Shoe in hay

Okay, I’m at work in Nebraska, away from home for an assignment and I get a call from Mim. I’m busy and can’t take the call so it goes to voice mail. Later I access the message and this is what I get from Mim with my editorials comments in parens:

Okay, pictur this: I’m dressed nice in a blue frilly top, skirt, and high heels. I have finals today and need to go right from work to change clothes and then go to school. Well, my boss has other plans. He calls me into his office about ten minutes before I am scheduled to leave and keeps me there for more than thirty minutes. Well damn! Now I don’t have time to change clothes. So, I hurry out to feed the horses before I head to school because you know class will go late into the night.

(This is in mid-May and we’ve had a considerable amount of snow and rain. If fact, Mim got stuck on a snow drift earlier and had to have a neighbor pull her out. So, it’s a bit muddy in spots for this adventure).

I get out of the Jeep and start feeding the horses. Since I’m in a hurry, I don’t use the gate and simply throw the hay over the fence. I’m all busy doing this when I go to throw a pitchfork full of hay over the fence and my high heeled shoe gets stuck in the mud. I kind of pull on it and, no, it’s stuck. A little peeved, I yank my foot up and my shoe goes flying up in the air, flip, flip, flip over the fence and onto the hay.

Hmmm. Now I’m one-footed. It’s muddy. I hold myself up with the top of the corral pane and consider what to do. I figure I’ll use the pitchfork and pull the shoe to me when, my horse, Sanchez, decides to check out my shoe. She thinks it’s a treat and goes over to it, nuzzles it a bit, and picks it up! Then, if you can believe it, she walks off with it!

Here I am calling to her, “Here Sanchez, here Sani, come here girl…….come over here you bitch and bring me my shoe!” (Your can kind of tell her voice raises a bit at the end of that little speech). Well, she looks at me (gives her the old dead-eye look, I’m sure) and drops my shoe in the middle of the corral and promptly goes back to eating hay. Unbelievable.

I hop back to the car and take off my other shoe and both stockings and tromp through the mud and muck to retrieve my shoe. And, of course, I’m late for class. Nice shoes and haying the horse don’t really go together do they? So, there you go. Talk to you later.

Note from Mim: I can’t tell you how many times we have thrown things in the corral while she’s eating and gotten no response from her. The bitch!

A Bedroom Conversation

Okay…pictur this (and it happened just this way no matter what Mim says),

Mim usually goes to bed before I do. Her routine is to read a bit then get her little dog, Ping, all situated and happy in her bed, which is on the floor by our bed (of course, this little dog isn’t spoiled or anything).

I have had a heck of a week—lots of meetings, fairly stressful. So, when I went to bed I didn’t go right to sleep; I usually do, but not tonight. I was laying there kind of tossing and turning when I hear Ping. She is making this high, weird whistling sound, kind of stutters and chokes at the end of her breath, then starts all over again.

I’m lying there listening to this and it’s getting louder! Now I don’t want to yell at the dog and wake Mim up and I certainly don’t want to get up and walk around the bed to break the dog’s cycle. I end up just hoping it stops.

And it does!….for about ten seconds (which seems like an eternity at o-dark-thirty). Then it starts all over again. Ping goes through this a couple times and gets pretty loud.

Finally, Mim stirs and groggily says, “What’s that noise?”

I say, “I think it’s Ping.”

She says, “I think it’s you.”

I say, “No, it’s Ping.”

And I say this, you know, because I’ve been laying there listening to the little mutt for at least the last 10 minutes.

Mim says with complete and unassailable finality, “No, it’s you.” She rolls over and goes immediately to sleep. I’ve got nothing to say. I’m done…game over.

Postscript,

Today I told my daughter this story when she came for the weekend. She reminds me of the story just after Mim gets home from work. So, I recount it for Mim…who does not remember a thing and denies the whole conversation. She says I’m a liar. Unbelievable. Again, I’m done…game over, man. M.

The smell of caulk

I walked into the bathroom to ask my husband if he was ready for lunch just as he started to put the caulk around the edges of the new mirror. The smell of the caulk hit me like a speeding locomotive and suddenly I was 13 years old again.

It was a beautiful spring day in May and I was planning to go hang out at the mall with my girlfriend. My brother who was 18 and my sister who was 16 had already made their escapes, which meant I was the only one left to be volunteered. Now I use the term “volunteered” loosely, it was really more like conscripted but as my father was not an evil dictator he called it volunteered. My Dad was installing new shower doors in the bathroom that day and wanted one of us kids to help. Since I was the only one home that meant me, it also meant that I could not go to the mall with my girlfriend when she called. So in typical 13 year old fashion I sat in the bathroom helping my father. In other words I was thoroughly unpleasant, as only a teenager can be. My father finally had his fill of my mouth and attitude and popped me one upside the head. This, in turn, led to a nasty outburst on my part, which ended with my being sent to my room until dinner and grounded for the next week.

I stormed off to my room, slamming the door behind me. In my minds eye, and having now been a parent of teenagers myself, I can almost see my fathers back straighten ever so slightly as I slammed the door. I threw myself on the bed in a paroxysm of tears and imagined a better life with wonderful loving parents, all the melodrama of a thirteen year old girl in exile. As the day wore on I settled down and began to think, with some shame, about my behavior. To add to that shame, my girlfriend had never called to go to the mall so it was all allot of boohoo for nothing. As I was thinking my dad came to the door and told me I could come down stairs when Grammy called for dinner and I could watch TV till bedtime. I thanked him and he shut the door and went to get cleaned up and dressed.

My parents were going out for dinner that night. One of their friends was having a birthday party to celebrate turning 40. As I was standing and looking out of the bedroom window I saw them come out the back door and head for the garage. Suddenly I needed to apologize for what I had said and how I had acted. I ran down the stairs and out the front door to catch them as they came out of the garage. My Dad stopped the car and got out thinking something was wrong as I was crying. I ran and hugged him and told him I was sorry I didn’t mean what I had said. He hugged me back and said he knew that, he forgave me and said he loved me too. Then he chuckled a little and told me I was still grounded and to get inside.

That was the last time I saw my Dad. He had a massive heart attack at the party. Despite all the efforts made to revive and save him the damage was too severe and he died. I will forever be thankful that I ran out that door and asked for his forgiveness and told him I loved him. I can only imagine the burden I would have carried if the last words I had to carry were the ones spoken rashly and in anger.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. You never know when you will not have the opportunity again to say something kind and encouraging to someone, so do it now. This is a lesson I practice to this day, 30 years later. I will tell perfect strangers how lovely they are, or what beautiful eyes they have, or that their laugh is wonderful. To my own family and friends I miss no opportunity to tell them how much they are valued and touch my life. Time is too short to be left with rash and angry words when time runs out.

To this day the smell of caulk transports me to that fateful afternoon when I lost my Daddy forever and learned a valuable life lesson. Speak loving words now for tomorrow may be too late.

The clock

Pictur this:

I went to school relatively late in life, after I was married and had two kids (something I would not ordinarily recommend). While we lived in California, I got a seasonal job in Idaho with the organization that employed me after I graduated. So, one summer Mim and the kids were able to come with me to Idaho. We were renting a travel trailer from my employer. It was kind of small for a family of four but we made do.

Our bed was at the front of the trailer and we had to pull it out every night since it also functioned as the dining table. Because of this, there was little room for what you’d normally have at your bedside—you know, kleenex, water cup, alarm clock, things like that. Well, we bought a small alarm clock that was, oh, I don’t know, about the size of a small digital camera today. It was white with not much else other than the digital read-out for the time. Because shelf space was non-existent, we had to put the clock away each day and up on the narrow window track every night.

Well, one week-end morning we slept in a bit. I’m laying there and feel Mim move a bit, then a bit more, and the all of a sudden all sorts of thrashing happens. She is saying stuff like, “WHA…WHAT’S THAT???…GET IT…GET IT AWAY FROM MEEEE!!!”

I’m pretty slow in the morning and don’t really come awake but finally look over at her and see her pick up the clock from about her mid-section where it had fallen sometime during the night.

In relief she holds it up to me and says “I thought it was a big bug…a clockroach.” I’m stunned, kind of speechless—you know, it’s morning. Clockroach. I’m just about to bust up laughing when she looks at the clock with new wonder in her voice and in all seriousness says, “What time is 50 01?” That’s pronounced “fifty oh-one.”

Now, I don’t care how awake you are or are not, that question is a poser, especially after the “clockroach” comment. She looks at it a bit more with a quizzical look on her face, I look at it with her, then just reach over and turn it right-side up. She looks at it and says, “Oh, it 10:05. We should get up.”

Oh my God. Only Mim could come up with two zingers like that in the space of a minute. We had that clock for a while after that and it was always called The Clockroach.

Cheers,
Max.

black dogs in the night

As you know, I, Max, have been on the detail out of town during the weekdays. Well, Mim has been having some dental work done lately. On Monday, she had a root canal and was on some pain meds and had to go back on Wednesday for yet another root canal—two in one week. She was in a lot of pain and she usually tolerates pain well so when she says she’s hurting a lot, it means a real lot. So, the dentist thought there might be some infection starting and put her on antibiotics too.

Thursday night she was pretty doped up and was watching TV and decided to go to bed. She let the dogs out for their nightly duties and went to bed to read for a bit. When I’m gone she leaves the bedroom door open and the big dog comes in early in the night and usually leaves after a couple hours. Now we have two dogs—one big (Desi, the hound) and one small (One Ping Only, Mim’s dearly loved), and both are black. Desi is big and gentle, but stubborn. Ping, being a chihuahua-terrier mix, is fast, fun, and totally loveable.

Mim turns out the light and starts to fall asleep and hears Desi and decides to make sure the little one is okay. Again, another thing that happens when I’m gone is Ping gets to sleep on our bed. (Seems like everything gets closer in when I’m gone. When I’m home, Desi doesn’t get to sleep in the bedroom—I’ve had too many late night trips to the bathroom stumbling over her to tolerate that. The dumb dog won’t move when she hears me coming and gets stepped on, plus she sleeps heavy and sometimes doesn’t even wake up until I step on her. Also, the little dog normally doesn’t sleep on the bed when I’m home. I come in to go to bed and she hops off).

Anyway, Mim feels around for Ping on our bed but doesn’t find her. She feels around for her in her bed, which is on the floor on Mim’s side of the bed, and doesn’t find her. She calls. The dog doesn’t come and makes no sound. She calls again. Nothing. Now if she was out of the bedroom Mim could hear her on the wood floor down the hall. Mim sits up in bed, getting worried now, and LICK! right up the side of her face. The little mutt had been on my side of the bed, just out of reach, watching Mim try to find her. She was probably standing up wagging her tail, ears cocked forward, all wondering what’s going on.

Mim yells and leaps out of bed, all crossed legged of course, and, because she is night-blind, has her hands out in front of her. She catches the edge of the closet which spins her around and WHAM! she lands on her rump, stunned. Instantly, she’s mad but then starts chuckling (it’s not the first time she’s fallen out of bed, but those, yes those plural, are other stories). Well, Ping thinks this is a good time to lick her again and starts darting in from all angles, lick here, lick there, lick anywhere she can. I tell you that little dog is fast and, when she thinks it’s a fun game, she’s intense. Mim is laughing and trying to fend the little dog off and is just not managing it. It is pitch black and she can’t see her at all so she’s at the Ping’s mercy, which is none at all because the dog thinks it’s sooo much fun. Finally, Mim reaches up and turns the light on and turns around and RIGHT THERE (heart attack 2) Desi is about four inches from her face wondering (as only hounds can) what all the fuss is about. Mim takes a quick breath, you know, ragged-like, leans against the wall and decides dental work is not all that much fun and neither is DAMN black dogs in the night.

The Lord our God is One

To jump right in… we recently visited a friend who said he could not believe in a God who would send someone to hell because they didn’t belong to a “Christian church.” Max and I agreed with him. Christians have put this hard and fast rule in play that you must say the sinner’s prayer – which by the way is not even scriptural – before you can be saved.

Then there is the whole thing with Jesus. Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely believe that he is and was the Son of God. But the Talmud and the Bible tell us that Jesus and God are one. “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is One.” So if I know God and have a relationship with God but have never gotten to know Jesus is that going to condemn me? We don’t think so. The Lord our God is One.

Mim’s thoughts: To use an analogy that has been taught to me in the church since I was little – There are many people that know Mim and have a relationship with me that have never known me as Mom. They still know me. Maybe they don’t have the full rich picture of me but they know me, because Mim and Mom are one. In the same way God and Jesus are one, the Lord. So knowing one without knowing the other cannot be the deciding factor for “salvation.”

I have known many Christians who have come to know Jesus and developed a relationship with him but know very little of God and the Holy Spirit. Does this mean they are not going to heaven? Well, in the Christian faith the only criterion is to know Jesus, but scripture says “call upon the name of the Lord and thou shalt be saved.” The Lord our God is One. So given this scripture if I call upon the name of God and know him I will most assuredly find a seat in heaven.

There are many who know God but remain reserved on knowing Jesus and his role. The key here is they know God. (I recently read a book called The Shack that I believe reiterated a lot of these things.)

In my many discussions with friends who are Hindu and Muslim I have come to learn we are all speaking of the One God. In the Hindu faith, I recently learned – if I understood correctly -, they adhere to a one God faith. (The many aspects of God are represented through natural creatures to which they pray for different things, much like the catholic saints and our representation of the different aspects of God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.) What it still comes down to is the Lord our God is One. The Jewish God, the Hindu God, the Muslim God is One. So why do Christians require new converts to recite the sinner’s prayer (which again I note is not scriptural)? Is it so we can check their box for salvation or our box for spreading the word of god?

Max adds: As an example, there are Buddhists who see the search for Nirvana as a melding into God. I think we all see a slice of God, like the old story of blind people touching an elephant and proclaiming they alone have an idea of what the elephant is and looks like. In fact, the words we use are so limiting for a limitless entity. So—God, the Source, Infinity, the Origin(ator), Nirvana, Allah, Shiva, Vishnu, Zoroaster’s teachings, Akhenaton and his teaching of Aton, Jehovah, Yahweh…the name does not matter to me. We are all seeing small aspects of the One.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE!!!!

Water at the horse property

Pictur this:

This is the first Pictur This I wrote and it was in response to what my brother wrote to me where he said, “Okay, Bro, pictur this.” For those of you that may not know our setup, we own a piece of property (40 acres) about 4 miles north of the small town where we live. It is a 40 acre parcel and we have our horses there. We put up a barn and have a corral around about 2 acres made up of corral panels and electric fence. This little story happened before I expanded the corral system. It is edited for younger audiences.

Okay, Bro, pictur this:
I’m going out to feed the horses and I’m in a hurry. I drive up to the barn and decide (for prolly the ONLY time) to drive around to the backside of the corral where the hay is stacked. You see I usually park in front of the barn by the doors and walk around to the back to toss the hay to the horses. I have been doing this because I didn’t want to smash the grass down around the barn with my truck.

Anyway, I’m about halfway around the backside of the barn and my truck starts slowing down…front end sinking…and finally stops. What the….??

Oh no! I left the water on in the horse trough and it ran all night long…filled the trough…drowned half the corral…and flowed out the other side of the corral, down the side of the barn and under me! Crap!

I put the truck in reverse…it does not move an inch. I say IT DOES NOT MOVE AN INCH. This soil here has lots of clay in it and when it gets wet, it is slick. Oh well, I have a big four wheel drive truck…should be no problem.

I put on my overboots (hah—you thought I’d have to slog around in the mud with my good boots huh)…jump out and slog around the truck to turn my hubs in, jump back in, put it in four low and…ready?…DO NOT MOVE AN INCH.

The tires spin freely, mud flying everywhere…don’t move a stinking inch! Crap! Now what? My wife and daughter are already at work, my work crew is out of town, my tech is on vacation, my neighbor is a not fun and I don’t want to ask him.

Hey! Wait! I have a tractor! Oh, yes! I’m saved the humiliation and embarrassment. I fire up the 1946 Ford 2N, pull it around to the truck, and hook up the chains. I put the truck in neutral and begin to pull with the 2N. The tractor starts bouncing (I’m thinking this ain’t normal); I ease up a bit and it starts to move.

(I was thinking of doing the really redneck thing and putting the truck in low range, reverse while I pulled with the tractor and then trying to run around to get out of its way after it was out of the mud, but thought maybe I’d run over my own self doing that and decided nah).

I finally get the truck’s back tires out of the mud and decide to not put any more stress on the 2N. So I stop, park the tractor, and go get in my truck to go. I’ll be hanged by my thumbs and struck blind, I’m still stuck—the freaking front end is still not moving.

By now I’ve had about enough of this crap. I slam the gas pedal down, mud, dust flying everywhere. The horses run to the other side of the corral (they’re watching me like I was an idiot anyway) and…the truck starts moving.

Finally free of that crap, I’m now flying backwards, still full into the gas (to hell with smashing the grass), flip around and finally go to work—hot, pissed, mud spots all over me.

But, hey, I have a tractor! And I didn’t need to call anyone to pull my stupid butt out of there. I’m never, ever driving around the backside of that darn barn again.

Cheers,
Max

Dis-abilities

You walk down the street, a red car passes you by.  As you walk on, you hear a sound behind you of tires screeching, metal banging against metal.  You turn to look and glimpse the red car slip around the corner, leaving another car on the side of the road—a classic hit-and-run.  The police ask you abut the accident.  All you can tell them is it was a red car.

 

I walk down the street, a 1995 or so Honda passes me by.   As I walk on, I hear a sound behind me of tires screeching, metal banging against metal.  I turn to look and glimpse the car slip around the corner, leaving another car on the side of the road—a classic hit-and-run.  I note that the end of the car is a bit long for a Honda Civic and decide it is an Accord.  The police ask me abut the accident.  I tell them it was a dark colored, 1994-1996 Honda Accord.  It had dark tinted windows and after market wheels, probably Cragens.  By the way, the sound was that of an after market exhaust system with chrome end pipes, which was the last thing I saw of the car.

 At my work I have been recently called The Lone Advocate for Color Challenged people.  With computer programs and really nice printers, people can create wonderfully colored documents.  Unfortunately for the color-blind, they often lose their meaning, or worse, become a confused mess. 

 

Color-blindness is not a big handicap as such things go (funny to be thinking of myself as disabled when I am otherwise physically fine (and then funny how the words we use display our skewed perceptions—fine as opposed to unfine or tarnished somehow, abled as opposed to disabled)).  It does not materially limit me in my life’s pursuits.  Nonetheless, over the years I’ve noticed it provides me a different view of the world. 

 

The first time I began to see my “disability” as a unique ability was in college.  I was taking a remote sensing course where we were looking at satellite photos of landscapes in color phase shifted mode.  This is where the infrared end of the visible light spectrum (or ultra-violet I can’t remember which end) that we can’t see is shifted into colors we can see.  This ends up being in the magenta shade, which is horrible for me to see.  I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able do anything productive in the class and talked to my professor.

 

He basically laughed off my concern.  In fact, he said I would have a distinct advantage because I first see texture and pattern and then color, whereas most color-sighted people see color first and derive meaning from that and then, maybe, go to texture/patterns.  And sure enough, I was looking at a photo where the task was to differentiate two groups of trees by species and it was a piece of cake for me—totally obvious.  My classmates were struggling and could not see any difference—because the color was the same and they had difficulty seeing beyond it.

 

After that I began to value my color deficiency and occasionally try to educate my color sighted friends and colleagues.  I live in a world of rich texture and patterns that has some color added to it.

 

Cheers,

Max

 

The unexamined life – Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living – Socrates

Mims interp.

 

So, what makes the examined life worth living?  The Bible encourages us to examine ourselves.  I can only say what this means to me.  In my own life I deplore self ignorance.  I do not want to go through my life unaware of who I am and my effect on the world around me.  To me such a lifestyle is akin to the walking dead.  Those who do not know themselves, in my experience, are insensitive and often uncaring of others.  I’ve known some who bury their insensitivity in a pretext of religion or truth.  They feel they can say “that” because in their mind it is the truth.  I find the unexamined life often becomes judgemental and without compassion for human frailty. 

 

Some live their lives behind walls built by themselves.  If anyone dares to point out something about them they become angry and defensive – fear – they live in fear.

 

How can one truly live the human experience without self examination.  With out self examination we never see who we truly are or how we can be and what we can become.  We lose perspective and compassion and joy and …. all that makes life worth living.

 

Some may think ignorance is bliss. I think ignorance, at least self ignorance is death.  To be ignorant of ones self is to close the world around you off.  It is to allow others to determine how you think and feel instead of searching for those goals yourself.    

 

A truly and honestly examined life is one that brings constant challenges to ourselves.  It is becoming daily more the image of God. It is seeing Him and hearing Him more clearly.  It is a process of growth and learning that never ends until we finally take our last breath.  It is exciting and full of adventure, change, emotion, mystery, and all that makes life worth living.

“church”

So our first topic is from a continuing conversation with mom.  We have been conversing back and forth for almost a year on our different points of view on church attendance and “church”. 

Our point of view:  We believe the churches today have recreated the veil between God and individuals.  There are many organizations out there with annointed teachers and pastors, we have attended several, but they share with us the word that God has given them.  In doing so they take on the position of being our interpreter and guide to the intracacies of God and his word.  We believe that is what we have a relationship with God for. So he can show us what he has for us.  Mentoring is great but in today’s organizations it is not just mentoring.  The expectation is that you do not question the pastor/teacher that if he has said this is from God it is.  In fact it has even gotten to the point that no-one can speak in a meeting unless it has been approved by the pastor/teacher first. Don’t misunderstand, we do not believe there is any malicious intent.  They are truly doing what they believe is right, and under the current culture what is expected of them.   Are we so afraid of our own thoughts that we can not present differing points of view?  Perhaps if we were prodded out of our laziness by hearing differing opinions we would seek God for truth and understanding for ourselves.   We believe God gave pastors, teachers, apostles, prophets et el for the purpose of helping us grow closer to God through getting to know him – spurring us into conversation with God.  To excite us to see what God may have for us if we spent some time in conversation with him.  But for us to do it – not to be told what is what by someone else.  No intrepreter, No veil!  Mim thinks about the early church and is a little jealous.  What we wouldn’t give for meetings that we believe those were.  Saints coming together to share their burdens, joys and lives, good music, good food and great church!  No preaching time every week  with the passing of the plate for offering, the worship service to prepare for the sermon/teaching.  No religious organization.  They came together in different locations to encourage and protect one another, to share their faith stories and to openly discuss – yes open discussion – the scriptures.  It was always great when the occasional prophet or teacher came through – but somehow I don’t think they were vetted before they were allowed to speak.

Well that’s it in a nut shell.  Let us hear what you think.