Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Gypped!

I always look forward to the first frost of the year. I find it utterly beautiful. It is also the day in which I traditionally silence the cold-blooded wimp that lives within me and follow my unbidden impulse to walk barefoot in the grass.

I've never figured out why I have the barefoot urge on the day of the first frost--but I do. And it's an urge I unfailingly give in to. Only, "walking" barefoot might be a small exaggeration. The effect is more like leaping barefoot upon the corner of the grass, then making a mad dash back to the warmth of the house as fast as my toes can carry me.

We had our first frost this last week. I was up about four a.m. that morning to take Dad to the airport. The world, presumably in all of it's white laced glory, was shrouded in darkness and I just about froze my fingers off scraping the ice off of my car windows. Meanwhile, the much anticipated "first frost" of 2007 lost every last ounce of its proper glory in my sentimental eyes.

Is this part of growing up?

Sunday, October 28, 2007

I Also Wonder...

...what a "weak chin" is supposed to look like?

Friday, October 26, 2007

I Wanna Know....

...why my stash of Purell, which is advertised to kill--eliminate, dead, gone!--99.99% of all germs, has an expiration date on it??

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Nothing Bargained, Nothing Gained

Personally, I've always been one to drive a hard bargain. Poor Paul--growing up with me made for a childhood of sometimes getting what he wanted, always at a price higher than most open markets would actually sustain. To this day he flatly refuses to play Monopoly if I am playing. And he still groans in distress when the family story recirculates about the time I agreed to let him sniff my chocolate scented marker five times IF he helped me clean my desk.

With my own extensive background and experience, it never fails to amuse me to when John, Abigail, and Peter start negotiating. John, carefully making studying the psychology of his victim. (He never wastes time bribing someone who will do what he wants for free. And he knows his limits before he begins any give'n'take.) Peter, with a quick emotional reaction to help or hinder his cause.

And Abigail. When she wishes, she can mediate the fairest of all fair bargains. When she's being silly, she's winning enough to make you incline to do what she wishes whatever the absurdity of her suggested bargain.

Like when she offers to say nice things about you for five minutes straight, provided you correct her math.

Friday, October 19, 2007

When You Have Nothing To Say....

Or when your voice is a raspy wreck of its normal self....

It is a time to keep silence.

That, or write.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Oh, The Trouble I've Seen

I have always slept very lightly. There are many disadvantages to this, of course. But there is one advantage, viz. I am the one with the story to tell in the morning.

I am the one who knows, for example, when the dogs barked away an hour of the night. And I am always a faithful reporter when it comes to night time storms, night time meteorites dramatizing the local atmosphere, night time discomfort of small siblings, and, well, the whereabouts and status of battery operated products.

It started a long time ago when Dad came home from a business trip and gave Abigail an alarm clock. Dad's employer at that time and some of his clients frequently dispensed complimentary "gifts" of various kinds--to Dad's benefit. These "gifts" ranged from the obligatory coffee cups and pens to such novelties as calculators and alarm clocks. Most of these "gifts" were inherited by Dad's children. Abigail was probably around six at the time she became the proud owner of her very first alarm clock. I suppose when acquired at that age the alarm clock was something in the way of destined to become a toy.

John and Abigail used to spend hours playing "house" in my bedroom. The alarm clock made a useful accessory to the game. At the end of the game, John and Abigail would go to eat a real dinner and the alarm clock would lie forgotten in my bedroom. Sometime in the middle of the night, Katie would awaken to the sound of the alarm clock going off. Somehow, John and Abigail always, always, ALWAYS left it on. AND always left it in a different place in the room. While sound-sleeping Abigail dreamed sweetly, I would spend several minutes at a time fumbling about the dark room trying to find the alarm clock guided only by its insistent, clamoring sound. Usually it ended up being under the bed, behind the books on the bookcase, or deep in the closet. Sometimes, I had to turn on the light to find it. Never, in all the many times this scene was redrawn, did Abigail wake up.

Later, we lived in a large house with very tall, vaulted ceilings. The house met all the required fire safety regulations, including a liberal sprinkling of smoke alarms throughout the house. Grateful as I always am to know when a smoke alarm's batteries are dying, I have never figured out why these batteries always begins to die at night. And how, with the loud "CHIRP" cutting the silence at five minute intervals, everyone else manages to sleep soundly. Worst, there was no hope of a quick, peaceful conclusion it was generally the smoke alarms attached to the highest points of the highest ceilings...the kind that required a twenty foot ladder to access.

Most recently, my night hours have been made most interesting by the antics of Pauls' electronics. Between his interest in computers and all things computerized, and his job at a cell phone company, he has acquired quite a collection of battery operated equipment. And I have spent some portion of some of my nights learning which is which by the sounds they make when their respective batteries die.

Last night, one of his cell phones disturbed an especially quiet night by announcing that its batteries were giving up the ghost. Disgusted, I turned over, schooled myself to ignore the sound, and went back to sleep. I thereby discovered that I have become no more able to be satisfied by sleeping in five minute increments than I ever was.

Finally, giving up on peaceful coexistence, I got up and stumbled out to the main room to find the cell phone. It was only then, as I was shuffling about trying to find it in the dark guided only by its sound, that the battery gasped out its final breath and I heard the phone die. I don't believe there is a moral to this story.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Losers, Loyalties, and Life

So the Seahawks lost again last weekend. At least, so I hear. I'm not all that enamoured with football, so I neither watched the game nor cared to check on the results afterwards. But many of my coworkers are fans with a capital "F." In such an environment, I can only maintain my peaceful ignorance so long.

This morning while I was flipping radio stations, I caught a snatch of an interview with one of the Seahawks players team members. Don't bother ro ask which one. As you may have gathered by now, I generally zip by sports-discussing radio programs with the same rapidity I might scan past a station in some foreign language. But for some reason, I stuck with this interview for an extra minute--and was surprisingly rewarded with the following question and answer:

"So, how are the people you run into on the street & among your friends handling all these losses?" the commentater inquired of the player.

"Oh, it's tough, you know. Everyone has an idea of what you could change--should change," the player chuckled, "I have to deal with myself, even. I mean, I have ideas of things I think we could change. But I have to tell myself, 'that's not my job. ' I'm not the coach. I'm a footabll player on a football team. My job is to do what the coach says, the way he says it, and inspire my team members to be on board with the coach's game plan. That's it."

I wonder how much simpler my life would be if I never tried to infuse my own ideas into the game plan God lays before me? If I focused more on the goals of the moment and less on my (not so) brilliant strategizing for the future?

As John Quincy Adams so aptly summarized, "Duty is ours. Results are God's."

Monday, October 15, 2007

Why?

Picture to yourself a deformed slinky. The kind that has long descended from stair-dancing status to why-am-I-keeping-this status. The kind that seems to exist solely frustrate the occasional attempt to untangle its coils and restore its former glory.

The cord on my work phone looks something like that deformed slinky. Vexing, I call it.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

"S" Is For Stumped

(The conversation herein communicated is reproduced from an actual interchange that graced our family conversation not more than two days ago. Names have been withheld to protect the...guilty?)

Progeny 1: "Mom, have you ever eaten sockrot?"

A startled silence fell across the family circle, lasting for some three seconds. The party addressed was appropriately the first to come back to life.

Mom: "Uh...I don't think so....I mean, not on purpose...uh, not that I know of..."

Confusedly sensing that the question hadn't been clear, Progeny 1 hastened to clarify.

"It's a vegetable."

The neighbors could no doubt have heard the combined creaking and wailing that ensued as each person present felt their mental wheels go into high gear.

Sockrot. Vegetable?

Sockrot? Vegetable.

Vegetable (edible?). Sockrot (sp?).

Upon the brilliant mind of Progeny 2 the light suddenly dawned.

Progeny 2: "Sauerkraut! Have you had sauerkraut, Mom???"

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Remember to Remember

I suppose my re-association with fall's crisp cool air, variegated foliage, shadowed sky, and saturated grass is to blame for the recent insistent intertwining of memories with my consciousness. As the world says a brilliant farewell to each year's verdancy, I find myself pulled into a remembering that no other season induces. Perhaps it is because much of my deepest personal growth has occured during fall and winter seasons.

As the yellow leaves cling tenuously to the trees outside, I remember the acorn tree that flourished in full view of the bedroom window of my childhood home. Always the first to turn, it was synonymous with fall for me. Fall, with its afternoons of leaf-raking with my family, hats and mittens, board games & legos, and school routine. The family withdrawal to indoor coziness meant a special kind of security to me.

With the falling rain, I remember my early teens. We heated our home with a fireplace insert. I remember the chilly hours of stacking cords and cords of wood while rain dripped & I kept a wary eye out for spiders. I remember hours of watching the flickering flames, interspersed with reading and writing pages and pages and pages of reflection on life.

With the shadowed sky and early dusk, I remember the October days when we first moved everything we owned into storage, with the exception of our suitcases and a little food. When the lights romanticize our neighbors' warm family rooms before their shades are drawn, I remember what it felt like to live through a winter in a one-room shelter we could not call home. I remember dim days of physical & emotional pain when I wondered how my physical ailments would effect my future dreams. And then when I knew how it would effect them.

As the wind picks up, I remember two years of rural living in what I like to think of as our Swiss Family Dwelling. The wind whipped both frequently and strongly through the trees around us and I frequently awakened to its fury. I remember the drawing closer together times our family had as we braved the wind & frozen ground to put grass in. I remember the walks to and from the nearby beach and the nearer church.

I remember, too, the shift in wind direction that meant fall had come to the Oregon coast. I remember the road trip we took there along a rushing river, with the mountains and their dozens of colors reflecting in the water below us. I remember our move there on a brilliantly blue and gold fall day, and our move back to Washington on a drenching, gray winter day. And I remember the changes each of those moves meant in my life.

Intermixed with the practicialities of wind & weather, I remember with a smile the times when I wanted to skip & dance & sing in the knowledge that God was on His throne. And I remember also those times when I cried & clung somehow, dimly to a faith in God's kingship though I couldn't seem to trace His Hand anywhere at all.

Then, as I remember, I always see clearly what I best love to know. Regardless of its color, each memory is pressed with the clear fingerprints of a God Who has promised that the earth will not outlast its seasons, that He will complete the good work He's begun in me, and that He will not change. I don't believe in clinging to the past or living in its memories. Nonetheless, I'll consciously store these memories up for semi-frequent review. Within them I find yet another promise that my life won't outlast His faithfulness.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

In Forthright Defense of a Social Dissenter

It was a friendly acquaintance's chipper voice on the other end of the phone. She was suggesting that since I'd be in her area, we should go to Starbucks and enjoy a social half hour.

"We can go get coffee," she proposed, "wait, do you like coffee?" then, without a pause, "Ha,ha! Of course you do! You're from Seattle, after all."

___

The city to which belongs the suburb of my nativity has shaped my existence in many ways. I am more likely to drink water without than with ice. I don't carry an umbrella. I use my parking brake and I know which way to turn my wheels on a hill. I intimately understand the cons of growing blackberries in my yard.

But all Seattle, suburbs, and nativity regardless:

I. do. not. drink. coffee.

You understand the risk I take every time these words cross my lips? Understand that I have no wish to move & have every wish to preserve my life? Here, in the land where the Starbucks to block ratio is approximately 2 to 1. Here where most people consume 2-7 cups of coffee a day. Here where coffee is served at (almost) EVERY social occasion regardless of the level of formality or the time of day.

In self-preservation, therefore, I offer publicly my story. When I was about four, Grandma gave me a taste of her coffee. It tasted horrible. I decided both consciously & seriously that I would never drink coffee. Fast forward to adulthood. I know coffee is bad for me. I feel no need to convince myself to like something that is not good for me anyway. I do not drink coffee. The end.

I can count on three fingers the drinks I've ordered from Starbucks in the last five years. But I don't believe in passing up on pleasant chats with friendly acquaintances.

___

"Starbucks sounds great," I heard myself say.

I truly enjoyed my small-as-it-gets cup of hot cocoa.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Earth To Katie

After fourteen years of close interaction, one would think that I would know Abigail very, very well. In fact, I do know her very, very well. Just not well enough to....

Sunday night, I was getting ready for bed & Abigail was talking. About the arrangement of our bedroom. About how she was getting tired of it. About how she wanted something different. About how much neater and more spacious it might look in some other set-up. About how refreshed she would be made to feel by a new arrangement. About whether I would mind.

I've never been one who felt extremely motivated to change anything that was working just fine, but...yeah, I supposed if it made her happy we could at least think about moving things someday.

I left for work early Monday morning and didn't return home until after an evening training session I attended. It must have been about ten-thirty p.m. before I reentered my room.

What was to me an unmotivated willingness to "think" about moving furniture "someday" was to Abigail all the sisterly approval she needed. Every last scrap of furniture and decor was moved and re-arranged. After I managed to reclose my shocked mouth, I had to laugh. I remembered she had even asked me to leave my room extra neat that morning. How could I know her so well & still miss all the warning signs that could have prepared me? And could I find my bed in the dark, strange looking room without stubbing my toe?