Posts Categorized: Patience

Olio

| Joy, Love, Patience

The definitions of olio are:

1) a miscellaneous collection of things.

2) a variety act or show.

I’m thinking of it as the collection of things from the past week.

Peter came. There were the regular events, like Thursday night at the Mayborn Museum and a trip to Kiddieland, for the train ride and the other, carnival-type rides. There were special things, like the ScienceFest activities at the annual Arts Festival in downtown (a much-appreciated activity, as the Mayborn Museum was closed on Saturday, because there was a Baylor home football game, and they close the museum so the parking lot will be available for football goers).

 

In un-Peter-related stuff:

A couple of weeks ago, I worked in the very back part of the yard, cleaning up and raking, getting ready for the newest crop of fallen leaf piles, which will be added to the compost. Something small and vicious lives out there. I was scratching my left arm when I came back into the house. By nighttime, there were several spots that needed anti-itch cream. I woke up in the night from a dream that I was covered in big round bites, and I was busily scratching my arm (for real, not just in my dream). I needed a minute to remember why I felt so itchy, and got up and added more cream.

We had a torrential rain on Tuesday. I was headed home from my volunteer day at Book Club at West Avenue Elementary, and I was actually afraid. I couldn’t see the lines on the road. We were all creeping along. When I turned from the main thoroughfare onto the side street to go home, water gushed over my fender. EEEKK!! But, I did get home fine. And stayed there. It came and went all afternoon.

 

 

Let your heart overflow with praise to the True God of heaven,  for His faithful love lasts forever.

Psalm 136:25 (The Voice)

Praise God in heaven! God’s love never fails.

Psalm 136:26 (Contemporary English Version)

Oh, give thanks to the God of heaven, for his loving-kindness continues forever. 

Psalm 136:26 (The Living Bible)

Oh, give thanks to the God of heaven! For His mercy endures forever.

Psalm 136:26 (New King James Version)

O give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Psalm 136:26 (New Revised Standard Version)

 

I couldn’t make up my mind.

 

Some Things ARE Remotely Possible

| Patience, Peace

A few years ago, David’s car made its last trip. The car we bought next has remote ignition.  I used it for trips to Fort Worth to get Peter, because it was newer and therefore, more reliable. And then, I insisted that I drive him around town in that car. My reasoning was that, because the car would get really hot, hot, hot in the summer sun, if I could start the car (the climate control comes on when the car starts), then the interior would be at least a little bit less hot when I put the little boy into his car seat, after a couple of hours at the zoo. Also, that would mean that we wouldn’t have to transfer the car seat from car to car. It was hard not to agree, when it’s Peter’s well-being at issue.

A few years later, when my car was really old, and repairs were costing more than the car was worth, we bought a new car for me to drive. Someone had given Kevin and April an additional car seat, which they handed down to us. It’s permanently installed in my car, at least until Peter’s heavy enough and tall enough to safely ride in a booster seat. And, the car has a remote ignition, too.

The remote ignition is nice for really hot or cold days. But the more important issue is–it helps me locate the car.

I never misplace the car at the grocery store. I drive into the same lane every time I go. Maybe I park nearer the store. Maybe I park at the far, far end of the row, where there is a tree. That’s where I park on hot afternoons, when the smallest amount of shade helps, even at the expense of a few bird droppings. Even then, I will aim the car’s key at the distant car and press the remote button, to get the air conditioning going.

However, in other parking lots, I often drive up and down a couple of lanes to find a closer parking spot. As I exit the car, I gather up my recycled shopping bags, lock the car, and walk into the store. I rarely, ever, think about paying close attention to where, exactly, I have left the car.

Once, leaving Target, I started the car remotely. I walked to where I thought it was. It wasn’t there. I walked down another lane. Nope. I turned around, headed in a different direction, and heard the faint sound of a car’s motor. I walked over toward the sound, and, TA-DAH! There was my car, purring along, waiting for me to locate it.

Lights on! Engine humming!

And, just  yesterday, at Wal-Mart, I walked out of the store, pushing the cart with my purchases, and aimed my key fob towards where I thought the car was. As I walked up the lane, I thought, No. This isn’t where I parked the car. I parked with the car headed the other direction.

 

I kept walking, slowly, looking at other rows of cars, trying surreptitiously to locate my car. (I hate to look like an old woman who cannot remember where her car is, however true it is.) I kept on walking, slowly, slowly. I passed a large white van, and, right in the next slot–was my car, lights on, with the motor humming and humming away. Whew!

 

 

Jesus told the people another story:

What will a woman do if she has ten silver coins and loses one of them? Won’t she light a lamp, sweep the floor, and look carefully until she finds it? 9 Then she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, “Let’s celebrate! I’ve found the coin I lost.”

Luke 15:8-9 (Contemporary Version)

I do rather feel like some sort of celebration when I locate the car after I’ve wandered around a parking lot for several minutes. With milk and/or ice cream in the cart. Meanwhile, in other news:

And I’m almost done sorting out all the yarn!

I Haven’t Counted Them and I’m Not Going To

| Faithfulness, Goodness, Joy, Kindness, Love, Patience

I mentioned  before that David’s mother passed away in July. In the weeks and months before that, David and his five siblings began to decide how to divvy up a big household’s worth of belongings. There was furniture and dishes and silverware and books and jewelry and clothes and a big assortment of all sorts of stuff. There were things that several folks wanted and things that NO ONE wanted.

David went back again a couple of weeks ago. He brought home his parents’ college yearbooks and some documents and photographs. He packed up a nice sewing machine that his aunt in Memphis thought would be nice to have. He left it at her house on his way back home. And, he brought home some yarn.

A couple of David’s sisters, who live in the area, worked (and worked and worked and worked) to organize the house’s material goods. There were a lot of bags of clothing that went to helping agencies in the area. They bagged up pieces of jewelry that no one had already asked for (each sibling is supposed to take a bag, to dispose of how they wish). And they bagged up some yarn.

If you don’t participate in the yarn-based arts (knitting, crocheting, weaving), then you don’t quite understand what yarn workers are like. And what yarn workers do like. We like yarn. We might purchase some yarn that is perfect for a new project. We also might purchase some yarn that we just like, even though we don’t necessarily know what we might use it for. Or when we might use it. Some of you might suggest that we could have an obsession with yarn. We do not plan to pay attention to you.

David didn’t want very much from his parents’ house. We have a house with plenty of furniture. We have dishes and pots and pans and lamps. I don’t wear much jewelry (David did bring home the required bag of jewelry, and I have offered it up to some friends. Some of it is going to church for the preschoolers to pretend with.) I did bring home, when we were there in July, a few small Corning Ware pans. I already had a couple and they’re pretty useful. Beyond that, we didn’t collect very much. But, before he left for his most recent trip, I said, “Bring yarn.”

My sisters-in-law said that they unearthed LOTS of yarn. I think there were 60 white trash bags full of yarn. Seriously.

I belong to a knitting/crocheting group that is very helping-oriented. They create items to make chemotherapy patients comfortable, they make shawls and lap afghans for people in nursing homes, they craft handmade hats for children in a low-income child development center in town, they knit and crochet items for homeless folks. These are yarn workers on a mission.

So, I said, “Bring yarn.” He was able to pile 20 bags in the car. Here’s what 20 bags of yarn looks like:

Actually, there’s quite a bit missing. I invited a yarn-desirous friend over a few days ago. She carefully went through several bags and took a couple of bags’ worth home. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to find loving homes for all the skeins. It may take a few weeks; there’s a limit to how much I can transport to the knitting/crocheting folks at a time.

Some of the yarn won’t really work well for places where the hats, shawls, etc. will need to be machine washed and dried. My mother-in-law purchased some really nice, quality yarns, like wools and cottons whose care tags read: “hand wash and lie flat to dry.” But, I think there will be enough to go around for whomever and whatever and however. I might even keep some for myself.

 

She opens her hand to the poor,
    and reaches out her hands to the needy.

Proverbs 31:20 (New Revised Standard Version)

Not all the members of my yarn group are “shes.” But they are all pretty much on board with that helping and reaching out business.

 

The Best Sprayed Plans

| Patience, Peace

We moved into our current home late in November, 2006. We’d done some work in the previous months, after my dad moved into a retirement residence and we’d had an estate sale and the house was pretty much empty. The walls got repainted. New flooring was laid in the dining and kitchen area. That sort of thing.

I hadn’t really noticed how badly the paint on the front porch’s wrought iron railing was peeling and that the underlying metal was showing rust. When spring arrived, I started working on it. I was using sand paper to file down the chipping paint, smoothing things out to prepare to repaint. It was a lo-o-o-o-o-ng process. I got a sander to make things go more quickly. Or, rather, not so slowly. Quickly wasn’t really happening.

Then, my brother-in-law bought a grinder. NOW we were getting somewhere. I ended up sanding/grinding off every bit of the old white paint, the bottom-most layer having been applied in 1959. It looked great. The next day or so, it rained, and rust began to show up, within hours it seemed. And, while it’s usually hard to be unhappy about rainfall here, I was relieved when it stopped after a few days, and I smoothed off the new rusty parts, and repainted the railing a nice, clean white. Ta-Dah!

I had assured myself that I would pounce on any new cracked, rust-vulnerable portions of rail that showed up.

Actually, I didn’t exactly pounce. But when several cracked, rusty parts showed up this past summer, I made note of them and promised to deal with it when the weather cooled down a tad. And it did, last week.

I got some sand paper (there were only a few rusty places) and sanded down the problem areas. I gathered a couple of partially used spray cans of white paint from a shelf in the garage. I carefully laid down newspaper below the railing and taped it down with sturdy blue masking tape.

I sprayed the railing until the can of primer ran out of paint, apparently having been almost all used up with some previous project. Not a problem. I had a can of Primer/Paint combination. I shook that one up and kept on working. Until that one ran out.

I really did not want to change from my painting clothes to regular going-out-in-public clothes to go to Lowe’s for more paint. But what luck! I found an unopened can of white primer/paint combination, right there on the shelf. I knew it was full because I had to remove the protective piece of plastic from the spray nozzle. I got right to work and finished up the first coat and had plenty left for a second coat, too.

I went out the next day and trimmed off some leaves from the plants in the flower bed. They’d been in the line of fire from the paint cans, and I thought they might should be cut away, because those whitened leaves were probably not going to be all that important to the plant in their paint-covered state.

Then I removed the paper that had been protecting the section of porch that was underneath the railing …

and discovered that, apparently, I had also spray painted the front porch. Or at least part of it (the part not carefully protected by the taped-down newspaper sections).

I’m hoping that weathering (rain, strong western sunshine, etc.) will moderate the obvious mistake that was made. Maybe people will think it’s some trick of the sun, which really is pretty strong in the late afternoon. If you come to visit, you do not need to mention it, I ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT!

 

Do your work willingly, as though you were serving the Lord himself, and not just your earthly master.

Colossians 3:23 (Contemporary English Version)

I was working willingly. And I thought I was working well and efficiently. Nothing like a mistake to provide a warning for next time.

It’s Time to Get Ready for Spring!

| Goodness, Patience

I know. It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it. Summer’s not done with us yet; the temperature is supposed to be back into the 90’s later in the week. Meanwhile …

Many years ago, thirty or so, I think, my Dad planted some iris rhizomes in a bed at the back of the house. I remember them blooming. And, when we moved in, in the fall twelve years ago, they were still there. They came up, mightily, with the bed filled to the brim with leaves. And, a few flowers bloomed. Each year, fewer and fewer flowers appeared, even though leaves came up, as strong and plentiful as ever. It seemed like it might be time to make a change.

Fall is the planting time for those sorts of plants, and I thought I should get those old rhizomes out of the ground and make a new plan. One day a couple of weeks ago, when there were some clouds, and when the sun had moved on to the front part of the house, I hosed down the dry, hard, dirt, waited for the water to soak in, and then put on my gardening gloves and got to work.

The job required about ten times the amount of hours that I thought would be required. I read once that a human adult’s intestinal track is between 25 and 28 feet long. It’s hard to imagine all that inside our abdominal cavity. I can imagine that, if I had shaved off the top three or four inches of dirt from the mass of ancient iris rhizomes in a flower bed 3 by 14 feet, I’d have seen, first hand, the unimaginable squash of ancient, worn-out, couldn’t-produce-a-flower-if-it-tried maze of rhizomes, and it might have resembled the squashed-up intestines in a human adult’s gut.

These things look to me like some sort of tentacled sea creature, from the deep, deep part of the ocean. (I also dug up lots of rocks.

As it was, I just started digging up the ground with a garden trowel. Those things were deeper than I had imagined. I rubbed a blister on my palm (and I was wearing gardening gloves). The next day, after putting two layers of Band-Aids on my palm, I got the garden fork, and started digging up the dirt a little more efficiently. Still, I spent lots of time pulling and tugging at the twists of rhizomes. The dirt is clay-like, heavy and sticky.

There were a couple of sets of healthy-looking iris leaves attached to some stronger-looking rhizomes. And, there were three or four round bulbs. I don’t know what they were, because nothing had bloomed in years. But, I took the iris leaves and the bulbs to the nursery for advice. I explained my situation to the nursery lady, describing how old the plants were and how nothing had bloomed in ages. I showed her what I had. She thought the round bulbs were some kind of lilies, and thought they might bloom. The iris rhizome with the leaves attached also looked salvageable. I showed her one of the tired, strange-looking things. “And what are these?” I asked. “Old, worn-out irises. They won’t bloom any more.”

I bought some compost to dig into the bed, to revitalize the dirt and help it not be so dense and sticky. I spread five bags-worth on the bed and dug it in. Well, as much as I’m able to dig. But, even after days and days of working in the bed, I still dug up a few more of those old, tired iris rhizomes.

God, my shepherd!
    I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
    you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
    you let me catch my breath
    and send me in the right direction.

Psalm 23: 1-3 (The Message)

 

Meanwhile–

Yes. It’s Thyme.

| Faithfulness, Patience

The backyard today, with the garden in the back corner

The plat of this house, built by my parents in 1959, clearly shows a garden, at the back, east, corner of the lot. My dad planted a vegetable garden there, but it didn’t do all that well. Then, he planted cannas, then some irises, and other things, over the years. As my parents aged, they did less and less yard work, and by time we moved in, that garden area was a huge, overgrown mess, with pecan trees (from squirrels, who put pecans into the ground with the idea of going back and getting them to eat during the winter, but, as far as I can tell, they immediately forget where the pecans are, and the pecans sprout and grow new trees). Those original cannas, sturdy plants that they are, were still growing there.

For my birthday and Mother’s Day, the first spring we lived here, Kevin and April completely cleaned out the garden. I kept the canna roots, and planted them elsewhere. I tried vegetables in the garden, without much luck. The next spring, I tried again, purchasing six nice tomato plants. I tried to be a better caregiver, and I did get a harvest. Six tomatoes. Not six tomatoes per plant, but six tomatoes, total. I couldn’t get squash to grow. I couldn’t get green beans to grow.

The compost bins–the right-hand one is for current peelings, etc./the left-hand one is cooking

I made a nice compost area in the yard’s very back corner, and, each year, spread the compost, with great hope, into the garden. So, at some point, I should have had really great dirt. But, somehow, not great plants.

One spring, a local garden center offered a Groupon: $10.00 for an hour of yard work. I bought it and used it for a guy to come and dig in that year’s compost. (He said I had really nice compost.) When he finished, I explained my lack of skill at growing things and asked what he thought would grow there. (I had identified one possible problem–maybe not as much sunlight as tomatoes, peppers, and squash might need.) He said “herbs.” I said, “What kind of herbs?” “Thyme,” he said. And thus was the thyme garden born.

The first year, I bought lots of thyme plants, and lost a lot of thyme plants. Then, I tried, maybe, three plants. When they lived, I added another one or two. And, over the years, I have, indeed, grown myself a very nice, thriving thyme garden. I don’t really grow it for its usefulness in the kitchen, as I don’t cook much these days. I grow it because it will grow in my garden. But, when I do find an interesting-looking recipe that calls for thyme, I’m very excited.

Last November, I saw a recipe in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine that looked interesting (and called for thyme!): Jerk Turkey. (That recipe called for turkey breasts, while this link calls for a whole turkey, but the recipes are essentially the same, but without the star anise and lime. And a baking time of a hour.) We had it for Christmas dinner. It was delicious, probably due to the home-grown thyme, don’t you think?

Recently, I was flipping through a copy of Cooking Light magazine, and saw a recipe for “Amp up your Plant Intake with Mushroom-Based Meat Loaf .” I’ve never cared much for mushrooms, but last Christmas, in addition to Jerk Turkey, I also made “Modern Green Bean Casserole,” in an effort to make our holiday dinner a little more interesting. It had sautéed mushrooms in it, and was really tasty.  I glanced through the meat loaf recipe and saw that the mushrooms were sautéd in that recipe, too. (I think I’ve not cared for mushrooms in their raw state.) And, bonus–Thyme! I made a list and went off to the grocery store. I did walk back and forth in the fresh foods section, searching for “cremeni mushrooms.” I could not find them anywhere, and I touched and read the labels of just about every mushroom package. I looked up “cremeni mushrooms” on my phone and read that baby bella is just another name for cremeni mushrooms, and there were baby bellas all over the mushroom section.

At home, I sautéed my mushrooms, stirred in the other ingredients, and, with great joy and love, stripped 2 teaspoons of thyme leaves from their stems and added it in. It was great meat loaf! And, we amped up our plant intake.

Then God said, “I’ve given you every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth
    And every kind of fruit-bearing tree, given them to you for food.
    To all animals and all birds, everything that moves and breathes,
    I give whatever grows out of the ground for food.”
        And there it was.

Genesis 1:30 (The Message)

 

God is good to us.

 

Just Because It’s September, Doesn’t Mean Summer Is Over . . .

| Patience

… because it’s not.

But the vibe kind of changes, because kids are back in school. Football season begins this weekend. And, even though magazine photos show football fans all bundled up in coats and hats and mufflers, Texas football spectators will be wearing lightweight clothes, except for those mascots who wear large, heavy, body-enclosing costumes.

These limbs and twigs with brown leaves will, eventually, lose all these dead leaves and waft their way down to the ground, in a few months. Maybe

Except for trees that are experiencing severe moisture stress, leaves won’t be falling for a while. Twigs are falling off the pecan tree, but that’s not unusual, at any season. They get broken off during high winds and sort of stay hanging around, up in the tall parts of the tree. Their leaves dry up, and, maybe months later, they make their way down through the leafy boughs and, plop, finally sink to earth. And I put them in the green bin.

Speaking of bins, our trash bin has gotten pummeled by the trash-bin-picking-up-mechanically truck. It had great gashes in the side, and we became a little concerned that, at some point, our trash bags will just gently tumble down to the street when the truck tries to hoist it up. David phoned the city’s Waste Management folks who said, “Do that online.” Last week he put our information and user number into an online document. They called Tuesday and said to put the old one out on the curb Wednesday night and, on Thursday, they would pick it up and leave a new one for us. I’d forgotten about it until about 9:00 p.m., and raced out, under the cover of darkness, in my nightgown, to put it out. Mid-morning Thursday, they came!

And, Peter came for a pre-starting-a-new-school-year visit. Of course, it was just too hot, hot, hot for much outdoor activity, beyond walking across a parking lot to the car.

Last Monday, I took Peter back to Fort Worth. We ran some errands before going back to his house. Spy Base 1 was our house, which we left at about 9:30 a.m.

At Peter’s we found that his first Top Secret Adventure packet arrived!

Spy Base 3 was Central Market, where I had a salad for lunch and Peter had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some milk. We sat outside to eat, next to a play area. There was a little girl and her mom, there, too. Peter went over to them and said, “Hi!” And he and the girl played together for a while. Then, when their faces were red from hard play in the heat, Peter and I went on to Spy Base 4, Container Store. Then, on the Spy Base 5! Peter’s house!

 

 

 

 

You created the moon to tell us the seasons. The sun knows when to set,

Psalm 104:19 (Contemporary English Version

 

I know it’s all a cycle. And, I guess if I want to avoid these horrid summers, I’ll have to move. But, then I might be in a place with severe winters, which really does seem worse to me. Or, a place that is prone to fires. Or a place that’s so arid that only cactus grows well.

Meanwhile, I keep seeing the holes in the ground that the cicadas emerge from. But, I haven’t seen any of their exoskeletons on the brick walls of the house, like we did last summer. And I know it’s not merely holes from last year, because I hear them singing (or however it is they create their buzzing music at sundown). This evening, when I went out to photograph the Ming fern, they were in chorus in all the neighborhood trees. The sound of summer. And, to my ears, it sounded like they were singing “Music! Music! Music!” I sang along.

Did I Tell You It Rained?

| Patience, Peace

It actually did rain. A couple of weeks ago.

Then it began to pour. Rain fell, on and off, all day Saturday. Then it kept up all day Sunday. It doesn’t matter how much I water, nothing fills the bill, literally, like real rainfall.

I buy these pretty plants each spring. They are two or three inches tall when I get them. This year I bought sixteen of them, I think. They are heat tolerant and thrive in my western exposure front bed. They reseed themselves all during the summer. They were doing all right. Blooming. New ones were growing. Then it rained. The blossom count doubled, and has stayed high. See those two flowers in the middle, with the darker centers? Those aren’t flower centers. Those are bees. I’m doing my part for the local bee population and honey harvesters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, just in case I’ve lost all hope for nicer weather, the fine folks at the HEB grocery store would like to remind me that I shouldn’t feel like SUMMER WILL NEVER END! (Which is a little bit how I feel, as I do every August, and into September.) Halloween (and the END OF OCTOBER) is apparently just a heartbeat away!!

Even Peter thought it was inappropriate.

 

Celebrate and sing! Play your harps for the Lord our God.
He fills the sky with clouds and sends rain to the earth, so that the hills will be green with grass.
He provides food for cattle and for the young ravens, when they cry out.
The Lord doesn’t care about the strength of horses or powerful armies.
The Lord is pleased only with those who worship him and trust his love.

Psalm 147:7-11 (Contemporary English Version)

 

I know. If I want it to rain on me more, I should move somewhere else. I do feel fortunate that we live in an area with a very big lake. We have enough water to drink and to use for cooking and for keeping my plants healthy. I know that many other people are not so fortunate.

Enough Excitement to Last Me for Weeks

| Kindness, Patience

At the end of Peter’s visit with us, a couple of weeks ago, I’d washed all his laundry and packed it up. We’d made a list of all the errands we needed to run, before I took him to meet Kevin so they could return to Fort Worth. I’d loaded all his stuff in the car. We gathered all the videos and books that needed to go back to the library. And, just before I said, “Let’s get in the car,” Peter came to me and whispered, “I heard a sound. I think there’s a bird in the house.”

I thought we had time to play a pretend game, and I said, quietly (because we don’t want to alarm pretend birds in the house), “Where is the bird now? Is he still in this room?”

“No,” said Peter. “I think he flew into your room.” So, we tiptoed to my room, walked quietly in, and …

 

 

THERE WAS A BIRD IN MY ROOM!!!

There it is. Sitting on the blinds. I tried to get some video, but the bird was way too quick for me (and probably really fearful, too).

Then I told Peter, “I know exactly what to do.”

I did know exactly what to do, because, several years ago, we had a bird in the house. David had left early to go to church one Sunday morning. He lowered the garage door when he left, and a bird, who flew in the garage for some unexplained reason, and unknown to me, got stuck. When I opened the door to leave for church, the bird flew in. At that point, I had no idea what to do, so I just went on to church.

When I got back home, I called Animal Control. Turns out, they do not come and remove birds from people’s houses. “How do I get the bird out, then,” I said.

“Close all the doors in the house,” the guy said. “Of course, you’ll leave open the door of the room where the bird is. Then, open a door to the outside, being sure that you’ve left a way for the bird to leave. He’ll fly out.”

I found that a little bit incredible, but I followed the instructions, and, indeed, the bird flew out the front door.

I told Peter what we needed to do, and we got to work, closing doors and turning out lights in spaces that didn’t have doors. I opened the front door and put a flowerpot by the storm door, to keep it open, too. I went in the bedroom and rattled around to make the bird uneasy, and, Ta-Dah, the bird flew right out the open front door. Whew! Peter’s idea was that we should leave all the interior doors closed, to keep out birds that might fly in at some other time, but I said, no. Birds don’t usually fly into people’s houses. I thought we’d be all right.

So then, we were getting things together to leave the house and Peter said, “Mimi. I think there’s another bird in the house.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s not very likely that another bird has flown in.”

Hmmmm. There was another bird in the house. In the living room. So we went back to closing up rooms, and I opened the door, and ZIP. The bird flew out so fast that we barely saw him.

Here’s what we think happened:

The garage door was down, and I was taking Peter’s bags and suitcase and backpack, etc., to the car. We’re assuming that the birds either got caught in the garage, when David closed it when he left the house to go to work. Or, they may have just wiggled in the spaces at the bottom of the garage door. We know they are able to do this, because the baby birds who were in the nest that was in the garage, did not die in the two weeks we were gone. The nest was empty when we returned.

However they came to be in the garage, we’re thinking that they were alarmed by my walking around in that dark space, and flew into the house, which I had left open, and was substantially brighter than the garage, hoping to escape. I didn’t see them go in. Peter didn’t see them go in. But … they were in. And apparently, pretty anxious to get out.

 

Lord God All-Powerful, your temple is so lovely! Deep in my heart I long for your temple, and with all that I am I sing joyful songs to you.

 Lord God All-Powerful, my King and my God, sparrows find a home near your altars; swallows build nests there to raise their young.

You bless everyone who lives in your house, and they sing your praises.

Psalm 84:1-4 (Contemporary English Version)

Bible commentaries say that this psalm writer was envious of the birds that made their nests under the eaves of the temple, because they, basically, lived at church. I know that the birds I’ve had in my house were always looking for the light. A good example for me.

 

Housework

| Faithfulness, Love, Patience

The company started leaving last Friday. Peter was with me as I was doing post-guest cleaning and getting the house back to its regular self. Putting stuff away, like dishes and napkins. Going through the fridge and tossing the tiny bits of leftovers that got stored and saved. Laundering the towels, which mostly got folded up and stored in bins in the linen closet, waiting for the next guests. And washing the sheets, which got put back on the beds. Before the guests came, I also laundered the mattress pads and pillow protectors when getting the clean sheets on the day bed and trundle ready for guests. When I removed the sheets and pillow cases from the guest room bed, post guests, I thought, Hmmm. I should wash this mattress pad and pillow protectors, too.

That load was a washer-full, and I gathered up the pad and pillow cases and protectors and put them in the dryer by themselves, so there’d be enough space. Later, when I went back out to the laundry room to retrieve them and put the sheets in, I discovered that I’d put the big ol’ mattress pad in first, and then added the pillow protectors and cases. The mattress pad had rotated itself around and around in the dryer, trapping the pillow cases and protectors against the dryer door. They weren’t sopping wet, but they were damp. Really damp.

I carried them to the guest room which is also where I sew, and iron. I put up the ironing board (with its lovely new ironing board cover) and plugged in the iron. And spent the next few minutes doing the same thing I had done when I was nine or ten years old and learning to iron. Ironing pillowcases. JoAnne remembers doing that, too–our mom handing down her “taking care of the house” skill set.

A couple of the pillowcases were 100% cotton. One was really damp and ironed up easily and all and starchy-ish. The other one had dried completely and was badly wrinkled (as 100% cotton things sometimes are, especially those that are really old and don’t have the tiniest bit of man-made fibers in them). This one should be sprinkled, I thought.

And when the weather was rainy …

I didn’t actually sprinkle the wrinkled pillowcase. (I really did once have one of those sprinkler tops. I got it in a collection of gadgets and things that were a wedding gift. I haven’t seen it in years.) But I do have, in the sewing room closet, a spray bottle with rose-scented water in it. When things need ironing, I spray the wrinkles, and then iron them. It seems to work as well. And smells good.

Do your work willingly, as though you were serving the Lord himself, and not just your earthly master.

Colossians 3:23 (Contemporary English Version)

I’m going to try to remember that, next time I’m cleaning the bathrooms. Or cleaning up the kitchen. Or pulling weeds. And all the other things …

 

In a completely unrelated issue, here are photos from July 6, when Peter and the little boy next door made chalk pathways, and from August 5, when I was explaining to Peter how I knew it hadn’t rained at all here.

Late this afternoon, rain poured. There was lightning, and thunder. There is not a speck of chalk dust on the porch, the sidewalk, nor the driveway. Peter’s idea was that, if it did rain, he and Ford should chalk things up again, so we can continue to keep a running record of the un-rainfall rate around here.