The Music Studio That Was Once a Parlor

Two A.M. They are still at it. Elijah and his good friend Marx. They have turned my parlor into a music studio and are recording the next big hits for the American listening market. Marx has a music set-up so precise that it corrects pitch slips and lowers the volume of the piano when it drowns out the voice. It's amazing. Even more amazing is the state of my room when I come creeping in at 6:00 A.M. to make my coffee and go for my walk. Yikes!

Shalom Aikido

Every night before it was time for VBS, I took care of all those who came early. We played "market music" down by the river. Anyway, Zaya is supposed to be a little Hebrew boy. He wanted "the white costume" and after I saw this clip I knew why. Here is the little Japanese video game fan doing a routine to Jewish music.

What is This?

The Art Santa came by Monday night with a pack full of treasures for Claye. It was Mary Lou. (I'll have to do an entire article about her some day) She had been given a couple of boxes of art stuff for cleaning out an old garage. There were paints, brushes, canvases, craft items and these two very intriguing little items. Does anybody out there know what they are? We're guessing either something for art or something for smoking pot.

The first one looks a little like a chess piece and it had felt glued on the bottom. The black stuff inside looks like ashes but it doesn't seem to have any smell. We don't know if the metal piece goes with the clay piece or not.














The second one is like a little strainer with a pot. However, it has a fixed, double bottom and when you tip it, it sounds like there is sand between the layers.

Gray Matters

I'm older. Each day I'm amazed
That I falter, I fade, and I'm dazed
Though I'm falling apart,
From my head to my heart
The real "me" is hardly fazed.

Inside I'm much younger than you
And my dreams are still lavishly huge
All the plans in my head
They're alive 'til I'm dead
And the thoughts that I think are still new.

This is a Limerick for Mad Kane's Humor Blog. The prompt was "Getting Older".

Bessie's Turn

I couldn't get this video to post with the others; maybe too much in one post, so here it is.

Claye and Two Cousins throwing Pots

We had a nice surprise on Saturday. My brother-in-law and his children had been camping with their church group in the area and decided to pay us a visit. Of course we just had to show them all the VBS stuff from our week, and Claye threw a pot for them. The oldest two--I'll dub them Bessie and Bert-- each tried a hand or two at making a pot and I took some video. The first one, Claye's, is actually quite long as she spent a little more time than usual, showing us different possibilities. Then we all had a taco dinner and polished off the day with cobbler and ice cream. Ah! Did I ever tell you how much I adore summer?
It's about over though. I start back to work Friday. Sniff Sniff.

Scary Words for Non-computer Nerds

Update! Do I Have To?

There are two terms that bring trepidation to my computing soul: power surge and new updates.

Our power isn't the most reliable here in the heart of Oklahoma; occasionally--most often during a high wind or winter ice storm--the electricity will fail. On rare occasions it will decide with its dying breath to seize my modem and drag it along to the grave for company. New modems aren't something I like to pick up with the groceries. They cost money and they may or may not work when you first install them. That's frustrating because you can't go online for the fix when the line is what's broken. Arrghh! However, when they do work, they work well. You see the three green lights all solidly on, and you experience the peace of a junkie waiting for the euphoria...well maybe that's carrying it a bit far, but you know what I mean.

The other problem isn't so simple: new updates. Now I realize that these should be met with wonder and glee: "Wow! What has Firefox come up with now? I can't wait to see!" "Oh, look at this: Google Earth has added a dimension; now we will be able to explore the seventh planet from the sun, if it is still a planet," but in my experience it's as risky as taking a random bottle from the medicine cabinet: "Oh wow, these little red pills look good for today, so round and harmless!" At least the manufacturers of those pills put all the "may cause" warnings: May cause violent stomach cramps and that other word that's hard to spell and harder to live through. The update people don't have those restrictions. And they are insistent: Everyone must be brought up to snuff. So I get tired of the messages popping up at the bottom of my screen: "You have 5 new updates ready to install". My hand hits the yes button before my mind is awake for the day...and I just lost the whole firefox option. It's gone. To gain internet access at all I have to go back to my former browser. Of course, that browser is miffed at me for having left it, so it won't remember all my passwords and proudly bring up my favorites. I lose "bloglines" and all my shortcuts and find myself having to access my blog through two other blogs...well you get the idea. But that's the least of my troubles; It seems my computer just took the opposite of the little red pills when it swallowed those updates. Lag lag lag. Arrghh! OK. Time for a system restore and a computer clean up operation. I'll have to be satisfied with googling earth in the old fashion way but my Firefox is smokin'.

VBS-Philippi

We had 74 children last night.

We are set up for 60.

So while it is a great success, I'm flustered.

I even forgot to tell them that Paul and Silas were missing and had to employ the drama team to announce the news in each room.

It's terribly much fun, but I'm exhausted.

Philippian VBS--or 13 Reasons Why I'm Not Blogging Right Now.

A Thursday Thirteen....well sort of one...


Our Vacation Bible School is well underway. We had far too many children last night for the facilities, but how can you turn away such eager and anxious little smiles. When this is all over, I'll probably write a long article about it, but for now, just a few pictures.

Making Mountains out of ....Odd Lumps

For the last two days I've been struggling with a strange task: mountain-making. You see, since our VBS this year is set at Philippi, on the border of Macedonia. I'm going to be Lydia, the seller of purple, and hold the lessons and singing time at our prayer meetings down by the river; hence I needed a river. My plan was to throw some blue cloth on the floor and pin it down with a couple of potted palms. Well, life is more complicated than that.
First of all, we are using the youth room/adult Sunday School room/ladies former quilting room. The built-in decor is frilly and mauvish furnished with a lovely white couch, love seat and coffee table, a piano, class room tables, an overhead projector and Video Screen, a ping pong table, and a pool table. It's a big room, OK? Which is exactly why I need it. Sixty children moving around and doing motions to songs need a lot of room.
Here's the problem: We can move most of the furniture out, but the piano and pool table have to stay. So we decided that the pool table could be a pool of water and waterfall...onto the blue tarp river along one side of the room. Then a board member suggested that we make a mountain on the wall with a stream pouring down so it wouldn't look like the waterfall was coming out of the floor. (He's not heard of "willing suspension of disbelief" I guess.) Fortunately, the choir closet was stocked with three rolls of banner paper--green, blue, and black. It was a sign. I saved the black for the prison (Another story), and started making mountains.
My biggest problem was what to do with all the stuff on the wall. Now I know real mountains are lumpy...but this? Yes. I had to cover not one lamp like this, but two, some shirts, a bulletin board, and the rack that holds the cues for pool, so I just sort of molded the green paper over it and made mountains that stick our from the wall. Yesterday it looked silly, specks of sunshine on the light side, splotches of shadow on the dark. If you squinted your eyes really tightly and stood clear across the room it was tolerable, but the fake water--strips of old swimming pool cover--just didn't cut it. When Claye came home for the weekend, she looked at it and gave me a few pointers. Trouble is, they all required a lot of work: more shading, paint the water, add a sky and add another mountain to cover another wall lamp. I worked about five hours last night, just folding, taping, stapling, shadowing, and snowing...yes snowing on the mountains, all the time praying, "Lord, where do I put this glob of paint? How do I streak this white? How can I attach the bottom of that mountain when it doesn't fit?" and the most amazing transformation is happening to that wall. Mountains are emerging from the fog. Look at this! I really can't wait to finish. I feel like I've got a rush of high altitude air. Now if someone will help me move the pool table into place...

A Little Smoke Bomb in the Family

My daughter, over at Babysteps, described her son's recent fascination with fireworks. He entertains us all by pretending to be one kind or another. Black snakes and screamers are hilarious and so is the fact that every now and then, when we light the fuse, he fizzles out and says that he was a dud that time. Anyway, here is a video of him pretending to be a smoke bomb. I'm sorry that it got to be so long; seems that stage fever struck him.

There are Many Things in Life that I Cannot Understand

I know that's the first verse of a song somewhere, but it's also the theme for this Thursday Thirteen.

1. I don't understand why my clothes hamper never retains clothes. They gather around its feet in a worshipful pose and lie there limply on the floor. Strange.

















2. I don't understand how my sock basket gives birth to totally new socks, never twins, single odd socks that I never bought. They just appeared in the nebula of the sock galaxy. If you recognize any of these socks, claim it. Suspicious












3. I don't understand how anyone could possibly use 21 fishing rods.
That's right: 21. Even if you did inherit some, and bought some at garage sales, and were given some: the question is why must you keep them forever. Puzzling.














4. I don't understand why grass grows so well in the flower beds--trespassing over cement and risking sudden death at the clipper-equipped hand of an irate gardener to get there, and refuses to grow on certain spots of the lawn, where it's pampered. Irritating.













5. I don't understand what is so hard about putting
the new toilet paper on the roll when the old one
is finished. Am I the only one who does this? Confusing.
















6. I don't understand where nail clippers go when you need one.
There must be at least 21 pair of them around here. Maybe I need a rack to hang on the wall so I can hang them all side by side. Intriguing.





7. I don't understand why perfectly well-behaved, intelligent children, upon being introduced to an adult
--particularly an adult you want to impress--decide to talk gibberish and make faces while pretending to be an iguana. Amusing.








8. I don't understand how anyone prefers Nacho Libre to Casa Blanca.


Weird.










9. I don't understand how squash, with all those pretty colors and vitamins, isn't as alluring as plain old home made vanilla ice cream with its wicked empty calories. Tragic.














10. I don't understand what's better for a car that doesn't fit in the garage--parking under the trees and suffering bird splats or parking in the sun and getting bleached spots on the upholstery. Disconcerting.













11. I don't know why the telephone doesn't ring for twelve hours, then rings three times in five minutes...when you are out in the garage, painting something. Annoying.









12. I don't understand how the same recipe produces different results in different households...namely something delicious in somebody else's kitchen/ something indigestible in mine. Discouraging.











13. I don't understand how some people can come up with a Thursday Thirteen every week, but I have blank weeks when I just can't think...so you get stuff like this.
Amazing.

A Rare Gift

Although my grandchildren don't realize it yet, and probably won't for many years, they are being given a rare gift: a father who plays games with them. No, they aren't old enough for T-ball and baby soccer; they are still at the very imaginative stage where they want to act out adventures a la "Blues Clues". It's inconceivable to them that adults wouldn't want to join in the fun.

Last Saturday Zaya decided that Lupe, his stuffed wolf, had become a "detector" and was going to "discover mysteries". As per usual, that became a theme to intermingle with the adventures of Mario and Luigi, stolen from video game worlds.

Mim came running in to the den on a mission:
"Please, Daddy, won't you play an adventure with us?" she asked with a baby charm.
"Sure," he answered, "What character are you going to be?"
"I'm going to be...Lupe."
"So who will I be?"
"You can be Peach."
"Peach?"
"Yah"
"Couldn't I be someone a little less girly?"
"Ok."
"I'll be Mario"
"Yes, and Luigi can come with us. Come'on, Luigi," she yelled to her brother, "Let's have an adventure!"

So they were off...off to the far away living room to use their "special skills", lighting the night with the white flashes from Luigi' fingertips and shooting down spiders with Mim's red fire balls so they could eat the amazing apple star fruit huddled under a small, promotional blanket for the local football team--a blanket that has yet to be used at that kind of entertainment. Daddy Mario assured them that the blanket was a "floppy submarine." His "skill" for the adventure lay in "singing old Beatles' songs badly". His two cohorts weren't sure how this skill would help the adventure, but they loved the submarine and the song--We all live in a floppy submarine-- that served as the roar of its engines as they tunneled through the deep blue sea. "

In a few minutes the blanket submarine slinked into the den, all three characters crawling under it, and emerged at the golden chair, where it docked. Mario slipped out of character long enough to whisper to my daughter and me in the kitchen that he needed some dinosaur sounds. We produced them: I was the tyrannosaurus and Babystepper was the saber-toothed kitty---lots of growling and meowing. We were rewarded for our efforts with showers of white and red fire balls. Then the submarine submerged and slid back into the far away living room.

Few children can say that on a Saturday, after a challenging week of solving problems most people aren't capable of understanding, their father makes some time to enter into their little world--a world they, themselves, will outgrow very quickly and remember only faintly.

Zucchini Baby

I feel very fortunate to receive fresh vegetables
from time to time in the summer even though I don't
tend a garden. My friends bring from the overflow...zucchini,
yellow crook-neck squash, acorn squash, potatoes,
real green beans, cucumbers, and, occasionally,
true tomatoes--the dark red kind that aren't mushy or mealy--
but I do have to admit that not every single veggie
suffers the fate of the oven or the frying pan.
You see. I have grandchildren who visit.

Meet Zucchini Baby, who single-handedly managed to entertain two pre-schoolers for an hour and a half. They dressed her, rocked her, gave her a bath, listened to her heart beat, and took her little blood pressure. I dragged this old doll bed of their mother's down from the attic, and there she sleeps still.








Shhhh! Nevermind. Her eyes are open now.

Raining in the Trees

It's strange to walk this morning. The ground is wet and the streets are shining. From the north, comes a mist-laden breeze and everywhere I hear the dripping and rustling sound of steady rain. Out in the street, away from the trees which gather to gossip at the creek, the rain is over. It was a good rain though. You can tell that by the lively, green rustle of the Virginia creeper, which has lately drooped over fences in a languid protest at this July heat. I walk a mile alone. It's Sunday. Everybody is sleeping in. Church doesn't start until ten o'clock, but you can't tell that to the birds. They are singing already. Loudly. Incessantly. Joyfully. That's what rain does for the thirsty.

My Oldest Friend

A Sunday Scribblings Prompt

She’s ninety five, and because of a stroke, her limbs are of no more use than branches on a backwards tree. So every day someone dresses her, as if she were still going to her old job at the courthouse—soft knit dress, slip, hose worn like knee socks, and brown penny-loafers— then lifts her out of bed to the recliner, where she sits patiently, watching television in the dusky living room. The house is old around her, filled with the furniture of her grandparents and carrying the smells of two bygone centuries. This is her entire world, well almost. Every evening, her son pulls out the wheelchair and the two of them go down to Benny Jack’s to eat catfish and hushpuppies. It’s like an expedition to the carnival: lots of noise; loud, lively music; real people crowded into booths and tables so close the waitresses must take turns passing by. The gossip is delightful to her old ears—who’s getting married, whose son became a fighter pilot, and who’s having trouble with that bunch of amateurs up at the courthouse.

I met her this summer when her substitute caretaker ran into some problems and asked for my help. Imagine meeting someone the first time when they come into your room holding a bucket and asking if they can give you a wash.

“Are you a nurse,” she asked suspiciously. (Much can be forgiven nurses.)

“No. Just a friend of your friend here”

“I’m not going to let you do it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This is one of those emergencies,” interjected the sitter, “You don’t really have a choice, because I can’t do this by myself.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lilibeth”

“Mine’s Mim. You don’t hear a name like that much anymore.”

“It’s a pretty name, and it happens to be the name of my little grand-daughter.”

“Well imagine that! Her parents named her Mim, huh?”

“They did.”

“Well, if we’re going to do this, we’d better get started.”

So we did. It’s an odd way to meet someone, but it certainly does away with all the social airs and graces and lets one get on with just being friends.

That wasn't the last time I ever saw her, for life has a way of letting people meet again.

Three weeks ago, when I told her goodbye, she was sitting stiffly in the recliner, funny little hose still rolled at the knee, smiling in spite of her strait-cast life, ordering the sitter to sit over by the window and quit being so nervous and fluttery.

My old friend Mim.

Observations Through the Fence.

Hey look, Arnold, Visitors!

Look, Mommy, Goats!











See how they sit and stare, all alike.
Maybe they are from the same flock.

They look hungry. See how they stand and stare at us. They don't really like grass, though, maybe some weeds would be tasty.










I don't care what they look like. What's that in their hands. Weeds? Delicious.


Here little goat, have an iris leaf.









I've got the munchies for that dress. Who cares about the leaf?