Monthly Archives: September 2020

Top 10 Things about Fall

Nobody feels neutral about autumn’s advent. Mention fall, and you trigger one of two reactions:

“No-o-o-o-o (weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth)!”

Or, “Ye-e-s-s-s (double fist pump)!”

The first response typifies skinny beach bums and bunnies who evolved without sweat glands. They play tennis on boiling blacktop and Frisbee on 500-degree sand. My scientific theory: summer people originally lived on the sun, but inexplicably migrated to the Midwest a million years ago. They’ve complained about fall ever since.

Perhaps you’ve deduced that I support the second view? Below, I’ve listed my Top 10 reasons for loving the harvest season:

  1. Steve – At a Labor Day picnic 67 years ago, my husband’s 20-year-old mother wondered if the holiday would prove prophetic — she thought she was going into labor. However, the excitement was traced to a mole digging holes under her blanket. Hubby, who still takes his good old sweet time, appeared two weeks later. I’m glad he did.
  2. Layers – No more bathing suits! Hurrah!
  3. Cozy reading – Sure, beach books introduce us to new imaginary friends and take us to faraway places. But during fall, I can roll up in a throw like a giant burrito and read with equal enjoyment — with no sand in my pants.
  4. Apple everything – Orchard apples taste as if they grew in fruit heaven. They bless us with bubbling apple pie, chunky homemade applesauce and hot, cinnamon-y cider. Mmm.
  5. Comfort food – During summer, Congress should declare cooking illegal. But fall brings urges to fill the house with delicious fragrances: chili and cornbread on cold Saturday nights. Chicken and noodles for Sunday dinner. Golden loaves of bread that smell like love as they bake. Even hot coffee tastes better during fall. (I never could embrace iced coffee. Some things are just wrong.)
  6. Squirrels – I like to watch them work. I like to watch anybody work but me.
  7. Sports – I like to watch football and playoff baseball. I like to watch anybody exercise but me.
  8. Weather – A fall day’s air smells fresh as if God just invented it. Often, autumn brings the only true-blue blue skies we see in Indiana. Even the most addicted summer junkie can’t deny that fall offers great snuggle weather.
  1. Nature – Trees, clad in their best fall-rainbow finery, leave me breathless. Other scene-stealers: morning glories swathe fences with royal blue and ruby blossoms. Chrysanthemums bloom in jewel colors. Cornstalks rustle with gentle gossip about weather changes. Orange pumpkins like harvest moons nestle among brown vines. Ugly brown milkweed pods erupt with white, airy adventures.
  2. Besides all this, we don’t have to weed or mow the grass this weekend.

What’s not to love?

Welcome, fall!

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What is one of your Top 10 reasons for loving the harvest season?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Marching to the Blessed Drummer

O Lord, with the COVID-19 crisis, my oldest grandchildren have practiced and marched in their bedrooms so they could perform for family and friends. OMG, if I followed You as carefully as they follow their directors, perhaps I, too, might help create something beautiful. And I probably wouldn’t collide with as many tubas. 

Growing Fat, Er, Fit with You

“I want to grow old with you.”

A romantic line whose meaning gets lost in the translation.

I thought “growing old with you” meant “growing fat with you.”

Not that my husband and I don’t try to stay fit. We walk, hike, and bike. On a class reunion scale of one to 10, Hubby and I generally score between six and seven. Good, but not obnoxious like those aliens who’ve maintained their graduation weight. No one over 50 should be without love handles. A small potbelly witnesses to the good life.

Unfortunately, Hubby and I took the good life to an extreme last winter. Love handles had turned to love tires, inflation dangerously close to maximum.

Hubby bought new scales.

I wanted to yell at him. But I couldn’t breathe; my jeans were too tight.

Torture enough, right?

Wrong.

Having recently retired, Hubby fulfilled a lifelong dream: exercise.

He put his money where his muscles were, hiring a 21-year-old personal trainer. A guy who doesn’t remember when bacon was considered healthy.

Surely, my crazed spouse would recover from this madness. Instead, sporting new exercise attire, Hubby went to the gym.

He returned looking like he’d kept an appointment with the devil, gray-faced and covered with sweat. He’d hauled 30-pound medicine balls and heaved weights. Did “planks” and sit-ups.

“That trainer should pay you,” I said.

I’d wanted to grow old with him. Now, I almost changed my mind.

Talking hurt him too much, but from his expression, the feeling was mutual.

Still, he refused to abandon his nightmare, er, dream. “I want to set up our camper without an Ibuprofen fix. Chop wood. Backpack in bear country.”

His potbelly shrank. His waistline tire deflated.

Meanwhile, mine threatened to explode. Would my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup habit hasten my demise? So he could grow old with an equally svelte blonde who could lift campers with him and backpack with bears?

Sad, but determined, I buried my Reese’s Cups deep in the freezer under ancient containers of grated zucchini.

At least, the trainer on my senior exercise video looks 35, not 21. He’s okay, though entirely too cheerful. If I’ve had it with Chirpy’s smiley face, I make him disappear. Click. Poof.

That’s the personal trainer you want. Not one who, during the COVID-19 shutdown, emailed even scarier workouts Hubby could do at home.

I made peace with the exercise bike by reading. During microwave numbers countdown, I stretch, hoping someday to recover a waistline.

My tire has deflated somewhat. My potbelly has diminished.

Hubby and I aren’t growing fat together.

Though some sweet day, the Reese’s Cups I dig out may change that. …

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you translate “growing old together”?

Confessions of a Really Bad Sport

Are you a good sport?

I’m not. Never have been.

As a preschooler, I pitched horrendous hissy fits when I pinned the tail on the donkey’s nose.

Worse, I adopted questionable ways of winning. I recall playing jacks at age four with Meddy, a “big kid” of five. When Meddy dropped a jack or misbounced the ball, I loudly denounced her “misses.” My similar miscues, however, were “mistakes.” People who made mistakes deserved another chance. Several, in fact.

Meddy suggested a new game: Throw Rachael Off the Top of the Swing Set. She was good at that game. I wasn’t the best sport.

I graduated to towering rages while playing Monopoly — not my fault. My brother manufactured counterfeit five-hundred-dollar bills under his bunk bed. He spent every penny building vast empires around Park Place and Boardwalk. When his cash flow disappeared, I bought his lousy railroads and utilities with carefully hoarded cash. In turn, I believed he’d ignore my landing on his hotels.

Wrong. He nailed me. I, the prudent, generous developer, always lost.

Since his counterfeiting skills didn’t figure into playing Clue, I fared better. Still, I rejected the candlestick as a weapon. What respectable murderer knocked off people with candlesticks?

After ten losses in an afternoon, I smacked both my brother and my cousin with the playing board. Hey, it made more sense than using a candlestick.

I even extended my winning obsession to church. Boy vs. girl penny contests at Bible school inspired me. I emptied my piggy bank, dug under sofa cushions, and shook down neighbor kids so we angelic girls could beat those devilish boys to send money to missionaries. Somehow, I confused the bring-a-visitor-to-church competitions with TV cowboy westerns. We kids even sang songs urging us to “bring them in.” How was I to know “dead or alive” didn’t apply?

Eventually, I grew up. Fair play, teeth-gritting congratulations to those who bested me, and missionary giving sans mugging all became the norm.

Recently, I played Scrabble with our grown children. As I was an English major, this self-designed scenario should have resulted in another victory notch in my diploma.

But all the vowels had been called to jury duty. During game two, all consonants were outsourced overseas. I proposed new rules: If other players used an X, they lost five tiles. If I drew a Z, though, I received five bonus tiles.

My narrow-minded offspring nixed my innovations. Their proposal: If I drew a Q, all U’s found among my tiles were to be held in custody until 3012 or until peace prevails in the Middle East, whichever comes first.

Maybe we both just made mistakes?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a good sport?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Can’t Stop Singing!

O Lord, I’m so thankful. Yesterday, for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, our church choir, including Hubby and I, could join the angels in singing Your praises. We had to wear masks, and the angels didn’t. But OMG, what a joy to worship You together!  

Should We Bless This Food?

My mother taught me the “God-is-great-God-is-good-and-we-thank-Him-for-our-food” prayer early, so saying grace comes naturally. But as a child, I wondered about blessing food containing onions. Onions were poison. Yet, Mom persisted. Fearing death, I changed my prayer accordingly: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. …”

I picked out the onions, hid them in a napkin and sat on them, plotting secret disposal.

A prominent U.S. Senate chaplain dealt with similar issues. Reverend Peter Marshall’s wife Catherine, who later would write Christy, a best seller, tried to disguise leftover holiday turkey as hash. Reverend Marshall declared that God knew he hated turkey hash; therefore, he would not give thanks.

Lucky Reverend Marshall. He didn’t sit on a napkin full of hash.

Unblessable vegetables have cropped up in my poll. My husband offers theological treatises on why God never meant humans to ingest lima beans.

He also dislikes fried chicken, a lifelong passion of mine — and my mother’s. When I was dating age, she warned me about men like him. Mom never stopped frying chicken, but for 65 years, she cooked alternative pork chops for chicken-hating Dad.

Other poll participants have experienced similar disagreements, describing black-eyed peas, liver, mincemeat pie, marshmallows, sushi and tapioca pudding in vivid, unmentionable terms.

Some struggle to bless food in restaurants, especially at today’s prices. Others, like me, rate lukewarm soup as an abomination before the Lord.

However, I’m not always sensitive to others’ dietary abominations. When I went to college, my mom, who had German background, sent me a special treat: pickled pigs’ feet. Upon seeing the bones in our trash can, my Jewish roommate concluded I was a closet cannibal.

Image by Aline Ponce from Pixabay.

Missionaries struggle with related scenarios. A prominent Ecuadorian town official offered missionary friends roasted guinea pig. My sister-in-law in Honduras informed me that armadillo does not taste like chicken. Once a guest in a South American jungle home, I forced myself to munch mooshy strips of spoiled bacon. Later, I discovered they were baked bananas.

I have learned to eat onions — though they remember my early rejection and exact revenge.

Before leaving the subject of unblessable foods, we should address the elephant in the room. Not eat it, though some Asians and Africans consider elephant meat a delicacy.

I refer to elephant-sized appetites, including mine. Should we bless thousand-calorie-a-bite cheesecake?

God is great and God is good. He blesses us with cheesecake — also with bathroom scales, fitting room mirrors, high school reunions, and mean doctors/dieticians/trainers.

With tons of green salad, too … topped with a slice of onion.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What foods do you consider unblessable?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: You Know the Way

According to my grandson, Betsy and I were buddies.

O Lord, my grandchildren believe I’ve been around since forever. One asked if I knew Betsy Ross. But You truly have been around since forever. OMG, thank You for offering Your expert help to all of us navigating our senior years. Not to mention, our forever!

What Kind of Store?

Have you noticed lately that businesses are teaming up to lower costs?

Image by RobynsWorld from Pixabay.

If you’ve driven interstates, you’ve probably taken breaks at truck stops that combine gas stations, convenience stores, and fast-food restaurants. Highly visible, their diversity serves tired travelers who want to find only one exit — and parking spot.

Other restaurants also have joined forces. For a while, I could sky my cholesterol at either a building’s fried chicken half or taco section.

Recently, though, that trend has waned. Perhaps, employees were exchanging secret recipes. Or maybe, desiring job security, they started to mug customers, dragging them to their side.

Businesses offering contrasting services seem to post success rates. Scorning the logic of bookstore-coffee shop and doctor’s office-pharmacy combinations, they often appear in small towns. I’ve patronized a computer-tractor sales store, which New Yorkers might find … unusual. Also, a car repair garage that sold used furniture. I’ve drunk lattes brewed at a hardware store.

Occasionally, even we small-town types blink at business combos. Hubby, wanting his coat cleaned, found himself staring at a store window’s sandy beach scene. The tanning salon also served as a dry cleaner’s drop-off.

Image by MustangJoe from Pixabay.

When my mother visited our small town, I had to explain why I’d driven her to the laundromat to buy a Greyhound ticket.

Having pastored in an isolated Oregon town (population 37), Mom shouldn’t have found that strange. The solitary business there served as combination restaurant, bar, gas station, post office and bank. My parents probably were the only missionaries their supporters knew who cashed checks at the Dry Gulch Saloon.

Our son and his family have followed a similar unique path, attending Sunday morning services where a boxing club, GED classes, pickleball courts and a girls’ Roller Derby team are housed. I never before had praised God in sight of a boxing ring, but Jesus, with His grassroots approach, might not have found that odd.

I wonder why certain combination stores haven’t yet appeared. Take, for example, a car repair garage-nail salon. Supplied with massage chairs and earphones to soften clanky garage noises, female customers would never ask, “Is my car ready yet?”

Instead, they’d pay for an engine rebuild. (Anything to avoid fixing supper.)

A combination electronics store-spa would please both genders. With men free to stare at screens and evaluate gadgets and women free to relax without doing either, store owners would make big profits.

Some parents suggest a combination birthday palace-psychological clinic, with discount therapy coupons for moms and dads.

However, we don’t want to see some business combinations, such as a tax accountant-bond service outfit. A fast-food-bait store. An airport with its own funeral home.

Saving money on overhead is great. I’m all about cooperation and mutual support.

Sometimes, though, wouldn’t going it alone be better?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What odd business combinations have you seen?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Glad You Like Them Tall, Lord

O Lord, thank You for zinnias, which I plant every year because they add flower fireworks to my yard; rarely have to be fed or watered; and finally, OMG, thank You for making them tall enough to hide my almost-September garden from the neighbors.