And Then There Were Nine...

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." - Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty, Mittens the Cat

So my last post about the Orange Kitten was just the beginning of what becomes a story of strife, rejection, consternation, and adoption.  Read on. 

It was last Monday night and a teacher-friend’s daughter had just returned to her car from night classes at the local junior college.  What should she find, but a box of four kittens on the hood of her car!   Kittens that were too young to not have a mother.  Kittens that were about a week or so old.  Kittens who were dumped by doofuses who should be sterilized and never allowed to reproduce. 

Teacher-friend’s daughter has a good heart and takes the kittens home, even though she could have just set the box on the next car’s hood.  Teacher-friend has another teacher-friend who has had success in hand-raising kittens, so they pawn…  I mean, leave the kittens… in her care.  Teacher-friend’s teacher-friend feeds the four kittens for three days with a bottle until I catch wind of the story. 

“I have a lactating cat!” I announce.

And so it was arranged that the other teacher-friend would deliver the kittens to me, just moments before an impending field trip to the zoo with my oldest son, so that I could pawn…  I mean, leave the kittens… in the care of Mittens, our new mother cat. 

“This is her first set of kittens,” I told them.  “She doesn’t know that four more don’t usually show up a week later.”

I had the kids pet the kittens profusely on the way from the school to my house.  That way they would at least smell like us.  Their eyes were matted and their fur a bit unkempt, but maybe Mittens wouldn’t suspect they were dumped. 

We plopped the four new kittens in the box with the five existing kittens and left for the zoo.

Hours later we returned to find Mittens happily snuggling with all NINE baby kittens.  Apparently she has a heart for adoption.  She’d considerably cleaned up the kittens as well and everyone appeared happy and satisfied about the situation as evidenced by a pile of sleeping kittens.

And the story would end there with “and they all lived happily ever after”, except for this one kitten.  He’s bigger than all the others.  I’ve named him Bubba due to head size and have been fascinated with his behavior.  He swats and plays and gets the other kittens in headlocks.  His ears stand up.  He’s getting teeth and he administers the bunny-kick to all his unsuspecting siblings.  Everyone else lays there like a slug.  No teeth.  Folded ears.  Thinking “WHYYYYYY?????” when he grabs the in a choke hold. 

  

So, not only did the doofuses dump the kittens, they didn’t even keep the litter together.  Here’s three from one litter and a bonus kitten!  Two mama cats without babies now, somewhere out there.

Thankfully, through the magic of Facebook and a few mushy photographs, most of the kittens are already spoken for.  I still have a couple that I may end up giving away as parting gifts at Bunco, or perhaps as an end-of-season prize for soccer, but if there is anything to be learned from this, it is this:

1. God gives animals a heart for the innocent, wayward, and helpless, so surely that is a part of himself he has instilled in us as well. 
2. We would all do well to heed the advice of Bob Barker and “have your pets spayed or neutered”.

And maybe our doofuses too!

The Orange Kitten

"Happy is the home with at least one cat." - Italian Proverb

I am not a fan of orange cats.  It’s not that I think they are any different from any other color of cat.  I just don’t care for orange ones.  And I believe there are enough stray cats in the world, that should I go to choose another cat, I should be able to find one that is not orange in color.  Orange cats are also known as “blonde” by my 7YO. 

Second in line on my Cat Color Hating Scale is a calico cat.  Not a fan.  Probably because of a black and orange calico cat name Kiki that would not let me pet her when I was a child. 

So the 7YO’s cat, Mittens, had been killed by a car late last summer and a cute little mostly gray kitten had shown up at the neighbors.  (She undeniably had peach colored calico mixed in with her gray fur, but I was willing to ignore it because she was a nice kitten.)  The neighbor didn’t want her, so I said I would take her home with me.  The 7YO promptly named her Mittens and she became his own. 

Fast forward to about a month ago.

I’d thought about getting Mittens fixed, knowing she was borderline on the preferred age of six months to have her spayed.  But was she getting fatter?

The 7YO noticed first that she had “milk suckers”.  Great!  Maybe I could still take her in…

Let me just say that nothing riles up the pro-choice/pro-lifers at this house like an unexpected teenaged cat pregnancy.

How could we not let her have the kittens? 

And so, our ignorably calico Mittens has been ballooning up over the past several weeks.  The kids couldn’t wait until she “pooped out her kittens”.  They had already begun petitioning to keep one of the kittens as a “family cat”. 

“If there is a blonde one, can we keep it?” my 7YO asked. 

“I don’t really like orange cats,” I told him.

“Why would you say that?  When they grow up, they get all shiny and nice, and they look professional!” he told me. 

Professional cats. 

What will they think of next?

And so the days had been accomplished that the cat was either to have her kittens or explode. 

Yesterday morning, she wasn’t waiting at the front door to be let into the garage for breakfast.  She wasn’t in the garage at lunchtime.  I got to thinking that I hadn’t seen her all day and I’d been home for most of the day.

I checked with the neighbor lady who said she hadn’t seen her either. 

I decided to check the barn.  On my way out to the barn, I peeked my head under the roof of the well house.  There was Mittens and her kittens.  Four little dark blobs. 

But wait…. 

She moved her front paw.  And there… what did I see?  ...but another blob that was undeniably ORANGE!

I could almost hear God laughing!

I kept the secret until the kids got home from school.  My 7YO was so excited that he “happy cried”.  We relocated Mittens and her kittens to our back porch so they would be protected, and the kids could pet the kittens every day to keep them tame so that their fate of leaving this house to go to a new one will be as expeditious as possible.    

My 7YO then prayed, “Dear Jesus, thank you for my blonde kitten.  It is just want I wanted.  It’s my FAVORITE!  In Jesus' name we pray, amen.”

It looks like we’ll be keeping a kitten, doesn’t it?

Grandma Hazel

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”  2 Corinthians 5:6-8

My Grandma Hazel died on Saturday.  Went home for Easter, I suppose.  I woke up Saturday thinking that she would probably die that night because the next day was Easter, so when my Dad called about 6:30 pm, I really wasn’t surprised at all.  We lost Grandma Hazel a number of years ago, really.  Dementia took her from us.  She wasn’t who she used to be, who we really remembered as our Grandma. 

Several years ago, before she entered an assisted living facility.  The family had an auction of all her personal effects.  Family members got what they wanted out of the house, but the rest was auctioned off to the public.  Everyday common crap really.  Nothing really special. 

I had wanted pictures from her house.  I’d heard for 30 years that she had pictures of my brothers that died in infancy.  I found them hiding in a chest of drawers along with a lifetime of pictures of people I knew and didn’t know.  Pictures are a high commodity to me, as I don’t have as many as I used to due to my house flooding while I was a teenager several times.  I also took pictures of my cousins and other family members, leaving behind the vast majority.  I wish I’d taken more.  I wonder what happened to the rest of the pictures now.  Probably got thrown away. 

Anyway, the skull up there is a treasured reminder of Grandma Hazel to me.  It is an ashtray.  I guess you put your cigarettes in the glasses.  Why would a skull need glasses?  Why would Grandma Hazel have an ashtray?  She didn’t ever smoke that I knew of.  I always assumed it belonged to my Grandpa Taylor who died before I was born.

This ashtray sat on an end table beside the couch where Grandma Hazel always sat with her crochet.  She’d watch Days of our Lives just about every day, and was hardly ever without something to crochet in her hands.  I can remember her holding me on her lap while she crocheted.  She taught me to crochet when I was five.  And where did she keep her crochet hooks?  Here in the back of this ashtray.

So when we went through the house to see what I wanted to take, I purposely left the ashtray.  Surely someone other than I would want it for sentimental reasons.  One of my aunts probably. 

The day of the auction came, and I went.  Not because there was really anything in particular that I wanted, but because I wanted to see how it all turned out.  Grandma Hazel had a huge Budeweiser picture of Custer’s Last Stand behind her stove my whole life and we all thought it might bring quite a bit of money, even though we all thought it to be hideous.  Another leftover from Grandpa Taylor, I always assumed.  Some man bought it because his dad had had one just like it in his barber shop when he was a kid.  He paid $500 for it and felt compelled to make a speech after.  He said, “This is going in my house, and it ain’t EVER coming out!”  Glad he liked it! 

As I walked around, I saw more stuff that had been stuffed away in closets that I remembered.  I was looking through boxes when, lo and behold, there was the ashtray – the head, as I call it – crochet hooks still sticking out the back.  I guess no one else waxed nostalgic over the skull like I did.  But it was up for sale!  To strangers!  I had to have it!  I couldn’t just go stealing it out of the box.  The auctioneers had all the stuff inventoried.  And the money from the auction was going towards Grandma Hazel’s long-term care.  What if this ashtray was worth more than that Budweiser picture?  How was I to know? 

So I hung around waiting on the box to come up for sale.  In the meantime I bought her sewing cabinet for $20 because I didn’t want furniture dealers to have it.  I bought a little dilapidated wooden bench that always sat beside her bed, and I bought a pair of ceramic chickens that always sat up on a shelf in her kitchen.  Better for me to have those things than people to whom they only had resale value.  And probably little of that! 

So the time comes for the box that contained the head to be sold.  It was in a line of six boxes that contained all kinds of stuff.  Two boxes of mason jars.  One box full of old quilt squares.  And a few cardboard boxes best described as miscellany.  I even tried to kind of hide it in the bottom of the box under a doily, but auction goers are pretty undeterred by such things as a doily.  One lady even looked at it. 

The auctioneer announced that we would be bidding for “choice box” in this round.  Tension mounted.  I was sure everyone there was interested in MY box.  I had worked out in my mind that I’d try to get it for five or six dollars, so I wasn’t just going to go crazy!  The bidding started and I had some stiff competition, but when my final bid of $5 was topped with one for $6, I stopped just as I’d promised myself I would do.  The other lady had won.  The auctioneer asked her which box she wanted and she took…

The big box of mason jars.

Whew!  I still had a chance! 

I assumed we’d be bidding on our choice of boxes again, but the auctioneer announced that we would be “cleaning up” this lot!  Great!  Now I’d be bidding on the rest of the boxes all at once!  More tension! 

Bidding started again, and I stuck true to my decision and only went up to $6.  But this time, it was enough!  I’d won the whole lot!  Junk boxes and all! 

A lady standing near to me came up and said, “Did you really want those mason jars?”

“No,” I said.  “I only wanted this,” and I reached in the box and pulled out the head.

She laughed and said, “How much do you want for the jars?” 

“Three dollars?”

“Sold!” she said, paying me, and quickly carted off at least part of my loot.

Later, I made a couple of lap blankets for Grandma Hazel to use while she was in managed care, but even those have been returned to me.  Some junk just keeps coming back.    

It’s funny to think how we all treasure our personal effects so much, but yet what would be left after the auctioneers come through?  Those things we think of as being sentimental to others, might not really be what they associate with the person at all.  And to think that something purchased for only $3, net the mason jars, could become one of my prized possessions!

Here’s to all my memories of Grandma Hazel.  I’ll be sharing more in the weeks to come.  May she rest in peace with the Lord until we are all reunited, and may her memory live on forever in our hearts.

Fishing Adventures

"As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen."  Mark 1:16

We have a new fishing hole.  Actually it is quite a large pond on an acreage containing lots of cows that we have to climb the fence and walk quite a ways to get to, but we have permission.

No, really, we DO have permission.

It has been verified by an old man named Jack who thought we were poachers or something.  What would we be hunting?  Cows?  And all we had was a BB gun.  Not likely to be very successful in the poaching world. 

Anyway, after threatening to call the Wildlife Department on us, he verified with the owners who, sure enough, knew us and had given us permission to fish there.

After our interrogation ceased, we continued about our merry ways.  Here is a pictorial of our fishing fun spaced out over three or four days in the past couple of weeks.

This is what we're looking for.  Sunfish. 

The hub bought the boys a Red Ryder BB gun again motherly advice.  Apparently I'm the one who was supposed to obey. 

This was the first time my 7YO had gotten his hands on the gun. 

My husband found this in the woods and brought it to me.  Romantic, huh?  

I was lured to the far side of the pond where I saw some ducks.  Turns out they were plastic.  No wonder ducks fall for it! 

  

This one must have hit an iceberg.
 

The kids found a "make your own cow" puzzle.

And frogs.  I won't even tell you about our run-in with a cottonmouth or how my little one stepped on a garter snake.  And took 10 years off our lives!   

The hub borrowed this boat from the neighbor and we carried it all the way across the cow pasture.  I guess it was worth it from the looks on their faces. 

And finally on our last trek out, we caught a decent number of fish.  16 in about 30 minutes.  And some were actually visible with the naked eye.  Still can't figure out what this one is.  Is it a striper bass? 

Hope you're fishing for memories today and I hope you catch some big ones!    

CSI: Special Dental Unit

"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free."  Proverbs 19:5

Click! 

I’d sent my 7YO to go brush his teeth and after he shut the door, I heard the click of the door lock. 

Now it might not be weird for people to lock bathroom doors in your house, but it is around here.  In fact, with my boys, it is weird if they even shut the door at all.  Just be prepared, should you ever come to visit. 

So, I knew something was up. 

I hear water running and all the usuals of teeth brushing.  But, that click… 

He comes out. 

“Did you brush your teeth?” I ask. 

“Yes.”

“Did you use toothpaste?”

“Yes.”  Shifty eyes. 

“Let me smell your breath.”

He uses watermelon toothpaste so sometimes it can be difficult to discern whether or not he’s brushed his teeth or eaten a piece of candy. 

He breathes in my face.  Hmm…

“You didn’t use toothpaste!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth again.”

“Yes, I did!  You just couldn’t smell it!”

A retort!  Not his usual defense.  Must employ elevated tactics. 

“Well, let me smell your toothbrush!”  Evil mother eyes.

Busted!

His mouth turns up into that little upside down grin that says, “She knows!” 

“Uh huh!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth!  And do it RIGHT this time!”

Often I feel like my own private investigator.  I feel like I’m both the good cop and bad cop.  I feel like I live with a bunch of criminals just waiting to break Mommy Law.  And now it seems they do so and then lie to me about it. 

Will they proceed from not using toothpaste and on to a life of organized crime? 

Or will my detective work moments serve to build a conscience that will speak to them when I’m retired? 

Will I ever be able to retire?? 

Just another day in the life of the Toothpaste Detective.

Hope your pearly whites are minty (or at least watermelony) fresh today!

Tiny

We bought a King Cake for Fat Tuesday a couple of weeks ago.  It came with the baby above.  The kids and I strategically placed it in Daddy’s piece of the King Cake, and my 7YO almost spontaneously combusted with anticipation of Daddy finding the baby. 

He told him, “Daddy, next year instead of a King Cake, just buy us jelly donuts, okay?”

But, oh, that is only one family story concerning a tiny plastic baby. 

Picture it.  Commerce, Oklahoma.  1978.  I was two and staying with Nanna in her mobile home.  My mom calls Nanna to check in on me and hears me crying in the background. 

“Nnnnnnaaaannnnnnaaaaa…..  Ttttiiinnnnyyyy!”   I said through exaggerated sobs and cries. 

My mom asked what was wrong with me. 

“Oh, that S.O.B.-ing Tiny is missing again!” said Nanna, according to family tales.  Only she didn’t use the acronym.

Now Nanna was a Sunday school teacher for at least 50 years.  What was it about Tiny, and occasionally me and my friends as children, that would make Nanna stoop to such language?  (We always thought it was hugely funny when we could get her to say bad words.)

Well, as you can see, Tiny was, well, tiny.  And apparently I had quite the affinity for these tiny babies when I was little.  I held on to Tiny with all my might.  But inevitably, I would misplace Tiny and then it became quite a challenge to find Tiny due to his size. 

I can empathize with the search for Tiny as every two weeks a missing library book usually reduces me to the very last synapses of my nerves.  There will eventually be a wing at the library dedicated to my family’s honor, paid for with fines for missing library books. 

So, the family got wise.  They went to the Dime Store and bought a whole package of Tinies.  *Is that spelled right?  Or is it Tinys?  What kind of grammatical rule applies here? 

Anyway, now whenever Tiny went missing, they could slip me a new Tiny!  Genius!  But the patting themselves on the back ended shortly… 

I wuddn’t no dummy!  I knew they’d slipped me a new Tiny! 

Or at least I figured it out when I found OLD Tiny. 

Then I had two Tinies!  And we had to keep track of TWO Tinies. 

Then FOUR Tinies! 

It was an ever growing problem.   

Tiny survived all of my childhood.  I still had a couple up until adulthood, but alas, they are buried somewhere along with other items of my childhood, like prom dresses and old boyfriend pictures that didn’t get flooded, in some of my mother’s storage items.  I’m pretty sure sometime in my life I will once again run across my favorite Tiny, who was embossed with his own set of underpants. 

But until then, learn from my Nanna’s mistake.  For one, don’t give inch-high plastic babies to a 2YO.  They’re choking hazards, you know!  And if you do, have a plan in place that does not include exponentially increasing your grief should Tiny go missing! 

So, whenever I see a baby from a King Cake, to me he will always wear his full title of “S.O.B.-ing Tiny” due to his tendency to become lost and causing people to lose it! 

Hope you’re not losing it today!  Happy Wednesday!

A Skating Good Time

"So come on, come on, and do the locomotion with me!"  - Kylie Minogue, 1988.  

My boys were invited to a skating party a couple of weekends ago.  I hated to even tell them where it was because the oldest one had tried skating once before.  And it didn’t go well.

And that brings me back to my memories of the Miami Skating Rink.  I spent many an afternoon there at skating parties, or church parties, or just because Nanna was sick of taking us to the swimming pool.  Or maybe we were too sunburned.  I don’t know.  I just know I have a lot of skating rink memories.

Of course the biggest deal of skating is trying to find the perfect skate and then get them on.  In Miami, they were a kind of beige leather with brown laces that you would eventually wrap around the top of the skate and your leg several times so that you wouldn’t trip on your own ties.  They had orange wheels and stoppers if I remember correctly. 

The laces and wheels perfectly matched the brown and orange shag carpeting that made up most of the skating rink and its lovely round benches that were parked in front of the lockers.  There was about a two inch drop to the baby blue painted hardwood floor of the actual rink.  The floor was warped and if you made it about half-way around, there was a dip big enough to give an unseasoned skater the thrill of going dangerously fast.  Just when you thought you had your balance on the wheels of death, they would turn on the disco lights.  There was an actual mirrored ball that hung in the center of the rink and I hated that thing!  When the patterns of light fell and spun on the rink, it would mess with my mind and make me fall down.  Yeah, that’s what it was! 

I mostly stayed on the carpeted areas, trying to make it from round bench to bench.  Every once in a while, I would get brave and try the slick surface of the concession area where there were booths to hang on to.  Inevitably, I would brave the rapids of the rink.  And it always seemed that just as I was getting good at it, they would clear the floor for a couple’s skate, or limbo, or the choo choo train thing.  Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion still plays loudly in my brain when I think of the skating rink.  (I secretly can’t believe I still remember who it was by!)

And then there was that inevitable trip to the restroom where it was nearly impossible to maneuver in the bathroom stall, precariously perched on one leg with the skate stopper down, trying to take care of business without  rolling out the space at the bottom of the door or off the toilet. 

I don’t want you thinking that bad skating skills run in the family.  My dad’s brother, my uncle Bill, was quite a skating phenom.  He was the classic disco skater.  I was at the skating rink a few times when he was there.  He was probably a little old to be there.  Probably all of thirty or so, but he could do twists and turns and spins that nobody else could do.  Not even the weird guys who worked there.  Yes, it has always been a prerequisite that you must be only slightly on the edge of morality and normalcy to work at a skating rink. 

So back to the kids’ birthday party invitation…

I told them where it was.  They said they’d try it only after I told them if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to skate.  Of course, they never took their skates off until it was time to go.    

We get there and they have these handy dandy walker looking things that make it look like a place for geriatric skaters, but they really work!  Uh, I mean, they look like they would work.  Okay, I’ll admit that after making it around ONCE without falling, I grabbed a walker.  And even though it was about two feet too short for me, it really did help.  After a while with the walker, I actually made it around FOUR times without killing myself or my tailbone. 

My husband had a different technique.  He would carry the walker and only put it down if he thought he needed it.  It was hilarious to watch! 

But what neither of us did was continually fall on our rears like one dad there.  He was nearly my inspiration to stop while I was still ahead.

AND, after putting it off for quite some time, I finally had a less than exciting trip to the restroom still on my wheels! 

A good time was had by all!  Many new skating rink memories were made including the lights of death, countless falls, and some slightly inappropriate music for the 7YO crowd.  And of course, there was the one guy there who was an ice dancer in another life who could turn around backwards and actually HELP little kids who’d fallen get back up. 

My only defense was to crash myself before I crashed into them. 

Keep on rolling!

Immigrant Legacy

“Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.”  Exodus 23:9

You never really think about the legacy you’re building or the place you’ll hold in family lore.  It’s all about the here and now, living in the moment.  But today I’ll reflect on the past and project into the future.  Perhaps I am becoming an existentialist. 

Or maybe not. 

I had to look existentialist up! 

Anyway, my uncle sent me the scanned photo up there the other night.  Hans and Hulda Foss - my great-great-grandparents on my mom’s side.  The boy in the middle is my great-grandpa, Alvin.  He is flanked by two of his brothers – Harris on the left, and Clifford on the right.  Yes, I know, Clifford doesn’t seem like a nice little girl’s name, but that was the custom of the day.  Why did they do that???  Clifford lived to be over 90 and liked tractors, so it must not have affected him too much. 

Hans and Hulda immigrated to this country from Norway.  They came by ship.  Not sure what their initial reasons were, but probably freedom, a better life, you know, typical immigrant ideals.  And then there were a lot of begets, and eventually I came to be, but the Norwegian tie has always been remembered.  My uncle’s name is distinctly Norwegian.  My grandpa can speak a few words of the language and has always held an affinity for all things Nordic.  I, myself, have tried my hand at making lefse.

Ok, so fast forward to yesterday… 

The hub says the last time he talked to his dad, his dad mentioned he wanted to come visit, so would I mind (once again) looking up what paperwork we needed to do to get the ball rolling on a visit?  Today I spent the morning perusing the Department of State’s website looking at forms regarding a visitor visa application. 

But if it were only that simple… 

When his mother wanted to come visit in 2006, she didn’t have enough “ties”, as determined by the consulate office, to sufficiently prove that she would NOT immigrate to this country, so she was denied a visitor visa.  We contacted our State Representative and got a nice “too bad, so sad” letter from the consulate office, but there was nothing else we could do on the visitor visa road.  BUT… since my husband is a US citizen, she did qualify for a green card which would allow her to visit and immigrate to this country.  Logic is not a strong point for immigration procedures, I have found.  We had to go through the entire process (and paperwork) of getting her a green card just to come visit. 

She stayed five weeks, hated it, and promptly returned home.  We’ve not tried to get her to come back over and really don’t know how that will work since her green card is in limbo since she didn’t immigrate.  Will she ever immigrate?  I don’t know. 

Any who, we’re hoping the hub’s dad has more “ties”.  It all depends on the opinion of the consulate officer who is conducting the interview.  My father-in-law has traveled extensively, most recently to India, and has always returned back to Russia, so we’re hoping this makes a difference.

So all this foreigner-immigration stuff has got me to thinking about the future.  Someday I’m going to be somebody’s great-great-grandma.  And there’ll probably be a picture of me somewhere with my kids and husband.  And the story will be “she married a Russian, and that’s why you’re part Russian.”  And maybe they’ll like fur hats, and maybe they’ll like nesting dolls, and maybe they’ll try making borscht. 

And maybe all my paperwork will not have been in vain!

My Nursing Home Plan

“Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God.  I am the Lord.”  Leviticus 19:32

I always say that I had children so I would have someone to put me in a nice nursing home someday.  I have no denials about getting old and needing round-the-clock convalescent care.  In fact, I intend to be a huge burden!  Most likely I will lose my mind, but no one will really be able to tell the difference.  And I intend to start drinking once I enter the nursing home.  I’m going straight for the hard liquor.  I figure if, by then, I will have held off for 80 years or so, what’s the use in holding out any longer?  Plus, maybe it will make my days go faster. 

I worked in the kitchen at a nursing home for about four years during my teenage hood, so I have no myths or false assumptions about what a nursing home entails.  And, I have every intent of using every amenity to the best of my ability.  In fact, sometimes I wish I had one of those emergency nurse buttons now.  She could bring me a drink of water when I’m already in bed… 

Anyhow, Grandma Hazel has been in a nursing home or like facility for numerous years, but due to failing condition and several episodes, she has moved several times in the past couple of years.  The kids and I have visited her at least once at each of the facilities she’s been at.  The first was an assisted living facility and had a big dog that the kids liked to pet.  The second was a “memory” facility where one lady asked my youngest if his name was Thomas at least 97 times while we were there because he was wearing a Thomas the Train shirt.  The third was more of a nursing home facility that had birds in a glass cabinet that the residents could sit and watch.  And her current facility is homey and has a giant fish aquarium in one of the sitting areas. 

Yes, some of the people are scary.  Yes, they are desperate for visitors.  Yes, you can sometimes smell pee.  Let’s just get all that out there!  I think those are the usual reasons people tend to shy away from regular visits to the nursing home. 

So on Monday night, my 7YO tells me, “Mommy, I love you.  I’ll make sure you go to a nice nursing home.” 

Have I groomed him well or what?

And then he starts talking about what my nursing home will be like.  And then he decides that he’ll build me a nursing home.  Here will be some of the amenities:

• A swimming pool and hot tub
• My own cat
• A TV in my room
• A fish aquarium in my room, with a larger aquarium in the hall to hold extras, in case my fish die
• Meatloaf on Sundays (The meatloaf cracks me up because I think I’ve made meatloaf maybe once in his life.)

Then he asks, “How do the people who work at the nursing home go to church on Sundays since the nursing home still has to be open?”

I told him that the workers who were working didn’t go to church because they had to be there, but that sometimes a pastor would come to the nursing home to have a church service for the people there.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” he said.  “We’ll have all the people lined up and they can just raise their hands if they need help.”

He’s got it all figured out.

Hopefully, we’ll only have grape juice at communion.    

He also said we would only have girl nurses because girl nurses are nice.  I told him boy nurses could be nice too.  He said, “Okay, we’ll have boy nurses too,” and decided that his brother would do the hiring.

“I hope you don’t have to have a wheelchair,” he told me. 

“Me too,” I said.  I’ve spent enough time sitting on my butt as it is. 

“I’ll say a prayer that you don’t have to have a wheelchair,” he told me right before bed.

“Say one too that it will be a LONG time before Mommy has to go to the nursing home,” I told him.

“Okay!”

Now everyone else pray that his plans pan out!

Communion Wine (Whine)

“Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”  Matthew 26:27-28


Okay, so we’re not good Lutherans. 

When I first learned to commune, I used to drink from the traditional chalice.  I was young.  I liked Pastor communing me.  And I knew they used Everclear to wipe the rim of that cup between rounds of communion.  Nanna was on the Altar Guild, after all, so that meant I was an honorary Guild-ster since I helped her put communion out when it was her turn.   I remember when we got those tiny cups for individual wine servings and started offering an “option” to drinking after everyone else.  I remember the horrible filling of those tiny cups with this glass jar apparatus with a rubber bulb on the top. 

I also knew that the inner-round of those circular trays didn’t have wine in them.  They had grape juice.  Welch’s.  Straight from the kitchen refrigerator, to be exact.   It was purple, just like the wine, so you’d have to know what was in those cups.  And, of course, it was assumed by me throughout my growing up that if you took grape juice at communion, you were a recovering alcoholic. 

I’m judgmental that way.

Or maybe I was told that. 

Now they say “allergic to wine”. 

Anyway…. 

Years pass, Nanna dies, I go off on my own, I get married, move away from my home church, and start attending where I do now. 

And it turns out, I don’t feel so comfortable drinking after all these people anymore.  And it turns out, that the wine tastes like rotten raisins.  And it turns out, you can have grape juice at communion and not be a recovering alcoholic. 

My church uses white grape juice, probably Welch’s, so you know what you’re getting.  Every communion Sunday I have the grape juice.  I don’t care what you say, wine is nasty.  It burns my throat, gives me dragon breath, and is not an enjoyable experience for me to consume. 

And, if my Lord can put his cleansing spirit in wine, then I’m pretty sure he can put it in grape juice too!

So this Sunday, the wafers and the Pastor pass.  Wafer was not stale this Sunday, I note.  Sometimes they are chewy and get stuck in my teeth.  I like to think of myself as quality control for the Body of Jesus.  Ok, maybe not.

Then the elder comes with my now-usual individual cups.  I only say “elder” as a church term.  He was younger than me.  And we’ll blame it on his lack of “elder” knowledge and experience that he’d let the center circle of cups of grape juice run OUT before he got to me.  So I made a face at him.  And he kind of paused and grinned at me, wondering what I was going to do, my unspoken disgust for the situation written on my face. 

And then I took a tiny cup of wine. 

While the elder spoke the words of communion, I threw back the wine so as to limit the exposure of my taste buds to the horrible taste.  It burned my throat as it made a fiery path to my stomach.  My lips curled and a shudder went through me.  My face got hot and red.  Then I looked over at my husband, who was chin to chest with his face contorted into a grimace usually saved for cough syrup. 

And I laughed.  Ok, not hard, but I found all this quite funny.  I don’t think there is much of a chance of the hub and I ever becoming alcoholics if we can’t even handle the communion wine! 

Maybe we’re “allergic”! 

I did feel a bit more renewed, or cleansed, or like a new person, as I walked back to my pew.  Maybe I needed a reminder of what communion is all about.

Plus, the kids enjoyed my dragon breath!     

Thanks be to God for powerful blessings that can turn even stale wafers and grape juice in to perfect reminders of our salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

And for forgiving even bad Lutherans like me!