Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On

My Gi-normous Birthday party has come and gone. I think we had almost 30 people but no major embarrassing stories to tell. No mice or squirrels invited themselves. Word must have gotten out about our tiny little mothball odor problem because a lot of people gave me scented candles for my birthday. The girls got me a flamingo cake with “60” on the side. Or maybe it was “GO”. Not sure. But Sarah and Essie were excited for me.

We’re slowly bringing the Emergency Dump Boxes back into the house. Beaven and I have developed a routine that works really well for us: when we expect company we gather up all the books and magazines that paper the floor around our chairs and throw them into a box that we then hide in the storage building out of sight. It’s the fastest way to clean the living room and also the easiest way to bring the room back to normal afterward. This party required about 6 Emergency Dump Boxes. We really need to go through the boxes and throw some stuff away, I guess. I set out one of the boxes as “party favors” to give guests their choice of radical leftist magazines, books or movies. And a couple of people were excited to take some of the stuff home with them.

The best part of the whole day was the campfire sitting at the end. I think I’d rather do that than anything in the world. Especially with good friends. And I’ve managed to keep the fire going since Saturday just by adding a few logs during the day

One of my gifts this year was from a guy who didn’t even know it was my birthday and it certainly wasn’t his intention to make it a present—but that’s what it’s ended up as. It's a new Jimmy Buffet song. Don Oswald, one of the guys I met at the PDA camp in Mississippi told me about it. And now I can’t even remember why he did unless it was because the song is nominally about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. But it’s as much about living a relaxed life and staying in the moment: I heard this philosophy a year ago from my dear friend Nancy Gray. In the middle of a busy evening I asked her what time it was and she answered, in her best Buddhist-Presbyterian way, “Now.”

I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man
Floating down Canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says "now"

Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And if I had trouble the warranty said:
Breathe in, breathe out, move on

I think that will be my theme music for the next 40 years. Certainly it will come in handy when we go to Europe next week. Not only will we cross a half dozen time zones and throw our body clock out of whack, we do it the day before daylight savings time ends back here at home. THEN, the second week of our trip, Europe changes their own time. Whenever I try to figure it out my head starts spinning like the little girl in "The Exorcist" and I give up in despair. I'm just going to have to wing it and forget about keeping track of time.

In fact, Don Oswald later sent me the link to a website that sells watches that really do just say ‘now.’ I bought one. Hope it comes in time for the trip.

We leave on Saturday and I’ll be out of touch for a couple of weeks. If I find a way to stoke my internet addiction you might hear from me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Surely, I'll have things to say. In the meantime, breathe in, breathe out, move on.

Critters

You’ve heard it many times: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.” My own thinking is a little more mellow. I follow a general wisdom of two points: God knows everything we say and do. And God has a sense of humor.

In spite of this I went and planned a huge party for myself for my big 6-0 birthday. I invited a whole bunch of people—people from our church, for God’s sake. I didn’t need anything to spoil this party.

The first thing that happened was the washing machine went out, clanking and screeching to a halt last night.. Beaven thinks he knows how to fix it but just for insurance I’m scouting for a Laundromat. I think there’s a new Soapy Suds a few miles from here.

Then we found out we have mice. We’ve never spotted even a hint of mice when we sit around at night just the two of us. No--our mice only come out in front of company. Well, I shouldn’t make it sound like we have a regular parade of mice; it’s not that bad. Actually, only one other time have we seen a mouse but it was when two ladies from the church were visiting. The mouse ran from behind the book case into the bedroom but I know they saw it. We all saw it. It was enough embarrassment for a whole lifetime. A couple of days later our cat, Murphy, showed up with a dead mouse in his mouth and we congratulated him heartily. Extra rations for Murphy that night, our hero. We thought we had ourselves a good mouser. We were wrong.

This time the mouse ran through the kitchen, stopped in the middle of the room to look at Beaven for a minute like he was wondering what a human was doing in his house before he ran off into the living room and hide behind the bookcase. I had to wonder if there is some sort of mouse hotel behind our bookcase. We’re expecting around forty people this weekend, most of whom have never seen our house. Did I mention they’re all from our church? They already think we’re crazy for moving out to the God forsaken sticks and now here’s the proof.

I don’t want to mess around while Beaven researches the Internet, sends off for a few books to be delivered, then builds what he considers to be a better mousetrap using electrical wires and assorted computer chips. I need to get rid of this mouse pronto. I called the exterminator with the most appealing ad in the yellow pages—a company called “Killers With a Conscience.” Then I sat back to wait for them to call me back and come do their voodoo to get rid of my mouse.

While I was waiting, I walked into the bedroom to find a dead squirrel on the floor. A fully grown and very dead squirrel. In my bedroom. As you might imagine, this is the first time in my life I have ever seen a big old dead squirrel in my bedroom. So I screamed a little. Fortunately he wasn’t bleeding. (See Rule #2 in my September 12th entry, “Don’t Bleed on the Carpet.”) I don’t know how he died. I don’t want to know, either. It’s enough he ended up in my bedroom.

Clearly our cat is not doing his job. The only way a full-grown squirrel, especially a dead one could get into our house would have been through the cat door, in the jaws of our cat. Instead of killing the mice he was hired on to monitor, Murphy is now bringing toys into the house. Can snakes and possums be far behind?

In fact we had a possum once about 30 years ago when we lived in a different house. I washed him along with the laundry. Of course, it wasn’t on purpose. I really don’t care how clean the neighborhood wildlife is. Apparently, the poor possum wandered into our garage from the field across the street and climbed into the machine to take a quick nap on top of whatever laundry was in the machine. I must have thrown a bunch of clothes on top of him, closed the lid and started the machine. The next morning I went to move the laundry over to the dryer and opened the washing machine to find what I immediately perceived as either a very ugly cat or a huge rat. It only took me a few nanoseconds to slam the lid down shut and leave Beaven a note telling him how much I loved him and how much I wanted him to get rid of whatever was dead inside the washer. Then I went on to work. This is what men are for, isn’t it—to kill bugs, open jars, and remove dead things from the washing machine?

My brother was in the Navy at the time serving on a nuclear submarine. The family could send him messages via 50 word cables. The rules were very strict: no more than 50 words and no codes.

This was a time in my life when things were fairly dull. I felt sure he wouldn’t be excited by our youngest daughter’s potty training victories but that was really the most exciting thing going on. In spite of the way it seems, children don't usually offer constant drama with blood drenched races to the emergency room or projectile vomiting. Sometimes they just sit and play. Fifty words aren’t enough for real stories but too much for just “I love you. Stay safe.” What else are you going to say? So I sent him a cable that included the sentence, “I washed a possum in the washing machine yesterday.”

Somewhere deep underneath the Indian Ocean, my brother was summoned from his sleep to answer to the Captain of the ship. “Allard, you know you can’t receive coded messages!” the Captain bellowed. My brother read the cable, threw his head back and laughed, “Captain, that’s not code, sir, it’s just my sister. She probably did wash a possum in the washing machine.”

Our previous attempts to exterminate the house ourselves have all been miserable failures. We heard “things” crawling in our walls one particularly cold evening last winter. I suggested to Beaven that he toss a couple of mothballs into the attic to repel the critters. Our attic is hard to get around in so he just threw an entire box of mothballs by handfuls as far as he could throw them in every direction. Within a couple of hours the aroma of mothballs was so powerful you could smell it outside in the yard. Inside the house our eyes burned and we sorely regretted the move. Our entire house reeked of mothballs. It’s been a year now and the whole house still smells like your great grandmother’s house.

I am picturing my magnificent party this Saturday. I will have my best party fare and serving dishes, maybe even a nice floral arrangement; decorative napkins and tidy little candy dishes set out……..with mice scampering willy-nilly through the living room while the cat plays with assorted wildlife in the bedroom.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe I could put a tiny little sign on our washing machine: “Squirrels and mice: Free Swimming.” Oh, wait I forgot. The washing machine is broken. Maybe the guests will miss the drama completely. They will probably all be outside to escape the smell of mothballs. I just have to keep Beaven away from trying the latest critter repellant we saw in a store: fox urine.

Our Poetic God

Last week we went to Pearlington, had a great time, cooked a little barbeque, put up some drywall and came home. Before we start today, I'd like to announce the winner of the First Annual Texas versus South Carolina Barbecue Cook-Off. Of course, if you ask me, it was Texas. If you ask the eleven or so folks from the fine state of South Carolina, they will tell you they won with their wimpy little pork butt in a crock pot. I will let you decide for yourselves based merely on the fact that there was no genuine hickory smoked Texas brisket left over after the meal and South Carolina was still trying to foist their left-overs on anyone who would take it for the next two nights until they limped back home.

Certainly a Good Time was had by all. In between sharing the camp with a few old friends of mine from Dorchester Presbyterian in Summerville, South Carolina, and helping put the town back together, we feasted on lunch at the Missionary Baptist Church and discovered a great new restaurant in Bay St Louis on our last night.

Lunch at the church was a reason to go to Pearlington in itself. Who could resist cornbread whose recipe begins with the instruction “first you take a pound of butter…” ?

We were able to go straight to work the first morning. The camps were closed during the summer's intense heat so all the building inspectors had been able to catch up and the houses were just waiting for the next step. Ardyce and Chris went to the church to help with lunch and I went with the guys to hang drywall. We finished the hall and the last bedroom, then taped and mudded the rest. It was ready for the second coat by the end of our week. Beaven worked some on the electricity and plumbing. He fussed over the septic tank way more than I would have. We worked on one of the few brick houses in the town so after gutting the windows and walls, the house was pretty much intact. Certainly the plumbing gave us no concern. Or, at least, I didn’t think so. I can’t imagine a hurricane doing much damage to pipes that were buried underground. That tiny little philosophy didn’t keep Beaven from wondering aloud, and frequently ad nauseam, if there was a P trap underneath the shower drain and exactly where it was. He couldn’t see it and, therefore was in doubt that it ever existed. For my money, if people had been taking showers in this house for the last 20 years without a problem, just put the damned shower pan in and forget about it.

The family whose house we worked on was headed by three sisters. That’s all I knew for a couple of days until I found out their last name is Baudean. Angel, Laurie and Leah Baudean, with Laurie's nine-year old little Mary as our major inspiration. After two years she couldn’t believe they were finally going to get their house fixed. Finally, our dear friend Dallas Trammell told her that she was so sure they would get their house fixed that Mary should pick out the paint and a ceiling fan for her room. We left before the house was ready for it but there’s a can of pink paint and a pink ceiling fan sitting there waiting.

I got to see my third finished house. You can’t imagine the satisfaction in being able to stand in Shirley Thompson’s living room and see her kitchen table sitting where we had piled drywall a year ago. I got to see towels hanging on their holders in her bathroom underneath the cabinets I helped install. Someday I’ll be able to see Mary Baudean’s pink bedroom.

I’m sure the South Carolina team, in spite of our differences in cooking style, felt the same way. I was there when they installed the hardwood floor in Shirley’s back bedroom and I know how much care they put into it. We may not be professionals but what we lack in skills we make up for by earnestness.

It took me back to something Dallas Trammel said about a month ago when I called her to see how things were going. Dallas is the work site manager for PDA. She told me sometimes people ask her what happens if another storm comes and washes away all our hard work. She said she tells them: ”Nothing will ever destroy these homes again. They were re-built through God’s love and what is stronger than God’s love? Nothing.”

What a poet Dallas is. But the greater poet is God.

For the last couple of months I’ve been thinking about my birthday coming up. It will be my sixtieth. November 26. I calculated once that it’s about nine months after Valentines Day—a good example of God’s poetry. Since the day is so close to Thanksgiving and so many other people I know have birthdays around that time (the Valentines thing, I’m positive) I figured I’d have my party a month early so more people could come and the weather would be better. So I’ve got a big old party coming up in a couple of weeks but I still hadn’t figured out what I will do the actual day, the anniversary of my birth a month later.

I thought I might do something very physical to prove I’m still a healthy young chick--maybe a marathon or charity walk. I ran in the Turkey Trot one year for my birthday. Then I thought I might do something more contemplative, spend time alone with God, like a whole day spent in prayers of Thanksgiving for sixty years. I kept waiting for the perfect idea to come to me.

While I was at the camp last week I talked with the Volunteer Village Coordinator, Rich Cozzone. He mentioned that they were looking for people to serve as managers of the camps. They’ve been using Young Adult Volunteers for the last year, which I thought was a brilliant idea. The work isn’t really that hard or complicated. It really doesn’t pay much to speak of. But it’s perfect for a recent college graduate who doesn’t have a mortgage payment and is still figuring out their next move; spending a little time chilling out and getting some management experience while watching the Kingdom of Heaven at work. Exposure to the hurricane recovery is good for any young person.

But Rich says they’re having a hard time finding YAVs to manage the camps now. I have a feeling the recovery has lost its appeal for them. Time has moved on for everyone except the people still living in FEMA trailers. So it’s going to take some retired old geezer with nothing better to do with her time, somebody like me. I knew Beaven would encourage me but would stop short of both of us going. He’s convinced our dogs and cat would starve to death without us and he may be right. We can’t both be gone.

I talked it over with Beaven and he encouraged me to apply. I e-mailed in an application, alerted my references and went to the grocery store. I had a call on my answering machine waiting for me when I got back from the store.

Now I know how I will spend my birthday this year. It looks like I’ll spend November 26th driving myself to the Gulf Coast to one of the PDA camps to start work as a Village Manager. I don’t know which camp yet but I know it will be located somewhere within the Kingdom of God. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the beginning of the last third of my life. I have a feeling it will be the best third.

Talent

I’m writing this on Saturday morning. We leave tomorrow morning for a week in Mississippi and I won’t be able to post from there. I tell myself that there’s someone out there who would actually notice a Wednesday without words of wit and wisdom from me. But I do have a few so I’ll leave them for my daughter to post on our regular day. That’s a kind of risky prospect itself because there’s no telling what she might add or delete just to make up for all the times I wouldn’t buy her gum at the grocery store.

After my posting of last week about the state fair and what an expert I am in the food category I was validated when we went on Thursday. I had left Beaven and Elizabeth to look at cars and told them I would meet them in the food building. I’m sure it has a better name now and anyone who understands what I mean when I say “the Electric building” is showing their age. I am not THAT old but I do remember when the fair had an entire building devoted to electrical appliances. I guess in 1936 when it was built, electricity was still a novelty but even while I was growing up in the 50’s it was still called that.

Anyway, there I sat. And I must have reeked of wisdom. I must have radiated like I possess all the knowledge in the world because a man walked up to me and asked me where he could buy onion strings. That could have been because I was eating some (as well as a bit of Baklava and a coke) but I like to think I just looked like I knew what I was doing. And, once again, I knew that I knew exactly how to tell him to find onion strings: “Go to Big Tex and stand in front of the Fletchers Corny Dog stand facing Big Tex. The onion strings will be about 50 feet to your right.”

I tell you, I’m good at this. I may have found my niche. You put me around food and I appear as the accomplished gourmet of all things fried that I am. I look like I know what I'm doing because I do. It’s a shame they don’t pay people for this talent. It reminds me of the way native Brits will stop Beaven in London and ask him how to get somewhere and which tube station they should use. This has happened more than once. And here’s the amazing thing: he knows how to direct them to where they want to go. It’s all that time he spends back home in East Texas studying the maps. Afterwards, we wonder if they notice his Texas accent when he’s talking to them. But they never say. And they always walk off in the direction he tells them to so they must trust his directions.

We’re just a couple of old geeks who possess a niche of mundane talents that are totally useless in any economic sense.

Anyway, back to our trip- we’ll be going back to Pearlington, Mississippi for another week of rebuilding houses blown away by Hurricane Katrina. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends from Dorchester Presbyterian in Summerville, South Carolina. I shared the camp with them in February during one of my solo trips. This is the church that includes Diane Lodge, the chick I worked with installing toilets at Shirley Thompson’s house. We made the perfect partners. Diane could lift a toilet by herself and once I sat on the toilet and set the wax ring using nothing more than sheer weight, we knew Shirley’s toilet was there forever. It was another moment when a hidden talent of mine, having a big butt, was put to good use. I think it was Fredrick Buechner who said something like where the world’s need and my greatest talent meet, there lies my ministry. I’m just loaded with ministry.

I stayed in touched with a couple of people from the congregation and we decided to arrange to work the same week this fall. One of the guys from their church had the nerve to challenge our team from Texas to a Barbeque Cook-Off. Jason did this without knowing our church owns a professional size smoker and harbors our own "smokemeister." I'm not sure the average Presbyterian church takes their BBQ this seriously but we have matched our congregation's talents to our community's needs. We call this our "hickory smoke ministry." Periodically we will roll the smoker out and have a church picnic on the grounds for all of Garland, Texas to see. I'm sure Jesus would approved whole-heartedly.

I’ll be back next week with stories.

Knowing the Fair

I have a horrible sense of direction. This Achilles heel has been documented by a series of very expensive tests. The day I went in for the evaluation of the tests I got lost trying to leave the office. So I went back to the test evaluator and asked what gives with my poor sense of direction. She told me the tests showed that I have poor “design memory.” Whatever.

That’s why I was so excited when someone asked me for directions last year at the State Fair and I knew that I knew.

I was standing in front of the Hall of State watching the Syncopated tap dancers and eating my Belgian Waffle and drinking my coffee. I’m sure I had a look of confidence and assuredness on my face. That must have been what drew the woman to ask me, “Pardon me, do you know much about the Fair?” Maybe it was the dusting of powdered sugar on my shirt front or the bits of whipped cream at the edges of my mouth that told the woman I “knew the Fair.”

Do I know the Fair? My people have been coming to the fair since the Centennial of 1936. Beaven and I both have a solid annual relationship with this event. We have a brick on the pavement with our name on it. He grew up in the surrounding neighborhood and knew where to climb over the fence to sneak into the fair without paying. It was the first place my parents let me loose without an adult. When Beaven worked at the TV station we usually had parking and entrance passes for more than one visit a year. My Daddy and I took my kids before they could walk. I took my grandkids before they could walk. I know the fair.

The lady wanted to know where to buy a corny dog. I started explaining how there are probably eight places to buy a corny dog and each location has its own merit, then realized this fine lady didn’t need the details, she needed to know the best of all eight places, the place I buy my own corny dogs. I pointed up to Big Tex and told her to go to Big Tex and when she was standing in front of him her back would be to the best place on the grounds to buy a corny dog.

It’s not just the kind of food or the place you buy it that’s magical; it’s also the technique, the way you eat it. Fair Food should be eaten with enthusiasm. Neatness counts against you. Neatness says you were able to take your mind off what Big Tex is saying long enough to pay attention to the little drip that fell from the corner of your mouth onto your shirt. It is my firm belief that Fair Food inoculates you from most of the common diseases the winter will bring. Once you get a good layer of root beer, mustard and catsup on your hands as a base coat; then add fluffs of cotton candy and snow cone juice plus a tufts of sheep wool and chicken feathers then top it all off with assorted sneezes, coughs and droolings from the kid in line ahead of you, then you’ve just taken in most of the germs you will be exposed to in the coming school year; maybe even your lifetime. And you know that at some point during the day you will lick your fingers but because it’s the Fair, God gives these germs a special dispensation and they don’t make you sick. Trust me on this one. My kids were never sick.


People overlook the quality of the food at the fair. It’s the equivalent cost of a really fine restaurant and, in it’s own way, is haute cuisine. I like to follow a set route each year and move with a vengeance that only Sherman marching across Georgia could match: We’ll start at the pizza stand by the parking lot and aim for the Museum of Natural History, eating our way across the Fair. I don’t usually stop until I’m about to throw up.I know the fair.

I used to go to the Natural History museum and visit the alligator but they got rid of him when he broke. This was my favorite part of the fair after the food and I’ve mourned his passing every year since. I dream that one day I’ll go to the museum and he’ll be there, newly resurrected. The alligator was in a dark room and had benches to sit on with a looped tape recording of nature sounds. Of all the chirps and tweets on that recording there was one certain bird whose call was magic to me. It had a way of making me feel safe and secure. My whole day, midway included, was put into a better perspective. The call of the Chuck Will’s Widow can make me feel like I’m sitting around the campfire after a day’s hiking. I can become totally at one with God’s creative genius. It’s that single note of purity and innocence in the midst of chaos and sham. That bird’s call can return me to the calm of the womb. Since very few people ever visited the alligator I could lie down on the bench in the dark and listen to the soothing nature sounds as long as I wanted. It made for a small spot of peace and quiet in the midst of the heat and noise.

I remember one year particularly, when the girls were in middle school. Middle school is a time when they liked to think they didn’t have parents; that they were dropped here from above or that they were adopted; that I wasn’t their real mother, Oprah was. My only role was to drive them to the fair and then disappear. I was thus gloriously alone that year and could do and eat whatever I pleased. I’m not sure of the exact details but I think it was probably my usual routine of a Belgian waffle with coffee, a corny dog and coke, a Rueben sandwich with extra sauerkraut and a root beer, a couple of tamales, cotton candy, nutty bar and Jack’s French fries. That took me about an hour and I felt the familiar combination of nausea and sleepy at the same time. I stopped at a park bench in the shade on the route to the alligator and lay down for a nap. What woke me was the sound of my daughter’s voice: “Is that Mom? Oh God, that’s so pathetic. Pretend we don’t know her.”