking at a ceramic life-sized piece of strawberry cake that I know was made by one of the older boys and it’s still here! Is there a statute of limitations somewhere? Is this stuff written down? Why didn’t I know about this?!

Okay, I’m back - short break for breathing into a paper bag.

A short word about the incredible creativity of my boys. I am enthralled by their ability to make these amazing projects. Shoot, when I was in school we considered ourselves near genius if we could draw a life-like tree! The scope of their creativity is astounding. Any project they are asked to do is done with excellence, and I am proud of them! 

The problem is that this whole situation kicks in my conspiracy theory gene. Is this the art teacher’s way of sticking it to the world on behalf of teachers everywhere? I voted for the referendum for gosh sakes, I know you are underpaid and overworked. Really, I know! Please don’t send home anymore ceramic heads that would do a witchdoctor in Bora-Bora proud. I now have to stare at those unblinking eyes FOREVER! I’m sorry! Whatever I did, I’ll make it up to you! Please, I’m begging you, let me take you out to lunch, let me pay for your next pair of shoes, I’ll do anything if you’ll just stop sending home wire jellyfish!

The worst part is that I know there is more coming. There is a mysterious Cardboard Project that has yet to make an appearance. I’m afraid. Really. Seriously. Afraid. And next year is Ceramics 3! Am I a bad mommy if the cats eat a few of these projects…OH, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED TO MY ARTWORK! Bless you mommy, I now understand! 

The First Year of Marriage - Part 3

Blankets – I have always been someone who did not want to share her bed. Ever. With anything. No stuffed animals, no cats, no dogs, no sisters, no friends on a road trip trying to save money on a cheap hotel – no one. My path in life was a much harder one to trod. To date I have shared my bed with a squashy tootsie roll pillow, 3 cats, a 125 pound Great Dane, my sister and various friends at various times. I have not enjoyed it. I did not find it comforting to have another being beside me. I did not want to be touched while sleeping; leave me blissfully and unconsciously alone. The closest I came to having a husband in bed was the Great Dane. It went something like this. “Okay Katie, bedtime, get in your kennel” to which my dog obediently plopped in her kennel, gave me a soulful look as though I were torturing her and sighed as only a Great Dane can sigh. Around 2 hours later, when I was at my most vulnerable and droozy with sleep there would suddenly be this full force compression on my chest as my clumsy Dane puppy plopped her 125 pounds on me. It was like a nightly practice for CPR, only I was the test dummy. I really was the dummy, because we repeated this pattern every night for months; yet somehow I was always surprised. Slooooooow learner. Trying to move a Great Dane when they have decided to stay is akin to trying to move the Great Pyramid of Giza with those furniture slider thingys  – not going to happen… The next morning I would awake clinging to the vertical side of my bed by my fingernails and sheer cussed stubbornness, while the Great Dane was ecstatically, fully stretched out with her head on my pillow. Sigh…

These experiences gave me little hope for peaceful slumber in my married life. I fully expected to give up sleeping as the price for marital bliss. Imagine my surprise to find that not only do I like sleeping in the same bed as my husband, but I actually can’t go to sleep without being in my “spot” curled on up his shoulder. Shocking! That spot is like finding out the mirage shimmering in the distance really is water in the middle of an oasis. In my opinion, every night, of every year spent without that spot was a thirsty desert experience.

There is only one teensy, tiny, itsy, bitsy, little problem. I hardly think it worth mentioning, but without it, there would be nothing to blog about [grin]. Blankets. My husband steals them. Actually, I think steals might be too strong a word, perhaps cocoons into them would be better. My husband has no body fat. Like none. I work very hard not to break that "Thou shalt not covet" commandment over that one, but it’s really hard. It makes me feel like I’m living in a Jack Sprat poem. Because of this one terrible flaw of his, he seeks warmth like a missile. Usually this means I wake up shivering and having to go to the bathroom. Now, one does not necessarily lead to the other, but the bathroom trip is inevitable.

I need to note, that there are few things in life more miserable than waking up in the middle of the night freezing cold AND having to go to the bathroom.

After the necessary trip to the necessary, I am faced with a dilemma. What once was my long, lean, stretched out husband has become this tight, squished up ball of Beloved and blankets. The first time this scenario played itself out, I did what any loving wife would do and I unrolled the bundle and took my side of the blankets back. Then the most horrifying thing happened! My husband, in his sleep emitted the saddest sounding  whispered  “Brrrrrrrrrrr” and lay  there unconsciously shivering until the cold half of the blankets warmed up. I felt like I kicked a puppy and pulled the cat's tail all in the same night. Nobody warned me about this! I thought all these blanket stealers were hardened criminals, capable of the most heinous criminal acts like leaving one’s new bride out in the cold. But no, I find that they, or at least mine, are simply skinny popsicles in need of a defrost cycle. So now, I lie there thinking, should I or shouldn’t I unroll the husband burrito? Warmth or love, now there’s a real dilemma! Perhaps I should just wriggle my way into that burrito!

First Year of Marriage - Part 2

Doilies - I have a passionate fear of doilies. I am convinced that were I to put one doily under one object, that I would not be able to stop. Then I would be THAT house. You know the one that looks like a permanent blizzard of lace has iced every available surface?  However, this also plays a part in my most heinously evil newly married fantasy. We have this room in the basement. Its unfortunate nomenclature is The Man Cave. I’ll give you a moment to picture it. Are you frightened yet? Cowering in terror and clutching your loved one who secretly wants his own Man Cave? Okay, my fantasy is to sneak down there in the middle of the night and put doilies everywhere. I mean everywhere. The arms and backs of the furniture, under every forsaken dish, cup and plate, sandwiched between every xbox game and wrapped around every remote and joystick thingy. Then, as the final piece of skullduggery, I will run through the room every 20 minutes or so waving doilies and singing I Enjoy Being A Girl at the top of my lungs!

Really I am completely unaffected by the testosterone gas in my male filled house…really…

Towels – I worked in the medical field for 10 years as a medical assistant/lab tech in various facilities and on various projects. This is part of how they train you to be a lab tech. They have you swab (swab should be said swwwwaaaabbb, to get the full effect) things... I mean everything... There are some things the human mind holds onto like a vacuum cleaner with the edge of your fringed rug. I now know with indelible certainty what grows on things.

“I know what you are covered with doorknob, and you, you foul telephone, I KNOW…”

And yet somehow you are supposed to go out into the world after graduation as if you are not permanently scarred by this knowledge. I was not so fortunate. I secretly struggle not to become the world’s biggest germaphobe. You see, most germaphobes SUSPECT what’s out there… I KNOW! Yet I valiantly walk around pretending not too. However, there is one area I simply cannot bring myself to forget. Skin cells, moisture and towels. This frothy stew is beyond my ability to endure.

When I moved into the house and found that the guys follow the common practice of using a towel more than once, I applauded their economy, until I realized that they were a bit caaaasual about which towel was the repeat. After I regained consciousness, I quickly forsook THAT idea. And now I live comfortably with my new towel. One leeetle problem. I forgot about the laundry. There have been times that I am convinced that one of my men is playing a trick on me and buying new towels at Target everyday on the way home. It is not possible for there to be this many dirty towels. Who even OWNS this many towels? Since showering is by no means a favorite activity, what are they doing to generate this many towels? Perhaps one for each toe? One for the upper half and one for the lower? One daintily wrapped about the hair and each arm? I am at a loss. I will, however, gladly bear the endless Sorcerer's Apprentice type loads of towels for the sheer joy of knowing that mine is clean, sweet and unused.

I am not insane.

Holding hands - It is amazing how quickly we as human beings adapt. I went for 45 years without holding onto anything while I navigated the world. I did not need the balancing metric of another arm to hold me up. Now, however, I find it difficult to walk across the kitchen without my beloved’s hand in mine. In fact, I have become so accustomed to having it that I actually reach for the hand of whomever I happen to be near. Fair warning, people.

 There is something amazing about that connection. Knowing that when you reach across the void, there is a hand waiting to catch yours. Compelling. Comforting. Connected. My gratitude for this simple act is boundless. The warmth of this contact, flesh meeting flesh, is beyond a simple grasp. It is a symbol of everything that is wrapped up in loving someone. It is “I am here for you,” it is “I have chosen you,” it is “I will catch you when you fall.”   

There is so much I have learned about God from that handclasp. When I reach across the void of time, space and life, He is there. Always. And now I understand more of what that means. While there are some funny things to navigate this first year of marriage, I am profoundly changed and deeply grateful.

 I may be drowning in an endless load of towels, but I treasure each nasty, damp, balled up lump, because of what comes with it - an endless stream of love. 

Marriage the First Year - Part One

I am in the 7^th month of my first year of marriage. These are some of the unexpected things that I have experienced in this first year.

Black socks. I have a theory. I fully believe that if I wash the same 20 black socks over and over again, enough times, that they will eventually find their mates. Please note I said 20 black socks, NOT 10 pairs. Where do all these black socks come from!! How do I make them go away? I will occasionally find a match for one of them and you would think I was celebrating the winning of the elusive Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I dance around the room waving them in a gleeful paean of praise to the sock-matching-god.

As for the rest of them, as a newly married, late in life bride, I can’t help throwing the rest of them back in the wash in the faint hope their one true love match is floating around in the dryer. So far a love match is as rare as a summer day in Minnesota this year.

Boys and housekeeping. Keep in mind that I am coming from living by myself in my pristine townhome to a house full of men. It is not quite a 7 Brides for 7 Brothers moment, but there are days... You know that scene in a movie where the guy is sitting on the couch and lifts his feet so that they can be vacuumed under? It happened to me. No, really! I gave the offending man-child the stare of death; he remained either unmoved or oblivious. I fear it is oblivious. Because this I now know. Oblivious is an honest state of being…and they live there. The landscape of Oblivious is littered with invisible things, such as half eaten chip bags, miscellaneous cups, used paper plates and socks, lots and lots of socks. These socks are of the used to be white variety, so alas, no match for the black ones. Strangely, they only emerge from Oblivious when a necessity to the welfare of the town is breached. Such as the half eaten bag of chips mysteriously becomes a wholly eaten bag. Then they emerge blinking, wide-eyed and perplexed, holding the previously invisible bag up for your inspection and wondering when the empty state is going to be reconciled.

The bathroom. I was going to do a chapter on the bathroom, but I started to black-out at the mere thought, so I’ll just skip that part…for now…

The joys. Lest I leave you with the thought that there is only trauma in the first year, let me regale you with some of the wonderful things. I used to joke that I would get married just to have my back scratched at night. Now, I no longer joke about such a sacred subject. I am fairly certain that eternity somehow resonates with the feeling of having your back scratched when it’s itchy. Honestly, every time I feel cheated that I can’t purr like my cats. That is the only proper response.

Coming home has new meaning to me. I used to be greeted at the door by the cats inquiring when their next visit to the food bowl was scheduled. Now I come home to someone whose eyes light up at the sight of me. I have new understanding of the word awe. I did not know that one person could have that powerful an effect on another. I am humbled. 

Cooking together. I love the old standards. Those of you who were at my wedding know my love of Always by Frank, At Last by Etta, Unforgettable by Nat, Summertime, Fever and all the other wonderful songs of bygone eras. My new husband and I cook our dinners while listening to them. Is it really our fault if dinner burns as we dance around the kitchen making googly eyes at each other? I mean really…

To Be Continued...

Devotional

Psalm 42 is a psalm of longing. It says As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee, and many other beautiful words of longing.

One thing to note is that the longing is not something that needs to be worked up or sought after, it simply is. So it is with our longing after God. Our souls yearn for him, even when we are not in tune with that yearning.

Our lives are incredibly busy. My husband and I talk almost every day about when our lives will be simpler. After Christmas we said, well no, but after our first big Valentines day it will get simpler, or maybe not, but surely after Holy Week things will slow down. Well not really, maybe after Josh’s graduation, no, but really after Jubilee it will all be better…except then there’s…fill in the blank for yourself…

Our lives are not simple and frankly I don’t think they are going to be simple. Ever…

I say this not to discourage you, but to say that sometimes life has to be lived in the “in betweens” I think we have to stop looking to the horizon for a return to the idyllic. Our lives are not days of labor that end neatly at five o’clock and evenings spent on the porch watching the sun set, feeling the wafting breeze and talking with passing neighbors after a leisurely dinner. Instead, our lives are seemingly endless rounds of surrender to the tyranny of the urgent.

There is however, a respite. The moments in the “in between.”  For my devotional, we are going to live in one of those moments.

I am going to lead you in a meditation. Funny word meditation, it has so many negative connotations, but can really be quite powerful if you get beyond the stereotype. So take this as a moment of rest and peace.

So, first we will start with some music. Something instrumental so your thoughts are not drawn away. Get comfortable. Lay your head back and close your eyes. Take a deep breath, hold it for a second and let it out all the way down to your toes. Feel all of that breath leave you. Good. Now breath deeply, but normally. 

Start with this picture. Think back to a time you spent by a lake. Its early morning and it doesn’t even hurt that you are up at the crack of dawn. You put on your favorite hoodie sweatshirt, grab a warm cup of your favorite beverage and head out to the dock. You sneak out the door so that you don’t disturb the family. You are completely alone in the silence. The morning fog chases your feet as you walk. The loons cry somehow adds to the stillness instead of taking it away. Your steps on the old dock creek as only old, worn wood can.  Your fingers are warming around your cup. The sip warms your insides and you feel it all the way down, warmth spreads through you. You sit at the end of dock and your tennies nearly brush the surface of the water. The new sun shines on your face, it is so real in the stillness, you feel it like a caress on your cheek. As you sit there, stillness fills your whole being…and you hear these words.

I have loved you with an everlasting love.

I have called you by name and you are mine.

The deepest places in me, call out to the deepest places in you.

I am with you

I will be your light, when all around you is darkness

Put your hope in me when despair plagues your steps

I am loving

I am faithful

I am your strength when your own strength fails

I will comfort you when life betrays you

I will be your shelter when you are alone

I knit you together and put myself in the very fabric of your being. You are made like me… You are made by me… and you are made for me… and I love you.

Your eyes open to the light of the full dawn. You don’t even know when they closed. You sigh and listen to the last lingering notes of the music you didn’t know you were hearing.

Your soul is filled. The longing is stilled.

You have lived in the moment “in between” and God has met you there.

One of the things that inspired this devotional was a quick conversation I heard between Jon and Pastor Carl. They were talking about how hard it is to still your mind enough to “Be still and know that he is God.” And I wanted to share with you one of the ways that I use to find that stillness in the brief moments that life allows us. I hope you found a moment.