Tag Archives: Family

Classic Post: An Office Shoveler Ponders the Meaning of Cleaning

Image by Richard Duijnstee from Pixabay.

This post first appeared on February 10, 2021.

I shoveled out my office last November.

A delayed optometric appointment had prevented me from seeing its squalor. After all, having bumped a fellow “pedestrian,” I realized I’d apologized to a mailbox.

I also stumbled through my chaotic office to reach the printer.

What finally inspired a cleaning turnabout? I share the printer with my husband.

Rummaging through rubble, I saw carpet. It’s blue — who would have known? I even (drumroll) cleared my desk.

Hubby thought he’d entered the wrong house. Then he swore I was the wrong woman. After checking birthmarks and dental records, though, he acknowledged I was his wife, not a lookalike alien. Even if I’d cleaned my office.

“Clean,” though, is a relative term. Some neatniks scrub their garage floors. Their streets.

I speak a different language. “Clean” means piles have been boxed and lined up along walls. It also implies bookshelves no longer threaten to collapse, as (sniff!) I gave books to Goodwill. Three of them.

I follow a never-fail formula for dealing with UFOs — Unidentified Funky Objects. If it doesn’t erupt, tick or grow tentacles, I toss it into a closet or drawer.

It doesn’t always look this bad. Sometimes, it looks worse.

Mission accomplished last November.

Then came Christmas.

Bushels of Christmas junk migrated to my office. With the advent of energetic grandsons, our antique clock fled there for protection. So did the crystal clock my husband gave me. Custom-thrown pottery also took refuge.

Piles of trash, attracted as if magnetized, have made themselves at home.

Now, trying to force the office door open, I confront the unthinkable: I should clean again.

Twice within four months?

Let’s just buy another printer. And put it in Hubby’s office.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your definition of “clean”?

Joy to the World? At Easter?

Leave a reply

Who needed baskets? Our kids thought “Easter shoes” were normal.

Does your family celebrate Easter in traditional ways?

My siblings and I hid Easter eggs so well, truants were located weeks later by their potent odor. We awoke to yummy treats … in our polished shoes. Years before, Mom had possessed only pennies to spend on Easter. Having poured out frustrations in prayer — Mom talked to Jesus about everything — she recalled reading about Dutch children receiving Christmas candy in their shoes and nested jelly beans in ours.

My father, a pastor, celebrated Easter wholeheartedly, his bass voice leading “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” “He Arose” and … “Joy to the World.”

I thought everyone sang that hymn at Easter. As a teen, though, I realized other churchgoers sang it only at Christmas. I kept our odd custom a deep, dark secret, hoping no Easter visitors knew me.

Fast-forward 20 years. My children and I dyed eggs, their clothes and mine. One helpful toddler knew egg-zackly what to do with eggs.

Crack them.

Our family could afford Easter baskets. Repeating the story of their grandma’s faith, though, I filled my kids’ shoes with grass, chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.

My grandchildren still receive Easter treats in their shoes and hear of their great-grandmother’s prayer. They will dye Easter eggs — and their clothes. Our congregation will sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and “He Arose.”

Joy to the World”? Probably not.

I’ll save that hymn for a visit to our parents’ graves. I didn’t want them to die. They weren’t crazy about the idea, either. But because Jesus came alive again, they will too. Someday, we’ll all be together with Him.

Joy to the world! To all who believe in Jesus’ Resurrection.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you celebrate Easter?

Night Fright

Leave a reply

People often say they conceive their best thoughts at night.

I’m missing this microchip. My mother often told me that even as an infant, I wasn’t a positive thinker during the wee hours. When I grew old enough to read, I added hundreds of new items to my nocturnal Scary List. Take, for example, the 1960s obsession with outer space. If I read a story in Look magazine about flying saucers above a wheat field near Boring, Nebraska, I knew the little green guys would like Indiana sweet corn better. I resolved to eliminate bedtime in order to protect my state from alien invasion.

NASA spent millions to supply me with worry material — until monsters took over the task: Frankenstein, Wolf Man and TV vampires. When tired Mom nixed movie and television viewing, the local paper kept me informed. I read about a hairy, Bigfoot-like creature that cried like a baby and haunted Detroit. Nowadays, sports writers would deduce it was a Detroit Lions lineman, lamenting their playoffs loss. But then, I never knew whether the unearthly wails from the next bedroom came from my baby brother or the monster.

Thankfully, I outgrew all that. The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West no longer scares me.

At least, not much.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do some childhood boogeymen still haunt you at night?

Leap Year: Yay or Nay?

Leave a reply

Does Leap Year make sense to you?

“Leap Day” (February 29) sounds suspiciously like “spring forward” and “fall back,” two of my least favorite “holidays.” Why trust people who mess with calendars any more than people who mess with clocks?

It’s not enough that we spring and fall. Now we are expected to leap? The whole scenario sounds suspiciously like exercise. I don’t trust that, either.

Scientists, however, declare we humans don’t have to sweat. Our planet should jog around the sun in 365 days, but slowpoke Earth requires 365¼ days. People who lie awake at night worrying about that — and whether every apple sticker posts the correct bar code, and whether Number 1372 or Number 1373 inspected their jeans, or how many angels dance on the head of a pin — insist Leap Year is a necessary corrective measure.

Thinking positive, though, who hasn’t wished for an extra 24 hours?

To catch up on sleep missed the other three years.
To discover that aliens do indeed exist — growing in the refrigerator.
To read books piled on our nightstands.
To meet strangers across the street who have lived there only 12 years.

Springing forward and falling back aside, messing with the calendar might not prove so bad, after all. Maybe we should take some leaps this Leap Year?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What leap would you take?

An Ordinary Drive

Leave a reply

My husband and I often drive to Ohio to care for his elderly father.

Not like traveling along California’s coastline, with its infinite, sparkling waves. Not like coaxing our car up Appalachian heights, where scary curves rival breathless beauty.

A between-snows drive on Midwestern highways doesn’t raise pulse rates — unless a semi crosses the line.

Or if we focus on a sunrise. Pastel hues stripe the gray horizon, then amid sherbet-colored clouds, the butter-cake sun shines on dark chocolate fields —

Sorry. I’m driving under the influence of a post-Christmas diet. But the delicious scene raises my pulse rate. Maybe a bakery lurks nearby?

Hubby points. “The sun’s position has changed considerably since the fall equinox.” As he continues enthusiastic commentary on light angles, his pulse rate probably rises to new heights.

Mine doesn’t. Until he mentions ancient tribes who built mounds in the Anderson, Indiana, area. They marked seasons by studying scenes like this.

That’s how those Native Americans survived without phones?

My fascination with human behavior — Hubby calls it nosiness — quickly spreads to houses we pass.

I indicate a typical Indiana farmhouse. “Do they like strawberry or grape PBJ? Whatever, I’ll bet it’s homemade.”

Hubby’s look silences my mouth, but not my mind.

Yards that sport tired-looking Santas warm my heart. Someone’s farther behind than I. Others boast shining windows and perfectly sculpted bushes. Even their snowdrifts appear symmetrical. How do people live that way?

Pristine Amish homes grab me, though, with their simplicity and clotheslines full of black shirts and dresses dancing wildly in winter wind.

Slowing for buggies lets us enjoy trotting horses and large families snuggled like birds in a nest. However, rumspringa Amish teens skating down the middle of the highway don’t generate warm fuzzies.

Later, after a day of hugs, time with Dad and conversations with health care workers, we say bittersweet goodbyes. Hubby and I could drive the route home in our sleep, but watch each other closely so we don’t.

Against the sunset’s fiery rose, orange and purples, steeples along the way reach for Heaven. My thoughts do too.

Glory to God in the highest.

One more extraordinary ordinary drive.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Describe your latest amazing, everyday drive.

Classic Post: The Love Trials

2 Replies

This post first appeared on February 10, 2016.

Even successful speed dating requires major time investment to identify Mr. or Ms. Right. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those longing for true love could detect it within one day?

Ta-da! My revolutionary concept, Love Trials, cuts to the chase. This approach will benefit all humankind, plus make me a few million dollars. Each participating couple will know whether they have found their soulmates after five short sessions in which they:

Trial #1: Pack a suitcase. The girl and guy are given one small bag. Not one each — one. She does her best, but it only holds a weekend’s supply of lipsticks. And is he really going to wear that?

Trial #2: Visit a buffet with one plate. When a woman’s salad vies for space with the guy’s giant nachos topped with five pounds of bacon, she may reconsider. His passion may cool when she doesn’t want his food touching hers.

Trial #3: Dig a car out of a snowdrift. Even without debate as to who should have known about road conditions, speed and directions, this trial proves invaluable in unmasking polite claims of gender equality. She dubs him the stronger; therefore, he should push. He thumbs his nose at her so-called dedication to equal rights and claims superior judgment in rocking and rolling out of the predicament.

Trial #4: Hang wallpaper. Participants ask themselves: Do they really want to pledge their lives to someone who can’t distinguish a rectangle from a trapezoid?

This is the way they imagined remodeling together. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.

Trial #5: Buy each other a $10 gift. She purchases an extra-long towel and embroiders his baby-in-the-bath picture on it (winning his mother over). He buys her a heavy-duty ice scraper.

Have the starry-eyed lovers fled the scene? If not, do they still speak? (Grunts count. So do weepy “how could you!”s.)

If so, light up a huge neon Congratulations! sign. Release balloons and confetti!

In the Love Trials, if he and she have not escaped to Mars and Venus, a relationship with a real, live human being has begun. Break out the chocolates, flowers, music and romance! This couple can celebrate true love until the next great Love Trial:

Planning a wedding.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What tried-and-true Love Trial would you suggest?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: It Could Be Worse

Leave a reply

Dear Lord, while other grandparents inherit grand-dogs and grand-cats, it’s taken some time for me to adjust to grand-rats. But You have taught me to share our grandsons’ pleasure in petting and even holding the little creatures.

After all, OMG, they could have chosen snakes and tarantulas.

Images l-r by Anktrish Kamar & Steve Buissinne from Pixabay.

Little Joys

Leave a reply

Everyone loves huge joys, the take-my-breath-away, can-this-be-me, yippee-yahoo-yaaaay! joys. Some people even become speechless. (A lover of words and hyphens, I’m not one of those.)

Many, though, experience bits of gladness that barely raise adrenaline levels, yet light blahness like a candle’s flame. For example:

Being the very first to stick a spoon into a jar of peanut butter.

Discovering an in-law’s dog chewed your shoes already destined for the trash.

Putting away groceries without remembering what you forgot.

Buying avocados at exactly the right stage of ripeness.

Almost spilling something purple on a friend’s white carpet but recovering in time.

Seeing someone else has reloaded toilet paper. She may have been a burglar, but wouldn’t you like to shake her hand?

Baking brownies with crispy edges and gooey middles — though someone will inform you they are too crispy. Or too gooey. Which doubles the little joy, as you can eat them all yourself.

Discovering you really did leave your phone at home, rather than at O’Hare.

Maybe that last qualifies as a big joy, an end-zone-dance celebration. But other small joys make a difference:

That someone held the door open for you when your arms were full. And didn’t let go too soon.

That your car, even more hostile toward winter than you, started at first try.

That a human hug is something computers will never replace.

That rain doesn’t have to be shoveled.

That no one cares whether pink or blue baby sleepers are politically correct. At least, not in Indiana.

That you finished a book delightful as a hot fudge sundae — and no calories!

“It doesn’t take much to make you happy,” critics might say.

As if everyday happinesses don’t matter. As if little joys collected throughout a lifetime don’t add up to something substantial.

On the contrary, they shine in a person’s face, walk and talk. In memories of them long after they pass on.

That is no small thing.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What little joys brighten your days?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: No Gripes Here, Lord

Leave a reply

Jesus, You know I often struggle to assume an attitude of gratitude. But on this chilly, damp Monday, with one flush, I remembered my papaw’s outhouse.

Image by Dieter Scharnagl from Pixabay.

OMG, for cleaning two-and-a-half indoor baths, I am THANKFUL.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.

Help Is Not a Four-Letter Word

2 Replies

Do you like to ask for help? Me, neither.

Even as a toddler, I yanked my hand from my mother’s and ran into a street in downtown Indianapolis. Terrified by screeches and honks, though, I clung to her at the next crossing.

Maybe I learned I wasn’t ready to take charge of my life? Nope. Instead, I believed Mommy needed help with hers. She needed me to iron while she was busy with my baby sister. That I ironed my left hand (I still bear the scar) should have made me question my choices.

It did. I still avoid ironing whenever possible.

But cautions about so-called independence learned during childhood vanished during my teens. My friends and I knew everything. Parents resembled forerunners of ATMs, except they gave advice along with money.

I should have wondered why The Beatles, the 1960s epitome of youth and success, sang lines about needing help and growing older. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were only 25 and 23 when they penned “Help” and McCartney wrote “Yesterday.”

But I didn’t until I married and had our first baby. Where was the faucet to shut off drool, puke and pee? I finally admitted that perhaps … I needed guidance.

Image by Natalia Lavrinenko from Pixabay.

Did I ask my parents or in-laws? No. Instead, I consulted books.

Though I did learn from several good ones, none provided critical answers I needed.

Most of the books then and today tell us to look within. That we know all the answers.

Instead, shouldn’t we open the Book that tells us to look up? To realize Someone much bigger and smarter stands waiting to help us?

We Americans pretend every day is Independence Day — even in January. However, 2024 stretches before us, its kamikaze traffic already whizzing by. Can we really navigate it alone?

Or, when we cross unknown streets, should we reach for the Helping Hand always ready to guide us?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Where does your help come from?