7 Rambling Takes

One

Jen's book is coming out next week! The cover looks very pretty. As I was looking at all the lovely pictures and excitement I thought, oh, I will probably never write a book, sob, but I could do podcasts of myself reading home decorative magazines out loud. Instead of Sarcastic Devotionals for Angry or Worn Out People I could do Sarcastic Readings of Architectural Digest and spare us all from possible heresy. If Matt had turned on his phone and filmed me yesterday, instead of just being shocked about how mean I was being, it could have been the launch of a new career.

Two

We, Matt and I, did have a whole day out together yesterday. We went from coffee to restaurant to coffee with occasional breaks to wander around a store or two. By the end of the day I was totally stuffed. As for the eating, I enthusiastically recommend the little Latin place that used to be a Cuban restaurant. I don't remember what its called. It's across from the bus station. Weirdly, as soon as we sat down, someone who appears to be being hounded by The Lord God Almighty, who was going to COGS before he foolishly started running away, came in about 30 seconds after we'd settled ourselves in. We were behind him in the dubious window seat. Something, I assume God, spooked him and he turned around and saw us and fairly jumped out of his skin and started sweating profusely and quickly made his escape. It was so amazing! First that we'd delayed so long in going to this place and been stuck in traffic and tried to go somewhere else, and then that he walked in at that moment, and then the look of sheer terror in his eyes. I do hope all of you know how foolish and unpleasant it is to run away from the will of God. If you don't, sometime ask me to more perfectly describe the look in this young man's eye. “The Lord orders all our steps,” Matt observed, the understatement of the day, or even week or month or year. “Isn't that so,” I mumbled, my mouth full of divinely perfect deep fried plantain.

Three

We discovered, in our wanderings yesterday, that if you can't afford to go to Florida for the winter when you retire, if you're a lady, you can go to the Chriatmas Tree Shop in the middle of the afternoon, and if you're a gentleman, you can go to Barnes and Noble. We did both together. At the Christmas Tree Shop, Matt bought me these.

We've broken practically all our plates. We don't have enough left for all eight of us to have a plate (it's been a perfect opportunity to let the kids know who we love best–you get a real plate, because we love you, and you get a paper one, just because…I'm just kidding…we would never do that.) As we were driving away it occurred to me that Matt had been lying when he said he “loved” these plates, just so he could get points. Blast it all.

Four

I also drug him into a store he hates so that I could, again fruitlessly, examine all the purses. I, like many women I hope, have been on a life long search for the perfect hand bag. The one I use all the time now is virtually perfect. It is the right color, the right shape and the right material. But it is a quarter inch too small and doesn't fit my ipad.

I have tried to stretch it out but it is too well made. “What I really want”, I explained as Matt looked over the vast array of bags and wished he were a thousand miles away, doing anything else at all, “is the right color, the right shape and the right price.” I looked them all over again. “It is my life quest,” I said, “to find the right bag.”

“Is that like having a Life Verse?” He asked. “You're trying to find your Life Purse.” He laughed to himself as if he had something really clever, when really, mocking the necessary search for the perfect bag, I felt, caused him to lose all the points he acquired from the plates.

Five

In the evening–while Matt contributed to the destruction of the earth by driving back and forth to baseball, or is it contributing to the American Dream by raising up children into the national pastime? I never know which it is–I poured two pots of tea on this lamp shade

trying to make it look less terrifyingly white, and started a few more seeds. My asparagus died in the terrible winter, and I found another egg carton. So now I have so many packets started, if many perish, it should still be ok.

Six

I'm nearly done with 2 Samuel as I go along in the bible. David is old, now, and been told he can't go anymore into battle, lest he bring ruination upon his armies by dying or being captured. The psalms that came after were all about sickness and suffering and sin. It is so tragic, The Lord's Annointed, walking down the final road to death, as all men do. And then there's the sorrowfully gut wrenching picture of Jesus, in all the mess about Absalom, of David going out of the city of Zion and across the Jordan and being cursed by a man walking by on the hillside, woven together with the picture of the Father, inconsolable over the death of his Son, as David mourns and weeps for Absalom. It, like so many many many Old Testament pictures, hangs there like a great question mark, a great problem. As I go forward, let the reader be warned, in the Old Testament without any New Testament except for on Sunday Mornings, I am liable to get more and more depressed. It's so worth it, though, to live through the darkness, and have the sudden piercing ray of light when you hit Matthew chapter One.

Seven

Elphine is making a mess of the kitchen, and I should really be writing a sermon and not doing this, as well as facing down the cleaning of the school room, which I have heretofore totally ignored even though I've had a whole week to deal with it. There will be baseball all day tomorrow, and the climb up the mountain to Sunday, so I guess I will do that which I ought to be doing, which is not blogging but instead grappling with Thomas again, as I do nearly every year. Poor Thomas, every year we celebrate his terrible doubt, or maybe it's God's goodness. That's probably what it is.

Have a great weekend and go check out Jen!