guess you better not wait and see

we say that a lot. "wonder if we'll have a white Christmas?" guess we'll have to wait and see.

who's gonna be in the championship game? guess we'll have to wait and see.

who's gonna WIN it? 

wait and see.

what's in that big package under the tree?

wait and see.

the little tiny one?

wait. see.


waiting and seeing is actually quite fun. it's hard, but it's fun. and if what was in the big package turns out not to fit, it's not the end of the world. it's not even the end of the world, despite what half the world thinks, if the wrong team wins the championship game.

but there is one time when "guess we'll have to wait and see" could be the end of the world - of yours, anyway:


"wonder if Christ really is the only way to eternal life?"






 

 
 

the woman who loved every kind of weather or, how to fix everything

last night i had dinner with an old woman who loves every kind of weather. hot and humid? loves it. freezing cold and snowing? loves. mild and rainy? loves. cool and sunny? loves. below zero? fine. in the teens? fine. 50s? fine. 90s? fine. over a hundred? fine. "have you ever met a weather you don't like," i asked. "no," she said.



lots of people, all of them seemingly on facebook, seem to know the secret to a good life - and most of them can sum it up in a catchy meme. it might be - often is - religious in nature, it might be - often is - sarcastic in nature, or it might be - always is - thought-provoking in nature. but no one has ever summed it up like the old woman who loves every kind of weather.

i have never met a person who even likes every kind of weather, much less loves it. i have met people who like every kind of season, but that's different. to embrace humidity right along with embracing scraping your windshield in january is not just unusual, it is unheard of. 

and that's why the world is a mess. because loving weather, no matter what kind it is, is unheard of.




i asked this lady if she is flexible about everything. she thought about it for a second, shrugged her shoulders and said, "sure. why not?" are you flexible about what you eat, i asked.

"sure. why not?"

the clothes you wear?

"sure."

where you live?

"yeah."

what you do in your free time?

"of course."

you flexible about politics?

"people are politics. so, yeah. gotta be flexible about people."

religion?

"you practice yours, i'll practice mine."

what about taxes?

"sure. tell me what to pay and i'll pay it."




is there anything you're not flexible about, i asked.

"one thing," she said.

what, i said.



"being flexible."





 

accept it: you don't accept it.

i don't like it when people say "i know  for a fact." drives me crazy. just like when people, especially athletes, say, "(blah, blah, blah)......know what i mean?" drives me crazy.



M.Scott Peck, american psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, brilliantly said in the opening of that ground-breaking book published in 1978 that, "Life is difficult. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

the problem is, even those of us who accept it, don't accept it. even Christians who have the difficult life example of Jesus Christ don't accept that life is difficult. we might think we accept that life is difficult, we might say we accept that life is difficult, but (practically) nobody accepts that life is difficult. on the contrary, we think that life should be, if not easy, per se, then at least pretty nice most of the time. and when it's not, look out.

people mix up expecting life to be difficult and accepting that it is. i'm not sure that there's any worse confusion in all of life than that one.

expecting problems is one thing. you look around, you see tons of them, and you figure, sooner or later, some of them are gonna come your way. you expect them. but when they actually show up, you say, "why me?" and if you don't say, "why me?" you at least say (or think), well, dammit.

why dammit? why not, "life is difficult - and because i truly understand and accept that life is difficult, my life is no longer difficult. because now that i accept that this problem makes my life difficult, this problem no longer makes my life difficult." why don't we say that? 

because we don't believe it. and we don't accept it.



and i, for one, know that for a fact.  



know what i mean? 
 

what i really want

a synthetic life, bumping into

walls on your 

cell

phone. and people,

you

don't even 

see.



eating big box at red 

lobster or fri-

day's o'charley's pan-

era or

chili's texas road-

house ruby

tuesday's.


good-bye, ruby

tuesday.



shopping big box

this Christm, i mean....

holiday.



designers. custom.

high end.

surprise me, why don't you,

with a 

pie.



from your

kitch-

en.








  

hearing voices

you know that still, small voice in your head? not the crazy one......the one that's God.


i didn't grow up being taught that the voice in my head is God but rather, that it was my "conscience" or my "common sense" or some other non-divine thing. i didn't grow up being taught that if it snowed on my birthday it was because God arranged that - i grew up believing that if it snowed on my birthday it was because the atmosphere and the temperature and some condition way out in the pacific ocean caused it to snow on a day that just so happened to be my birthday. sure, God could have arranged it to snow on my birthday, but He didn't. He had bigger fish to fry.

i was taught to vaccinate children, not to not vaccinate them and if God doesn't want them to get rubella, they won't get rubella. 

my parents told me that God helps those who help themselves. (no wonder they're republicans.)

my teachers told me to study. i don't recall a single one of them ever telling me to go light on the studying and big on the praying and if i do that, i'll end up valedictorian.

one of my mom's favorite pieces of advice was "do things in the right order. finish your education, THEN get a (good) job, THEN get married (if you want), THEN have children (if you want). reverse any of that and you're in a big mess." 

she never once said, "do whatever you want whenever you want, put the cart before the horse if you feel like it, just know that God will guide you and won't let you get lost." 

my dad is smart. he's one of the smartest people i know, maybe THEE smartest person i know. he loves the Lord, and he figures the reason the Lord gave him a good brain is because the Lord wants him to use it.

and he does.

and he taught me to use mine, too.



"God helps those who help themselves." THAT'S what was for dinner at my house - not beef.



but, as an adult, i have run into more and more people who rely heavily - some even solely - on the voice that isn't their conscience but the voice that (they believe) is God's.


i don't know how to distinguish the two. or if there even are two. and regardless if there's one or there are two, i don't know whose i am hearing. everyone else seems clear about who is talking. i am not.


everyone's talkin' at me/i can't hear a word they're sayin'/only the echoes of my mind..........



 

 

 

no, we really DON'T need one more cute picture of you behind the wheel

selfies are...........wrong. stop taking them.


i am turning over a new leaf. (well, as much as one can turn over leaves in georgia. Lord, what i wouldn't give for an entire woods filled with color.)

but, i am turning (notice the tense of the verb......i did NOT say "turned") over a new leaf. i am going to stop being so self-centered - as much as i humanly can given the fact that God made me (and you) self-centered and then said, stop being self-centered.

i don't know why God made us self-centered and then said don't be self-centered. would an earthly parent let a kid run wild (well, actually, YES......all the TIME).......but, would an earthly parent let a kid run wild and then when he starts running wild say to the kid, stop running wild? like i said, YES.....an earthly parent would. but not a GOOD earthly parent.

now, am i saying God is not good? no. but i AM saying He has an odd way of going about things.

be that as it may, making me (and you) self-centered and then asking us not to be self-centered is how He wants it, so how He wants it is how it should be.



stop taking selfies.

food. it's what's for dinner.

i am not on the non-GMO bandwagon. i am not on the organic one.

i don't  really care, apart from economics, if it was grown locally or not.

if you're gluten-sensitive, fine. but i'm not.

i buy stuff from walmart.

i no longer think stacking food vertically on a plate is cool.

white bread still makes the best toast.

a regular burger is fine.

i would like to live in west virginia and just eat ham.

when this last bottle of balsamic vinegar is gone, i will not be replacing it.

if you want to do a juice fast, fine. but i don't.

i don't hate monsanto.

bacon and eggs will not kill me. and if they do, fine. something has to.

pizza is supposed to be bad for you.

i would like to live in kentucky and just eat ham.

the expiration dates don't get my panties in a bunch.

red eye gravy is the most under-appreciated food in the world.

cook like your grandma cooked.

white rice. thank you.

enough with the sweet potato fries thing.

eat your next tomato like an apple. at the sink.

catfish, slaw, and hush puppies.

the blue plate special is special.

meatloaf.

think huck finn, tom sawyer, and sheriff andy taylor.

i would like to live in alabama and just eat ham.




while you're at it, teach your kids (you shouldn't even have to) how to play cowboys and indians, too.

nice

1. they're nice here in georgia. at least this part of georgia.
2. the lady at the DMV (they call it the DDS here. wonder what they call dentists.....)........the lady at the DDS was nice as pie. nice as whatever your particular favorite kind of pie happens to be. that nice.
3. the man who worked at the first grocery store i went to down here was nice. he insisted on carrying my groceries to the car. insisted. i suppose that would get some feminists all up in arms but instead of getting mad (or even), i let him do it. and as we walked to my car, i learned that he was originally from ohio, too. he was born and raised in tiffin. i said to him, tiffin? that's where heidelberg college is, isn't it? and he said, "i don't think anyone since i have lived here has ever asked me that question. how nice. and yes, it's where heidelberg college is. except it's heidelberg university now. i kinda liked it better when it was heidelberg college." i told him that i graduated from wittenberg university which used to be wittenberg college before it was wittenberg university and that i kinda like wittenberg college better, too. he said, as he put my groceries in the trunk, "it's been so nice talkin' to a buckeye."
4. the woman who cut my hair today was nice. the minute i saw her, i liked her. and she told me as i was leaving that the minute she saw me, she liked me, too. and i could tell she wasn't lying.
5. the lady at the car wash was nice. she dried my car off, without me even asking. i know that she was no doubt hoping for a tip - and i gave her one - but i look at it like this: she dried my car off.
6. the 19-year old kid who was at the hair salon at the same time i was, getting his hair cut, said, "you're 60??????? you look 40!" true, people in ohio have said similar things to me before. but not with such a nice southern accent.
7. rudy's next door neighbors sat down with rudy and me and just started talking like we had known each other a long time. maybe not like we had known each other forever - but for a long time.
8. the guy at toast, a wine store here in town (great name for a wine store, by the way), upon showing him my ohio driver's license, said, "ohio? wow. that's a long way to come for wine," and i said, well, i sort of moved here, and he said, "when?" and i said, a coupla weeks ago, and he said, "welcome. i hope we georgians always treat you right."
9. two of rudy's friends have invited me to have lunch with them. and one of them offered to help me find a job. and they haven't even met me yet.
10. you just about can't get to any place down here without driving on washington road. which is nice. because george washington was nice. or, maybe he wasn't. but i like to think he was. so, for all intents and purposes, he was.
11. but the nicest thing of all about georgia is that rudy is nicer than all of these things put together.

is this why nancy drew wrote "the secret in the old attic?"

attics are usually small, hot,and full of stuff like family Bibles, vinyl records, old photographs, and newspaper clippings about woodstock or the day jfk died. if you're lucky, there's a mannequin or two up there or maybe one of those headless human-like things that seamstresses and tailors use to hang the clothes they're sewing onto. or, if you're really lucky, like kevin from "home alone," there's a life-sized michael jordan up there. just in case you ever need to make it look from the street like that there's somebody in your living room. so don't try breakin' in.

attics also are places that hold all the things that when you ask somebody like your mom or your dad or your grandma or grandpa, "whatever happened to (fill-in-the-blank)," they'll say, "i dunno, it's prob'ly in the attic." and when you go up there to see, sure enough, there it is. even if you do have to dig around awhile to find it.

attics are usually nothing but a bunch of unfinished boards and wires and pipes and pink insulation and their unfinished, raw selves represent everything that's right with the world and how, in spite of our materialistic american selves, we can still sometimes manage to get our priorities right:

attics are humble not proud, simple not fancy. it's the rare attic that has felt the need to upgrade to marble countertops.

attics preserve precious memories, most of them family-related. if you go back downstairs after a visit to the attic, nine times out of ten, the family's not there. because they're out playing golf or over at the mall.

attics don't care what kind of faucets the rest of the house has or how hip and cool the color scheme is. all an attic cares about is whether or not it kept your sentimental things intact and the dust to a relative minimum.

they spend countless days and nights unvisited (and in many cases, unremembered), guarding precious mementos and the family "jewels." they don't get much attention or consideration and when someone does go up there, it's not so much to say hi to the attic as it is to go up as fast as you can, find what you came up here for, and get the heck back downstairs as fast as you can. because it's hot up there and who wants to be hot.

but the attic doesn't get angry. the attic says, thanks for dropping by and, see you next time.

attics are faithful. they are faithful servants - if not of God then at least of us. and we ought to give them a little more respect.
 


yesterday, rudy and i went up to the attic in his - our - house and although his - our - attic isn't small (it's actually huge) and although it isn't hot (it's actually quite cool and comfortable), it's still an attic. and it's still the watchman for years and years of a life - soon to be two lives - well-lived, worth remembering, and worth preserving.



the supremes told us to "go up the ladder to the roof" and the drifters before them sang about the glories of being "up on the roof." i think both of them were right - the roof is a great and open-sky place to be. but don't bypass the attic on your way to the roof. the roof may have a spectacular view of heaven,

but the attic holds generations of reasons why being on earth can be pretty heavenly, too.

the lady on the side of the road with the 2 upside down chairs

there's an older lady who sits out beside a road here in evans, georgia almost every afternoon. all afternoon. 

the road she sits by is a pretty busy one; too busy to really slow down and get a good look at her. which maybe you would want to do so you could try and figure out what she's sitting out there for. like it's any of your business.

she sits on a folding lawn chair and she has another folding lawn chair next to her. she sets a bunch of stuff on that one. i don't know what it all is. when she's not out there sitting, she turns the chairs upside down. and they sit there, waiting for her to come back and turn them like they're supposed to be.

behind her is a long, narrow red dirt road, surrounded by woods on both sides and leading, presumably, to her house. waaaaaaaaaaay back in there somewhere.

or maybe she lives in a tent.



i told rudy that i would like to stop and talk to her sometime. that maybe she's lonely or maybe she's depressed and maybe she sits out there so she can have a little company, watching the cars go by. rudy said he thought that sounded like a good idea - me stopping and talking to her sometime, that is.


sometime came today.


me (walking towards her with my hands up): excuse me, ma'm, i'm safe. i'm not here to hurt you.
lady: (doesn't say anything. which includes not saying "get out." so i didn't.)
me: i know this probably seems strange to you - it seems a little strange to me, too, to tell you the truth - but, well.......well, first of all, hi. my name is nancy.
lady: (doesn't say anything. still doesn't say "get out," though.)
me: well, um, so, yeah. my name is nancy. and i just moved here not quite 2 weeks ago. from ohio. and, well. well, i've driven up and down this road a lot since i got here and, well, i see you out here a lot.
lady: (doesn't say anything.)
me (feeling ridiculous): well. anyway. i just sorta wondered, you know, if maybe you were, i don't know, lonely or something. and maybe that's why you sit out here. to watch the cars go by and stuff. and maybe have a little company. i don't know. i just wondered that. and, well, maybe this is awful forward of me but, well, i don't know. i thought maybe i'd stop and see if you wanted someone to talk to.
lady: name's margaret (not her real name).
me: well, hi. hi, margaret. i'm happy to meet you.
margaret: (nods her head. not much, but it was a nod.)
me: so. well. ah. yeah. anyway............i just wanted to stop and say hi.
margaret: ok.
me: so, well. ok. nice meeting you. (i start to turn to walk back to my car.....)
margaret: i sit out here waiting for the mail.
me: oh! oh! well! i hadn't thought of that. (but i didn't believe that story. at least not entirely. sit out all afternoon everyday, waiting for the mail?)
me: well.
margaret (doesn't say anything).
me: well, ok. good. good. i'm glad you're not out here because you're lonely. good.
margaret (doesn't say anything).
me: well. it was nice meeting you. i guess i'll get out of your way now. nice meeting you, ma'm.
margaret: you don't have to go.
me: oh. well. okay.
margaret (doesn't say anything).
me (trying to remember my social work skills and how to engage people who are difficult to engage): so (pointing down the long red road), do you live back there?
margaret: yep.
me: looks like it'd be nice. back there in the woods.
margaret: till everybody gets to fussin' and carryin' on.
me: ah. yes. until then.
margaret: gits to me sometimes. y'know?
me: i think i do. i'm a social worker. i've seen all kinds of fussin' and carryin' on.
margaret: you work around here?
me: no. not yet. i haven't been down here very long. but i hope to get a job soon.
margaret: you'll get one.
me: i sure hope you're right.
margaret (almost smiling): i'm right.
me: well. thank you. 
margaret: no trouble.
(a few awkward seconds pass)
me: well. so. i guess i better get going. it sure was nice to meet you, margaret.
margaret: nice to meet you, too. nancy.
me: see you around?
margaret: i'll be here.
me: k. well, bye.
margaret: bye.

i walk back to my car and open the door to get in. i turn to wave to margaret.



and she's already waving to me. 









 

how rudy jones and ashley parks saved my life

sometimes we expect kindness from

strangers more than

we expect it

from

friends.


sometimes friends

are too

busy.


sometimes friends see you

so much

they

assume you are

there.


strangers see the

tears

in your

eyes. they notice when

your hand is out

and you

are

begging.


but friends,

even though they're in

a

hurry,

know what you're crying

about. know what you're begging

for.


know what you need.


know what you need is

olivia's picture

on the

table.


know what you need is

come home early

from

work and take you

to

dinner.


know what you need is

do what you want

with the

house.

it's

yours.


know what you need is

letters

from

what used to be

home.


but thanks to

friends,



now this


is.

snow angels

i know i am

leaving

the

snow.


i am leaving 50

fingers, 50

toes,

5

smiles.



i am leaving

what comes out of

small

mouths. 



the way their heads

turn

when i walk

in.


the way their eyes

are.

their hands,

their

hands.



the things i will suddenly

remember in the

night,

when i can't

sleep or the snow falls

up north,

alone, without me there

to

catch

it.




the kind of things i would

write to them 

in the

snow.



if i

could.

in the beginning God

thanks to rudy, i am reading "The Joshua Code: 52 Scripture Verses Every Believer Should Know" by O.S. Hawkins. and the first scripture mr. hawkins thinks every believer should know is genesis 1:1 - "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

actually what mr. hawkins thinks every believer should know - and what i'm pretty sure he thinks every non-believer ought to figure out - real fast -  are simply the first 4 words of that verse: in the beginning God.

hawkins talks about worldviews and how they shift and change over time and in accordance with the political tone of whatever decade you wanna pick. pick a decade, any decade and things are like quicksand. don't think so? consider how radically different the '60s were compared to the '50s.

he says, "Even though worldviews may change across the decades, there is a single constant that does not change. The simple fact is that one's worldview can be determined by one's response to the first four words of the Bible: "in the beginning God..." If we believe these four words, then we will view our world through the lens of Scripture that does not change. If we do not, then we will continue to view our world through the lens of culture that continually changes." 

(continually changes according to your brain, not God's, i might add. your fickle, fickle, fickle, finite, not-as-educated-as-you-might-think-even-if-you-did-go-to-yale brain.)

speaking of brains, mr. hawkins blows mine. and he oughta blow yours, too. he takes the first four words of the Bible and boom, asks you the most important question of your life:

are you in? or are you out?



seeing as how the first four words of the Bible are not "in the beginning science....." or "in the beginning (an) explosion..."  or "in the beginning atheists..." and definitely not "in the beginning stephen hawkings..."

but.. most of all not... "in the beginning i..."



seeing as how all that?




in.


definitely in.

a spoonful of sugar

i have always marvelled at how they come up with recipes. what amount of effort, experimentation, and patience there must be before they figure out that it's a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda, not a half.

which flavors go together and which don't. what can make the whole thing go wrong.

what can make the whole thing go right.



just like love.

the sidewalk the day the president got shot

six days away from turning nine and the president got

shot.


the sidewalk got bumpy.

on the way home, i fell over it twice.
i had never fallen over it once

before.


i don't remember the sky.


the sidewalk, the sidewalk. when did they build extra

sidewalk? why did it take five minutes

this morning and however-high-i-could-count-minutes-

that-afternoon just to get

home?


i don't remember the sky. the sky is usually my favorite

part. but i guess i wasn't looking

up.


i was six days away from turning nine

and the president got shot.


when the sidewalk ended,

it was at my house - and i went

inside. i knew i shouldn't

have.


the aroma of cookies was not

there.

my mom was crying.



i turned nine, maybe 15,
six days early


that year.

why ice is cold

i was never very good in science. better in science than math but when you consider that i could add one plus one in several ways and get several answers, saying that i am better in science than math has no relevance whatsoever.



i had a science teacher once who all the kids thought of as "mean." when i came home from the first day of 9th grade and told my parents that sure enough, i got mrs. cook for science, they said that was great. "what's great about it," i said. "she's mean." they said that "mean" means she's a good teacher - that she would make me learn - that she wouldnt' let me get away with murder. and she didn't - let me get away with murder, that is. what she did let me get away with is burning myself half to smithereens and ruining one entire glorious teenaged summer when i could have been studying my own kind of science. if you get my drift.

what happened is, it was june. school had just let out. i had survived my 9th grade year with mean mrs. cook. i felt like celebrating. i had some friends over to spend the night.......

next morning, we threw on our bikinis first thing - the sun wasn't quite up but we were ready for the first ray. working on our tans was serious business.

while we waited for the sun to rise (in the east, by the way, which, ha ha, mrs. cook, i knew that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west way before i ever had you for a science teacher)..........while we waited for the sun to rise, we got hungry. someone said donuts. nobody was old enough to drive so we couldn't go to schuler's. my parents were health-and weight-conscious even back in that day, so there were no donuts in the house.

we decided to make some. from scratch.

and we did. we did. they turned out great. delicious. nobody ate more than one bite - because donuts are fattening - and the only thing more important than getting a suntan was getting a suntan on a thin body - but the donuts were great. looking back, i don't remember what we did with the leftovers. probably threw them away. but i hope not. my social studies teacher wouldn't have approved. and now that i'm grown and i recognize (notice i said "recognize," not "like")........now that i recognize that i am not the center of the universe and somebody, somewhere was starving and would have died, literally, for a single bite of a donut, well, i hope we didn't throw them away. i just hope we didn't.

but i digress. first time ever i have digressed.

so..........what happened next is where the not letting me get away with murder but ruining my summer comes in............

after we were done making the donuts, it was time to clean up. first thing we decided to do is take the boiling hot oil off the stove. good first thing.

second thing - not nearly as good - and before i tell you what it is, let me point out that mrs. cook never - never - never once said anything about what happens if you pour hot oil into a glass jar. never once.

so...........yeah. true story. i poured boiling hot oil into a big glass jar that i was holding in my left hand. and the whole thing exploded like your family at the table on thanksgiving, talkin' politics.

it burst into the air, my friends went running, and the grease went running, too. all over my hand, all over my chest, all over my stomach, and all over my legs. it didn't stop till it got to my ankles. and by then, i was in, literally, shock.



what happened next was worse than the burn itself. as i was lying in a semi-state of consciousness in the emergency room, i kept asking the nurses and the doctors and the thousands of other people who work in a hospital (and were probably eager to catch a glimpse of a teenager in a bikini) whether or not this meant that i wouldn't be leaving the next day, as planned, for mexico.

i was supposed to leave the next day, with my upcoming 10th grade spanish class (whose teacher was not mean), for mexico. we were going to be down there for 2 wonderful weeks, learning spanish. and learning about boys who speak spanish.

but, no, said the nurses and the doctors and the thousands of others........no. you are not going to mexico. you're not going anywhere. all summer. the closest you might get to going somewhere is getting off the couch to change the channel.



and so. the rest of that summer, i spent on my back. wrapped in gauze from my neck to my ankles. that hurt. when my girlfriends came back from mexico with the addresses of people named jose and pedro and raul, that really hurt.



but the point of this whole story is mrs. cook and how, even though she really didn't turn out to be mean (she actually ended up being one of my favorite teachers of all time), how she never bothered - not once -  to teach us not to make donuts.


she also never bothered to teach us why ice is cold.

i can't walk.

two people i love to pieces told me that today. they can't walk.



one of them can't walk due to old age and the other can't walk due to older age. i thought about my grandchildren and how they used to not be able to walk - due to young age.


they say that age is just a number and it doesn't matter. but it sure matters when you're 9-months old trying to crawl to 1 year.


they say it's just a number and it doesn't matter but when you're 86 and you walked and then you're 87 and you don't, it matters.


if you weren't in a wheelchair one day and then the next day you are, it matters.


i had a client tell me the other day that when she was a little girl, her father routinely kicked her to the floor and kept on kicking while she was down there. when she was in her 20s, her boyfriend tried to kick her the same way but she stood up and walked out.


it matters.




it's just something i'm thinking about as i run, thank you, Jesus, closer to 60.

meet the fockers

rudy met my co-workers yesterday. i think he passed the test.


the 5 of us discussed snow, driving in snow, getting stranded in snow, why anyone in her/their right mind would like snow, ice, basketball, graduating from a class of 60 (kate), graduating from a class of 700 (ashley), graduating from a class of was it 450 or 540 (nancy vs. rudy), minneapolis weather (devorah), not being very good at diagnosing mental disorders even though that's our job (ashley and nancy), and how kate set the fashion standard at her high school.

we talked a lot about high school. rarely a pleasant experience when you're going through it but generally a safe, common denominator kind of thing to talk about 41 years later. or, in the case of kate, ashley, and devorah, since yesterday.


when rudy and i left, we talked about them. i don't know if they talked about us. him. but, they probably did. not a lot has changed since high school.



not a lot except getting the best do-over of your life.

wrong side of the bed

probably five times in my adult life i've woken up on the quote unquote wrong side of the bed and today made six. i know why.


i woke up on the wrong side of the bed for what might be the right reason. provided there is a right reason to wake up on the wrong side of the bed which, i'm not sure there is. is there? and even if there is, no sooner did i wake up on the wrong side for the right reason than i screwed the right reason up and made it wrong. (i'm high maintenance.)

the possibly right reason that i woke up on the wrong side of the bed today is that i had one of the most difficult sessions of my career yesterday. it was volatile, it was tense, it was intense, it was full of rage, and it called for every skill i had - and for some skills i didn't even know i had but somehow managed to pull out of somewhere. 

the session ultimately ended well - very well, actually - so that wasn't the problem. the problem was, after a session like that, you're done. at least, i am . all you need to do after a session like that is go home, get into bed, and maybe never get out again - regardless of which side.

but this morning, i got out. i didn't know it was the wrong side at the time i got out but pretty much the minute my feet hit the floor i did. i was like, oh no, this isn't good.

what had happened was, i had soaked up all the negative energy of yesterday's session. i hadn't soaked it up on purpose but i didn't have to. negative energy just crawls in. like traffic inching its way towards wherever you have to be five minutes ago. it's there. there's nothing you can do about it.

except..........there is.



initially what i did was, i complained. that didn't help.

next, i complained some more. as if zero plus zero is gonna have a different sum the next time around.

i was never any good in math so i complained 3, maybe 4, probably more like 5 more times. zero times five (or would it be zero times 7 by now? i'm not good in math)......zero times whatever (and it could have been a billion - and i guess you'd have to ask the people who had the misfortune of having their circle intersect this morning with mine to know if that number is exaggerated or not - but probably not).....zero times whatever and it could have been a billion is still zero.



so what i did was, i did what i told my clients yesterday to do:

stop it.



it took them about 2 1/2 hours to stop it. it took me about 5. 



tomorrow when i wake up, i hope it's on the side of the bed where good social workers wake up.

dog gone

i put my dog to sleep today.



i went to the store because i had no other choice. 2 eggs, 3 dried out pieces of cheese, and one wilted head of lettuce wasn't gonna cut it.

my birthday's this month so i went to the license agency to renew my license and my tags. everybody must be born in november, that's all i'm sayin. i have never seen it so crowded.

i needed chapstick so i went to walgreen's.

dropped by the library - as much to see if they still make books as to actually borrow one.

cleaned the kitchen real good. i stopped short of scrubbing the floor on my knees but other than that, i cleaned that sucker good.

dropped by the clubhouse to pick up the mail. there was a "friendly" letter from the IRS. i'll deal with that on monday.

made a pot of chili for dinner tonight. it smells like what the section in heaven for people who like cold weather smells like.

took a little walk/jog around the neighborhood. the skies were gray and there were little lights on in every home. with atmosphere like that, i don't know why i'm not out there still running.

dusted the furniture and vacuumed. i hate to vacuum. but i love the little raised up places it makes in the nap of the carpet.

went outside with pippi's leash because i thought she might have to go.

my neighbor was out there. he said, doggone, it's cold out here.



yessir.......



dog gone.