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 |  Just play: don't look at your hands! |
What a dumb title for a person who never got a single star  on her piano lessons!Daily practice is the thing though: the practice of noticing as well as of writing.  However, I'd much rather play duets than solos, so hop right in! You can do the melody or the base part, I don't care.  Just play along--we'll make up the tune as we go. I'll try to write regularly and deliberately. Sometimes I will do it poorly, tritely, stiltedly, obscurely. I will try to persevere regardless. It seems to be where my heart wants to go, and that means to me that God wants me there too. See you tomorrow. ![Merit Badge in Journaling
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| It was over 100 today, and, squeezed into the small mission church for an ordination, we were all melting. Dripping. Clergy was to wear cassock, surplice and stole-- which is a lot of extra clothes on a hot day. The cassock is a full length, long sleeve, high collar black garment. The surplice is a white, flowy 3/4 length gown which goes over it. Even the stoles, usually several layers of silk or wool, hang heavily around one's neck on top of all the rest. I had second and third thoughts about that degree of torture, but decided to go through it with the rest of the attending clergy. I brought my cassock home from church on Sunday. Had to go back today for a red stole-- a somewhat unusual combination. Bill transferred the cassock from his car, which we were in on Sunday, to mine so that I'd have it with me. But oops, I forgot that the surplice was still at home in the laundry room. So there I was with just my civvies and a clerical collar. It's too bad if anyone thought I was a poor sport, but I considered the mistake providential. When I reached the church, I didn't have time to go home for it, and I was plenty hot even without those extra layers. Now that I've been home long enough to cool off, I'd better get on with the things I need to do. |
| When my grandchildren were visiting, they wanted me to read them some stories at bedtime, which I love doing. I found an old book of their mother's which contained a lot of stories I remember from when I was a child. This was A Treasury of Little Golden Books. It held such classics as The Little Engine That Could and The Poky Little Puppy. I was sure it was filled with other gems that would never go out of style. That wasn't quite true. It didn't seem to bother the twins any that all the trains had coal cars and baggage cars and black smoke funneling out smokestack. They liked the circus parades that showed up in several stories, although I have to admit I haven't seen one of those since I was their age, and only once at that. It did seem strange to them that the "fat little policeman" stood in the middle of the street to direct traffic; and that a boy named Johnny, who was entranced with machines, was excited by making a toaster work. When Johnny investigated the farm machines, the seeder and the brooder, those were strange them because they've always lived in the city, but a toaster? One thing that struck me was that each family had a mommy and a daddy. I'm glad the twins didn't notice that that is no longer the norm. Another thing that surprised me was that some of the stories were written very badly, with lots of run-on sentences. If I compare them to the modern Disney books that came out after movies, they were still more fun to read. Have you ever read Toy Story for instance? It was such a wonderful movie, but the book has no charm. I've found that true of all the Disney books. It's as if they were written by computer or a technical writer. Even though the old stories were mostly familiar and seemed written to be read aloud, it was the illustrations that I remembered best. I felt such nostalgia looking at the picture of the woman washing her clothes in the stream where Jersey cows are standing, watching Scuffy the tugboat float by. Or seeing the Saggy Baggy Elephant holding up his skin. Or feeling the childish joy of Tootle the train when he leaves his tracks and romps in the meadows with the butterflies, decked out in daisy chains. |
| Sophie and Jack have been gone for a week. During that time the living room was restored to chaos so that the dining room and hall carpet could be removed and replaced with oak laminate flooring. It's all done except the moldings and looks very nice. It was very hot last week, in the hundreds, and is still in the high 90's. So I neglected my garden, and you can guess what happened. Big stalks of grass are busily seeding themselves, and bugs are skittering around in tandem, looking like pushmepullyou's. I've pulled out everything that is going to seed and squashed a bunch of bugs who weren't paying attention, but I still have a ways to go to return to the previous, nearly weed-free condition. There is one ripe tomato, and three more that are turning pinkish. Yea! Sophie and I picked the first zucchini. It was finger sized, and I chopped it into the stir-fry with a grocery store vegetable of better size. Today, however, there are no finger sizes out there, or cigar sizes, or even banana sizes-- not among the zucchini plants. I picked five monsters, and we had the two smallest tonight for supper, sauteed with olive oil and garlic and Walla Walla sweet onions. I fileted them.  Tomorrow night we'll have leg of zucchini, and maybe I'll even try mint jelly. What do you know? It might taste good. |
| fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! |
| I used to have a sign someone gave me that said "Put a little blue in everything you do." Blue is my favorite color, at least my longest standing favorite. It's all so relative though. I don't care for blue walls usually, and I don't have many blue clothes because blues are so hard to match. On the other hand, blue is a feeling too, and, like water, it is alive. An all pink, or even all yellow or all green life would stifling. So, on this very red-hot, red-white-and-blue day, I chose to skip the big doings in the park and stay home alone. I'm missing my little Jack and Sophie--that's my little piece of blue for today. I've found a few items that didn't get in their suitcases. I swam today with Bill, and no one was yelling, "Grammy, Grammy!" at me. I guess I could have made today my annual Do-nothing-but-float-in-circles-and-read day, but I'll save that for another time. As for WDC, I haven't had a blue day in a very long time; and all the things I've meant to write feel stale today. No, they feel put away, not worth dragging out to look at. The only writing I've done in the past week or more has been some editing. Last Sunday we flew the twins back to their home. Jack, who has a history of getting airsick, possibly from an untimely virus, made it okay. We had taken them up for a "test ride" on Saturday, both in the back seat; and they did okay, although I suspect that Jack's getting quiet was a signal that we were pushing our luck. We headed back to the airport and no one mentioned it. Bill thought he might do better in the front seat, having more to look at, and tried to give him that chance by asking who'd like to sit there. Wrong move. Sophie wanted to; and whatever she wants, Jack wants automatically. They decided to solve the problem themselves by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors--the winner of 2 out of 3 games. Sophie won. Jack insisted on just one more try, and then lost it too. He wailed that it wasn't fair, that he "meant to make paper instead of scissors." (Sunday afternoon at the airport, Sophie saw some child size flight jackets and took one off the hanger to try on. Jack took it as if he thought she was getting it for him; and when she wanted it back, he made some remark about boys being pilots. Two women behind the counter were pilots themselves and set him straight. He remarked, "Boy, I didn't see that coming!") Bill, who had just come home from a week in Chicago and wasn't accustomed to the bickering, suggested that we make a stop mid-way, at a town not far off the path, and let them trade seats. Jack, who evidently thought it wasn't fair because what would a girl get out of a front seat ride anyway, wasn't having any of that. By Sunday, though, he'd agreed to it. Both times we took off, Saturday and Sunday that is, he was excited. He loved the headphones and immediately saw how to put the mike directly up against his lips to talk. Going up he was almost shouting he was so excited. When we had a talk about that, he said we could just unplug him if it was a problem. Good idea! After ten minutes of little whoops and humming, he began to get pretty still. It was hot, and unexpectedly bumpy. He put his head back and closed his eyes. We'd already changed courses to land in Pullman, but I was afraid the extra landing and time in the air might be too much. He finally said he didn't care about trading seats, he just wanted to sleep; so we headed back to Spokane. Back to blue, while we were playing and flying, there was a whole lot of sadness going on. This was a very difficult weekend for the hospice crew. The husband of one of our nurses rolled his tractor and was crushed to death. His funeral will be Friday. The whole office sat and talked about it Monday for over an hour. The nurse who has the most difficulty with loss wasn't there because she'd left on a family vacation, but she had spent a lot of time Saturday and Sunday with the other nurse. Another who had shown some difficulty with adjusting to continual job-related losses came through wonderfully, even though she had been the one on call and the first on the scene. I found myself to be easily tearful for a couple of days. Sometimes it's such a mystery what really touches us and what doesn't. Sometimes it's the straw that finally breaks the camel's back, but not this time. This time it's hard because this nurse is so dear, and she and her husband had such a great relationship. He had MS; and although he was not yet in a wheelchair, they were having his old family homestead, which they'd just returned to last year after living in Italy, remodeled to accommodate what seemed inevitable. Well, it's time for me to start supper. Bill should be home soon. Have a festive and safe Fourth of July, wherever you are. |
| When I walked in June's room, she was dozing. She wakened easily, greeted me, and asked me how I was. After the ordinary exchanges, I reminded her of my last visit. Two other people had been in her room, and I hadn't had enough time to wait them out. So I told her I had talked to her daughter, and she asked me to tell her mother, among other things, that she loved her. That's the part I wanted to repeat. June responded, "There were too many people in the room today. Six of them, in different groups. Which group are you?" I replied, "I'm the chaplain from hospice." Now here's where it breaks down, because I can hardly remember sentences that don't make sense. "You're the group with them together nurses daughter." Not knowing what to say, I repeated, "Your daughter asked me to tell you that she loves you." "You talked to my daughter? Where?" "I talked on the phone to her. I told her about the society that accepts body donations to use for research. I told you about it the other day." No response. "Do you remember?" "You," she said forcefully. "I want you to climb over to the next one. Will you get it for me?" Then she pointed toward the window. "Can you put those out?" "Do you want me to close the curtains?" I asked. "It will be dark in here if I do." "That's too many groups." She grabbed the curtain behind her that was pulled slightly for privacy and opened it. Not the curtain she'd been pointing at. Her words were confused enough that I reached for my pen and pad to write them down. Just then a friend came in with a blanket she said she'd brought from June's house. She'd written June's name on the label, and she showed her. June's responses were appropriate, and just then a friend of Bill's called me from the hall. I talked with him for a while, and the visitor came out of the room looking perplexed. "What's a whizbat?" she wanted to know. She hadn't seen June in several years, she said, and didn't know what she was talking about. She seemed relieved to hear that June wasn't making sense to me either. Then she began to talk about her husband's death. He had been a hospice patient too. "I had to go out to do some errands," she said. "Of course I never would have gone if I'd known he was going to die right then. I had to blah blah, and go to the blah blah, and then I needed to stop at the blah blah blah. When I pulled in the driveway, my son was standing there, and he said, 'He's gone.' Well, I tell you, it hit me like a ton of bricks lifted off my shoulders. I couldn't do anything without him asking me what I was doing and where I was going." blah blah blah. That's a very unusual way to be hit by a ton of bricks: "lifted off my shoulders." I'm glad I was paying attention or I wouldn't have replied appropriately either. |
| I’m ready to go to sleep, now that the kids are quietly snoozing, but I want to record this incident. My reason for writing about my patients and my work is not so that people will tell me what a hard job I have, or what a difference I make, etc. Honestly. I’m not out for pats on the back. I write about these things because not everyone has an opportunity to experience them. Death is not an everyday thing any more. I also write about the people because they are so interesting. Maybe it’s crazy, but it fascinates me that people are all so different, so very unlike me in so many ways. And of course they’re probably like me in other ways, some that I don’t want to recognize. Ahem. That’s about to be a chicken, right? Today’s incident is interesting to me because of the language. I know I can’t get it verbatim. I was fishing around for a pencil and pad when another visitor came into the patient’s room, and I didn’t want to have someone see me transcribing a conversation. Then, further interruptions kept me from being able to write down the words. Being nonsensical in context, they don’t come back easily. The patient I was visiting is a woman I’ve known for about fifteen years or more, but never well, by choice. She worked at the hospital for some time, then became a patient I saw occasionally as she battled with back problems and then cancer. I don’t know why I never really liked her. That’s possibly some of the shadow likeness I don’t see or admit to, I suppose. But not this part: she is not a truthful person. She whines, blames and refuses to see that much of what has happened to her was a result of her own actions. Life sucks, as far as she’s concerned, and no one has ever done right by her. It seldom happens that a truly righteous person is disowned by all her family and shunned by friend after friend who try over and over to help before giving up. I hope it seldom happens. I’m sure this is not a case of it. This woman has a mean streak in her, just plain danged mean. There’s something shifty about her too. Now after saying all this bad stuff, you’re probably wondering how I could possibly be of any help to her now that she is dying. Me too, but she asked for me. She even asked if I’d do her eulogy, although I think she means her entire memorial service from what she said. She was suggesting hymns and readings, although she couldn’t remember what The Lord’s Prayer or the 23rd Psalm sounded like and had them confused. Another chicken. I’m off the track again. I must really need to write this down. She wanted to be cremated and have her ashes put into the grave with her father, but her sister won’t allow it.She has no money for a burial plot, or even the cremation, and she told me her children don’t want her ashes anyway. From their conversations with the nurse, that statement sounded accurate. So when I got some information on donations of bodies for science that include a cremation, all free of charge, I mentioned it to her. She wandered off onto the poor-me trail, and so I didn’t press it. I did call and give the information to her daughter, who told me to tell her that she loved her. (Patient does not have a phone in her nursing home room. The daughter had just that day found her paternal grandmother, for whom she had been caregiver, dead. She was not in shape to make the five hour trip to see her own mother again, especially after a brutal visit last week.) There. That’s long enough for one blog. Probably too long, but it’s background. I’ll try again later in the week for record the conversations here. Thanks for listening, and good night. One quick funny first.The twins went shopping with me yesterday, and were exceedingly good and well behaved. There was no whining, no begging for this toy or that dessert. I told them as we were getting in the car how proud I was of them. Jackson said, "We did it for you. We aren't like this at home." |
| First, a rant about those Quick BLog Entries. Another one just disappeared right from under my nose before I could save it! On to the real stuff. I have admitted before that I am lousy about anniversaries and birthdays, any of those expected holidays. It's not that I forget them, it's just that I don't remember to do something about them in a timely fashion. If I remember to buy a card, I've forgotten where I put it by the right date. Someone in my office suggested a card organizer. I didn't admit I have one but don't know where it is either! |
| Sorry. I didn't get the pictures up yet. You see, the pictures are on the computer that Bill watches the NASA live feed on. He's very interested in all of that. I've been going out with him to see it at night, and last night saw both the station and the shuttle in orbit, one after the other. Pretty exciting. They were very bright, as bright as Venus, which is amazingly bright right now. They were not quite as big as Venus though. Tonight we're trying to get the pool ready. TOmorrow is our tenth anniversary, and Sunday Bill leaves for Chicago. The twins will be with me for the week, so I may not get on line much next week either. Then July 1, we'll have the carpet removed, finally, and they'll get started with the flooring. I forgot to tell you the one exciting thing that's happened recently. I won honorable mention in Mavis's short story contest. I'm thrilled! |
| "Ocian in view! Oh! The Joy!" These are the words from the diary of William Clark, written on the day Lewis and Clark arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific. The quotation is also found on the new Oregon quarter, but the spelling has been corrected.  Astoria, OR, is where we spent our weekend, and had a lovely time despite the rain. Will stop this now to download some pictures. *** I'd forgotten how long this process takes. Here are two for tonight. I'll post more tomorrow. |
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