OMG, When Hubby and I find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, please help us always find the beauty.
OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Not Easy Street
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Tag Archives: Indiana
Night Fright
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?
An Ordinary Drive
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.
I’m Glad I’m Not in Florida
Maybe you think I, from chilly Indiana, have finally flipped?
Perhaps I can persuade you to see things my way.
First, pleasant weather conditions during winter confuse us Hoosiers worse than a time change. Is it January or June? Has someone sneaked six months past us?
Lovely weather also demands we go outdoors. If I’d been raised in Florida, my mother would never have let me inside: “Sunshine’s good for you!”
If I were a Floridian, I’d have to do (gulp) yard work. I much prefer curling up each winter with my sherpa throw to read or watch basketball.
In Florida, forget about warm fuzzies. Or the waistline-camouflage layers I love.
Besides, we Midwesterners enjoy griping about weather. Could we survive without our favorite pastime?
If Indiana’s environment resembled Florida’s, our state would be flooded with touristy relatives. Hoosier parents do bribe grown children to come home for Christmas. Soon, though, bored offspring return to nests elsewhere. As a result, parents truly own their homes and cars.
Speaking of cars, no one in the Midwest keeps vehicles clean during winter as expected in Florida.
Besides, without wintry mix, we and our cars would miss the joy of doing figure eights on the interstate. That’s the only wild life we experience after New Year’s.
Regarding Florida’s wildlife: boo for bugs the size of Volkswagens! While winter camping might prove more fun there, alligator warning signs made me rethink my antipathy toward raccoons. They might steal a week’s groceries, but raccoons don’t abscond with several limbs as well.
Becoming a snowbird requires the packing and moving I despise. Besides, snowbirds inhabit rows and rows of mobile homes so close dwellers know their neighbors are eating Popeyes’ fried chicken for the third time this week.
Finally, wouldn’t Florida’s continuous green grow monotonous? The never-changing, brilliant blue of sea and sky?
Sure, we Hoosiers endure dreary months. But nothing will excite us like the first baby leaves that invade Old Man Winter’s domain. Sunny daffodils will send us into spring ecstasy.
Poor Floridians know nothing of these extreme Hoosier joys. Pity them.
And move closer to the fire.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Where would you like to spend the winter?
Bambi, You Blew It
As a child, did you watch the Walt Disney film, “Bambi”?
I didn’t, but my second grade class read the adorable fawn’s story. I hoped a friendly deer like Bambi would let me ride on his back. However, sightings during the 1960s in Indiana, even at my family’s woodland cabin, were rare.
Years later, when deer overpopulation resulted in state park hunts, I was appalled. How could they shoot Bambi?
A herd in Oregon’s Willowa-Whitman National Forest helped me realize why. Our children opened car windows to pet them. Those hijackers tried to poke their heads inside. If Hubby hadn’t closed the windows, we’d have lost both kids and upholstery.
Also, my dad’s truck and a deer collided. With big-time damage to the animals, as well as vehicles, you’d think they’d look both ways.
Riding our tandem bike, Hubby and I have managed to spot deer before they get too close and personal — except for one incident, when a fawn ran alongside our bike for 100 yards.
Lovely creature, with trusting eyes.
He almost reconverted me — until we and our garden moved near town’s edge. Groups hang around our nearby church. Holy instincts? No. Those thieves never learned the Ten Commandments.
I imagine their eating-out conversations:
My weirdness as well as deer repellent haven’t saved our green beans. One deer apparently stuck its head in a tomato cage. Hubby and I, puzzled at the cage’s disappearance, searched without success. A neighbor brought it to us, mangled almost beyond recognition.
Have the deer learned their lesson?
In a word, no.
The Internet bristles with suggestions of how to get rid of them: grow marigolds, garlic, lavender and mint, or hang soap, old CDs and pie pans nearby. Avoiding chemicals, gardeners spray concoctions of egg, liquid dish soap, garlic and/or hot sauce. Engineering types suggest motion-activated flashing lights or ultrasonic deer repellers. Others build ten-foot fences.
I could add a watchtower. And order a bazooka from Amazon Prime.
Bambi, you blew it.
This “server” is about to get serious.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Is Bambi still your BFF? Why or why not?
Dad Was Different
“Happy Father’s Day, Dad. It’s Rachael.” Holding the phone, I’d picture his ornery grin.
“Rachael who?”
“Your daughter, Rachael. Your own flesh and blood,” I’d retort, and the fight was on.
If we’d been polite, each would have suspected the other was up to no good.
A pastor for nearly six decades, Dad radiated his own style. Even his conversion sprouted in atypical soil.
A Depression child, he scavenged Louisiana pinewoods to supplement his meager diet. Dad hid outside churches where African-American worshippers sang joyous music.
Their lives were even harder than his. How could they celebrate Jesus? Dad couldn’t stay away.
Eventually, he graduated from a Bible institute, where he’d met my mother. They married and worked at a Navajo mission in New Mexico. Throughout decades, they planted/pastored small, independent churches in Mexico, Indiana and Oregon. Sometimes they lived in for-real parsonages. Sometimes in churches’ back rooms, a grass hut, and a mountainside, snow-covered log shack.
Even if churches paid him — a rarity — Dad worked construction to support five children. We counted off in the station wagon to ensure nobody was left asleep on a pew. I was number two.
Ahead of trends, Dad shrugged off ties and other unnecessary protocol. Having taught himself to play guitar, he led singing with his three-blocks-away bass voice.
Dad ministered as much outside church walls as inside. He drank coffee with troubled diners at Denny’s and introduced them to Jesus. He made Cracker Barrel servers giggle and hugged lonely Hispanic and Chinese restaurant owners, far from home. When someone was in need, he opened his thin wallet.
Once, in Oregon, he picked up movie-mad English hitchhikers who asked if Indians were on the warpath. Dad promptly arranged with local ranchers to stage a cowboy-Indian fight, complete with flaming arrows.
Even more dangerous: Dad used a fishing pole to cast a jelly doughnut among his church members’ weight-loss group.
I said, “In Heaven, you’ll be perfect. What will you do then?”
He looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know.”
At 91, Dad did go to Heaven. His family — and his guardian angel — all stopped chewing our nails.
But we miss him. So much.
Someday, I’ll stand at Heaven’s entrance, too. Jesus will know my name and give me a huge hug.
Dad? He’ll wiggle his mustache and say, “Rachael who?”
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How was your father unique?
Help for Gardening Addicts
Gardening addicts. Never leave them alone at a garden center or nursery, where obliging, devious personnel help them take out a second mortgage to buy the last bougainvillea. This, though the tropical lovelies prefer Argentina over Indiana.
Younger junkies fall victim to buying binges after watching HGTV. However, gardening addiction does its worst damage in women of a certain age.
They should know better than to trust this mad urge to nurture. Most spent decades caring for little humans. They’ve repressed memories of endless feedings — and the waterings with which baby sprouts responded. These women dealt daily with mountains of fertilizer. Eventually wising up, they limited the number of nurturees they’d cultivate.
However, spring gardening regenerates the madness. While spouses are playing golf, the women load up with 35 flats of annuals, 37 bags of potting soil and barrels of pansies, adding just one more hanging basket here. Another there. How can they ignore wilted tomato seedlings? With their TLC, the weaklings will flourish.
Addicts.
With symptoms listed below, I hope to alert family and friends of this malady.
Signs of Gardening Addiction
Early Level
- Switching from a regular cart to one the size of a brontosaurus.
- Bragging to strangers about how many green beans she grew last year.
- Fibbing about extra trips to garden centers.
- Claiming kids/grandkids are responsible for dirt in the car.
Second Level
- Bragging to strangers about how many zucchinis they forced on friends last year.
- Buying seeds by the pound on the Internet.
- Claiming proud ownership of 234 flowerpots stacked in the garage.
- Delighting in the $1,000 tiller her husband gave her for their anniversary.
Third Level
- Hijacking a brontosaurus cart at gunpoint.
- Shoplifting bags of manure.
- Buying seeds by the barrel.
- Claiming proud ownership of 9,781 flowerpots stacked in the garage.
- Organizing neighborhood kids for a dandelion-blowing party at a rival’s gardens.
Final Level
- Buying an authentic Sweet Juliet Rose. The original plant sold for $15.8 million.
I am proud to inform readers, as well as my spouse, that today, I didn’t brag to a single stranger about green beans or zucchini. I bypassed needy tomato seedlings. I kept my regular cart and made a single purchase.
“Only one?” Hubby blinks in disbelief.
“Only one,” I assure him.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a gardening addict?
Spring Break R&R?
You’ve just returned from spring break. True respite, right?
For some college students, the answer’s a resounding “Yes!” Unlimited sleep where no drum fests are held at 2 a.m. Mom’s cooking. Free laundry.
Pure bliss.
For one day.
Until Dad gets possessive about car keys. Until Mom wants help cleaning the garage. Until both demand, “Where were you last night?”
However, most students who escape to Daytona remember zero. They return with seasick stomachs and third-degree sunburns to face 23 books they should have read during spring break.
Spring break doesn’t live up to some employees’ expectations, either. If a worker forgets to schedule days off, he’d better be prepared to skip lunch several days. All the other employees remembered.
No mother believes spring break will act like spring break, with sunny days in which kids power-wash the house. Instead, she accurately anticipates weather-induced cabin fever, with nonstop video games and violent sibling behavior that surpasses them all.
If parents head for Florida, they, like college kids, will remember spring break in a blur — but for different reasons. A 16-hour car trip resembles a rolling animal cage, especially if Mom and Dad have condemned teens to family togetherness, a fate worse than death.
Hotel rooms resemble animal cages sans wheels. Children don’t sleep, except with Mom and Dad, their sharp, little knees implanted in parental backs. Spring break trips comprise the most expensive birth control method known to humankind.
Also, if we read resort ads’ tiny print, we discover disclaimers about prices. About “luxury suites” with roaches the size of snapping turtles.
Staying with Aunt Maudie and Uncle Snerd may reduce costs, but added therapy fees may continue for years (for hosts, as well). Do spring breaks not only break the bank, but break us all?
Rumors persist, though, that some spring breaks meet expectations, with endless sunshine, three-person lines at Disney World, and hang gliding without encountering a single power line. Tanned bodies resemble those of the Kardashian clan.
Because we’ve seen it on TV. And on the Internet …
Give me a break.*
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your plan for spring break?
*This blog was written by a grouch who has stuck it out in Indiana all winter. If snow shows up in April, she will ditch cynicism and go on spring break anyway.
Of Crocuses, Tourneys and Hope
“A single crocus blossom ought to be enough to convince our heart that springtime, no matter how predictable, is somehow a gift …” —David Steindl-Rast
Have you, too, been watching your crocus bed like basketball bracketology? As if tiny blossoms guarantee your team achieves NCAA basketball glory?
While not everyone pairs crocuses and basketball, this Hoosier always will.
Blizzards may morph the combination into a reluctant threesome. Benedictine monk Steindl-Rast’s quote above resonates with me. Yet, Indiana inhabitants understand our March is as fickle as a referee’s calls.
Still, when crocuses, tough little optimists, push through snow, I want to turn somersaults. Although I prefer not to spend spring in a body cast.
Perhaps ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Minoans also had to resist somersault temptation, as they loved crocuses. The Romans gave us their name, derived from the Latin adjective “crocatus,” meaning “saffron yellow.” Spice derived from an autumn crocus was used extensively by ancient chefs. Fashionistas used saffron to color fabrics and hairdos. Others swore it cured Grandpa Kitanetos’ rheumatism, Grandma Isis’ headaches and even Uncle Flavius’ habit of hitting the wineskins too often.
Not surprisingly, the plant appeared in early civilizations’ mythology. Somebody was always falling in love with somebody else, rousing a god’s jealousy. In retribution, remorse or pity — or all three — deities, nymphs or humans were turned into crocuses.
In contrast, God, in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, celebrated the flower with an outrageous simile: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus” (Isaiah 35:1 NIV).
The Judean desert? I’ve been there. Even cacti run screaming from that burning wilderness.
At that time, God wasn’t dealing with depressed sports fans whose team blew it. He was speaking to war refugees who thought God had given up on them. Instead, He promised Jesus would come, bringing forgiveness and healing that would make miserable lives blossom like the crocus.
Today, as snow falls, the crocuses and I don’t give up hope. Tiny buds are reaching for the heavens, proclaiming Jesus’ Resurrection never quits.
Because of Him, we can always have hope.
Even if our team loses in the first round.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What do crocuses say to you?
OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: March Fool!
O Lord, my friends in California suffer from power outages, shoveling never-before snowdrifts.
Meanwhile, we in Indiana experience April-like thunderstorms and warm temperatures, fooling naive lilacs, daffodils and irises. OMG, perhaps Your weather is trying tell us we’re not in charge?
