Once Again

Last week, feeling guilty about having missed church for a while, I stumbled in on Stewardship Sunday. We were supposed to have filled out pledge cards to put on the altar. I vaguely remember getting one at home, along with a letter asking us to pray about what God wants us to give.

Okay, maybe if I prayed about what God wanted me to give, I’d get different answers, but when I merely think about giving, what goes through my mind is:

“There are people in this community who are hungry. You should give money to the Food Bank.” 

“Winter is coming, and some people can’t pay for heat. You should give money to Power to Care (a charitable program run by the utility company to help people with their utility bills).”

“With winter coming, kids need coats. You should give money to Pat’s Coats for Kids.” Sometimes it’s fall and children need school supplies.

“Christmas is coming. Some parents can’t buy toys for their kids. You should buy some for Toys for Tots.”

So that’s where my money for charitable giving goes, along with a few other organizations (the non-profit agency I used to work for, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a monthly amount to FINCA, occasional small amounts to MSF). I also do listen to the little voice that tells me that as long as I keep going to church I probably should give them some money to keep the lights on. It’s only fair.

I just have a hard time believing that any money I give to St. Anonymous is money given to God. All the pastors we’ve had have as much as said so, but if you can get your hands on a copy of the budget (and it’s a lot harder to do that than it used to be), you don’t see any amounts listed for Hope Ministries (the food pantry) or the prison ministry, or any other charitable giving. There are many opportunities to give to missions: you can bring food items for Hope Ministries, you can bring toys or gifts for the elderly at Christmas, you can buy salsa or baked goods to support the  children’s home, you can bake cookies for prisoners and buy “manna bags” for the homeless. But that money you pledge each month? Once the pastor, staff and the light bill are paid, the majority goes to the “music ministry” and “children’s ministry.” No, the “children’s ministry” is not an outreach program to supply coats or school supplies or dental care to those children who need it and can’t afford it; it’s Sunday School and youth groups. The music ministry is of course the choir, some members of which are paid. 

I have nothing against the music ministry or the children’s ministry and I love our new pastor, but to me all this seems upside-down. If I’m going to donate 10% of my retirement income anywhere (and that’s a big if), the bulk of it is going to go to the organizations that feed the hungry and clothe the naked and otherwise help people who are in need. Secular community organizations seem to do a good job of that, at least when they have the money. So that’s where my money is going to go.

And if Pastor J doesn’t like that, she can take it up with God, because if I remember correctly, it’s actually his idea.

Baby Steps

Years ago, I met a group of online friends through a Get Organized interest group on AOL. As AOL went through changes and the message board disappeared, we became an email support group and then Facebook friends. As we supported each other through project after project - decorating, de-cluttering, dieting and/or exercising, finding new careers and getting our children through their teens, our unfailing mantra was “baby steps”. There was no project so big or daunting that it could not be broken down into small steps and achieved a bit at a time. For us, baby steps were a useful tool to achieve worthy goals.

In the last few days, it has occurred to me that baby steps can be just as useful in taking you to places you don’t want to go. Like most of the rest of the country, I have been riveted (horrified, but riveted) by the sex abuse scandal at Penn State. (Warning: that link contains disturbing references to child sex abuse.) I have been particularly interested in the disagreements over whether Coach Joe Paterno did enough in 2002 by reporting what he heard from Mike McQueary to Athletic Director Tim Curley and VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz. Why didn’t he call the police? Why didn’t he insist McQueary call the police?

I can see how it happened, though. By the time McQueary told Paterno, the immediate emergency was over. So even if Paterno’s first thought was, “Mike, you’ve got to call the police right now”, I can understand a little voice saying, “Maybe I should give Curley a heads-up first. What if he gets calls from the police or the press and has no idea what’s going on?”

And once the decision was made to tell Curley and Curley set up the meeting with McQueary and Schultz, I can understand Coach Paterno thinking it was all being taken care of, and letting it go. One little baby step leading to the next.

I can understand the chain of events, but the problem is, nothing got done and Jerry Sandusky was able to spend nine more years victimizing boys. When a logical seeming chain of events leads to a horrific outcome, something is wrong with the logical seeming chain of events. There were a lot of people who knew about bits and pieces of what Jerry Sandusky was doing for years, and yet nobody stopped him.

I can think of times in my own life when baby step by baby step, I talked myself out of good deeds I meant to do or into bad decisions. I can empathize with Coach Paterno. Most of the time when I hear people say, “I can see myself doing that” the unspoken end of that sentence is, “so it was okay to do”. I see it differently. I can see myself doing that, but that doesn’t make it right. It just means that you don’t want to use me as a moral exemplar. I’m not going to hold up liquor stores or kick the cat, but if I wander into a moral gray area, I might wander back out on the wrong path.

So, yes, I can see how it happened, but that doesn’t make it right. Nine more years of victims makes it very far from right. Sometimes we do the very human, understandable, wrong thing, and need to live with the consequences. Sometimes we get there by baby steps.

Foreign Exchange: Part 3, the Daughter We Never Had

So we had two successful experiences with foreign exchange students and were looking for number three. I really wanted to find a student from South America, but none of the student profiles seemed right. We looked into getting a young lady from Moldavia, but another family had already invited her. So we invited Anett.

Anett was a 17 year old HS junior from Hungary, with a wide smile and seriously fashionable looking glasses. Her English skills seemed good enough for our local high school, and she projected an outgoing personality and ability to make friends in a new setting.

Anett turned out to be the daughter we never had. We enjoyed our years with Chan and Anders and still keep in touch with them, but with Anett we really bonded. Unlike Chan and Anders, who had a lot of complaints about American high school academics (with which I could sympathize), Anett seemed to accept things as they were. 

While I was helping Annett unpack and settle in, I saw a picture of her with a young man. She indicated that that was her boyfriend. “How old is he?” I asked. “Twenty-six.” She laughed at the expression on my face, and told me her parents were unhappy when she started dating him, but were okay with her dating him once they got to know him.

While we were talking privately later on, John said her parents probably sent her to the U.S. to put some distance between her and the boyfriend, figuring he’d give up and move on. If that was the plan, it didn’t work. They’re still together seven years later and talking about marriage once she graduates from college.

Of course, they talked every day via our computer, a mode of communication Anett used to keep in touch with her parents and friends back home as well. AFS recommends that students write home only once a week and call home only once a month in order to be able to bond with their host family. Anett bonded with us just fine, though, so I gave up worrying about how often she called home. She’s still the one who emails the most and whom we visited twice. Not only is she my Facebook friend, but her mother and brothers are as well.

All of our students inspired upgrades in our mode of living and Anett was no exception. One of her activities at home was going to the gym so we looked for a gym to join, and finally settled on the YMCA. We’re still members. I had a problem with classes there, though. Any time I found what started out as a low impact aerobics class, the teacher would quit or switch class times and be replaced by someone who had us running and doing jumping jacks. I finally settled for using the walking/running track and sometimes the weights, although I had weights and a power cage at home. Anett enjoyed the classes and the treadmill. 

Anett’s English was amusing. In Hungary, they apparently do pronouns differently from English because everybody was “he”. Even when she learned the word “she”, Anett would apply it to men as often as to women. It took months for her to get them sorted out and even then, she still made errors. She had what I considered a charming Hungarian accent, but like most people speaking a foreign language, she didn’t hear it. While we were shopping for her prom dress,  a saleswoman asked her where she was from. Later Anett asked me how the woman knew she was from somewhere else.

Actually, I thought even without opening her mouth, Anett looked European. Her style was more polished, her hair and glasses had a high fashion look, and she preferred her clothes to fit a little more snugly, although not in a way that looked trashy. I always joked that if you could get a quarter between Anett and the waistband of her jeans, she would complain they were too big.

Of course, a few months of American cuisine took care of that problem. Chan was the one who taught us that AFS stood for “another fat student”. Neither of them got anywhere near close to what you would call fat, but they both lost weight once they got home to their own countries. I could never understand that in Anett’s case, either, because Hungarians eat paté and cold cuts for breakfast, and think ice cream is a perfect snack at ten in the morning. Of course, they have walkable cities and probably just move more than we do. 

While Anett was with us, we took her to New York to spend Thanksgiving with my family and to Hawaii on a cruise. She also spent a week with John’s sister in Tennessee after school was out, in addition to going on a trip to Colorado with Young Life. School in Louisiana ends in late May, so our students have about a month after school ends before they have to go home. Chan used some of the time to go to Florida with friends. Anders hung around with us. 

The summer after she left, we went to Hungary to visit Anett and her family. We spent a week with the family in Eger and then a week at a hotel in Budapest with Anett and her family visiting us each day to take us places. Several of their friends joined in to entertain us: we had dinner at one of Eger’s best restaurants, a joint welcome dinner and birthday celebration for Annet’s father’s business partners wife. Unfortunately, the birthday girl only discovered that it was a shared celebration when she got there. We’re not her favorite people. Other friends and family variously held a dinner party for us at their wine cellar (or as Anett put it “wine celery”), had us as guests at their summer cottage, or fed us home made sausage for dinner. We also got to attend a wedding (not the reception, but we got goodies to take back to the hotel) and were serenaded by gypsies in a wine bar on the Street of Beautiful Women. A week later I was back at work being drooled on by three year olds and reciting, “I think of this as a temporary exile”.

It’s a good thing we had such a wonderful time with Anett, because the next two experiences were, well, educational.

(Part Two of my experiences as a host mom is here. Part Four is here.)

I Bought a Knife

Not a cooking knife, I had those. And I am not planning to go on a killing spree. I needed a pocket knife. I’ve needed a pocket knife for a few decades now, but it only occurred to me today that I needed one and could actually buy one.

What happened today is that I bought a new pair of clip-on sunglasses to replace my old ones, which broke. It had been cloudy most of the morning, so I was able to drive around without them, but the clouds broke as I was coming out of the store with my new sunglasses. “Oh, good,” I thought. “I have sunglasses to wear.”

They were in a plastic case that opened easily. None of that hard clear plastic stuff that takes a low grade explosive to remove, or barring that, a scalpel. Once I got them out of the case, however, I was stymied by something else - a tag connected to the bridge between the lenses with one of those plastic filaments. I could wear the sunglasses, if I was willing to give up being able to see. 

At that point it occurred to me that if I had a simple, ordinary pocket knife, I could have clipped that sucker off and gone on my merry way. Instead, I squinted my way home and used kitchen shears to free them.  

(It also occurs to me that when I make the simplest purchases, things like sunglasses that I need if I want to avoid cataracts, they are encased in so much non-biodegradable packaging, which took who knows how much fossil fuel to make both for raw materials and energy, that my carbon footprint on the average day rivals Bigfoot’s. I try to respect the earth, I really do, but I need a little cooperation from people who design packaging.)

I didn’t want one of those gung-ho Swiss Army Knives that comes with attachments to do everything from opening wine to storing your computer files. (Seriously, they now come with 16 gig USB flash drives.) I just wanted a blade, nail file, and scissors. 

I persuaded hubby to come with me to the Bass Pro Shop. I like to have hubby come with me on errands because that way we take his car and I don’t have to buy gas so often. His car uses less gas anyway, making it good for the environment. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I found one, the Wenger Esquire Swiss Army Knife, that had what I wanted plus a few extras I can live with: toothpick, tweezers and key ring. The problem is, the blade is only 1.75 inches long. I was hoping for something a little more bad ass, but the pocket knives that had blades the size I wanted did not have anything else but blades. I’m afraid if I tried to use them to remove tags from products, I’d remove a finger or two in the process.

Besides it was fairly cheap. That’s important, because I know what is going to happen. It’s going to live in my purse, and one day I’ll be about to hop on an airplane when the X-ray machine at airport security will find my knife, and I’ll wave good-bye to it as a TSA official confiscates it so that I don’t use it to hijack a plane.

But until that happens, I’m prepared for anything on the go. Broken nails, tags on my sunglasses, splinters, sesame seeds caught in my teeth. What more can a girl want?

The Agony of Da Feet

Even though my broken metatarsal has healed, my feet still have the problems that have been plaguing me for years: arthritis, scars from the joint replacement on my right foot, stiffness in my plantar fascia, and arches that flatten easily and need support. My spending three months wholly or largely off my feet has weakened the muscles that support all this mess, and it’s still hard for me to gauge how much I can do before I start causing pain.

I’m talking about normal activities of daily living here, not aerobic walking and certainly not jogging. I have been walking for exercise a couple of times with a friend, but not yet at a pace that would get my heart rate up. The kind of activity that seems to stress out my feet is having to walk to get somewhere, especially over terrain that is at all uneven. Unfortunately, the results don’t usually show up until a day or two later.

For instance, when we were in Branson, we walked down a long hill to get to what was described to us as an upscale shopping area. I was picturing Rodeo Drive East, but actually it was just the stores I shop in at home. I’m not certain Kirkland’s and The Gap count as upscale, but there was one shop selling high priced hand bags. (I didn’t go in.) At any rate, the hill itself was steeper than I’m used to, living in an area that’s flatter than Kansas, but it was two city blocks, not the side of a ravine, and even climbing back up was easy when I paced myself. I felt happy that I could finally do normal activities again.

Two days later, when I was back at home, my right foot started to hurt. I felt the pain in the arch itself, but if I rubbed along the metatarsal, that triggered a dull pain, and my foot felt the “buzzy” feeling I recognized as inflammation. I was convinced I had broken that foot. 

My more sensible nature made a deal with me. If the foot was still hurting by the following week, I’d make a doctor appointment. One day before the deadline, the foot stopped hurting, and has been fine, with only a few random twinges, ever since.

Last Sunday, hubby and I went to a local fair. The fair, a fundraiser for the Jaycee’s, takes place on a large open plot on the edge of town. The walk from the parking lot was quite a hike in itself, and the walk to the junior rodeo being held in conjunction with the fair was down a slight but bumpy incline with irregular footing, and of course, we walked the entire fairground before taking a seat in the music tent. Still, my feet felt merely tired, not sore, when I got home. So I went ahead with plans to go walking with a friend at the mall the next day, and the day after that I went grocery shopping.

Wednesday my left foot felt sore. The pain was located just below my ankle, but again, the metatarsal seemed like the trigger point and even a small amount of walking around the house caused pain that took a long time after I sat down again to go away. I was sure I had re-fractured the foot.

Again I made a deal with myself: keep off the foot and see how it feels Monday. Today it is back to normal. 

I tell myself it’s normal to feel uneasy after the bad experience I had. Twice now I’ve walked around on broken bones for over a month before getting help. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Another break in the same spot is likely to mean surgery, and considering my experience scarring up after my toe joint replacement, I’d prefer to avoid that. At the same time, the more I stay off my feet, the weaker my muscles will get and that will leave my bones less protected, not more. So I’m like Goldilocks in orthopedic shoes, relying on trial and error to find the amount of movement that is “just right”.

Let's hope the bears don't get me.

All Saint's Day

All Saint’s Day is November first, and in its older named of All Hallows or Hallowmas, gave us the name Halloween, from “Hallow Evening”. When I was growing up, you could still see the spelling “Hallowe’en”, although usually in older literature. Now it seems to have completely disappeared, which is okay with me. I could never remember exactly where that apostrophe went. All Saint’s Day, according to Wikipedia, is 

“a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In the Western calendar it is the day after Halloween and the day before All Souls' Day.
In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Christians who celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day do so in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual bond between those in purgatory (the 'Church Suffering'), those in heaven (the 'church triumphant'), and the living (the 'church militant'). Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways; for example, in the Methodist Church*, saints refer to all Christians and therefore, on All Saint's Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation are honoured and remembered.”

I used to think All Saint’s Day was another name for All Soul’s Day, but I see they are two separate days. All Saint’s Day celebrates the first string and All Soul’s Day, the bench warmers.

Every All Saint’s Day my late mother-in-law would go to the cemetery where her family was buried to put flowers on the graves. This is the custom in New Orleans, as well as (so Wiki tells me) “Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Chile, France, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, [and] Spain”. The New Orleans custom could have come from the French or Spanish or both. 

New Orleans being a semi-tropical city and my mother-in-law having had quite the green thumb, she was always able to find enough in her garden to make a good show. Unless it had been unseasonably cold, there would be late roses, mums, and possibly a few remaining zinnias and cockscombs, which MIL always called “rooster combs” to my great (and secret) delight, plus a few other flowers I never knew the names of.

MIL was always giving me cuttings from her garden. I still have a white rosebush, gladiolas, and something red that looks like a lily but isn’t that started life in her garden. I wouldn’t have a garden at all if it hadn’t been for her, but I have nowhere near her green thumb. It’s all survival of the fittest out in my yard. 

Once MIL moved to a retirement home in Baton Rouge, my husband would drive her to New Orleans on whatever Saturday was closest, after purchasing flowers from the grocery. Skipping Christmas or (even worse) Mardi Gras would not have been as major a departure from What Is Right as neglecting the duty to the dead.

So on Tuesday I reminded John that if he didn’t want his mother’s ghost to rise up and haunt us for the next year, we had better get ourselves to New Orleans sometime soon with some flowers. “Oh, I forgot about that”, he said. This morning he decided it would be a good day to go. This morning it’s raining.

None of the fittest having survived out back, we are having to take purchased flowers, but that’s okay. The important thing is to be there and remember. 

And not to get haunted.

*Not so much at St. Anonymous. We had one preacher who remembered All Saint’s Day, but he left abruptly for reasons that were not officially talked about, but everyone knew. 

My House Smells Like Lemon Pledge

Well, it did this morning, anyway. Now it smells more like the lentil soup I’ve been cooking, but when I woke up this morning around eight or so, my husband was wandering around with a dust cloth and spray can in his hand, dusting. Dusting is nominally my job, but I only get around to it every three months or so, because I hate it. I hate all forms of housework except cooking and laundry. I don’t exactly like laundry, but I find it inoffensive.

John is the kind of person who has to be busy. I’m the kind of person who thinks sloth is a hobby. Since he retired, John has repaired everything in the house he could find that needs repairing, repainted the living room, after swearing for years that he couldn’t move the armoire to paint behind it, repainted the bathroom and the mudroom, changed out several light fixtures, cleaned out the storage shed next to the carport, practically rebuilt the pergola, and polished the headlights on my car with a kit he got from Auto Zone. He also does all the yard work (frequently at 6:30 in the morning) and almost all of the housework.

What I’ve done since I’ve retired is played a bunch of computer games and bought a bunch of clothes.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I started a regular exercise program, which led to my breaking my foot and not being able to do much of anything for months thereafter. I decluttered 4 bags and 4 boxes of stuff for a fundraising drive back in February and have since gotten rid of 4 more boxes, including a skirt I could now fit into again and wish I had back. I’ve been writing blog posts several times a week. And I do batch cooking of soup, chili, and spaghetti sauce a few times a month so we have easy fix meals in the freezer.

Just yesterday I did our first big grocery shopping in over a month. After recovering from sticker shock at the check out counter, I came home to find John mopping floors.  Grocery shopping wasn’t the end of it. I made a marinade for the chicken breasts. I marinated them overnight and then wrapped them and put them in the freezer. I did the same with some skirt steak and store bought marinade. I was feeling very virtuous until I woke up to the smell of make-believe lemon.

I had planned to make the lentil soup anyway, but not first thing in the morning. I found it hard to sit around reading the paper with John spraying his way through the house, so instead of having the soup for dinner, we had it for lunch. Dinner is going to be the steak sandwiches that I originally planned for lunch, dressed up with Gorgonzola butter and roasted red peppers. And maybe onion rings.

Hubby is getting a lot of mileage out of one can of Lemon Pledge.