Terrapin Station

Tender Reunions

Ken left on Friday the 17th for a motorcycle rally in Alvarado.

On Sunday the 19th I left for Atlanta before he returned home.

On Wednesday the 22nd I came home from Atlanta, only to find he had just left for Marne, Iowa, where the second-largest Triumph dealer in the US is located.  He towed the Rocket III up there and left it for some warranty work. 

After midnight last night (Thursday the 23rd) he returned and fell into bed.

This morning he turned over and looked at me, and said, "Oh...I forgot you were here."

Friday Five: The Perfect Church

Singing Owl says at RevGals: 

Please pardon me for talking about church in the summer when many of you may be on vacation. However, the church we are talking about today is the one you dream of. I've been thinking about this because I miss pastoring and preaching, because I am sending in resumes, and because...well...jut because. So have some fun with this. Tell us five things that the perfect church would have, be, do...whatever.

We can dream, right?

Hmmm...

Perfect is a word I try to avoid.

But here's what I like my church to do, be, etc:

• Relational, seeking together to know and be Christ in the world
• Close to home
• Musically diverse
• Personalogically diverse
• Liturgical

 

Bloggity bloggity blog

I learned today via email, and in the presence of some colleagues, that a third colleague's wife has entered the discernment process in The Episcopal Church...I totally grinned my face off and exclaimed about how excited I was for her.  This led to a conversation about my avocation: women in ministry. 

I'm still wondering about why this charges me up so much...but it does. 

Here is what I love:  Harper's Magazine.  I used to subscribe in college but stopped at some point.  The recent issue is awesome.  I'm going to see if I can't resubscribe...how awesome to have that much smartness coming to my mailbox all in one package each month! 

Here is another thing I love:  Cast On, a knitting podcast by Brenda Dayne.  I downloaded ALL of them and am listening from the beginning while I work on THE ETERNAL SOCKS (if I finish by August 4 they will become THE ONE YEAR SOCKS, not bad for a first pair...right?!)

Here is what I don't love:  Sean Hannity.

Here is my new trick:  putting up photos and blog posts for my students who are currently in Costa Rica.  Check it out!  Wordpress is just enough different from Typepad and Blogger to have made getting started with it challenging...but it's great fun.  (Not sure if it's this computer or what but WP sure does load pictures slowly...)

At the same time, I am blogging here, deleting messages from my BlackBerry (mercy, it fills up fast - there has to be a way to stop that!), texting with sister Nancy about my mom's fall and twisted knee (RATS!)

Having walked on the treadmill earlier, I don't feel so bad about the lemon bars at break time...but not great, either.  They FEEDS you here. 

Here is what I wonder:  What did we used to do before tech? 

And speaking of tech...my sister Barbara posted to my Facebook page that she remembers waking me up to come to the den in our house on Cherrybark Lane in Houston to watch the moon landing 40 years ago.  I am sad that I don't remember it....but, now, there was some tech!  Right!?

Good things

It's gorgeous out - nearly noon and only 88 degrees, thanks to a bit of overnight rain.

My parents were here when I got in yesterday.  We went to IHOP for dinner and then came home where Mom and I fell headlong into the all-consuming maw of Ancestry.com.  I, um, I now have 1,427 people on my tree.  :)  This includes a good number of my husband's side, but I am counting them...since I have no way to split them out!  If you are in any way interested in seeing this, LMK and I'll "invite" you to view my tree.

Up early this morning and took Mom and Dad to airport.  I was able to get a dummy boarding pass to go back to the gate with them...help thru security...etc.  Glad because it is easy and routine if you fly a lot, but it's stressful and hard if you don't.  And they really don't. 

One gate change and one "mechanical delay" later, they are off.  I was immensely happy to see dearest Shonna (cousin of my sister's, who is going on the same trip they are) waiting for the flight.  She will continue to help and they'll all drive to the beach in the rental car together. 

I'm sorry not to be going to the beach, but today is a gift ahead...prepping for teaching I will do in Atlanta this week, laundry and packing and housecleaning; a good long dog-walk in the park later this evening.  Ken is at a rally so I won't see him until I get back Wednesday night. 

Off I go to carry on with the above!  Blessed days to all. 

The island within myself

The Blooming of the Lotus

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Smiling to my body I breathe in
Releasing the tensions in my body I breathe out.
Breathing in I go back
To the island within myself
There are beautiful trees
Within the island
There are clear streams of water
There are birds
Sunshine, and fresh air
Breathing out I feel safe
I enjoy going back to my island

Source: Unknown

From today's InwardOutward

It wasn't until this hit my inbox and I breathed in (as it said) then breathed out and thought of an island, that I realized, I now have a definite place in my mind that is "my island."  I haven't had much previous island experience...all Gulf-Coastal. 

Mackworth Island in Falmouth, Maine is one of the places where we took Sam, The Dog, for a walk.  It's beautiful and magical:

(All images from Flickr)

Perhaps one of the magick-est things about it is the grove of Fairy Houses:

(John Alphonse)

 (Stuff Tah Do In Maine)

 

I'm grateful to have this new place in my heart and mind! 

Hallelujah!

From IntegriTV.  Amazing things are happening in The Episcopal Church.  I am humbled and proud. 

Friday Five: Games!

Jan says at RevGals:  In less than three weeks, my family, including children and their partners, will be gathering in Seattle, WA for 12 days. After various days in Seattle sightseeing and in Bellingham seeing family, we will travel to the coast of Washington State to spend three nights in a large rented house. With nine adults (from almost 20 years old and up), I am thinking that we need to have some activities pre-planned--like GAMES! (Any ideas will be appreciated.)

So this Friday Five is about games, so play on ahead. . . .

Jan, how wonderful!  I hope you have a grand time together.  What a gift. 

1. Childhood games?  We had (I still have) a card deck called "Who Stole the Diamonds?" where you matched "witness" and "suspect" cards to make funny statements like, "The OLD SAILING CAPTAIN stepped out shortly after 11 pm.  He wanted"  ...  "To get some aspirin from THE NURSE."  Eventually one of the "Suspect" cards comes up, "TO STEAL THE DIAMONDS!"  Mostly I liked to read, as you see from the fact that my favorite remembered game was about making stories...

2. Favorite and/or most hated board games?  We kids played a lot of Monopoly and Life.  I don't mind playing board games but I am not competitive and it really spoils the game for me to play with someone who is.  As a family we played a trememdous amount of Aggravation:  my grandfather made the boards, not in the traditional star shape but as two wooden cross pieces that fit together.  It was a Milton Bradley board game from the 60's but I've never seen one of those; I grew up with the idea that Bigdaddy invented that game; and Memamma was the fiercest and most competitive player of it.  Agh. 

3. Card games?  I have a mental glitch when it comes to card games: I can't remember them.  I can't remember how they are played.  From poker to Go Fish to Hearts, I have played them all but if you asked me to play any of them, I would need to get you to teach me the game first.  (I also cannot remember jokes.)

4. Travel/car games?  The usual: license plate games, etc.  My dad was not a congenial driver and we weren't allowed to make very much noise on the long drives to and from Florida each year.  My mom would have a "prize box" under her seat and every 100 miles we would get a small prize from it.  But they had to be quiet prizes!  (Of course this was before every child had an individual video player for the car, pah!)

5. Adult pastimes that are not video games?  My group plays a lot of poker; also in the past have played Spoons and Push (both card games). 

But my favorite memories are evenings spent passing around a worn copy of Helen's Babies, pub. 1876, by John Habberton (download the book from Project Gutenberg here, or read a 1922 review here), taking turns reading and laughing hysterically.  It was a family tradition.  (Again with the reading...)

Bonus: Any ideas for family vacations or gatherings?  I have greatly enjoyed family vacations where we do "high low" at the dinner table.  (This is really a form of Ignatian examen!)  Everyone takes a turn telling their high point and low point of the day.  It can get pretty silly with little children, but I have some great memories of that also.

Grateful for:

• Grocery list for after work.

• That I am ABLE to go to to the grocery store (that I have a car to get there in & money to spend when I do)

• Husband going to motorcycle rally this weekend (glad he is happy to go without me in 102 weather)

• Parents passing thru tomorrow - glad they get to go to Florida with stop-off at my house)

• Travel to Atlanta for early part of next week

• Prep time Saturday for seminar I will be co-leading there

• Those two dogs, they sure do make me smile

• The work of TEC's General Convention 2009 - I can hardly believe how progressive an agenda has been carried out.  (pinches self!) 

Home again; now, with Moxie!

The hour at which I left Maine was really quite insane...what ever possessed me to book a flight AT 6 am? 

Bless Songbird for taking me to the airport so early...hoping she got more rest thereafter, as I did en route from Portland to DC.  I had two uneventful flights and Ken and 2 happy dogs picked me up at the airport afterward.  We drove to Fort Worth for him to do a work errand, stopped at Sonic for lunch-in-the-car-with-the-dogs, and headed home.  It is HOT.  Oh golly, is it hot here!

Just as we got to the place where Bonnie Brae exits 35W and goes under 35E to get to our house, and were waiting at the light, a car came tumbling over the metal barrier, hit a ledge, and fell to the service road below, miraculously landing on its tires.  The building you can see across the road is Fouts Field, UNT's football stadium, and the car came over just to the left of that in this photo. 

 

It very nearly hit a car going below, which managed to swerve.  Ken stopped in the road and ran to the car, and I started trying to call 911 (both dogs scrambling around on my lap).  I looked up and realized the police were already there somehow, helping an older man out of the car.  The police car had been sitting on the right shoulder, apparently. 

I hung up on 911, but apparently the dogs and their dancing feet managed to speed-dial my sister on the phone, and she later got to hear a 3-plus minute recording of my frantic praying as I watched the man being seated on the side of the road, stopped motorists asking if they could help, Ken coming back to our car. 

I don't know what happened to make the car come over like that...have been searching local news, but I may never know.  Such a shock.  Life is so very fragile, and I have had a lifelong horror of doing just what he did (though mine started with a recurring childhood dream of driving on a very elevated part of Houston's I-59 at night, realizing I was a kid and didn't KNOW how to drive, and driving over the side...then waking up). 

Anyway, a restorative nap later I am ready to unpack, catch up on laundry, and figure out what to do for dinner. 

I'm so grateful for the little time away; for Songbird and her family, who welcome me as one of them and allow me to slip into their day to day; for musicals on the IPod, books on the bedside table and open windows with sweet cool breezes; for long dog walks; for Karla, Jean, Holly and Sue, who came to visit; for the Portland Farmer's Market and those I saw there, and for Moxie, which I now have. 

Weather Report

I 'm having a dandy time!  this morning we went to TWO church services - one in Songbird's church and one at her soon to be former church.  (Got that!?)  She led worship and preached a great sermon; then at the other church we heard MaineCelt preach another one.  Riches!  Afterward we came back here with GodGurrl, MaineCelt & her partner, and had a delicious brunch of Blueberry Buckle, Mom's Magnificent Egg Bake, and MaineCelt's Ginger Scones.   Mmmmm.   Recipes here!  for the first 2 at least.

This afternoon we made dinner with much of our Farmer's Market booty and then went for a walk with Sam, The Big Dog. 

Tomorrow, to New Hampshire to meet RevKjarla!   and go yarn shopping.  Woot!

Oh, the weather?  Sublime.