Monthly Archives: February 2020

No Experience Necessary

27 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Relationships

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It happened again. I missed writing my blog last week, but I have a good excuse.

A sewer pipe cracked in our crawl space.

So for our second night at a hotel I had quickly grabbed my laptop to give you a harrowing play-by-play of our saga of methane gas and uncooperative insurance adjusters.

Except I forgot my mouse. And I can’t turn the built-in pad back on without the mouse. I worked the next two days, so once again a week went by without a post.

It always could have been worse.

The pipe got replaced and the system is back up and running. Clean-up IS actually covered by our insurance, so at least that will be happening soon. And the smell is now mainly in the garage by the access to the crawl space.

Our minds have definitely been distracted from other more important things, like Dear Husband’s hip replacement surgery that’s happening tomorrow. (Not ready to talk about that yet, but I’m sure you’ll hear more soon.)

As I write this it’s almost the end of what would have been my dad’s 88th birthday. And all day I’ve been thinking about how he would have handled our little emergency.

If he was at all able physically he would probably have at the least spread some lime under our house like they used to do when the outhouses of his youth got too toxic. Or headed down with a shovel and bucket to start digging up the contaminated soil where dirty water had spread over about half our crawl space.

There were many projects Dad tackled that were far beyond his expertise, but that never stopped him. He was always willing to pitch in and work hard at any job that needed doing, in our home or for a neighbor or church member. If it could save someone some money he always felt it was worth a shot to try. No experience necessary.

Our current situation reminded me of two of the most distasteful jobs he ever tackled. Because of course when he started in on a project he expected us kids to help him. We worked cheap.

Like the house my family lives in, my childhood home had a septic tank and leach field. The house was built in the early 1900’s and the tiles in the leach field were made of clay. After many years the effects of tree roots and the pressure of many feet and lawn mowers and the occasional car or truck driving over that part of the yard had broken down tiles somewhere in the labyrinthine system.

If you’ve ever had a septic tank, you know that it is actually not hard to tell where the leach field is. It’s the lines of greener grass that snake back and forth across a yard. I do not remember him letting me in on his strategy, but I assume Dad looked for the green line to suddenly end because the waste water could no longer work its way through the pipes.

Or maybe not. Because it seemed like we dug all over the back yard!

Dad actually did most of the heavy shoveling, then us kids had to help him replace broken tiles and scoop gunk out of the rest. We filled buckets with thick, smelly sludge, and I think we then dumped it over the fence into the field behind our property.

Natural compost.

Along the same lines, I’ll never forget the day I got home from a two-week camping trip to Wyoming with the neighbors in 1976. I was done with being a wanderer and dying for a home-cooked meal that did not involve hot dogs or lukewarm lunch meat. I had presents for everyone, souvenirs from Yellowstone/Grand Teton or the Black Hills, the Badlands, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s ranch. I had rocks from every state we traveled through.

I had written a script in my mind that involved dramatic expressions of how much they had all missed me and how they couldn’t wait to pamper me.

So when I walked over from the neighbor’s driveway with my bags I was shocked to hear Dad’s voice coming from under the house. “Throw some old clothes on and help us here!”

Very sentimental.

They were inside the cistern, which is a concrete room under the house where the water from the downspouts collected. We used that water for things other than cooking and drinking. I’m really not sure how the pipes were connected, but I knew there were times we had the cistern “turned on” and other times the well was on.

After many years all the leaves and bugs and whatever else washed down in the rains had decomposed and settled into the bottom. I’m guessing it had built up high enough that it was impeding the flow of water out of the cistern through the pipes.

It was time to muck it out.

The only way a person could get in or out of the cistern was to take the small window out of the foundation. And crawl in.

Fortunately for me there were already enough people inside the underground room, shoveling the muck into buckets. They needed me to pull them up with a rope, then carry the buckets to the fence and dump them in the field.

Are you noticing a theme with Dad’s projects?

And I’m sure they were the same buckets.

In fact, I think I have a couple of those buckets in my garage or barn.

And I sure wish Dad was still around to laugh about this latest bump in the road in my life. He’d get a kick out of it. And I’d love telling him all the details.

It wouldn’t take him long to hunt down one of those buckets and a shovel.

And I would love nothing more than to tackle another filthy job, side by side with my daddy.

The Master Stroke

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Childhood, faceliftbook journey

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The women’s bible study at church is working through I Corinthians, and this week, once again, there was a phrase that sang out to me in The Message paraphrase that I’m using right now. It came after Paul reminds the people of Corinth that they’ve been cleaned up by Jesus, and that they have gifts and benefits given straight from God.

How often I lose sight of that. I mean, I am very sure of my salvation. I believe that God’s promises are true. But I don’t always act like I recognize his gifts and benefits to me.

For me it starts with knowing him. It’s a work in progress. One step at a time.

You might think that would be a simple thing. Just pray for God to reveal himself to me.

But I think it would be absolutely devastating to see God fully, all at once. I like his way better, giving me one glimpse at a time of new facets of who he is.

What gets me, once I “get” something I never could make sense of before, is how obvious it seems now that I recognize it. Why couldn’t I see what was right in front of me?

The Bible also says that the reality of God can’t be denied, that he is revealed in his creation all around us.

But that doesn’t mean I realize how it points right to God as the creator of it all. Sometimes I refuse to recognize the obvious.

When I was a girl there was a wildly creative and artistically talented woman in our church, Sister Dorothy. (Every adult was Sister or Brother to me.) If Pinterest had been around then she would have been the queen. In my eyes she could do anything you could imagine.

I loved going to her house and seeing peeled apples drying to become the faces of old men and women. At Halloween she would dress up as a witch and sit on our front porch in a rocking chair, totally still. Until someone walked up and she’d creak the chair.

I still have some of the Barbie doll dresses she made for us girls, with rickrack and sequins and rich feeling fabrics.

But my favorite thing Sister Dorothy ever did was what we called a “chalk talk” at church.

My dad was the pastor, and occasionally he’d ask her to do a chalk talk during his sermon. She would set up her easel on the organ side, and as he came up to preach she would pick up her chalk pastels.

I paid more attention to those sermons than any others. No surprise when I finally figured out I’m a very visual learner. I was engaged in listening because I was always trying to figure out what the drawing would be. She usually tied it in somehow to the topic of his teaching, and I wanted to be able to guess before anyone else.

She didn’t make it easy. It wasn’t obvious as she got started. Just nebulous blobs of color, never starting at one side and moving to another, but some here, some there, with no rhyme or reason I could see.

After the first layer of color, Sister Dorothy would build them up, one on top of another. I would suspect a sunset maybe, or a forest, but it was all still undefined, no recognizable shapes emerging.

As the sermon progressed, she would add shading to show light and darkness, maybe a hint of whether it was morning or night, indoors or outside.

And still I waited eagerly to find out what it all meant, what it was going to be.

But the thing is, it already was, before she put it down on paper. She had thought it out, knew how she wanted to draw it, had an order she followed, and could see the finished product before she ever touched chalk to paper.

At the end of I Corinthians chapter 1 Paul tells us that for those of us personally called by God himself that Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.

He thought this up, from start to finish, how that sin would enter the world because people make wrong choices, but even so God wanted us to be with him forever. So he made it possible for my sin to become invisible to him when he sees me through the blood of Jesus – a miracle. And then he lets me have a close and very personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, who leads me and teaches me every day to take hold of the wisdom he offers.

But looking at it with my little girl eyes I never could have grasped all he had done, all the things that already were and that I could have for the asking.

It has taken me all these years to be willing to ask and ask again, what else do you want me to see? Where am I looking and not recognizing your hand, God, in everyone and everything around me? What am I missing?

The scripture that blew me away always sounded a little corny to me, until God brought Sister Dorothy to mind as I read through it last week.

I Corinthians 2:1 – You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy.

What does that even mean?

I’ll tell you the picture that I saw in my head.

Sister Dorothy would have all this color, the different shades and values meeting and blending and flowing on the pad of paper, and I could almost begin to see it. But it wasn’t until the last few minutes that it all came together.

It was the master stroke.

She would pick up a black pastel and suddenly make a line, usually long and curving or circuitous, and I could see it! A stream, or a house, or a barn. A boat. A man. A tree.

A few more well-placed lines and the whole scene came together, and you could hear people all over the church catch their breath when they saw it. It had been there the whole time. We couldn’t see it without her master strokes at the end.

It hit me that God is like that. Laid out right in front of me, everything that is necessary. I just need to look for the master stroke, the detail that suddenly defines so clearly what God has been speaking to me in subtler ways for so long.

Or maybe I’m listening to the polished speeches and latest philosophies when I need to lift my face and look at the person God places in front of me today.

So I ask again. Where do I need to look today, God, to see your master stroke?

“Funny…sad…sick, Mom.”

06 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in sickness

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I’ve been hearing these words a lot over the last nine days.

The Flu.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this version. The all-over-achy, coughing, fever, chest congested flu. Probably ten years.

I’m on day nine.

At least the fever part is over. I think. I stopped taking my temperature a few days ago when I hit my first almost 24 hours without feeling chills. Then I got them again for the next couple nights, but not during the days.

The days are reserved for resting.

Which is much better than the way I spent the first five or six days.

Writhing.

I don’t know about you, but the combination of fever and constant pain make me want to run for the hills. To have either on their own is much more manageable, but the two combined leave me totally conquered.

Look in on just about any of the last nine days and at least part of it you would find me napping on the couch, napping in my bed, napping in my husband’s recliner.

Can anyone detect a theme here?

Oh, oh, I forgot the best part! I can’t take anything for fever! I’m allergic to everything. And it wasn’t until day six that I remembered I have a new natural pain medication that actually works, so I did get a couple days of relieved pain.

So if you were looking for a post last week, I would normally have written it on Wednesday night, which was day two. My fevers were in the 102 degree range the first few nights, so had I sat down to write, you may have gotten quite the psychedelic story from me. Similar to when I had a reaction to a drug years ago and told my children stories of some of my darker days in college that I’d never shared with them before.

I did actually think of posting some pictures, but just the thought of trying to figure out once again where google photos hides my stash from me made me have to roll over and take a nap.

Earlier today, while being made fun of, I threatened to write about how moms can’t get sick because no one thinks to take care of them, and so they just waste away.

Yes, that was around naptime as well.

I’m not sure if it’s like this for every mom, or maybe my combination of control issues and emergency management skills mean that I don’t usually let others take care of me because I know better what I need, and I might as well just do it for myself instead of waiting for someone else to offer.

Except that when I’m sick, I lose the ability to communicate well.

I have long known this about myself. First I have a very high pain tolerance.

In my job as a standardized patient at our local medical college, students often ask where my “pain” is on the pain scale. (I’m only acting like I have pain.) They explain that 0 is no pain, then they usually say 10 is the worst pain you can imagine (or sometimes that you’ve ever had.)

In my real life I’ll give you an example of MY pain scale ratings. Every time I have been in labor I have reached a point where I could no longer speak or put thoughts together in the hardest part of a contraction.

That is my 5. I’m holding out for the 10. I’m tough. I can take it.

I think it goes back to being a stubborn girl with a shady dentist who “let” me have only nitrous oxide for fillings because I didn’t “want” a shot.

I have lots of those fillings.

Sorry. Getting a little psychedelic here.

Back to my point. First the high pain tolerance. Second, fever makes me fuzzy-headed. I can’t think in sentences, much less speak them. Third, I can’t follow through on my thoughts.

This is a big deal for me. And what brings on the new names as I try to make coherent ideas drift through the air.

Water.

Poptart.

Well that covers the menu for days one through four.

And most of the time I couldn’t say it loud enough for anyone to hear, so I got it myself.

Maybe I should write an instruction guide: “How to treat mom when she’s sick”, and post it on the fridge.

Did I mention I’ve lost 12 pounds in the last couple of weeks?

I’m really not high maintenance. I just simply can’t put my thoughts together to know what I want or need when I’m sick. It took me a whole day to get the word “popsicle” out. But had someone gotten down in my face, in that area where I could focus on their big lips talking to me, and start listing off suitable food groups, I bet I could have nodded gratefully and gotten one three whole days sooner than I did!

Yes, I’m saying it. I can’t talk good when I’m sick. Please talk for me! Because even though I don’t feel like eating, I need to at least have fluids going in. And though nothing sounds good in my head, that’s because I can’t picture myself opening the soup can, pouring it into a pan, turning on the burner… Nope. Too many steps. Not worth it.

Luckily for them I had bought a few day’s worth of dinner food so everyone else was able to eat. While I laid on the couch with my can of Vernor’s and a glass of water. And since what they were eating was too substantial, nobody asked if they could fix me anything light.

It made me think about my mom. When I was growing up I don’t remember being particularly coddled. When we were sick, we did get to lie on the couch and set up a tray table to have a place for our stuff, and Mom would sometimes bring us something to eat. I think we kids more waited on each other. Like playing restaurant.

But as a mom I’ve been the one to stock up on canned soup and gatorade and Vernor’s and poptarts and anyone else’s favorite sick foods, and to offer them throughout the day to whoever was prone on the couch.

I just want to be the one waited on once in a while.

Now, I have to say that once I was clear about what I wanted, someone would get it. It’s the being able to think clearly thing that took several days to get to this time around.

So I’m going to go crawl on the couch again, knowing this will post just after midnight. And maybe I’ll come back over and let you know on Facebook once it’s live.

But I’m not in a hurry to get up again anytime soon.