A Friendship I Wish I Had

I once had the Friendship I Wish I Had.  She was the friend who loved wholeheartedly and absolutely unconditionally.

It was a pretty unlikely friendship.  She was in her 50's; I was in my 30's.  Her life was all put together; mine was a big, fat mess.  She was all empty-nested; I had a house full of kids.  She was so much fun; I was a stick in the mud.  She was young in her heart, younger than I was; I was so swamped in my dailiness, it was all I could do to get by.  I'm not sure we had anything in common, except that we both loved to laugh, and we laughed at the same things.  That was enough all by itself.  My sense of humor has always been rather skewed, and she got it in a way hardly anyone else ever did or has since.

Once she brought my newborn baby boy a gift of a pink outfit.  Not what one usually brings to a boy, but, as she explained, it was too cute to pass up, and pleeeeeze, would I allow her to give it to him?  We both had a good laugh about that, and I laugh about it still.

Every so often I and a couple of my kidlets would collect a batch of the local freebie newspaper and take them up to her house where we would sit around her table and pick out the typos and other errors and laugh til we cried.  Just thinking about it cracks me up all over again. 

My life was rife with problems; her life was perfect.  Ok, maybe not.  Looking back now from an age beyond where she was then, I suspect maybe she did have, or at least had had, a problem or two.  But she had learned how to cope, and she kindly and generously shared her wisdom and her self with me.

I don't remember its exact Beginning.  But I perfectly remember its sad Ending.

R.I.P. my friend.

1st Day Of Endings/Beginnings...Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Younger Me,

You are born.  The biggest Beginning of them all.  You think being a baby will be boring, since you can't do a thing other than sit around. You are wrong.  Being a baby is exciting!  Every day is is full of discoveries and new thrills.

The firsts come quickly:  your first time to roll over, your first tooth, your first time to sit up alone, your first step, your first boo-boo, all Endings of your total dependence and Beginnings of your eventual self-sufficiency.

The stakes get bigger.  School Begins, school Ends, work Begins, and just like that, Z-I-P!  The Ending of your childhood and the Beginning of Personal Responsibility.  Aaahhhh!  Now you can really start living.  PSYYYCH!

There are many Endings and Beginnings along the way, all generally involving a certain amount of the bittersweet.  Sometimes things don't exactly suit you, and you can't wait to see them in your rearview mirrow.  When that happens, you are ecstatic!

Then again...sometimes you like things the way they are, and you wish they would never change.  But you can be assured they will, sooner or later, one way or another, because to hold the note is to ruin the song.  When that happens well-meaning comforters tell you when God closes one door, He opens another one, and this is often true.

At this point however, my feeling runs to the sense that sometimes when a door is closing, it's just a door slamming in your face.  Because from this End of things, I can see that in the Beginning, life is full of possibilities, but when all is said and done, in the Ending, it is just full of improbabilities.

Love,
Older Me

2nd Day:  A Friendship I Wish I Had

3rd Day:  A Book That Changed My Life

The Dangers of DIY

Wanna save a little money?  Do.It.Yourself!

Sometimes that works.  Sometimes it doesn't.  A case in point:

Answering the ever-annoying RINNNG!!!! of the telephone yesterday I was greeted by a sing-songy Edith-Bunker-like female giggle ~ giggling which alllmost masked the roar of the heavy male bellow in the background.  Piecing her little bits and snippets together with his occasional "TELL THEM.............." interspersed among the general "#$*%!*@%#@**^+#$^ " I managed to  discern what had happened.

It seems that this household had been having trouble getting their laundry dry, so, as anyone would reasonably expect, the handy husband of the house decided to D.I.Y.  Off he went to Lowe's to buy the latest  "AS-SEEN-ON-TV" gadget, the one that cleans out your drier vent, putting an end to laundry day woes.

As soon as he got home, he got right to work.  First step:  pull drier away from wall.  So far so good.   Carefully following the directions, he ran the wire brush through the wall and up the drier vent.  Noooo problem.  But right after that, things started to go south.  Still following the directions, he tried to pull the brush back out, but Uh-Oh.  It wasn't coming back out.  It just wasn't.

One can spend only so much time on something that doesn't work and clearly isn't going to.  So, as any handyman would do, he grabbed his fishing pole and stuck it into the black hole in hot pursuit of the wayward brush.  You can probably guess what came next.  The fishing pole lost sight of its task, allowing itself to become distracted by the brush, and the next thing you know, they are in solidarity.  Two comrades, united in purpose, out on strike.

And that's when Mr. DIY conceded defeat and called for help.  Or more accurately, hid his own face and had his wife call for help while he lurked in the background barking out instructions.

As things turned out, there was no budging that pair.  They are there to stay.

So Mr. DIY's next project:  Reroute the drier vent.  This is a simple process of another trip to Lowe's for a mile or two of drier vent ducting, and some circular saw blades; then cutting a hole in the wall, another one in the ceiling, and another in the attic; finally cramming the ducting up between the studs in the wall and out the roof, capping the hole and sealing around the vent to keep the water out when it rains.

A quick calculation revealed that the $85 he saved on the cleaner covered a good part of the supplies from Lowe's, and didn't touch the cost of the rerouter.  That bill hasn't come in yet.  But it will, because Mrs. DIY, a little (or a lot) poorer and a little wiser is, at this point, a little gun shy. Sure, she knows her hubby is handy, but she doesn't want him touching this one.

Takeaway:  The next time you get an urge to save some $, well....make sure you can afford to.

HELLOOOOO......???

RINNNNG!!!!

Me:  This is Mary, how can I help you?

Caller:  I need to schedule a chimney sweep.

Me:  I can do that for you.  Where are you located?

Caller:  In Harrisonville.  South of Belton.

Me ????:  Um, I have never heard of that.  Could you be more specific?  Which direction?  Towards Morgan's Point?

Caller ?????:  Ummm......No, south.

Me:  I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Harrisonburg.

Caller:  NO!  Harrisonville.

Me:  Oh, sorry, I'm not familiar with Harrisonville.

Puzzled silence....

Sounds like we'd come to an impasse.  I really did not know what to say next.  So I prompted her:

Me:  We cover a wide area.  Waco, Temple, Gatesville, Killeen, Copperas Cove, Harker Heights, Lampasas, but I don't know Harrisonville.  Are you maybe over towards Little River, Academy, Holland?

Caller: Well, we are about 30 minutes from Kansas City.  Do you know where Kansas City is?

Me:  Uh.....Kansas?  Missouri?

Caller (light beginning to dawn):  It sounds like you are too far away.

Me:  Yeah, like in Texas.

Caller:  Well, I googled "chimney sweeps near Belton" and you were the first one that came up.  OOOOHH.... I guess I should have googled "chimney sweeps near Belton, Missouri."

Me:  Yeah, that would be good.

Caller:  So all these other ones that are listed, are they in Texas, too?  Temple, Round Rock, Georgetown?

Me:  Yes, ma'am, all around here.

Caller:  Well, never mind.

Five-Minute Friday...SMALL

"For who has despised the day of small things?"  Zechariah 4:10

Smallness tends to get a bad rap.  We want bigger.  Bigger is better.  So says the common wisdom.  So we are conditioned to think.

But I'm not so sure about that.  When I think about the things that make my life happy....a visit with a neighbor, a phone call from a kid, a card in the mail, sheets smelling of fresh air and sunshine, a baby laughing, hot water and soap and towels for a shower any time I want, a rainstorm, fresh peas from the garden, a good book, a smile and a hug, a pot of orange tea, an opportunity to help, a free cup of *senior* coffee from McDonald's, the sound of the wind chimes in the breeze, a Bible study with my friends, a funny joke, a text from the 1LT...there aren't that many big things on the list.

The small things, it would seem, are the big things.

Five-Minute Friday...GARDEN

It's GARDEN time!  Garden conjures up alllll sorts of possibilities.  All of them good.  Even the tired aching back after you spend the day pulling weeds out there.  Because there's nothing like a good, honest tired.

I am allll about fresh food.  What a shame that so many children are growing up today thingking food comes from HEB.  They do not even know that it comes out of the ground.

We live in a part of the country where gardening is pretty ongoing.  Even in the dead of our version of winter we have hardy, hearty greens growing out there.  Collard greens and chard and kale, which has been enjoying a new status as the darling of healthy smoothies and snacks in the form of kale chips.  They are just growing away out there, with no input at all from us. 

January is pea-planting time around here.  Sweet little peas, my very favorite!  They never make it to the table in our house.  We go out there and eat them right off the vine, and if you're not careful, someone will beat you to it.

My favorite thing about the garden is how it connects us with ourselves.  I am firmly convicted that God put Adam in the garden for a reason.  It wasn't a random selection.  God could have placed Adam in a city or any other place, but He chose the garden, the place where we connect with the creation and with the Creator.
  
The kiss of the sun for pardon.  The song of the birds for mirth. One is nearer God's heart in the garden. Than anywhere else on earth.  ~  Dorothy Frances Gurney

Have It Your Way

I only go there occasionally, but when I eat at Burger King, "My Way" is a Whopper Jr. with no tomatoes, extra onions, and extra pickles.  That's what I ordered when I went through the drive-through today.

Right before the disembodied "Pull up to the window," I caught a glimpse of the screen with my order on it, including "extra onions $.10."  I did an incredulous double-take, but by the time I looked back, my order had been replaced with a picture of a milkshake, so I pulled up to the window where a friendly hand was waiting to take my money.

"Did I see that there is a charge for extra onions?" I asked.

My money-taker disappeared into the window.  A few seconds later she was back with a giggly "Yes, there sure is."

"Then why," I inquired, "is there not a discount for 'no tomatoes'?"

Of course there was no answer for that.  No attempt to find out.  No offer to ask the manager.  Just a shrug and more giggles.

What to do?  I have the moral ground!  There is a principle at stake here!

But how bah-humbug is it to make a federal case out of 10 cents?  It is, after all, only 10 cents, and ten cents today is roughly equivalent to.... nothing.  To be honest, had I not happened to see that little notice on the screen, I would have happily forked over the money and been none the wiser.

So I paid my extra ten cents and took my little Whopper home where I savored every last bite of that extra onion.

Burger King is world-famous for "Have it your way," and so you can.  But you better be prepared to pay.