Monthly Archives: March 2016

Surprise. I’m Home. What’s For Dinner?

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Nobody can tell a story like the Gospel writer Luke.

Well, to tell the truth, it really was Jesus who was the good story teller. St. Luke only repeated the story like someone stealing their buddy’s good joke. To be fair to Luke, however, he does attribute the story to Jesus, so really it’s all good.

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My much-loved nephew BJ

I’m talking about the story of the prodigal son – the gospel this past weekend. I can’t hear that story without thinking about Jen’s son BJ. Don’t get me wrong. BJ was NOT a prodigal son; but he hates – or at least used to hate – that story. He thought the older son got screwed and it pissed him off royally.

I didn’t like that story very much myself for a long time, up until I had my own son. And then I learned that no matter what had happened, if he and I had fallen apart, I would welcome him home with open arms if he came back to me. Maybe the fact that I only had one child for much of my life made that simpler. But I don’t think so.

Addie with deviled eggs cropped

My much-loved granddaughter Adelaide

It’s like the question kids often ask their parents and grandparents – which one of us do you love the most. (We never asked that question in our family because we all knew it was Dave!) But seriously, the answer to that question is usually that the parents and grandparents love all of their children and grandchildren. But different children have different needs at different times. Some children are more loving; others tend to be more standoffish. Sometimes one of our kids or grandkids is going through a particularly tough time and needs our attention a bit more. Like the time that Addie – who will be 13 in a couple of weeks, and how on earth did THAT happen – stopped by our house unexpectedly. She was a bit quiet and I asked if something was wrong. Yes, she admitted. Her mother was being TOTALLY UNFAIR. Now that’s an unusual thing for an adolescent girl to think about her mother, isn’t it? She and I had a good long talk and I hope that I sent her off feeling a bit better.

The point of the parable of the prodigal son, of course, is that God loves us all, even when we screw up. No matter how far away from him our life goes, when we’re ready to come back to God, he will accept us with open arms and no questions asked.

And what about those of us who never stop believing in God’s love? Are we getting screwed like BJ believed was happening to the older brother in the parable? I guess I don’t think so. The younger brother blew it – thought he could live without his father.  I know there have been many times in my life where, while I never stopped believing in God, I did go adrift. For that matter, it still happens. I begin to think I can go it alone. I forget that without God’s help, I’m nothing. But I know that God forgives me, not just once, but over and over and over again.

Just like the father forgave the son who made such a big mistake, while never loving his older son any less.

It’s what we parents and grandparents do too.

Goodbye M’ Lord and M’ Lady

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0922_FL-downton-abbey_2000x1125-1940x1091Last night I sat in front of the television for nearly two hours watching the final episode of Downton Abbey. It’s true. I will no longer be able to watch Lord Grantham as he struggles to figure out how to navigate the 20th Century, which carries with it things like hair dryers and women having lives beyond their families and being stuffed and tied into corsets. Lady Grantham’s tilted head and unending smile will no longer be there to take the edge off my day. The Crawley sisters’ bickering won’t be reminding me that sibling rivalries aren’t just a thing of the 21st Century. And Lady Violet. Oh, how I will miss Lady Violet.

Ever since the very first time I heard those bells tingle in the show’s opening sequence six years ago, my life was changed in a small way. And I’m not sure why. It was like entering into a dream.

I never yearned to be one of the Crawleys. I would have gotten lost in that gigantic home. Heavens knows I can’t even imagine having to wear formal wear EVERY SINGLE NIGHT to dinner. Life in the late 19th and early 20th Century was no piece of cake, even for families like the one in Downton.

Still, I enjoyed watching the show. There will be a hole in my Sunday nights that won’t be easily filled. Between the ending of football season and the series finale of Downton Abbey, I might have to take up embroidery.

It is no exaggeration to say that I cried throughout the entire episode last night. Seriously, from the beginning until the end. The fact that I was having to say goodbye to the Crawleys was no small part of the reason I cried. But Julian Fellowes (the series’ creator and writer) simply handed me a finale that was so flipping satisfying in every way.

I recognize, of course, that real life doesn’t always wrap up so conveniently and satisfactorily in 90 minutes as did the life in that little town in York. But I think that is why I found the show so incredibly addicting. It was nice to have drama and comedy and angst and family rivalries for six weeks in the middle of winter wrapped in such a beautiful package.

Because Downton Abbey was nothing if not beautiful. The clothes were lovely. The house was unimaginably beautiful. The manners, the British accents, the scenery – all made for astoundingly beautiful visuals.

For the most part, the characters were kind and smart. In the first season, I kept waiting for the wealthy Crawley family to be evil and greedy. That’s Hollywood’s typical depiction of the rich and powerful.  But no; instead, they were serious about trying to make a good life for the people for whom Lord Grantham was responsible. Not just his staff, but the people of the village.

The staff downstairs had their own interesting characters, story lines, saints and devils. I enjoyed getting a glimpse each week into what went on in the way of providing service for a family in a house the size of a small village. It was fun to root for the good guys and boo for the bad guys.

At the end of the day, I have enjoyed watching this beautiful program for the past six seasons, and am sad to say goodbye. But I feel like I’m leaving Downton and all the people there in good hands.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: I Feel Like Dancing, Yeah

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Two things…

First. Von Miller. Dancing With the Stars. Bliss. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Second. I got my hair cut this week. That in and of itself makes me happy. But during the course of my haircut, my stylist Erika and I began talking about food, as we often do. We were discussing our extreme fondness for Mexican food in general, and tacos in particular. Addiction is how Erika described her relationship with tacos. And she told me something she saw on Facebook that made me laugh.

Taco Fact #47
Tacos are healthier than methamphetamine. 

Good to know. It’s something anyway.

I’ll leave you with this.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: Tiny Little Thing

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searchTiny Little Thing is the first book I’ve read by Beatriz Williams though she has written quite a few other novels. I will give you one simple fact: I couldn’t put this book down.

True story. The day I read the bulk of this book, I got something like 900 steps on my Fitbit. I sat in the chair and read the entire day.

Having said that, I will also tell you that it took me a bit to get into the story, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because I had just finished an exciting mystery story, and the tempo of this book is not exhilarating. However, once I got to know the characters and became familiar with what they were up to, it was all I could do to keep myself from reading the ending before I was halfway through the book. I was CRAZED to find out how Tiny’s story ended.

Christina “Tiny” Schuyler was the so-called good sister of the three Schuyler girls. Tiny did everything the way she should. She was pretty (though not as pretty as her sister Pepper), she excelled in school, she married well, and she was the perfect wife to an up-and-coming politician who was being groomed by the ambitious Hardcastle family to be president someday (ala, the Kennedys).

But things are not always as they seem, and secrets abound in the Hardcastle clan. Troubles for Tiny begin a couple of weeks before her wedding, when circumstances throw her into the hands of someone who could change her life just two weeks before she is to wed Frank Hardcastle. Nevertheless, the wedding takes place, but Tiny’s story has just begun.

Blackmail, adultery, Vietnam, dirty politics – all wrapped in a 1960s package.  It made for a wonderful book with an absolutely satisfying ending.

Apparently the characters in this book have been featured in several of the authors other novels, and now I have to read them all!

Here is a link to the book.

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Thursday Thoughts

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Tech-less Thursdays
You might recall that as part of my Lenten fasting, I am refraining from most technology each Thursday. Here’s what I used as my criteria for what I’m not using: If I was going to a cabin in the woods with no television, no wifi, no internet, but with a kitchen, I would bring along books, recipes, and my crocheting (along with my project patterns). So, I am allowing myself to use my iPad as my book (since all of my reading these days is done via ebooks), and for my existing crochet patterns and recipes that are on Pinterest. I don’t use my iPad for anything else, such as email, Facebook (except to post my blog in the morning), or Pinterest (except to access existing recipes or crochet patterns). I’ve tried to limit my use of my cell phone, but frankly haven’t been great about that. So here’s what I’ve discovered: the things I miss most are being able to walk over to my computer to check activity on my blog or to look at Facebook (during Lent, I turn off my computer once I’ve posted my blog in the morning), and television. Oh, television. I would have told you a month ago that not watching television one day a week would be a piece of cake. It really isn’t. I guess I just enjoy sitting in the evenings and watching TV with Bill. Instead, I go into the bedroom and crochet or read, and listen to the sound of faint music because Bill watches American Idol. All-in-all, I have discovered that it has been harder than I suspected it would.

Spring Gardening
Not surprisingly, the gardening schedule is different here in AZ than it is in Denver, and most other parts of the country. While non-Arizonans dutifully plant their vegetable seeds and small plants in the spring and harvest in the summer and fall, that schedule doesn’t work in the desert. Remember, in July, when the green tomatoes on my plants in Denver are just beginning to turn red, it is 110 degrees during the day at our AZ home, and only getting down to the upper 80s or low 90s at night. Only the hardiest plants, i.e. cacti and succulents, can survive the brutal heat. So much of the vegetable planting is done in late fall and early winter, and harvesting is completed by May. For the most part, I am unable to garden very much here, as we only visit for a short time in the fall and tomatoes don’t have time to grow, sprout fruit, and ripen in the time we are here in the winter. But I do plant some things. This year I planted herbs in pots (parsley, thyme, and basil). When we first purchased our house here in 2010, Jen and I put in a little teeny tiny rosemary plant that we got at the grocery store in a 2-in pot. We put that in the ground as we knew it was able to withstand the weather conditions. Here is what it looks like today…..

Rosemary 2016

And here is a photo of my beautiful romaine lettuce in a pot, after several cuttings, I might add……

Lettuce

…and All I Got Was This Crappy T-Shirt
Bill had pretty significant dental surgery on Friday. It required general anesthesia. Everything went fine, and except for the fact that he can’t chew on the right side of his mouth for four months (whaaaaat?), he is recovering nicely. We had seriously not been home for 15 minutes when our doorbell rang. “Who’s that?” Bill asks, as he always asks when the doorbell rings as though I am psychic or have x-ray vision and can see through the door. I’ll give him a break this time because he was only an hour out of general anesthesia. Anyway, it was someone delivering flowers. It being way past Valentine’s Day and way before my birthday, I couldn’t imagine why Bill was sending me flowers. Well, the flowers weren’t for me at all. They were for Bill from his dentist and his oral surgeon. Get well soon, the card said. A very nice thought, though I’m fully aware that a $50 expenditure on flowers is only a pittance of the thousands of dollars they will receive from the dental work. Still……

Bill's flowers

This Wine Tastes Like Cardboard
Bill and I have, well, let’s call it simple taste in wine. Quite frankly, we’re cheapskates. But the other day I was at our big, nice liquor store and decided to get a bottle of wine to share that evening with Bec, who was coming for dinner. I was going all out and gave myself permission to spend upwards to $15 on a bottle of wine. CRAZY! Anyway, I went to the area where they have their nicest wines and began perusing the bottom shelf where the prices are more affordable. I ended up buying a bottle of an Argentine Malbec that was only $9.99. I was willing to pay more, but they description amused me……

wine description

Inky and concentrated with robust flavors of black fruit, cigar box, and chocolate. Cigar box? Really? The dinner never happened and so the wine has yet to be opened. Until then, I will just sniff Bill’s cigar boxes.

Ciao.

Dream a Little Dream

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I woke up last night, as I occasionally do, from a nightmare. My heart was pounding, and so that I didn’t fall right back to sleep and continue the dream, I got up and read for a bit. To tell you the truth, I can’t even tell you what the nightmare was about. Once I was wide awake, the whole scenario left me.

That often happens to me when it comes to dreaming. I know that we all dream all night, every night. So they say. I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes, when the dream has been particularly interesting or funny, I will try to imprint it on my mind so that I can tell Bill the next day. Even then, I almost never can recall the dream.

Dreams are funny things, I think. So often I will dream about someone to whom I haven’t given a conscious thought in a very long time. Somewhere lurking deep in the recesses of my mind, however, that person must be present. Where on earth did that come from I will wonder.

Bill has always been a great dreamer. In more ways than one, of course, but in this case I’m talking about the dreams he has at night. Or, more to the point, mostly in the early morning hours. Like me, he isn’t aware of any dreams he has during the night. But he has some doozies in the morning just prior to awakening. Parkinson’s disease, of course, can cause vivid dreams. That might be part of the reason for Bill’s funny dreams. But I will tell you that he has had vivid dreams as long as we’ve been married. We have had many laughs as he’s told me about his most recent dream. Sometimes he talks out loud while dreaming. One night, he was suddenly giving a speech. Out loud. Ladies and Gentleman, my name is Bill McLain. It took me a moment to realize he was dreaming. I, of course, already knew his name.

And his dreams often involve trains. He is on a train. There is a train passing by him. He is picking someone up at a train station. I wonder what Freud would say about the trains. Always, the trains….

As for me, I don’t dream about trains. I dream about houses. Well, not all houses. I dream about the house in which I grew up in Columbus. It doesn’t matter what period of my life I’m dreaming about. It doesn’t matter who is in my dream. It apparently doesn’t matter that I have lived in my current house in Denver for a much longer period of time than I lived in the house in Columbus. If in a dream I am in a house, I am in my childhood house.

And, as I mentioned above, I still have nightmares. Not often, but probably a couple a month. Perhaps that is because I read in bed before I go to sleep, and what I often read are murder mysteries. Even though the nightmares don’t directly relate to what I’m reading, I’m sure it stirs up fears in my mind.

Miss Dagny, NOT walking in her sleep.

Miss Dagny, NOT walking in her sleep.

When I was a little girl, I also walked in my sleep. It was generally shortly after I went to sleep, but I never had a recollection of the experience the next day. My sister Bec and I had some sort of code phrase that indicated whether I was really awake or simply walking in my sleep. I can’t quite recollect what the phrase was. Nor do I know why we were so confident that I wouldn’t use the code phrase if I was asleep.

One of my granddaughters – Dagny – also walks in her sleep. Her parents have found her in odd places in the middle of the night. Once in the toy chest as I recall.

Court used to have nightmares when he was a kid. When he was very small – around 4court years old – he had a recurring nightmare that there were squirrels on the floor by his bed that were trying to make their way up to bite him. Scary, huh?

And speaking of recurring, I used to frequently have the dream people often have where I was attending college at the University of Colorado and when I got to my English class, I realized that I hadn’t attended a class in months and was unprepared for the test that we were taking that day. At least I had clothes on!

I’m rambling today about dreams, but only because it still amazes me that at age 62, I have nightmares.

Sleep well.

Talking Loudly

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searchThe other day Bill and I took one of our dreaded trips to the gym. I say dreaded because there is never a single time when I think, “Oh, yay! It’s Monday. I couldn’t possibly be more excited that we get to go work out! It’s so beneficial, and feels so good too.” Yep. Those words will never pass my lips. But we go because we need to, and because we know it is beneficial to our health. Oh yeah, and it also feels good. It feels good to have LA Fitness in the rear view mirror of our car, that is!

Anyway, we found two treadmills next to each other, set claim to them, and began to walk. Bill had on his headphones and immediately became deeply engrossed in the sports station he was watching. I read when I work out, and so I am unable to block out sound. However, if it’s a good book, I can lose myself in the story and I don’t pay attention to anything that’s going on around me.

That particular day, however, I couldn’t miss what was going on around me as I would have had to be dead (or deeply engrossed in a sports station with earphones blocking out all sound) to miss it. There was a young man, age 25-1/2 (you will soon see how I know his age) standing on the treadmill next to me, conducting business on his cell phone. He didn’t have the treadmill turned on; he was simply standing on it. And the business he was conducting was applying for a second mortgage on his home. Loudly. So loudly, I’m afraid, that I was able to overhear the entire transaction, though I tried really hard not to listen.

I know his date of birth (October 2, 1990). I know his credit score. I know he has taken out a few small loans in the recent past to do upgrades on his house and therefore was concerned about his credit score which is why I know what it is. It is 720. He was so thrilled with the score that he chose to say it out loud so that we all could know and rejoice. I know he is a computer analyst but has a secondary business he operates out of his home from which he earns $2000 a month.  (I was tempted to lean over to him and let him know that I missed out on what his earnings were for his regular job, but I resisted the urge.)

I tried to get away. I really did. In fact, after learning his credit score, I picked up my iPad and moved to a vacant treadmill a bit down the row. Though several treadmills away, it was not far enough to avoid hearing him apply for his loan.

And when he was finished, he turned on the treadmill, ran for a full 30 seconds, stepped off and left the building.

I was perturbed that my peaceful workout had been disrupted, it’s true. But honestly, more than that, I wanted to put my hands on either side of his youthful and naïve face and say, “Young man, do you understand that you just let the entire gym know your personal information?”

Having recently been in the hospital, I will tell you that there is only one piece of information that members of the medical field need in order to access ALL of your personal health data – your date of birth. Well, they probably need your name as well, and if I had gotten there a touch earlier, I would have that information too. As it was, I got in a few minutes late and so I don’t know his name. No matter what I’m trying to do when dealing with a doctor’s office or a hospital, all I need to tell them is my name and my date of birth and they will begin telling me whatever I want to know.

When I talk on my cell phone, I speak very loudly. I know this to be true because I hear myself. And because Bill tells me. For reasons I don’t understand, however, I can’t stop myself. But I can – and do – try to maintain privacy when on the telephone. I leave the room or go outside if I’m with other people.

The other day as I was waiting for Bill during his dental procedure, there was a woman on her cell phone talking to a friend. Talking loudly to a friend. So loudly, in fact, that people were leaving the small waiting room, tossing her dirty looks as they left. She was entirely unaware of the effect her conversation was having on the rest of the room, however, as she was telling her friend (and all of us) what she and her husband paid for their mobile home, all of their health problems, and their various vacation plans coming up.

Unlike the young man, she didn’t share any information that could have been used for nefarious purposes. Nevertheless, it made me wonder once again when we lost our sense of personal and private space. Sigh.