Hardrock, Coco and Joe: The Three Little Dwarfs

as a kid growing up in the Chicago suburbs this was always a favorite. . . not like today with instant viewing - but back when you had to commit some serious time to watching and waiting and hoping and crossing your fingers that this would be the day it would be shown on Garfield Goose. . . if you were lucky, your friends might even be over and get to watch it with you. . .

football

i didn't understand the game of football AT ALL until my freshman year in college.

it was a long ways from my home in the Arizona desert to the frozen tundra - home of the Chicago Bears. but it was not long before i realized that these Chicago fans would risk life, love, limb, and frostbite to see a game at Soldier Field and breathe in the same air as DA BEARS. (ok, this was in the late 70's BEFORE our superbowl win in the 80's. we had payton - thee walter payton - but we were having quarterback issues back then too.)

i sat through a couple of Bears games in a crowded room being the only girl there and desperately trying to figure out what the heck a "down" was and why there were four of them. the game made no sense to me. and although i loved spending time with dave, i had entered the sacred shrine of male sports and it was fast becoming obvious when i didn't have the correct reaction to the play on TV that i was a football fan fake and worse - a Bears fan imposter.

i finally broke down and admitted to dave my failings as a girl friend and a human being - i did not understand the game of football.

he was stunned. i had attended numerous football games during high school. surely i picked up some of the rules. NOPE.

i was a member of the elite, disciplined, enthusiastic high school marching band. yes, we provided a stunning half time show but we also played appropriate snippets of songs during appropriate pauses in the game.

come on, who can forget the appropriately applied alka seltzer's "plop, plop, fizz, fizz - oh what a relief it is. . . " . or KC and the Sunshine Band's "oh, that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, i like it, uh-huh, uh-huh."

we roused the fans and the players with our enthusiasm and our nicely placed references to pop culture. i didn't have time to understand the finer points of football - i was helping to create the ambiance of the much sought after WIN.

after much hair pulling, teeth gnashing, and name calling - dave finally instilled the football novice's rules of the game. i could now watch football and not make a fool of myself or him. surprisingly, i found out that i like the game.

this did get me thinking that every day people participate in things they maybe don't fully understand. and maybe they don't want to admit they don't understand. like church. . .

i spent a lot years on Sunday mornings, sitting on the piano bench (and in this case "sitting on the bench" actually means you ARE playing in the "game") actively participating but not quite understanding the whole God sent his Son as a baby. . . wrapped in human flesh. . . becoming one of us. . .

i didn't truly understand until someone looked past my years of participating and asked me if i knew that "God so loved karen, that he gave his one and only son, so that if karen believed. . . "

so, being at the stadium and cheering your guts out doesn't prove that you really understand football any more than going to church and sitting through the service proves you know God loves you.

name tag baggage

i hate name tags. . . well not the idea of name tags or name tags themselves. . . i hate the placement of name tags - always have.

i remember one of the first times i had to wear one as a kid. i was a visitor at a Sunday School and they gave me a very cool looking name tag and told me to put it right where i would place my hand when saying the Pledge of Allegiance - over my heart.

i thought that was weird.

i thought the palm of my left hand would be a much better place. i could just wave "hi" and flash my name at the same time. if i wanted to answer the sure-to-be-coming bible story questions - the teacher would see my name tag on my raised hand and call me by name - i would just have to remember to raise my left hand instead of my usual right.

i took too long thinking about where to place the name tag so the teacher did it for me.

it didn't take too long for my name tag to find its way to my left hand. as soon as that was noticed, the teacher carefully put it back where it belonged.

soon the name tag was on my right hand and even sooner - it was back - plastered to my chest.

i looked at the teacher. she looked at me. i nodded in acknowledgment that this was over. she smiled acknowledging that i was now acknowledging the correct placement of said name tag.

and then my name tag mysteriously disappeared. "we" looked for it on the floor, under the table, in my bible (i would never have desecrated my bible by sticking a name tag to one of its pages), and under my chair. but it was gone.

but it really wasn't a problem.

the teacher had my name memorized the second time she had to help my name tag find it's way back to it's spot. the other girls in my class remembered my name too.

the teacher made a point of meeting my parents. she told them about the name tag.

on the way home they asked me about it and i tried very hard not to lie while peeling it off the bottom of my left shoe.

as a kid i thought the over-heart-placement was dumb. as an adult i think it is even dumber.

i like the idea of small name tags worn on our foreheads. i only get to know what your name is should i choose to talk to you or you choose to talk to me. i can look at your forehead and then your eyes and engage in meaningful conversation.

and isn't that the point. . .

walking the valleys

i have friends going through difficult, hard, yucky times. . . and not because of poor decision making. . . it's just life. . . no one's fault, no one's goof. . . just life.

and i have found myself saying over and over to them and myself that "there are no good words to make this better." and that is the truth.

being a Christ follower doesn't exempt one from problems - no matter what the televangelists spout.

but being a Christ follower does mean walking with each other through those valleys.

really walking.

the inconvenient kind of walking. . . making time, meals, and way for someone in the very thick of it.

being available. being vulnerable. being flexible.

really it's like being God with skin on for someone.

it is easier to walk other's valleys after someone has walked with us through one of our own. . .

i am grateful today for those friends and family who chose to do the hard thing, the difficult thing and walk with me through my valleys.

are you walking through a valley today?

are you alone?

making time to make change

i thought that being empty nesters who are well aware of the fact that there is only us empty nesters either messing up or picking up, the house should stay relatively clean. i was wrong.

while it has stayed picked up in some areas and clean in others, it has not stayed picked up AND clean anywhere. i do not function well in messiness and where it is obvious that what is lacking is lacking on my watch. so i made time over the weekend to set up my flipper system.

(Side Road: a while back i wrote about different methods to help with living life in a comfortable home - read "how to keep your house clean while raising children, pets, husbands, and plants without losing what's left of your mind" - please look up the old post OR better yet. . . check out this link THE FLIPPER SYSTEM).

i had purchased The Flipper a while back knowing that i needed to make time to set it up. but i have been more than busy and perhaps just a wee bit tired lately from all that extraneous busy-ness. (more about that later). looking back, i realize that i had considered The Flipper being a sort of lucky rabbit's foot (and yes, i see the irony in a rabbit's foot being anything but lucky for its original owner). i somehow believed that the newly purchased Flipper System nicely installed in a place of honor on my home office desk would somehow ward off wretched dirt gremlins and the evil dust bunnies (that dust bunnies do not "protect" one's stuff was a myth that died hard in this home).

but waking up to the fact that those housework elves advertised to clean while you sleep have never made an appearance in the last 28 years and therefore, cannot be counted out to show up now - was both freeing and motivating (read "a gentle kick in the keester") - so i set aside some time and set up The Flipper.

and that's what it came down to. . . making time to make change.

i set it up on Saturday and put it into play on Sunday. it is now Monday, and things are manageable and measurable. and most importantly, my brain has stopped hurting!!!

i'll let you know how it goes. . . or maybe i'll let dave let you know how it goes. . .

God Playing Tennis Commercial

well, i hadn't thought about it. . . but God must have an awesome tennis game. . .

the love of numbers can get a person in trouble

i love numbers. always have, always will. and it has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion.

i had fresh green beans from Indiana when my folks were here this summer. and it got me thinking about how sometimes a person should keep her ever lovin' mouth shut when it comes to number crunching and "canning."

a group of women at our first church asked me to come and spend an afternoon "canning beans" with them. i was excited but massively unprepared for what i walking into.

"canning beans" meant
picking the beans - from the actual bean plant nestled in the dirt of the garden (and there are bugs in that there garden - more than you would suspect). (side road - and may i just point out that my dad's vegetable garden was big - this farm wife's vegetable garden was the size of Rhode Island.)

washing the beans we just picked off that bean plant nestled in the dirt of that bug infested garden (and yes, i am aware that some of those bugs are really a valuable part of the ecosystem that is a garden).

snapping the beans - and yes, there IS a CORRECT way to SNAP those beans we just picked off that bean plant nestled in the dirt. . . and size does matter here in the world of snapping beans. . . i was surprised to know there was a canning standard as well as personal preference.

filling the "canning jars" with the beans that we had just picked off those bean plants. . . and don't kid yourself here, there are some steps involved in preparing the "canning jars" that i was not privy to, but was told they are important to the process.

adding boiling water to the "canning jars" filled with green beans from the bean plant nestled in the garden. . .

cooking those beans in the "canning jars" placed in a scary, hissing pressure cooker pot. ( i think that the hissing sound could end up being a comforting sound, if exposed to it enough times and if you could associate the hiss with the great taste of home canned green beans.)

you can see where i'm going with this, right? my mind wandered a bit and i stated thinking about. . .
x = number of women involved
y = number of hours spent in process
x times y times $ (minimum wage) divided by the number of quarts "put up" - canning speak for "canned" - gives us "z", cost per quart.
cost per quart against sale price of store bought, generic, canned green beans.
sale price of store bought, generic, canned green beans are cheaper (obviously, i did not take quality or taste into consideration).

and i, of course, pointed this out - pretty much out loud to the group of lovely women - completely missing the point of spending an afternoon canning green beans with friends.

spending time with friends - priceless.

spending time with friends in the great outdoors, picking vine-ripened vegetables out of one of the participants very own "Rhode Island big" vegetable garden - priceless.

spending time with friends in the great indoors, snapping and canning those vegetables while sharing bits of each others lives - priceless.

spending time with friends knowing that during the winter each of you will be sharing a bit of that summer's afternoon with her family over a Sunday dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, and home baked dessert to follow - priceless.

i guess what i'm trying to say is. . . if you are ever invited to an afternoon of canning. . . the dirt, the bugs, the beans, the hissing pot, the friendship, the comraderie, and the little bit summer you just captured in that canning jar. . .

don't "do the math" - just enjoy the moment.

and if you do "do the math". . . for heaven's sake, keep it to yourself!