Around here, that means winter has arrived. That means we’re in for 6 months of cold and gray. 
First, a really yummy steak at Ruby Tuesday’s. Then Christmas tree shopping, thanks to our bank’s rewards program. Then Starbucks for some java. Next stop, the movies.
Maybe it won’t reach all the way to Heaven, but surely they must have been thinking something along these lines . . . .
‘Space Elevator’ Would Take Humans Into Orbit
Don’t try this at home. The final step in getting the tree off the phone line sent a pretty big chunk of wood about 20 feet in the air.
The fallen tree’s twin still being pushed around by some pretty stiff wind.
If Hurricane Ike is capable of pushing trees over like toothpicks all the way up here in northern Ohio, then what must it have been like in Galveston?
Tonight, my dad sang stanzas 5 and 6 of the “Nonsense Song” to me. I found a copy over at the Wisconsin Humanities Council and have posted them here for your funny bone’s pleasure:
Nonsense Song
It was midnight on the ocean;
Not a street car was in sight.
The sun was shining brightly,
And it rained all day that night.‘Twas a summer’s night in winter
And the rain was snowing fast.
A barefoot boy with shoes on
Stood sitting on the grass.The rain was pouring down,
The moon was shining bright,
And everything that you could see
Was hidden out of sight.It was evening and the rising sun
Was setting in the West.
The little fishes in the trees
Were huddled in their nest.While the organ peeled potatoes,
Lard was rendered by the choir.
While the sexton rang the dish rag,
Someone set the church on fire.“Holy Smoke,” the preacher shouted,
And in the rush he lost his hair.
Now his head resembles heaven,
For there is no parting there.I saw a great, big, tiny house
Ten thousand miles away.
And to my view ‘twas out of sight
Last night, the other day.The walls projected inward,
The front door round the back.
Alone it stood between two more.
The walls were whitewashed black.
There were 2.5 million college degrees awarded this year. . . .
. . . One of them is mine.
What do you get for the 25-year-old who went cow tipping in her mother’s car as soon as she was set loose on the highways and byways of the world with her own driver’s licence? (Yes, she really did come home one night shortly after getting her license in a panic because she had hit, not one, but two cows in the road on her way home.)
Well, each year it’s been something a little different. One of my personal favorites was the special treat I concocted for her graduation from high school. While she was showering before we all left for the ceremony, I installed a custom cow car seat cover and steering wheel cover in her car and then strung 5 or 6 Cow Tales candies off the rear trunk latch. She drove down the driveway shaking her fist at me. Fun, fun, fun.
Now, nearly at decade later, I stumbled onto the cow gift of all cow gifts. Glen Wexler has come out with a book entitled, The Secret Life of Cows. So months ago, I purchased a copy and had him sign it and include a personal message that reads, “Aubrey, just how fast were those cows going?” Boy, has it been a hard secret to keep.
I don’t know if it’s even possible to top this one.
First rule, not original with me, is never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.
Next rule, which was discovered on Tuesday and adopted immediately is:
Never make your shopping list when you’re hungry.
I ate lunch and then made my list this week and nothing looked quite as appetizing as it usually does, so my listed ended up about 1/4 the usual size. Not bad. Smaller list = less time involved in acquisition.
There are other rules that make this chore more bearable for those of us who don’t like to do it. The one kind of shopping I rather enjoy, though, is second hand shopping. I’ve stumbled onto brand new clothes with the tags still on for a fraction of the new price. Today, I happened to find the cloth napkins and placemats that match a table cloth I’ve had for about 4 years now and paid a grand total of $2.00 for the complete set of 4 of each. This I can deal with.
Of course, I’d still prefer to have things just magically appear in my cupboards so I could eliminate the chore altogether.
Okay, so maybe my husband has been right all these years, and all I learned in college was how to say “I don’t know” in 20 words instead of 3. Dr. R made the above statement today while discussing a couple of concepts having to do with the complementary roles in society that men and women traditionally fulfill that will most likely appear on the next test. I’m sure that all he’s claiming he “made up” is that he coined the phrase, or applied it in the particular context we’re studying, but I did have to remind myself not to laugh out loud.
On the way home, I was wondering how this complementary structure of how men and women interact with the world in different ways, which seems to be rooted in our biology (the “true” part of the discussion), relates to what the Scriptures say about the differences between men and women, as well as how those differences are played out on a spiritual level.
My initial thought is that Dr. R, as interested as he seems to be in healing and spirituality and such, as knowledgable as he is about “religion”, has never seen beyond the level of pure biology. It’s rather interesting to me that he’s mentioned a friend of his on several occasions who was miraculously healed of breast cancer. She attributes this healing to Jesus Christ. He relates exactly what happened in class with the straigtest of faces (how do you deny something physical has happened when an ulcerous lesion is just gone and when you really enjoyed the fried chicken after the healing service?) and calls it psychology and “faith” and electromagnetic energy. He reminds me very much of my old friends, the Pharisees in John chapter 10 who saw the miracles Jesus did, saw the blind man who could now see, saw Lazarus raised from the dead, and when they heard the voice of God speak from heaven said it sounded like thunder.
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
At what level does the physical relationship of man and woman joining their complementary roles together in marriage intersect with the spiritual reality of Christ’s relationship with the church?
Stay tuned.
Our friend Janet expressed the week perfectly with those two words. She knows way more about hang time than I do, but after sitting in the surgery waiting room for upwards of 12 hours waiting for news, then moving to the critical care waiting room where we've spent the greater part of the last two days, it seemed fitting.
Even in this short time, I can see that hang time is different for different families. While dad was still in surgery, one family's hang time was coming to an end as a young 28 year old man lost the battle with a microscopic bacteria called Pneumonia. At the same time, another family's hang Time has already stretched out for a month while they wait for any sign of improvement from a 24 year old daughter sent into the land of limbo by a stroke.
Dad's proceeding as expected through his recovery. Thanks to all our family and friends who made much of our experience of hang time more like a reunion than a hospital waiting room.