The JAWZ of war against mice

My ammunition dump.  

I open the silverware drawer and notice little black grains and wonder who dropped dirt among the forks. Bits of bacon? Wild rice? Not mice feces again!

The glories of fall with cool temps and blazing trees must alert rodents it’s time to find a winter home, and with our entire tribe in tow, why don’t we enter this promising house with a perfect entrance through the kitchen exhaust fan? Why not? Because I am going to tell people how to stop you!

Mice, I admit, are rather cute with their shiny black eyes and fuzzy gray faces. No one knew this better than children’s author Beatrix Potter who wrote mouse stories that could warm the most cold-hearted adult. Who doesn’t love Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, the mouse couple who angrily destroy a doll house because all the food is fake but then return in repentance with a broom and dustpan to sweep up the damage? If only!!

I’m not afraid of them, like some, or viciously calculating like others armed with a cookie sheet ready to flatten it the next time it appears. (Futile remedy, Andene.) Okay, I did have one encounter that made me scream. But I was in no position to protect myself since it ran under the bathroom door while I was temporarily indisposed.

If you see one mouse run across your living room and disappear under the chair, you may be sure there are others. If you find one dropping in your pantry, you may be sure there are others. If you find a cache of shredded kleenix behind the shoes in your closet, you may be sure there are others. If my mother, the queen of proverbs, were here she’d toss you off a “where there’s one there are a dozen.” I cringe.

When they begin to lick the butter you left on the counter, (don’t tell me to get a cat; my daughter’s cat has always preferred licking butter to catching mice.) and leave their little black rice kernels on the dinner plates, nibbles on the cracker box and holes in the cornmeal sack – it’s time to declare war.

We have tried various ways of capturing them including live trapping with the benevolent plan of releasing them some where wonderful like the wealthy neighborhood next door. But they just seem to prefer slumming at my house. The old-fashioned bend-the-spring-back-and-hook trap only succeeded in trapping my fingers as the latch is so touchy. Mice despise this trap, disarm it with ease and leave with the bait. They may be cheap, but don’t bother. Poison is bad for two reasons. If a mouse eats it and dies and your cat finds it thinking what a yummy little snack, she might eat it and die, too. The second problem with poison, though some deny this, is that upon eating a shit-load of bait the mouse makes his way back to his nest somewhere in the bowels of your house and feeling very sick to the stomach curls up and dies. Then as nature does her work the mouse begins to decompose. The scent of rotting flesh emerging from such a small creature is alarming. We know from experience. That dreadful smell emanating from our basement infused the rest of the house and lasted until the blue bottle flies appeared (you know what was going on there!) It could make a monk curse. Slowly it dissipates and disappears after a few weeks. Meanwhile all our frantic searching in cubby holes and pipes never revealed the dead corpse.

My secret to fighting mice is simple and cheap. Go to any hardware store or a place like Menards and purchase four or five JAWZ OF DEATH traps. They should cost more than five dollars apiece. This is the best weapon ever. You load the little basin under the trigger with peanut butter, pull back the JAW until it clicks and carefully set it down. Then scatter a few grains of oatmeal. Not many. You want it to be an appetizer or an amuse-bouche, a little mouth teaser as the French say, before the mouse tucks into the main course. Then WHOMP – instant death. Fast, accurate and deadly. This almost humane, don’t you think? And his last thought will be a pleasant one – the surprise of finding something so tasty right in his path on the way to the kitchen? Bonus! Disposal is so easy – no touching dead thing, just hold over trash can and squeeze open and down it drops. Most of the time you don’t even need to re-bait.

I know. But he IS dead. Don't feel too sorry for him. Not to put too fine a point on it, The CDC says: "Worldwide, rats and mice spread over 35 diseases. These diseases can be spread to humans directly, through handling of rodents, through contact with rodent feces, urine, or saliva, or through rodent bites." Photo Courtesy of  Rachel Wilhelm.  

With JAWZ in place you can climb down from the safety of your stool and confidently put away the cast iron skillet you were going to throw. This is my best advice for autumn. For free. Lucky you.

A complicated eulogy

“A Complicated Eulogy”

Elisabeth Elliot died.

Photo from elisabethelliot.org

It’s a very odd thing to read about the death of someone you so respected and who influenced your life, but to also honestly face some of the doubts and, well, personal opinions that quite differed from hers. Writer Addie Zierman brought those repressed questions to the surface. She eloquently voiced what I would want to say if only I’d thought of it. (Read it here.) Elisabeth was one of my heroes, too. Many of the things she wrote and said steered me through difficult times. When I was overwhelmed with life she said: Don’t try to take the entire journey at once. Trust all your life and its details to God. He cares about you. All you need to do is the next thing. Whatever it is. Just do the next thing.

I wanted to be like her. For awhile. Until I grew farther into womanhood and marriage and mothering, then I found her voice more difficult to bear on some issues.

Zierman ends her eulogy with graciousness. If anyone ever wrote mine, I hope they would extend me grace in the end as she does with Elisabeth. Zierman points us to a place where I have wanted others to go – a place of hope, a place we long for: Home, a place where I (and you) are called “Beloved.” 

Robin Williams & William Cowper - happy endings not for sale

 Most emphatically happy endings are not guaranteed in this life. Robin Williams has been haunting the shadows since I heard of his death. It seems so wrong wrong wrong.

Our grieving responses for him are so strange in a way. We did not know him, we only think we did because his life was public. But it wasn't really his life we knew - his private life,  we only knew his work with its staggering gift for making us laugh and yet the sadness in his eyes showed through. His gift was so enormous, it must have been been a burden to him and even to those who loved him. I wonder if he could he carry on a normal conversation or relationship without making it a stage for performing? It might have been difficult to be with him if he could never turn it off.

A friend, Steve Froehlich, sent this last week and I am passing the whole thing on because Robin Williams' death has made me think again about those who suffer from depression, and those who take their lives in desperation and silence and the few who note their passing because their lives were largely unknown. As Christians we take comfort. For God knows his children. He carries them Home. Perhaps for them we can see it as a beginning. A good beginning. One of healing and renewed energies and unexpected joy. Yes, I do believe.


Steve writes the following:

This is an excerpt from a blogger whom I read occasionally -- he's Anglican, like Cowper.  His remarks were prompted by the confluence of having sung Cowper's poetry last Sunday and Robin Williams' death.  I've made one addition to the closing paragraph, a change the author approves.

Steve F.

William Cowper. Did the artist pick up the sadness in his eyes?

"Sometimes a Light Surprises" by William Cowper

    Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings;
    It is the Lord, who rises with healing in His wings:
    When comforts are declining,He grants the soul again
    A season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.

    In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue
    The theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new.
    Set free from present sorrow,we cheerfully can say,
    Let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may.

William Cowper was converted (in the crisis experience sense) while in an asylum after a suicide attempt. After that he was an evangelical. Not only an evangelical but a Calvinist. Not just a Calvinist but an experimentalist. He lived for awhile with John Newton. They wrote poetry together (though some think Newton was a drag on Cowper's poetry and that Cowper wrote best when separated from Newton). Though their friendship became somewhat strained, they remained friends.

[the blogger points to evidence of the oppression of legalism in Cowper's "A Living and a Dead Faith"]

    Easy indeed it were to reach
    A mansion in the courts above,
    If swelling words and fluent speech
    Might serve instead of faith and love.

    But none shall gain the blissful place,
    Or God's unclouded glory see,
    Who talks of free and sovereign grace,
    Unless that grace has made him free!

But there's more to Cowper's life...and death....  His last, and, some think, his best poem was written in 1799 (he died in 1800). It is based on an account he had read of a sailor who was swept overboard in a storm. According to a witness the man swam and stayed afloat for awhile, could not be rescued, watched as the ship moved further away, and finally drowned. Cowper describes the feelings the poor sailor may have had, but in the last two stanzas turns to his own situation, first identifying with and then separating himself from the sailor:

    I therefore purpose not, or dream,
    Descanting on his fate,
    To give the melancholy theme
    A more enduring date:
    But misery still delights to trace
    Its semblance in another's case.

    No voice divine the storm allay'd,
    No light propitious shone;
    When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
    We perish'd, each alone:
    But I beneath a rougher sea,
    And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

The last two lines reflect a statement Cowper had made in 1793: "My sin and judgment are alike peculiar.  I am a castaway, deserted and condemned."

Cowper's pre-evangelical-conversion suicide attempt was the first of several. There came a point at which the despair finally descended not to lift the rest of his life. So far as we know, Cowper died believing himself doomed. That's not the way Christian biography is supposed to end.

Though Cowper died thinking himself damned Newton did not think so.  He believed Cowper woke, no doubt to his own surprise, in glory.

One of Cowper's poems, addressed to Newton the former seafarer, describes the difference between himself and Newton. It also describes two poles of Christian experience:

        That ocean you of late survey'd,
        Those rocks I too have seen,
        But I, afflicted and dismay'd,
        You, tranquil and serene.

        You from the flood-controlling steep
        Saw stretch'd before your view,
        With conscious joy, the threat'ning deep,
        No longer such to you.

        To me, the waves that ceaseless broke
        Upon the dang'rous coast
        Hoarsely and ominously spoke
        Of all my treasure lost.

        Your sea of troubles you have past,
        And found the peaceful shore;
        I, tempest-toss'd, and wreck'd at last,
        Come home to port no more.
 
I don't know the how or the why of Cowper's life and despair. Nor do you. Here is a comment that makes sense from the perspective of Christian faith and points to the real difference between the depression of Robin Williams and William Cowper is to be found essentially in Christ now and experientially only in eternity:

"All men are tragic figures. Artists have a deeper sense of their own failings and helped us to sense our own. Robin Williams was funny because we saw the conflict in him - funny, joyful, silly, simple conflicted with a dour drug user, with a broken family whose wrinkly eyes made you either want to melt with mirth or explode with sorrow. He was a tragic figure, and we sensed it, because he showed us the tragedy of who we are. In Christ we have already been freed from this tragedy, just not yet."

My favorite Cowper hymn is "God Moves in a Mysterious Way." I will continue to sing these verses:

    Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
    The clouds ye so much dread
    Are big with mercy and shall break
    In blessings on your head.

    Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
    But trust Him for His grace;
    Behind a frowning providence
    He hides a smiling face.

    His purposes will ripen fast
    Unfolding every hour;
    The bud may have a bitter taste,
    But sweet will be the flower.

[For some a light will surprise "the Christian while he sings." For some the rain does fall with refreshment and relief.  But,] for some those big clouds of mercy will break in the age to come. Some will behold that smiling face in heaven. For some the bitter bud will yield to the sweet flower in the world to come. Not till then.  [The blogger would have done well to end where he started by affirming that for some, "Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings"]

So I hope.

Steve.

We are Home

My new office

Overseeing the sink

God made it to the new house. As if I didn’t think he would come. Bobble-head Jesus has a new sink to oversee. I am reminded that God blesses this place and these people (us) who dwell here. It is June 20^th almost a month since my last post. 

Today I am sitting in my new office looking out this window. I’m watching a little fly-catcher hop down a limb looking for insects. The sun is sending rays down through the canopy to the ravine below us. It lights leafy corridors with many hues of green. 

Looking at the canopy

We are 85 % moved in. Denis says it is 85%. I don’t know why 85. But I do know there are many fewer boxes. The ones that remain will be okay taking their time finding new spaces to hide or to show.

Unpacking the kitchen

This house will be called “The House Between.” Our new home. I’ll explain why the name some day soon.

One of the first projects we did was paint the basement “Bonfire.” Although it's a walkout, it is a little dim and that color warms it up. Then we spent the next two days prepping and painting the floor. It is now a lovely clean slate to work with. It is going to be Honeysuckle’s new home (too many local predators to be outside) and Anita’s Studio. Very exciting.

Bonfire!!

Last night I had a new experience. One I’ve never had or owned in life. I walked into our roomy, walk-in closet, (which is still unpacked because the shelves need to be painted and lined) turned on the light and changed into my pajamas. Totally pleasant experience. Do you think it is weird to thank God for a walk-in closet? I suppose.

In this quiet neighborhood we have already seen wild turkeys, fox, coyote and raccoons though technically we haven’t seen the latter, just experienced the damage they wrecked on our bird feeders. In the morning the cacophony of bird song wakens me. I do not object.

One final note. Our area has received so much rain the rivers and lakes are flooding in many places. A friend once told us, if you live in Minnesota and have a basement, it will flood at some point. Count on it. You would think we would have reached that point. It is a shocking wonder that ours remains dry as a bone. We are sure the previous owner who built the house had some engineer/architect smart person design the location of the foundation, the tiles and the drains because I have heard that even if you build on a slope you can do it in such a way that water flows through it rather than under or around. I lay in bed and think, God, how wonderful you are. I am allergic to molds. How good to give us a dry basement.

We are home.

Time to change

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It is snowing this morning. The first day of “Daylight Savings.” Daylight Time used to change when Spring was firmly established in flowers and light. Today, ironically, it is still winter. Snow falls straight down in heavy-cotton chunks. Theirs is a quiet, passing beauty. The kind of snow-fall that doesn’t last. Quickly it fades to small flakes and then disappears altogether.

I am thoughtful this morning. Considering changes. Time, weather, place. What to make of unwelcome changes?

Yesterday, driving from Lincoln to Rochester meant passing through most of Iowa on interstate highways. First miles and miles east to Des Moines on I-80 and then up, up, north and north through the “fruited plains” on I-35 until at last the bluffs of southeastern Minnesota gently rise.

About thirty miles west of Des Moines traffic suddenly slowed, came to a stop. We could see the road ahead was clogged with cars and trucks idling in the rain. An accident.  Someone’s tragedy unfolding far ahead; who we would never know. As we approached the standing point, some vehicles were making a k-turn, passing us on the shoulder and exiting the wrong way up the on-ramp. One questioning glance from Anita, and we were doing the same. It was a satisfying crime. A justifiable change of direction. We quickly followed a line of traffic heading cross-country. Along the back roads, we had time to call up Google Maps and decided to follow the perfectly paved Iowa county roads, straight and smooth, skipping Des Moines and Ames altogether.

A map of Iowa hints at its history – a perfect grid of right-angle roads. Rich, black soil precisely divided into sections worth millions. One mile on a side, 640 acres within the square. Farmland that made the lives of men and women who raised crops and animals to feed hundreds of others. Often there is still a stand of old trees on one corner of a section, remnants of a homestead, a house that might still be lived in, if it’s lucky, but the out-buildings –  the out-buildings. All dying, sinking back into the ground. Barns three stories high with an elevator still sitting beneath the haymow door as if one day the farmer was raptured, or died or moved to Arizona. Round barns, barns with graceful cupolas, hipped roofs, angled roofs, stone, oaken, bricked, square, reflecting styles of German, Norwegian, Dutch immigrants.

Iowa barn in winter

Not as many of these places are seen from the heavily traveled interstate, but on back roads they never leave your sight. County after county the quiet is eerie. In the stillness of winter the machines are gone, the land is dark, the buildings are broken, blackened, faded red. Granaries, barns, coops without an animal or human in sight.

Perhaps one reason American factory farming troubles me is because I feel alienated by it. I want to be wholly restored to land and creation. I want us to be careful caretakers of, not just the earth, but of people. I mourn empty places that were once alive with chickens, cows, horses and pigs. I want to repopulate them with children and dogs and tire swings. Restore a garden. Perhaps it is true Home I wait for – that impossible place of meaningful work and unbroken restoration God will bring about one day.

Tomorrow, I will be more settled. More distant from dying places I can’t fix. I will focus on my desk and maybe I’ll think about the small patch of urban earth outside our back door. Flower and seed catalogs are here and we need a few more climbing roses and stone walls for them to thrive upon.

Men go away. Women, stay.

I think men should go away for a minute while I post this. Women. Stay.

It doesn’t seem right that I celebrated turning 65 the day after so many young lives were over. So violently done. I should have been the one to leave and not come back. I want to apologize for my life.

But here it is Monday morning and the most incomprehensible thing about life is that it goes on right up until the moment when God says, Come Home. I’d like to say the deaths of those children will make me live more carefully, more intentionally. I know. Sometimes we’re full of crap and we quickly forget, but I’m going to try not to.

Here is reality: we celebrated my birthday. Denis made supper. He doesn’t cook often so that was cause for rejoicing and a bit of mirth. He opened a bottle of red wine, made marinated pork chops, steamed cauliflower and baked sweet potatoes without help. Anita made chocolate cupcakes with coffee ganache icing. You should never buy a woman a handbag, the chances of it being something she likes are almost zero, but Denis did and I love it. 

Gluten-free Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Icing

   The first leg of my celebrating actually began a few days earlier – let this be a lesson to all you out there with aging intestines and more diet restrictions than you care to make public. We were on our way back from visiting family in Chattanooga and me doing a reading and signing for The Exact Place at Camp House Coffee. No sooner had we left the Smoky Mountains and I was tricked out with Lattes and Poppy Cock. How can I be 65 and so stupid? By the northern Kentucky border I was screaming for an exit and scanning the roadside for shelter. There was nothing for miles. Denis yelled, “Download the RoadAhead app for your iPhone. It will tell us the location of the next Rest Stop!!” So I did. And when it politely requested if it could locate me on the map and I said YES! AND HURRY UP, it ran and ran and ran and finally said it could not FIND me, and we were ON AN INTERSTATE FOR PITY SAKE!  There was a happy ending when we finally found a MacDonald’s 30 miles down the highway, but it was close. A small thing, really, isn’t it?

Bad Margie

 Maybe this could be a small gift of being honest? I plan to keep telling you over the next few years. I don’t think I was ever at the “top of my game,” anyway. My face, my body, unfortunately my good sense and brains will fail me more and more over the next years. I don’t plan to hide my little face cancers and droopy eye-lids from you. Perhaps, in turn, this will give you hope and perspective – something I surely need –  to have the composure, the grace and the inner beauty to grow old in front of you and in spite of our culture’s quest for eternal youth and beauty.

Thank you for stopping by here and know that I wish I could bring you into the real place where I live and share a moment of joy and kindness. I’d like to bless you as you return to whatever it is you are called to do this week, this month. The office, your business, your families, relationships, the babies and the elderly you care for, your students – whatever it is you do to love and serve others, may you also find moments to celebrate and care for yourself. Merry Christmas. Love, Margie.

Renewing a chair

Nine staples where three might do.

A bowl full of mental illness

      Lately, in my meantime, in my sparetime, I’ve been tearing down an old chair, pulling out millions of staples, ripping off rotten fabric, dreaming of the bright, happy new look I will give it. My mom has a small shop where she has renewed old, stinky couches and dirty easy chairs for years. She tells me you can know a lot about a person by the way a piece was put together. Each time we’ve talked lately, I’ve complained - nay, ranted - about the hundreds of unnecessary staples I had to individually pry out. She says, yes, that is a person who is…, that is…, I forget the word...  I say, obsessive-compulsive? YES! she replies.  

     Renewal can be a lengthy, arduous process where we must address our own imperfections. 

Stripped, ready for renewal

The About Margie on Margie's Stuff

It’s a Friday morning in early Fall and I am on the cusp of going live with a new sub-site linked to Ransom Fellowship. Before that can happen, I need to write an About Margie.

…  much later in the day. No closer to being done. I don’t like writing this page and find many excuses to procrastinate. Hours have slipped past, and now it’s time to make chile rellenos with the poblanos I roasted earlier today.

The first distraction of the day was addressing the problem of wild grapes intended for jelly, not the syrup they’ve become. One jar for pancake syrup is okay, but ten? No. I dumped them all back into a large saucepan and re-heated it to a boil, stirring, watchful, thinking. I decided to add more pectin to see if it would thicken up. Carefully, I mixed it with a little water, gradually added spoonfuls of hot grape syrup until I could gently pour it into the simmering pot so as not to create one giant grape clot. There was a slight delay and then mayhem. I’ve stirred down many a rolling boil in life, but this was quickly out of control and I was trying to calm Mount St. Helens with a wooden spoon. The frothing bubbles grew into a heaping mound above the pot while I frantically tried to jerk the pot off the burner. Too late. The purple lava flowed over the sides, onto the burner where it smelted to pure carbon, adding a stink to the air, before sinking into the dark recesses of the range, where I never go. Thirty minutes later the mess was cleaned up and the jelly re-cooked. While ladling into the first jar, I managed to pour an inferno on my thumb. This was too much. I was about to cry or break all the jars, when my lifetime collaborator walked into the kitchen and offered to help.

And since that’s where I’m headed ... I may as well state it: now, looking back, thinking forward, life has been and will always be a collaboration with my husband of many years and with others who have joined us along the way. Not that it’s been perfect by any means. But I can’t write about myself without including Denis – his love of me, of hospitality, of theology, the challenges of media and culture … together we’ve tried to live artfully and faithfully, welcoming into our home those who don’t necessarily think or act like Sunday School veterans. We’ve asked ourselves what it means to fully live in this world with it’s many wonders and troubles and yet offer the full story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation.

When I was younger, I fantasized about doing something sensational and heroic, I can’t even think what right now. But I’ve learned that living a life pleasing to God and one that’s unexpectedly fulfilling is found in the ordinary days of waiting for the kitchen floor to dry in lemon-scented swaths on cleaning day, of scanning a cookbook for an apple cake recipe, reading a novel, reconciling the checking account, raising children, serving friends and strangers around a table where we share life stories. In the most foundational way learning to see Christ’s presence in the midst of the most common events not just for others, but for myself.

In this rich scape, which can also be rocky and danger-filled, I’ve been writing about what's funny, what's holy, what's suffering, probably since before you were born. It would be nice to claim that a great deal of wisdom has been seived through life’s boil-overs and rare moments of triumph over fruit-fly infestations, but that might sound arrogant.

This is the direction I stumble in, believing a greater glory will one day be revealed.

P.S. You should also know we have three adult children who helped shape our lives. I’m crazy about them, their spouses, and our eight grandchildren. I was at one time a pre-med student. (Thankfully, God spared me a life he knew I couldn’t live. I learned this observing the punishing schedules of physician friends.)  In another life I would be a stone mason or a gardener. I love coffee and chocolate. Currently, a dash of chronic illness seeps into my priorities, which is often why I don’t answer the phone. Don’t take it personal.

 A friend told me this pic made me look like a Grandma Vampire wannabe. That wasn't what I was had in mind. But my apologies for constantly wearing black and looking like I might bite.

Getting Home

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound. – Herman Melville novelist, sailor. (1819 – 1891)

Recently I was asked to be part of an interesting (well, interesting to me) series on pilgrimage at Highcallingblogs. Mine was the last in the series and it appeared today. Thinking about home, how to get there, and how to stay there, is not so unusual for me, so of course, rather than writing about going somewhere I ended up thinking about what Denis and I have hoped to make and give in living here together. I was anxious about how it would fit in with the rest, but then plowed ahead anyway. I quoted from one of my still-top-ten-favorite movies Garden State. There’s something about that danged ark at the edge of an enormous dark hole, Paul Simon singing “The Only Living Boy in New York,” the rain and three young friends screaming into the abyss that makes me want to stay here and keep the lights on for a while longer. Etc, etc.

Chewed by Squirrels

Last night we slept with the window open. The unconditioned air was soft and cool, pooling and rippling across the bed. This morning’s temp was 47 degrees. Pancakes and sweater weather.

 That makes up a little - us needing to come back from a week off. The Kaufman’s cabin, so picturesque and inviting was a restful gift to us and our family. Sometimes the lake water felt warmer than the air and you could float through surface layers that made you lazily dangle your feet until you hit gasping pockets of ice way below where fish monsters dwell. We never tire of watching loons dive and call, reading in the sun, playing Snorta with the children, eating grilled slabs of meat. Favorite comment: “Could this please not be a winning game?”  Paige, 5.

This week our wireless has constantly been dropping. We’re certain squirrels have chewed through the wires out there at the utility pole. They’ve done it before, but getting Charter to actually check it is like getting Heidi Klum to be nice. The tech comes out and we learn our modem is on the fritz after all. He also discovers the old cable coming up through the floor was stapled and dry-walled into the basement ceiling, circa 1989, is completely unreachable (and WHO did THAT?) and it’s so old it’s first generation cable wire and with the wireless we are paying for, it is like attaching a garden hose to a fire hydrant. He’s been here and gone, service is still rotten.

My computer is also unhappy, spiking a temperature, rising to 99 degrees C with only a few programs running. A thermal sensor gone bad, my Mac mentor thinks. I’ll need to take it to the Apple Store, and he coaches me on how to talk to the geniuses there. They’re not likely to listen to me. And WHY is THAT? So he says call him in Tallahassee and he will pick up even if he’s teaching class. That’s love, huh?

These don’t seem like trials, not compared to what could be happening or what is happening to so many elsewhere. I know that and I apologize. So leave it here: work is a challenge to everyone. And so are other things.

But I’m listening to Paul. He says: “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope.” (I Thess. 1:3) I need all of this - the linking process laid out clearly. I want it sopped up, festooned on my dull heart and head - especially: Your endurance inspired by hope. Kiss my pathology good-bye. It is Christ I love and work for and hope in. Everything else gets chewed by the squirrels.

Putting it to good use

Just back today from Denis’ graduation from Covenant and a short side trip to a B&B for rest and celebration.

After looking for a coffee shop the last 250 miles, (WHAT is WITH the I-90 corridor in southern MN anyway?) we careened into Caribou’s for our drinks. Today the young woman behind the counter greeted us and asked where we’d been. When Denis told her he’d just graduated. In what? she wanted to know.

A Masters in theology.

And this was her loud and wide-eyed response:

You’re KIDDING!

That’s TOTALLY bonkers. That’s BONKERS!

You mean, like you could talk about polytheism and monotheism and all that stuff?

(Yes.)

I MISSED Passover this year, I’m not Jewish, but I wanted to experience it. I’ve never been around Jewish people. I’m sort of INTERESTED in spiritual stuff.

So, could we get together some time and talk??

(Yes.)

(Does she think we’re Jewish?)

(Maybe.)

I couldn’t stop laughing. Life is sometimes amusing and so bizarre. If I needed an excuse for my lattes, which I don’t, this would be it… we don’t just get caffeinated at the shop one block from our house we get to love the spirit-seeking, patchouli-reeking baristas, too.

Expunge

When the stench from the refrigerator is bad enough to get a whiff of it even when the door is closed and you’re just walking past you don’t really have many options. At least, I don’t. It’s not like I could move out or call the maid or anything. And, although I really hate to discourage Denis from doing anything in the kitchen, I don’t like it when he gets all logical about this odor and says he’s going to find the source. What he really means he’s going to get in there and try to pitch stuff like the apples that feel like Nerf balls – I was going to make apple cake with them someday. Then he starts pulling out containers, opening lids, slipping the trashcan over to the door, exclaiming, WHAT is THIS? And, HERE, SMELL THIS. And WHY are you keeping THIS? I don’t want to get into it with him about why I’ve kept half a jar of capers for eighteen months, or the unopened bottle of angostura bitters for five years. And he may not like four different kinds of mustard, but I do. I just want him out of there. I don’t go into his office and riffle his papers, or rearrange his mountainous stacks of books and cds.

But. Because there was something that was knocking me back when I passed the refrigerator, I knew I didn’t have much time. And it is New Years Day. What better way to say I’m going to be a better person, I’m going to never over-buy or compulsive purchase. We will be eating every leftover, no fruit will rot… the deli meat will not get slick and smelly, and…. Nevermind. Just for today, at least, the fridge smells okay and there’s more room in there than there’s been for about three months.

So, happy New Year, Denis, my love. With very few excuses, this is what’s either freezing (it’s minus 2 degrees right now) out in the trash can by the alley or has been flushed down the toilet:

¼ jar of fermented salsa. - It got pushed to the back. Along with about fifty other jars of jam, pickles, olives.

Canned salmon with cream cheese, lemon, dill. - From the second you made this, Denis, I dropped to my knees retching. 12 days later… there are no words. You were supposed to eat it.

A bowl of greenish-molded boiled potatoes. I was going to make potato salad with these leftovers from a raclette dinner a month ago.

2 rotten apples.

2 limes brown and mushy. – The color of fresh limes make me happy, but I don't eat them much.

A shriveled piece of ginger. - A mystery. I didn’t put it there. Probably Anita.

A small bag of blackened cranberries. They were organic, even. Spoilage proves it. I made something with them in early November, can’t remember what. These were leftover.

4 egg whites growing clouds. Didn’t need them for the Mexican chocolate pots de crème.

1 serving of Mexican chocolate pots de crème with now sour whipped cream on top 3 ½ weeks old. - I thought Anita wanted it. (I know you don’t like chocolate that much.) She thought I did. Now neither of us want it.

A plastic bag of swampy brown and yellow liquid that leaked under the drawer.

Where am I

Past three weeks. For five years Marsena’s been caring for The Great Aunt, almost 89, and she can’t do it anymore. Her margins are gone. Plus she needs to find work. Denis and I have been here now almost a month. Helping make decisions. We’re so grateful there’s a beautiful memory care place The Aunt loves – she’s been there for respite care and can’t say enough good about it. The food! The comfort! The staff! Alzheimer’s makes you look at someone you know and love and even though you tell yourself this is not the person she used to be, nor is it the person she will be someday, you still get heart-sick, worried, even annoyed and you hate like anything to get drawn into petty arguments and corrections about whatever and yet you do. Or at least, I have. In my head, anyway, I’ve told her off. Sorry.

Day before yesterday. It’s time to move to assisted care. AR is angry and terrified. Any kind of change has always been a phobic catalyst. In these later stages of Alzheimer’s it’s worse. She’s lost the ground of who she is and what she can do. She’s saying dreadful things about Marsena. Doesn’t want to see her again. Threatening to have her “agents” on the east coast rescue her. She wants to go back to Mass. She HATES Autumn Leaves. She doesn’t want to see anyone. Her heart is broken, ours, too. We haven’t found ways to comfort her. Sorting through the remainder of her things is sad. The accumulation of possessions – how they’re too much at the end of life. But perhaps this is inevitable even when you clarify and eliminate, there’s still stuff. The staff at Autumn Leaves are saying give time, give time. Transition sometimes takes a few weeks. We hope so, we hope so.

Yesterday. Watching the Vikings play. Ah, love that Brett. Denis is under an afghan and drinking coffee. Marsena is downstairs doing a little work on the apartment, it helps her to be busy. We’ll be helping with more of that tomorrow. Denis is feeling worse today, sadder. I’m better, so that’s good.

Today. When I’m sick with a bad cold I drown in hot lemon tea with honey, so soothing. Today Psalm 103 is lemon honey. God’s love: forgives, heals, redeems, crowns with love and compassion, satisfies, works righteousness, justice, is great, from everlasting to everlasting. Praise for the soul. Praise for God. Haven’t seen The Aunt for three days, the staff advised letting her settle in first. We pray and pray.

Later. I went for the first visit. I'm scared. I observed her a moment, watching her in a comfy chair, her feet up, watching TV with others, (something none of us could do all day, which annoyed her no end). I saw her laugh. When I touched her, she looked up and beamed, “I was praying someone would come by to cheer me, and here you are! Where’s Marsena?!”