Notes From Slackerville

Once upon a time I used to be irritated by church slackers. You know, people who show up maybe once a month; who never volunteer for anything; whose seemingly indifferent involvement in congregational life placed a greater burden on the dozen people who always wind up doing everything; whose non-participation killed one program after another and whose silence always left the leadership guessing about what they were thinking, what we might be doing right or wrong.

I used to be irritated by such people. Then I became one.

We are actually on the verge of joining a new congregation. If this were a relationship, we have gone beyond casual dating; we've met the parents, so to speak; we're going steady but haven't set a date. (And for their part, they're between pastors, so things seem a bit in flux there as well.) But we haven't really become joiners; we haven't volunteered for anything other than contributing items to the church yard sale. And, truth be told, we don't attend church as regularly as we used to, even though this congregation is closer to our home.

Sometimes I get the guilts here in Slackerville. But other times -- well, it feels good to simply sit in a church pew without feeling the compulsion to sign up for the lector rota or that new discussion group; without knowing where the congregational bodies are buried and what interpersonal or political Sturm und Drang is roiling beneath the calm surface of the worship service.  Sometimes it feels just as good, if not better, to commune with the Holy in the context of a peaceful Sunday morning with Fellow Traveler and the four-leggeds, sitting in our pajama pants (the humans, not the animals) and enjoying one another's company.

I know that admission will not endear me to some of you reading this; certainly not to the Internet church nerds constantly bemoaning churchgoers who want congregations to do things for them instead of wanting to do things on behalf of the congregation. In my defense, I can only point to a former function of churches that seems to have gotten lost amid the contemporary emphasis on looking outward, not inward: care of souls. I don't hear a concern about that in circles where the compulsion is to scold churchgoers for not being more active and engaged; I don't detect a lot of interest in learning the why of people like me; people who've dialed back their participation in the life of their congregations, or who linger at the margins. Maybe some of the citizens of Slackerville aren't slackers; maybe they're the exhausted, the wounded, who need a stretcher to carry them off the field -- maybe even affirmation that the sidelines are where they need to be.

The thing is...I'm tired. I have been the good church do-bee for a long time, but now, in the words of Scotty the engineer, I canna do it. I canna do it physically or psychologically. When I go to church, I am going there for rest and refuge, not to get an assignment. Perhaps this is a temporary state until my health resolves. Perhaps it's going to define my participation in a congregation for the long haul. I'd like to think that, in the latter case, there would still be a place for me in the Church to just be. 

Goodbye...Hello

It's hard to believe that it's been almost three months since we lost the oldest four-legged member of our household, 15-year-old Mollie the cat, whom we had put to sleep after a short but precipitous decline in health.

Mollie began her life in the fetid trailer of a crazy cat lady in Maine. When local authorities finally raided the woman's property they found almost 70 cats, which they rounded up and sent to the local animal shelter; after they left, a neighbor noticed Mollie, then a tiny and emaciated kitten, sitting forlornly in the middle of the road. Knowing Fellow Traveler, and knowing she had a soft spot for rescue animals, she gave FT a call. And that's how Mollie came to be part of FT's pet family, eventually winding up in Michigan.

I'd known about Mollie for quite awhile before I actually met her. I was aware that she wasn't terribly fond of people and preferred to spend her days in a seldom-used spare bedroom. She introduced herself to me one morning via calling card -- a mouse's head that she strategically placed on my quilt while I was sleeping. Had I not already been a cat person this discovery would have probably led to a lot of screaming and perhaps some visits to my therapist, but because I know cats I understood this to be a kitty peace offering -- a choice morsel intended to communicate, "Hi. You don't seem that bad for a human." I was flattered -- at least as flattered as one can be staring into the lifeless eyes of a beheaded mouse. I knew I was in.

Mollie never let anyone pick her up, not until the very end when she was too tired and weak to protest. She did appreciate back rubs, head scritches and an occasional tussle with a proffered feather, although she usually preferred to play with her cat toys alone at night. As she grew older, she became somewhat more solicitous of human companionship; around 7:00 each evening she'd stroll into the living room, take her place in our recliner and sit listening to our conversation. At some point she'd usually jump onto one sofa, then the other, and accept brief pettings, never staying for long. She'd occasionally also come out to visit during the day, perhaps snoozing for a bit on a sofa back until she'd suddenly sit upright, look around and scamper off the furniture, down the hallway back to her room. She also became more vocal in her later years, chirping pleasantly in acknowledgement of "Hello, Mollie,"  but loudly scolding if we were too with her morning meal or tardy changing her litter box.

Mollie was a hunter extraordinaire -- never birds, always rodents. Every day she'd patrol the perimeter of our large yard, occasionally disppearing into the bordering ferns to sit and wait. At night she kept watch in our garage. She was proud of her work, and always a bit peeved when humans intervened on behalf of her prey. Whenever we went on vacation, even with a cat-sitter visiting her daily with meals and treats, Mollie would double-down on her mousing -- I think her attitude was, "I'm not sure if they're coming back, and I don't trust this other one, so I guess I'd better start provisioning now" -- so  much so that we quickly learned to do a thorough sweep of the house upon our return in order to avoid festering musine unpleasantness in some forgotten corner.

Mollie's relationship with our dogs over the years was mostly benign; think elderly maiden aunt forced to live in a household with boisterous, dirt-attracting children and you'll get some idea of her attitude toward most of our canine friends. Mollie seemed to have a special bond with my little Cody, when we moved in; maybe because he was almost as small as she was; I'd often catch them touching noses or even sleeping next to each other. Chica adored Mollie in a goofy puppy way; she got more than her share of thwacks on the nose for her overenthusiasm, but they still liked each other about as much as a cat and a dog can be expected to get along; sometimes, if Chica had a sleepover at one of her dog-friends' houses and Mollie was at home alone with us, she'd wander the house mewing, apparently trying to figure out where Chica was.

In the last few months Mollie seemed to be in good health but was sleeping more and more; then she developed a cough, stopped eating and started losing weight. One evening she tried to play-run the way she often did through our living room after her self-allotted family time, arching her back and skipping off to her room; this night, though, she kept listing to one side, almost falling over, and her lack of coordination seemed to surprise and distress her as much as it did us. That's when we decided, tears in our eyes, that it was time to let her go peacefully.

Mollie's death was hard for all of us. Even though she was an old lady cat who'd outlived most of her peers, it seemed so strange that she was no longer in our home. I kept expecting to see her in her room, curled up on her chair or keeping watch out the window from her favorite perch on a nearby table. Fellow Traveler felt the loss of one of the last real connections to her life in Maine. And Chica was sad; she had seemed to sense something final about Mollie's illness, and she didn't exhibit the sort of behaviors one might expect of a fellow pet, like searching for Mollie through the house, but she became very quiet and clingy for the first few weeks. And since then she's developed some odd only-dog obsessions she's never had before, like chasing our resident squirrels away from our bird feeders and standing guard, sometimes for hours under the tree. It's as if, without Mollie, she doesn't know what to do with her time and attention. For a quiet little cat who lived much of her life out of our sight, Mollie made such an impression on us, and left such a void in our lives.

But...that's not the end of our cat story. Days after our mournful resolution to not replace Mollie, one of FT's high school friends, someone we regularly keep in contact with, e-mailed us with a dilemma: She has two cats she adores, who are bonded to one another and who've been in her household for several years; but she's recently gotten engaged, and her fiance' doesn't like cats and is insisting that she find a new home for them. Would we be able to adopt them? FT looked at me; I looked at her; we knew what we had to do.

So by this time tomorrow we will be cat-keepers again. Our new cats' names are Dash and Pumpkin. We have so far been very low-key about all of this with Chica, and have decided to approach this new chapter in the family story with some affected wide-eyed surprise and confusion, a situation needing her assistance as pack lieutenant: "My goodness, Chica -- that lady left these two kitties at our house! What are we going to do? You'll have to help us take care of them!"

I'll let you know how that works.

A Wired Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five questions have to do with our relationship to technology: 

1. What types of technologies, like cell phones, computers, tvs, etc., do you routinely use? How frequently?
At our house we have two televisions, one in the living room and one in the bedroom (contrary to common wisdom, we sometimes find it helpful, after a tiring day, to unwind watching TV in bed, with no negative afteraffects); we each have a smartphone, the last-generation Samsung Galaxies that we generally love; we each have a laptop computer; and we each have a Kindle -- I have a tablet-like Kindle Fire that does pretty much anything, and Fellow Traveler just got a used Kindle from her upgrading sister that we need to add to our account. So we're pretty wired around here. We are usually within arm's reach of a phone or a laptop, and I do a lot of bedtime reading with my Kindle. Oh...and we have a seriously underused iPod somewhere on premises (I think in the family technology drawer under our DVR -- wait; there's another thing). I don't really enjoy "portable" music when I'm walking around; it feels like I'm missing out on important voices and sounds around me, especially when I'm walking outside. 

2. What social media and/or games do you like to play? How often? On which device do you occupy yourself? Which method of social media do you prefer?
I am not really big on online games. I do enjoy playing Scrabble with FT and assorted others (even though I tend to play for words, not for points -- it's just a thing); I went through a Words With Friends phase last year during our Florida sojourn but got pretty burned out on that; every so often I play Word Drop 2 or mah-jongg. If I play, it's usually on the laptop; I have such fumble-fingers, it's hard for me to play especially timed games on my phone. As far as social media -- for me it's Facebook (far too much Facebook, frankly). I don't have enough Deep Thoughts to tweet, and other social media outlets either seem too kiddish or too much like work.

3. Do you separate online activities between home and work? Or is it all the same everywhere?
Well, since I don't have a "real" job at the moment, it's all the same. 

4. Do you have a smart (or I-) phone?
Oh, yes. At times our phones are smarter than we are. FT and I especially rely on our phones for directions, since we're both directionally challenged. We have named our GPS app Priscilla, and she has gotten us safely through LA and Chicago -- no small thing. Again, because of my clumsy fingerwork, I don't do an awful lot with my apps, but I do like my weather app, my Yelp app, my compass app and my emergency flashlight app. And I recently discovered Evernote for my laptop, and downloaded the Android version onto my phone for tasks like finding grocery lists. I'm open to suggestions, though, for good apps.

5. What do you wish you had--or do not have--in relation to these devices?
I can't think of a single other piece of technology I need, other than bionic fingers.

Bonus: What is the difference between your attitude towards these means of technology and a generation older or younger than you?
Around here I think it's less of a generational difference than a difference of place. I am shocked by the lack of technological literacy in the area where we live. Part of it has to do with lack of access, both because of low incomes and because of lack of reliable high-speed Internet in some neighborhoods. But perhaps a bigger barrier to use is a sort of localized cultural aversion to technology. I was shocked, for instance, a couple of years ago, to hear an otherwise savvy young woman in our congregation state that, "My husband is the one who uses the computer. I'm afraid of them." We hear variations on that theme all the time around here from 20-somethings on up; although I think the era of smartphones is eroding that sort of Luddite refusal to engage with information technology.

And now...this exercise has reminded me that I don't know where my Kindle is. Gotta go!

It's in My Nature

If you don't care for nature -- if, like one thoroughly urbanized child of ours, unidentifiable insects and strange birdcalls and midnight shufflings in the shrubbery make you all verklempt -- living in the middle of outstate Michigan is probably not for you. We are not, technically, "out in the country" -- our property borders a subdivision at one end of our small town -- yet we are surrounded by trees, giving us the illusion three seasons out of the year that we're all by ourselves in a large forest; our large back yard is home to everything from Michigan's ubiquitous chickadees and downy woodpeckers to occasional turkeys, a fox, an opossum and about a dozen deer who wander through the neighborhood every day.

We enjoy nature. We enjoy it around our house (even our tribe of skinks who spend the summers sunning themselves on our patio and landscaping rocks, when they're not fleeing from the cat); we enjoy living two minutes away from a huge patchwork of farm fields and woodlands, from quiet country roads lined by trees whose branches meet overhead, from lakes and rivers. And because one of our daily rituals is taking Chica the dog on a long, energy-expending run, every day is like a field trip for us. The other day, for instance, we saw not one but two bald eagles -- no longer rare in these parts, but certainly not common birds -- circling in the air above us as we drove down an unfamiliar lane. A couple of miles away, passing the rows of brown stubble in a harvested cornfield, I noticed, out in the middle of the property, easily the largest elm tree I have ever seen in my life -- a stunning, vase-shaped beauty silhouetted against the sky. 

Being a farm kid, and an only child, I've always spent lots of time exploring the out-of-doors; I used to practically live in our pasture and hayfields during the summer. I was tacitly encouraged by my father; someone who, ironically, couldn't say the word "environmentalist" without preceding it with "goddamned," but who nonetheless possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of wildlife borne of a lifetime farmng, fishing and hunting, who for all his gruffness could be startlingly sentimental about some wild things (taking the time, for instance, to save a trembling young fawn from harm while cutting hay, waiting patiently for a reunion between baby and mama away from the hayfield before he commenced his work again) and who held to his family's Old World principles about engaging with flora and fauna -- for instance, considering it good luck to feed birds in wintertime, and to plant trees where there weren't any. My maternal aunt and uncle were also great amateur naturalists who knew the name of every plant and animal on their farm, whose reference books regularly shed pressed leaves and flowers, whose windowsills always held found objects from their fields like fossils and arrowheads.

Fellow Traveler is a city girl, but her 15 years in Maine, as well as our rural life now, has given her an ever-increasing appreciation of nature. And she has that "beginner's eye" that can make me appreciate what I tend to take for granted. 

So the other day I started a nature journal, with a nice, softbound leather notebook that Fellow Traveler had given me one year but that I'd been reluctant, given my sad record of diarist follow-through, to "spoil" with my handwriting. I've given myself generous parameters in this project -- I can journal, or not, anytime I want; I am not keeping to a given format; I am using a mechanical pencil, not a pen, for writing and sketching. So it's not exactly The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. But I feel that at least some of what we see is too interesting or beautiful or odd to simply try and preserve in memory alone. My goal is to keep my journal lively, and to actively pursue a bit of mess -- pressed specimens, photos from my smartphone, notes in the margins. I'd initially considered keeping sort of a multimedia journal online...but I think it's good to actually write with a pencil once in awhile, to attempt hand-drawn pictures instead of always falling back on cameras and clip art, to create a written work exclusively for our household. 

So far I've accomplished one page -- a short summary of our eagle and elm sighting the other day. I'm sure I'll have material aplenty for days to come.

Confessions of an Autodidact

Autodidact: It's a strange word. Something about it sounds suspect, possibly even nasty. She is a practicing autodidact.

But all it means is "self-teacher." And that's what I am. I like to teach myself stuff. Always have; even when I was a little kid looking through my parents' old schoolbooks and going through the lessons myself. Sometimes I've failed -- for instance, no amount of effort made me a successful music reader or practical sewer or shorthand writer. But sometimes I've succeeded: bread baking; knitting; enough German to bump me into the third-term class my freshman year of college (although I had the good sense to immediately demote myself back to German 101 before my deficiencies became apparent).

When I was a twenty-something slacker working in a bookstore, a couple came in one winter evening, back in those pre-Amazon days, with a long list of special-order books on two particular topics -- I think maybe a certain period in art history, and the Civil War. When I asked the middle-aged pair if they were taking classes in these things, they laughed and said no; but that, every year, each of them had committed to learning about one new thing. It was a New Year's tradition for them. I was charmed; I thought at the time that it was one of the coolest and most romantic ideas I'd ever heard of.

My embrace of that lifetime-learning ethic has been spotty since then; some years I pull it off, while other years not so much. But every now and again I feel that compulsion to learn in a systematic way. That's how I've felt this summer -- I think spurred in part by my recent experiences with brain  injury and my gradual return to feeling and thinking in a normal way. I no longer take it for granted, and I want to keep that sharpness sharp.

During my long recuperation this past winter I did some reading on homeschooling. We have shirttail relations who Waldorf-homeschool, and their children are so interesting and articulate that I decided to learn more about that particular school of thought. While parts of it appeal to me -- the integrated curriculum, for instance, and emphasis on arts -- much of it is, frankly, too oogity-boogity for me to take seriously; and I strenuously object to the Waldorf principle that actively discourages children from learning to read until they're 7 or 8. I don't care what the faeries or angels told Herr Steiner; it's a dumb idea. I learned to read when I was three, because I wanted to, and I'm grateful for that; I think it's criminal to hold children hostage to arbitrary developmental timelines.

Anyway, while researching that particular school of thought I was introduced to another pedagogical method that's gained some traction with homeschoolers and others: the Charlotte Mason method, named for a 19th century educational reformer. At first I got the impression that she was a darling of conservative Christian homeschoolers, and assumed that meant anti-intellectual nonsense wrapped in piety and Victorian sentimentality; but then I found out that plenty of homeschoolers without an overt religious agenda find Mason's ideas useful. And as I read more about Charlotte Mason herself, I learned that she was a pretty right-on woman for her time; an advocate both of girls' education and in giving all children, regardless of social class, a broad liberal-arts education based on the classical model and a lifelong love of learning. Her method includes short, focused lessons that allow the teacher to tackle many subjects; using "living books," books written by authors in love with the subject at hand instead of bland textbooks written and redacted by committee; emphasis on the out-of-doors, on nature study and play outside; teaching practical or self-improving activities instead of dumbed-down "twaddle";"dictation," by which she meant expecting students to be able to articulately summarize, aloud or in writing, what they've learned on a given day.

One thing led to another, and while reading about the Charlotte Mason method I discovered Susan Wise Bauer, a contemporary educator popular with classically minded homeschoolers. And -- yay! -- she's written a book for adults, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide To the Classical Education You Never Had, I stayed up until the wee hours reading it. In it Bauer lays out a general outline for tackling subjects as a self-learner, and also provides lists of books in different genres that can help a  motivated adult student deepen and broaden his or her understanding.

I feel like I've gotten my intellectual groove back. So I've been integrating some of the ideas I've been reading about into my own learning programme. I've had a lot of fun downloading lots of free Kindle e-books on Bauer's list, and have been leisurely working my way through the very oldest texts. I am also trying to check off a line item on my personal bucket list by undertaking Spanish, at least on a conversational level, toggling the Byki Deluxe program with an inexpensive Spanish grammar (because I just can't stand learning sentences without understanding the why of the sentences.) And -- I almost hesitate to mention this because it's so incredibly nerdy -- am revisiting the bane of my teenage existence, algebra, because I honestly think that without the performance pressure of misogynist math teachers and highly competitive fellow students, I might actually understand it this time around. Who cares if it's taken 40 years to summon the fortitude necessary to peel away this particular layer of shame? Game on!

I do one of the short Spanish units almost every day, or at least review the previous day; but the other stuff I just fit in, the way that I suspect female autodidacts throughout the ages have managed to steal learning time throughout the day. And -- thank you for the suggestion, Ms. Mason -- I am attempting to, every night, write myself a short summary of what I've learned. And cut down on the twaddle.

On Living With the Squid

As some of you who still hang around here know, after my big Medical Event this past fall I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which means that I stop breathing, for several seconds at a time, many times -- in fact, dozens of times in my case -- every hour that I'm asleep.  My doctor said that this could well have been a factor in my going into respiratory arrest after some routine, "twilight sleep" day surgery.

Occasionally sleep apnea has a neurological basis -- the brain, for whatever reason, is simply misfiring when it comes to sending the message to breathe. Most often, though, it's a function of body mechanics, whether that be enlarged tonsils or, most commonly, excessive weight that can physically obstruct one's windpipe if one is sleeping in a certain position.

Even though I think it's sometimes misunderstood as merely a snoring problem, it's actually a pretty serious condition that brings with it a whole constellation of unhealthiness, from daytime grogginess and cognitive slowness to full-blown depression to metabolic imbalances and hypertension to increased risk of stroke or heart attack.

All of which made my choice to invest in a CPAP machine kind of a no-brainer, even though the thought of going to sleep every night hooked up to this odd contraption made me sad and got me going all Charlie Brown over myself: You blockhead; you can't even breathe like a normal person. It didn't help, either, that the tech who came to the house to fit my machine and run me through its use and maintenance was a dourly melodramatic young thing, a CPAP  user herself, who intimated that if I were careless in any aspect of wearing or caring for my machine, or even if I carelessly indulged in a CPAP-less naptime on the sofa, I'd die, pretty much. And my first night lying there in the dark, feeling like an unholy hybrid of Darth Vader and a vacuum cleaner, was not fun. I couldn't get comfortable; as I tossed and turned the hose would get twisted and would pull my mask, breaking the seal and causing a distressing hiss that kept both Fellow Traveler and myself up much of the night. I later described it as trying to sleep with a large squid attached to my face. Trying to speak with the pressure on is uncomfortable, to say the least; turning the pressure off before loosening the mask can feel like having the life sucked right out of you.

And -- I'm not a vain person, but no matter how hard the medical supply catalog models try, you cannot rock this look. Unless you're one of the more disturbed individuals who write classified ads in the Village Voice personals section, a CPAP mask is not something that you really want to visually inflict upon your mate as the last image of you before s/he goes to sleep. It just isn't.

Well, this sucks, in many and various ways, I thought in the morning, dutifully washing my headgear with Ivory soap and setting it out on its little towel on the bathroom sink; a new daily ritual to follow for the foreseeable future.

But the next night, something interesting happened; after repeatedly tweaking the fit of my face mask, I finally got it to where I could sleep on my side, as I am wont to do, without pulling the thing away from my nose. And -- I got a good night's sleep. I woke up with my head spinning from all those good, complex dreams that come with some decent REM action, and an urge to work out on the Wii  Fit and write and inventory our antiques and play Words with Friends and clean the house and go snowshoeing -- all at once. Oxygen is amazing stuff when you've been depriving yourself of it for years. In the days that followed I became a whirlwind of energy; while that's peaked somewhat, it's still nice to wake up feeling, as someone once put it, Good morning, God rather than Good God -- morning. I also started thinking more clearly, which can be a bad as well as a good thing -- along with feeling like I'm getting my old sharpness of mind back, I also keep coming upon evidence of a mental fog that, while certainly being amplified by having a seizure, had been there to a lesser degree for a much longer time. Half-done projects that I had completely forgotten about, just lying here and there...confusing strata of personal clutter in my favorite caching spots...lots of stuff that makes me think Omigod -- did I really do this? Did I really not do that? What is this? Omigod...Omigod...

So I love this machine that I  hate, because it's made the difference between experiencing my world in one-dimensional sepia and in 3-D Technicolor.

And I hate this machine that I love, because as this article points out about Type 2 diabetes and the medical industry that's sprung up around it, CPAPs are evidence of a culture in which we've largely (pardon the pun) given up the idea that we can wean ourselves from unhealthy food and habits; we've consigned ourselves to simply creating technology and pharmaceuticals that help us survive a little longer and more comfortably while we still remain dependent on ways of food production and leisure and marketing -- think Walter Wink's powers and principalities-- that damage us. I hate the idea that over the years I've imbibed the poison cultural Kool-Aid and damaged my body to the point where I need a device like this.

But I cling to a stubborn hope that it doesn't have to be like this forever, either for me personally or for great swaths of society. My DO, henceforth to be referred to as Dr. Awesome (as opposed to my previous physician, Dr. Drive-By), is a complementary-medicine practitioner -- improbably located just 45 minutes away from my small town -- who is absolutely convinced that chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes are reversible in many people with the right balance of lifestyle guidance, motivation and judicious use of medical technology. She isn't mean or condescending, but she holds me accountable, and I like that. And she suspects that if I lose enough weight I may well be able to eventually wean myself off my CPAP. At the same time, she told me that my CPAP is a very useful tool that is going to gradually lower my blood pressure, amp up my metabolism and do a lot of other good things that will in turn make it easier for me to work on my other health goals. I wish everyone had a Dr. Awesome.

So at this moment I am loving the squid more than hating it. And last night I actually got a very sleepy Fellow Traveler laughing by donning my headgear, turning on the machine and intoning, "Luke...I am your father..."

A Very Bad Wizard

I think you are a very bad man," said Dorothy.
"Oh, no, my dear; I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard, I must admit." -- The Wizard of Oz

Our pastor cited this quote on Sunday -- I wish I could tell you that I could connect the dots between this and the Gospel lesson the way that he did, but four days later I'm not quite able to manage that.

What I can tell you is that I certainly know what it's like to be a very bad wizard.

There's the thing with our pond fish. This spring, after the pond thawed, there appeared to be no fish left at all -- just some winter-killed minnows floating on the water. There were no sign of the bluegills we'd put in the pond the year before. So in a burst of aquacultural enthusiasm I added a little bag of feeder goldfish for some color. As spring progressed into summer, everything seemed hunky-dory. But suddenly it seemed as if there were more fish in the poind that what we'd planted -- goldfish and bluegills. There wasn't time for them to reproduce. So apparently some fish had survived the winter, and were now competing for resources with the newcomers. I usually don't root for the great blue herons that regularly visit our back yard, but now I was practically flagging them down for an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

And then there's the thing with the honeybees. Our bees are still alive; they've been on our flowers and vegetable plants and wild plants all summer and fall. It's been fun to see them in the morning, working the annual bed, the herbs and wildflowers; "Hi, girls," I'd say. But because of the unskilled-noob way we installed the packages, we can't open the hives without hopelessly disrupting the colonies, and now it's too late in the season to mess with them; they're no longer able to create the wax to repair their homes. So now they're stuck in their original hive body and the roof area where they decided to establish themselves (honeybees actually don't like the frames that beekeepers use in hives, and if left to their own druthers prefer to hang their own elongaged ellipses of comb from any handy upper support). If they had taken to their frames, we would be able to add a top feeder to their hive body and supplement their own stores of honey this winter; but as it is they're pretty much on their own. Every other day I've been feeding them with jar feeders, with increasingly thick formulations of simple syrup, some of which they'll eat and some of which they'll store; but when it gets too cold to continue that, they're going to be on their own. I recently related our dilemma to some crusty old downstate beekeeper who came into the antique mall one day, and I saw the look in his eye when he said, "You might have a problem keepin' them bees alive."

Now, keep in mind that people who raise semi-wild animals for a living learn to roll with the punches of nature and circumstance and human error. The bee guy who came into our store -- a  guy who's been doing this for decades -- confided to me that last winter he'd lost almost half his hives; some to the colony collapse disorder that's devastated American beekeepers in recent years, but some just to chance. He told me that despite disappointments like this, there's no place he'd rather be on a given day than out working with his hives.

I want to get to a place like this, instead of where I am now, secondguessing my attempts to play God, or at least wizard, with sentient beings. I mean, I don't take my garden personally; when crops fail, as they sometimes do, I'm able to step back, analyze what went wrong and move on. This summer the weather necessitated a late planting of almost everything, which meant that my experimental teepee of yard-long beans didn't amount to  -- well, to a hill of beans. I think I picked a half dozen. I didn't go into a depression. I didn't berate myself for wasting the lives of helpless beans that don't really belong in Zone 5. I shrugged and thought, "Next year I'm growing those up a trellis alongside the sunny side of the garage."

At some point this fall I hope to pass by the pond, salute our fish and say, "I'm glad I saved you from life in a pet-shop tub and fish-farm pool. I'm glad I was able to give you all six months of freedom in the wild; and I'm glad you gave us the pleasure of watching you live your lives. I hope I see you again come spring thaw; but if I don't, thank you."  And on the way back to the house I'd like to be able to stop at our two beehives and say, "Thanks, girls, for pollinating our vegetables and flowers this year. Thanks for teaching us a lot. I may see you again around April or I may not; but you've made our yard and our neighborhood a better place. And whether we're out with our hive tools doing some renovations on your house next spring, or making room for a whole new colony -- know that what you did here this year was important; important to us and important to a lot of the other living things around us."

That would, I think, make me a better wizard than the one I am now.

To Sleep -- Perchance to Dream

Let me tell you about my night at the sleep center.

This was one freaky-deaky experience.

Since sleep apnea can be a contributing factor to anesthesia going awry in some patients, and since I exhibit some symptoms of apnea, my doctor arranged for me to undergo a sleep study. My appointment was scheduled for 9:30 pm, at a sleep center in the same city as my doctor. Fellow Traveler and I, already angsted up by late-night driving through deer-intensive countryside, arrived at the given address to find ourselves in the parking lot of a rather conventional professional building housing everything from insurance agents to electrolysis practitioners. The building was mostly dark; but when we buzzed the intercom a light came on in the hallway, and when we identified ourselves we were directed by intercom down a winding stairs to the ground floor.

About 5 seconds into this descent I had the sudden urge to run, run like the wind back to the Jeep -- it seemed like the setup for a local film student's horror movie ("This 'sleep clinc's' patients are just dying to get out!") -- but when we finally reached the bottom of the stairs we found a mild-mannered technician who introduced herself and led me into my room -- which, other than lacking windows, could have been in any decent business-traveler motel; roomy bed with a pleasant duvet in restful colors, wardrobe, flat-screen TV. My angst level ratcheted down a few notches.

I had a few minutes alone to get into my jammies, and then the tech reappeared and we got down to business -- a business involving a myriad of leads and electrodes which the apologetic young woman glued and wove on my face, into my hair and down my shirt and legs. A shock of wire led down from my head like a horse's mane, gradually merging into a lighted panel on the bedstand. The tech snapped a pair of belts around my torso, over other wires, and pulled another band around my head. I then had a breathing tube added to the mix. If I'd been in a more jovial mood I might have feigned The Robot, but that frisson of anxiety I'd felt at the top of the stairwell shivered through me again; especially after I got a good look at the closed-circuit camera aimed at me, that would be recording my movements all night.

FT and I said our goodbyes, and then the tech left. "You can watch TV until you're ready to go to sleep," she explained. "When you turn out the light you'll hear my voice on the intercom, and I'll have you do a few exercises for me to make sure that everything is attached correctly."

So that's what I did; watched part of a depressing Tigers-Rangers game, decided I didn't want to see it through to the end, clicked off the television and turned off the light. And, on cue, the tech came on over the intercom, giving me instructions like "Move your eyes from left to right, and then repeat," and "Flex your right leg," and "Count slowly from one to five."

Then -- darkness; mostly, except for the flashing lights next to the bed and the camera and sensor pointed at the bed. And I lay there, feeling all the hardware attached to me, unable to get comfortable and afraid to move too much lest I mess up the wiring, and feeling very sorry for myself. This has got to be the most miserable, most expensive sleepover ever, I thought glumly.

I'd like to tell you that at some point I relaxed and fell into a lovely sleep; but I didn't. I tossed and turned -- on at least two occasions forcing the tech to come in and reattach the leg wiring -- self-conscious in the knowledge that every movement, every breath, was being monitored and evaluated. I finally did drift off to sleep, a few times, enough to engage in some very bizarre dreams with complicated storylines...and then a voice came over the intercom again: "Good morning! It's time to get up!" It was 6:00 am.

I was surprised to find FT already back at the office; she'd only gotten a couple of hours' sleep at home before packing the dogs in the Jeep and returning. After being slowly, methodically detached from my wiring I shuffled off to the bathroom down the hall -- unlike the nicely composed sleep lab, this room had obviously begun life as a janitorial area, with a walk-in shower and foofier faucet fixtures added but the deep utility sink retained; and to add to the thrown-together ambience, I couldn't get the warm water going in the shower, and emerged cold and cranky.) We said our goodbyes, then made our way across town to one of the few local diners open at 6:30 before finally heading home -- where we both promptly crawled into bed and fell asleep for the better part of the day.

The tech had told me that a surprising percentage of the population suffers from sleep apnea; that it's most commonly obstructive apnea aggravated by things like weight, poor sleeping posture and adult tonsil issues but can also have its roots in a neurological problem, the brain periodically failing to send the proper "breathe" message. Fixes may include everything from diet and exercise to tonsillectomy to a C-PAP machine that helps maintain constant airflow at night. The tech also told me that she loves her job, and that, unlike my night there, the clinic is usually booked up with two patients per evening. I would be horrible at any shift work, but I have a hard time imagining myself sitting in a room all night watching strangers writhe around in bed (although I suspect some of their nighttime dream conversations provide a good laugh for the staff).

Geez. I remember back in the day when old folks just seemed more snorey, and no one questioned that. Now I have become a snorey old folk myself -- one who might have to spend more nights attached to a machine. During asthma season FT often needs to give herself breathing treatments, and I have visions of us in the evening, hooked up to our respective breathing apparati, in a scene that's not nearly as appealing to the two-rocking-chairs-on-the-porch-in-the-sunset scenario I'd prefer.

Oh, well -- it was quite a night, anyway. And I'll get my results next week.

Happy to Be On This Side of the Grass

Hey -- guess what? I'm still here.

That was not a given back at the end of September. I'd gone in for a routine colonoscopy -- in fact my first, baseline one recommended for we 50-year-olds. I was lightly anesthetized with Versed and Demerol, a mixture I'd been given before for oral surgery, with no ill effects.

I remember waking up woozy and uncoordinated and having to ride a wheelchair to our car. I remember eating a late lunch on our patio. I remember walking inside and lying down on the sofa. At some later point I moved to the bedroom.

Then, apparently I experienced what they call a rebound effect from the anesthesia; instead of passing out of my body the way it's supposed to, it somehow re-anesthetized me, to the point of seizure and respiratory failure. Fellow Traveler, who'd been checking on me every quarter hour, stepped into the bedroom to find me on the floor, face bloody, writhing and trying to cry for help. Yup; I almost bought the farm that night, while the local first responders and ER staff worked on me.

I'm not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that, during this medical crisis, I didn't see Jesus or my dead relatives; I wasn't encouraged to walk toward the light; I just woke up in ICU, stuck with tubes and sensors, being coaxed into eating a really bad omelet.

I came home for a week of marginal functionality -- I was on bedrest, which wasn't difficult for me because my head felt as if it were stuffed with a heavy bolt of wool, and I was having a hard time with eyestrain and sudden changes in light and dark. I also discovered that, during my seizure, I'd broken a molar, my notorious "weather tooth." But my biggest problem was fear: fear of going to sleep and not waking up; fear of sleeping alone.

Then, just as the fog was starting to lift and I was tentatively puttering around the house in gentle activity -- I came down with a bad upper respiratory infection, one that knocked me back into bed for another week.

All of which is to say, it's been an interesting couple of weeks. And I'm on a fairly short leash for the next six weeks. Oh -- and Michigan law mandates that, since I seizured, I can't drive for six months. (How advantageous that most of my six months will be during the time of year that I hate driving the most.)

But as FT's uncle used to say, any day on this side of the grass is a good day. Right now FT is at the antique store where we keep a booth; I'm taking a break from some very low-key laundering and dusting, watching the honeybees on our new mums and asters. My head and eyes are still "heavy," but they're getting better.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger

As I suspect other bloggers do as well, I struggle with juggling my desire to blog here with the rest of my life responsibilities.


When we have friction at our house, it's very often the result of the perception that I'm spending too much time online. Again, that's probably not a unique thing for anyone who's reading a blog.

My problem is that it is very, very hard for me to sit down and write anything of substance in a focused way for short measures of time. Well, I take that back; that used to be what I did for a living, writing promotional material for a local governmental-services office. Hack writing under a deadline is like taking a trip around the block for groceries; you're on autopilot, basically, at least after you've gotten into your professional groove, and you frankly don't exert all that much cerebral effort dutifully churning out press releases and PSAs.

To me blogging is different. It's about endurance and attention, not sudden brilliant bursts of insight. First of all, even under a pseudonym, you're putting yourself out there when you own a blog. You want what you say to matter -- because otherwise it's just an exercise in narcissistic time-wastery. And you also don't want what you say to sound like crap; you want to craft your thoughts, not simply disgorge them as they pop into your head. And, for me, even with a life filled with abundant raw material for any number of literary projects, it's difficult to sit and stare at a blank screen and come up with posts ex nihilo. I usually have to prime the pump by reading the newspaper or reading other people's blogs or keeping up with online conversations on the two discussion groups I hang out at. Somehow all of that, along with the rest of the day, spins together and, on occasion, provides me with an observation or insight that I'll find blogworthy.

So for me blogging takes time and focused attention. It's probably something I should do at the crack of dawn when I'm alone, undistracted and not distracting anyone else (except maybe Mollie the cat). I suppose I'm Exhibit A for Virginia Woolf's campaign to have female writers claim a "room of one's own"....although considering what happened to Virginia Woolf I'm not sure she's the best advertisement for that proposition.

But I really want to write more. Sometimes I feel as I've been given a gift, something that makes me me, that I'm not valuing the way that I should; and that if I don't continue to exercise this gift, it will begin to fade away, and part of me with it.

Gathering the Crumbs

I have an appointment in the Nearest College Town this afternoon, after which I'm going to go grocery shopping.

What will I find today? Maybe a bag of interesting organic granola. Maybe a can of white clam sauce, or packet of mole'.  Maybe some spendy pet food for the fur-chilluns.  And of course I can't forget a couple of pounds of good coffee.

I'm not going to a big-box supermarket. I'm not going to our food coop, or to a specialty-foods boutique.

I'm actually heading about a half-mile down a dirt road, next county over, to an Amish-run discount foods store.

We started shopping here maybe a year ago; we'd heard that it sold mostly outdated supermarket rejects, which didn't interest us, but finally one day we stopped in out of curiosity. What we found was a clean and tidy little store that carried, yes, a lot of old grocery items (signs around the store alert shoppers to this) -- but also a lot of perfectly good merchandise, including fresh cheeses and cured meats.  Interestingly, much of the items in stock are organics -- the same brands carried by the food coop. Ethnic specialty foods are also plentiful -- and, again, not all past their sell-by date.  The store sells bulk brand-name laundry detergent and fabric softener too -- just bring in an old bottle. Prices are all drastically reduced.

So if you can picture grocery-shopping America as a big aquarium, merchandisers sprinkle their wares on top of the water...what doesn't get picked off their keeps falling down, down, down, until it hits stores like this, in the hinterlands.

For us it's a challenge to find bargains here. I make sure to bring my reading glasses so I can discern the tiny date information on boxes, bottles and jars, and we both spend lots of time inspecting the goods. We've gotten some incredible deals; a couple of weeks ago, for instance, we scored on specialty organic dog and cat food, both well within their sell-by dates, for half off the list price. The store's havarti cheese is considerably less than it is at the nearest supermarket. Awhile ago we hit the store on coffee delivery day, apparently, and were able to buy several pounds of decaf "boutique" coffee, again at half off the normal price.

Shopping in such a venue requires patience, attention to detail and the flexibility to accept that whatever delicacy one finds on the shelf on a given day is a gift; to take it and enjoy it and not expect it to be there again. (I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.)

It's also quite a circus of characters, and of character itself. About half the clientele seem to be people like us -- savvy middle-class shoppers hunting for a bargain while enjoying a jaunt into the countryside. The other half are people who look as if they need every penny they can save; for whom this store isn't just a rural novelty but a real godsend. It's also interesting to note shoppers' comfort levels in engaging with the young Amish women who staff the store -- some are polite and friendly; others seem afraid or resentful.  We sometimes catch a whiff of xenophobia; frowning shoppers mumbling to one another about how they're somehow being taken advantage of. We sometimes wonder what those Amish girls think of the lot of us English -- our relative loudness and assertiveness and occasional public crudeness; behaviors which, by the way, aren't exclusive to poorer shoppers. Especially when other customers in the store are being jerks, FT and I feel a certain responsibility to be especially courteous and friendly to the staff; even if they think we're weird, at least we're nicely weird.

Wonder what I'll find today?

Shop Talk

What I did during my blogging vacation: Among other things, got all entrepreneurial and stuff. Really.

Our slow process of cleaning up and clearing up our home and adjacent buildings made us realize that we really needed to do something with the collection of estate-sale items that Fellow Traveler has collected over the years. We've never had much good luck selling stuff on eBay or Etsy. When we tried selling a few vintage items at our last garage sale, we discovered that the local folks are just too poor to care; they were interested in my old beaten-up college-era casseroles and silverware, not the items of value to collectors. Meanwhile, some of our favorite television programs -- the pawning/antiquing/picking genre -- was making us want to visit some estate sales and "junque" emporia.  We just need to find the right people, we thought.

One weekend we decided to wander into the local antique mall. This was once a department store, the pricier one in town, back when I was a kid. It had three stories, which was pretty impressive for our little town. My frugal parents hardly ever went there unless Mom needed some special dress or Dad ventured into the sporting-goods section for hunting gear. Anyway, when it, like most small-town department stores, went out of business, the owner turned the building into an antique store, renting out booths to collectors.

I can't recall why we went inside -- I think just to see if we could find some deals; FT has an interest in antique marbles and toys, while I collect hen-on-nest covered dishes. But as we wandered from booth to booth, we noticed an empty corner. "The stuff in our garage would fit in there," murmured FT. We looked at one another. "I wonder what the rent is."

As luck would have it, Skip the store owner -- a rather dapper and genial 80-something -- happened to be in the store that day. We asked him about the rent. We found out that it wasn't very much -- and that we could reduce it substantially by working in the store instead of simply selling our wares there. We also got the impression that he thought FT and I were interesting, knowledgeable and responsible -- perhaps even likeable.

That next Friday we moved in.

It's been about a month now. And while at the time I felt somewhat equivocal about taking on another life responsibility -- I find I really enjoy it. I love opening the store in the morning; wandering up and down the stairs switching on an insane assortment of light switches; putting the sandwich board out on the sidewalk and hearing the zap of the neon "Open" sign as I plug it in.

I also enjoy being in the midst of good-quality antiques and collectibles from a time when craftsmanship was valued. Skip runs a rather tight ship when it comes to vendors' displays; the place is neat and tidy, not like an episode of Hoarders, and contemporary garage-sale flotsam-jetsam is kept to a minimum.

And I enjoy dealing with the public. (This is one reason that I was content to slum in a bookstore far longer than I should have been after my university education.) It's fun for me to talk to visitors from other communities and promote our area -- the other day I wound up drawing an "Amishing" map for one downstate couple looking for a reason to drive out in the country. And you just never know who is going to walk through the door and what they want. One day it was men's old shaving razors -- we sold three of them to different people. (I later read in the New York Times Style section that personal "mantiques" of the 30's-60's are a trending thing among decorators and collectors.) One day a woman was ecstatic to find a googly-eyed coconut monkey for her backyard tiki hut. We sold our amberina pattern glass canoe to a fellow for whom this one thing had become a magnificent obsession; he already had 30 of them, he said; he wasn't interested in collecting anything else; he just liked glass canoes.

This is, contrary to what you see on TV, not a way to make a living. This past month we paid our booth rent with enough left over for a pizza, and that's it. But it's fun. It's exercising some of my marketable-skill muscles after a long holiday. It's also reawakened the collecting urge in me; I'm thinking of maybe upgrading my rather pedestrian assortment of hens-on-nests to include one of the really choice Atterbury glass-eyed chickens, or pursuing an interest in collecting/trading in young women's books of the fin-de-siecle and 'teens -- those brave, smart and subtly feminist heroines of books like Polly Goes To College and the old Campfire Girls series.

It beats sitting on the sofa watching American Pickers, anyway.

What the Health

So anyway...

In my last post I had mentioned Fellow Traveler's latest health issues.

As long-time friends will recall, we have been patiently waiting for FT to get an all-clear from the VA for out-of-system surgery for her jaw, to replace her RA-ravaged cartilage and ease her pain. We had cleared one of the final hurdles in this long (two years, actually) process, when -- the day we returned home from a beekeepers' conference in East Lansing -- she woke up with a stabbing pain in her chest whenever she took a breath. Was it bronchitis? Pneumonia? A heart problem?

We wound up at VA Urgent Care for most of the day; I fretted in the waiting room while FT was poked, prodded, monitored and scanned. Initial diagnosis? Pleurisy; a very painful inflammation of the lining of the lungs. They pumped FT with antibiotics and sent her home with orders to rest and an appointment for some additional cardiac testing just to rule out any heart-related problem.

A few days later we got a call. The doctor reviewing FT's scans didn't like the looks of something on one lung, and was scheduling a follow-up CT scan in June.

This sent me into an internal panic, even as I was keeping up a brave face for FT. FT has never smoked, but her deceased former partner was a chain smoker; had breathing secondhand smoke for years taken a dangerous toll? Had years of asthma done likewise? Had a blood clot in the lung from back in FT's childbearing years left scarring?

While we were processing this news, trying to put a positive spin on it ("They said come back in June...not 'We want to see you next week'...") , FT took her stress test. It wasn't pleasant, but not as frightening as she'd anticipated after reading the scary procedural preparation sheet. She had an echocardiogram. A couple of days passed. Then we got another call: There seemed to be a diminished blood flow to part of FT's heart, according to the stress test results; could she come in for a cardiac consult?

More panic. It was a very quiet, pensive drive back to the VA.

But FT's other test results didn't seem to confirm that there was a problem with her heart. She has a normal EKG; her echocardiogram seemed fine. The cardiology person all but ruled out a heart issue; scheduled another stress test with a different dye medium just to make sure, but told FT, "If you can make the pain happen by pressing on your chest, it's not heart disease." She even suggested that FT's arthritis might be inflaming her sternum and rib joints.  But she wrote FT a referral to a pulmonolgist to further explore the possibility that the pain is lung-related.

If this sounds like a breathless, cursory review of our last month...well, it is. My anxiety response has pretty much burned out at this point. And we're taking things day by day: If FT wakes up with less pain, it's a good day; if the VA doesn't call, it's a good day.

And, ironically, as all this was happening -- FT got her formal, written clearance from the VA for her out-of-system jaw surgery.

I'm trying so hard to work up the intellectual gumption to return to blogging on a regular basis. But if I don't, you'll know why.

In the Joint

Yesterday Fellow Traveler had her long-awaited consult with a non-VA oral/maxillofacial surgeon regarding her arthritis-ravaged jaw.

It was one of those mornings that just begged for a do-over. I had intended to accompany FT to this important appointment, but a relatively mild cold I've tolerated for the past week suddenly exploded in intensity, and I woke up with a raging fever and sore throat; there was no way I could go along. Then, about five minutes into FT's journey through town and toward the freeway our normally reliable Jeep began stalling whenever she slowed the car to a stop, so she was forced to turn around and carefully drive back home to switch vehicles.

I didn't see her for several hours.  Part of the plan that day was for her to come home by way of our church and help train a new volunteer on our database system; then she was going to stay for a council meeting in the evening. But a snowstorm began to build in the afternoon, and FT finally decided that it was unwise to try and navigate through the bad weather in the Prius.

By this time I was not only sick but anxious because of the increasingly bad roads, so I was relieved to see the Prius turn into our driveway. And I'd only gotten a short-form version of how the consult went over the phone, so I was eager to hear the details of the exam.

Here's the story: The good news is that the surgeon is recommending a less invasive, less dangerous operation than what was originally described to us; rather than attempting to replace the joint, he is going to realign the joint to reduce the bone-on-bone discomfort. More good news is that, while not a common surgery, this surgeon has done it enough times to be fairly confident that it will relieve FT's pain for an extended period of time.

The bad news? The benefits of the surgery won't last forever. Preparation for the surgery involves several weeks' use of a new quartet of medicines, including steroids -- something FT hates and has resisted taking in the past because of prior bad experiences -- a bite splint and a host of lifestyle restrictions. Post-surgery FT will have to have her jaws wired for six weeks. And if for some reason this surgery is not successful, the alternative -- a scary procedure -- only has a 20 percent success rate, and a high degree of danger.

FT came home exhausted, jaw pounding in pain, from her two-hour exam -- and from trying to process all the information that the surgeon had given her. I was still feverish and miserable but also trying very hard to understand exactly what this proposed surgery will entail, both in terms of the procedure itself and the necessary aftercare.

It made for a pensive evening.

FT has had so many surgeries for her RA-eaten joints that we jokingly refer to her as the Bionic Woman. Her degree of pain makes her so miserable on any given day -- her jaw swells noticeably, making it difficult for her to speak clearly -- that saying yes to something that may end that pain for at least several years, is not that difficult a decision to make.

But I worry. And I feel bad that FT -- who's already had so many joint replacements that we jokingly refer to her as the Bionic Woman -- has to go under the knife yet again. I know our life together has been blessed immeasurably these past going on five years...but there's always an undercurrent of sadness for the pain she's suffered and anxiety over the future. If this is, as Luther saw our life partnerships, a school for character, then we must be in graduate school.

Meals on Wheels

Got a chicken in the pot today, stewing away with some vegetables, destined for a big pan of chicken and noodles to send over to our friend with lung cancer.

This is a sad story that seems to be getting sadder. Not necessarily the prognosis -- she doesn't yet know if her chemotherapy has been effective in battling her disease; I take her to get her first post-chemo MRI tomorrow. But I detect a certain loss of hope in our friend, who wasn't in good health even before her diagnosis; and part of that may be due to living in her household, with yappy, needy small dogs, a difficult elderly mother-in-law who spends all day motionless in a kitchen chair, smoking and grumping about the lack of "fun" in her life, and a mostly-absent partner who, at least to us, seems to be drawing back emotionally as well in a cutting-her-losses kind of way. I'm not going to judge; this may be denial or depression or fatigue or tough-girl bravado: "I can handle this." But it's obvious to two outsiders, let alone her partner.

Fellow Traveler and I tend to have boundary issues in the other direction. But we, along with a sympathetic neighbor, have been taking our friend to her medical appointments; and when we learned that the other partner was not even attempting to make meals, leaving the sick partner and Mama scrounging the kitchen for food on a catch-as-catch-can basis, we decided to commit to making two meals a week for the family -- an entree and either a side dish or fruit dessert, enough for an evening meal and leftovers for lunch. We've been making one scratch meal and one "semi-homemade" meal using various boxed food products as a base for an entree.

This work has meaning for me. I've been enjoying creating menus to take over there, and preparing the food. And on some level it seems like a kind of karmic do-over for the years when my mentally ill aunt was in a downward spiral, my mother was too anxious and enmeshed in 40-year-old sibling issues to respond to that in very effective ways, and I was so angry and unhappy with my life at the time that I -- like our sick friend's partner -- just disassociated myself from the whole thing until I was forced by circumstances to step in and be proactive on my aunt's behalf. And I also remember, in my grumpy 30's and early 40's, being consumed with that same inward-turned resentment expressed by our friend's mother-in-law, in the midst of my aunt's mental breakdown and my mother's increasing fragility and anxiety-paralysis: I'm not having any fun. When is it going to be my time to have fun? Ouch.

You can teach an old dog, I hope, new tricks; it's taken me almost 50 years to get compassion in a gut-level way, but I'm trying to get a handle on it, day by day.

Our Green Scene

After devoting yesterday to marinating in my sadness, I resolved to start getting on with the business of everyday life this morning.
And several of those tasks involved tending our various gardening projects around the yard.

One of our landscaping goals for this year has been to change up the area around our deck -- to pull out the old, straggly spirea shrubs and fill those spaces with perennials. This turned out to be much harder than I first thought; spirea have an extensive, insidious root system, and I wound up  undergoing an unexpected regimen of strength training through several hours of chopping and twisting and yanking. (I'm not sure what benefit, if any, was gained from the concomitant cursing.) I left one tidied shrub on either side of the deck -- a case of turning a necessity into a virtue, because I simply couldn't dislodge one of them -- which actually turned out to make some design sense, because the shrubs form a logical boundary between the sunny and shady ends of the deck.

Now that that's been done, and a layer of new topsoil put down around the deck, the challenge has been to fill in the blanks. Fellow Traveler, who enjoys flowers and who actually came up with the idea of a perennial border but who is frankly not that interested in the particulars, gave me carte blanche in the selection and purchase of plants. I in turn have been restraining my horticultural exuberance and obtaining plants in a measured, prudent way, taking some time each week to visit the local fruit markets' rather neglected hodge-podges of small, cheap perennial starters or, if I'm feeling in need of inspiration, making a trip into the country to the nearest perennial nursery. This place is on an old farmstead, the business right in the backyard of the owners; despite this, it carries a staggering number of potted perennials displayed in thematic groupings all around the old farm outbuildings, and an entire field of hybrid daylilies that looks like a Monet painting when they're in full bloom.

I don't really have a picture in my head of what this is going to look like when it's all planted. With a few calculated exceptions, my plant purchases have been fairly random; the space around our deck encompasses all manner of light exposures, and requires both tall and short plants to fill, so there's lots of room for improvisation.

Today I planted some mixed sedums in the rocky bare space left by the demise of an absolutely ugly old potentilla that the previous owners used, not very successfully, to screen the area around the air conditioning unit. Sedums are great bee flowers, so if we follow through with that goal next year our little friends will have some needed nectar in the autumn. On the opposite side of the deck, in an equally troublesome, unattractive bare patch, are some lavender plants, a tricolor sage and a novelty pink, with soft gray needle-like leaves and odd, raggedy-fringed flowers in various shades of their namesake color -- all plants that can take heat and poor soil and that generally look pretty whether or not they're in bloom.

And then of course there's the vegetable garden. Thank heavens I raised the beds this spring. We've had so much rain this year that after each storm the walkways around the beds have been turned into canals, with ankle-high water; the garden would have been underwater several times this year if it had remained level with the lawn. But we were so busy in April and May, and the weather was so uncooperative at times, that things got planted about a week and a half later than I would have liked, and now our vegetables are a little behind the local curve. But they seem to be doing well; the lettuce is flourishing despite our naturally acidic soil, the seed-raised tomatoes are healthy and blooming, snap beans and cucurbits are loaded with blossoms, and the first planting of corn -- a new experiment this year -- is starting to sprout tassels. Today I planted a row of snap beans for a late crop -- admittedly pushing the envelope, but these are two-year-old seeds I wanted to use up, and by my calculation they can still yield -- and pulled a bucketful of crabgrass out of various beds. There is still much about gardening I need to learn -- I'm still trying to understand the trick of getting my radishes to make bulbous roots, and my maiden attempt at using black plastic mulch for the hot-weather veggies, while practically effective so far, looks like hell. And as I look at the modest rows of herbs, I can't help but think that I consistently underestimate how much we use these in the kitchen.

Gardening is good, cheap therapy, I've found.

Hangin' With the Amish

With the growing season underway, we've been stepping up our Amishing around the neighborhood, buying onions and strawberries and other delicacies from their local roadside stands.

One day I decided to give back, just a little. I planted dozens of tomato seeds this winter, with seedling mortality in mind -- but all of them flourished, and I wound up with many more than what I needed. So when we went on our weekly round of the farms, we stopped at a couple of the visibly poorer farms and asked the ladies of the house if they'd mind taking our extra tomato plants.

The reaction was interesting. "What do you want for them?" both women immediately asked, frowning.

I explained our predicament. "We don't want anything," I said. "You're doing us a favor. And we're thanking you for all the good food we get here."

That broke the air of formality in both households, and we had some enjoyable discussions about tomato husbandry and farming in general. The women seemed a little surprised, and approving, that I'd started the plants from seed, and wanted to know if they were heirlooms or hybrids. (I always feel woefully incompetent in survival skills when I deal with the Amish, so it was frankly  satisfying to show off my modestly green thumb.)

Afterward FT noted, "I wonder why we get more out of our relationships with our Amish neighbors than the 'English' ones."

We live in a community where people with life competency of any kind are in short supply -- long gone, thanks to Michigan's protracted economic doldrums -- so our 'English' neighbors tend to be, as our friends in social services say, lacking in coping mechanisms and a support network...fancy talk for My Big Fucked-Up Redneck Life. And, ironically, as gay folks, even though we know we'd not be accepted in Amish society, we also seem to have a common set of detractors and harassers -- fundamentalists and good ol' boys, both groups possessing a dangerous mixture of ignorance, inferiority complex, entitlement mentality and xenophobia. When we see a group of 20-somethings in a pickup truck trying to run an Amish buggy off the road, or read hysterical screeds by fundamentalist pastors bleating on about saving the Amish from the dangers and dysfunctions of their "cult," we nod and think, We get that too.

At the same time we hold no idealistic allusions about Amish society. We understand that their community is not immune from spousal and child abuse, addiction, out-of-control teenagers and the vagaries of an economy that affects even these most self-sufficient of people. We obviously have difference of opinion about everything from gender roles to the wise use of technology.And looking at the Amish through my Lutheran lenses, I might point out that, no matter how "called out" from the world Christians might presume to be, we're all still sinners, and no amount of good-works points is going to change that. Despite the grace I see in their actions, I don't always see a lot of grace in their theology.

But -- we still like 'em. We just do. And we love the kids, who -- unlike the sort of Stepford fundamentalist-homeschool kids I've encountered, or the jaded, prematurely "adulted" and technology-numbed children of the rest of the neighborhood -- actually act like kids; like the little boy who played hide-and-seek with us around his parents' roadside stand, or our furniture-maker  friends' toddler daughter who, while we were talking bidness with Dad,  was trying unsuccessfully to write on a bemused family dog with an ink pen, or the self-assured tweenage counter girl at the Amish bakery who, taking a marketing cue from McDonald's, always goes for an extra sell: "If you like that bread, maybe you'd like some cinnamon rolls too."

Our corner of Michigan may not be the hippest or the most scenic or the most historic. But our Amish community helps make it a better place to live.

Loving the Neighbors

Fellow Traveler and I have friends, a lesbian couple in their sixties and seventies respectively, who live a few miles down the road from us; FT met them at a neighborhood Christmas party shortly after moving to this area. The two live in a household I'll call Dysfunction Junction, a remodeled trailer on the edge of a river.

How can I describe this couple? They remind me of characters in a 1950's lesbian pulp novel, all growed up but still dressing and acting according to the Sisterhood's script of those times; think tough girls in jeans with a pack of Camels rolled into their T-shirt sleeve. Each has a past that she seems extremely reluctant to talk about. One partner has numerous health problems and hasn't worked for years; the other, younger partner has worked for years at a physically as well as emotionally punishing nearly-minimum-wage job. They've also been caregivers to two live-in invalid parents, although they seem to have burned bridges with many of their other family members -- including their children.

The two dwell in a cloud of blue cigarette smoke, so much so that we literally can't visit their home for more than a few minutes at a time before FT is sent into an asthma attack.They operate in a state of perpetual personal and household disshevelment; on the margins in a multiplicity of ways. They cycle through doomed money-making schemes; financial crises; caregiving problems; health issues; simultaneously exploitative and exploited "friends" who come and go. We in turn lose track of them for months at a time; then they'll call asking for help of some kind, or wanting to borrow some tool or appliance from us (that is inevitably lost or broken) and we'll briefly get involved in their lives again...until, once more, their neediness begins to overwhelm us.

A few weeks ago, after months of not hearing from them, one of the partners appeared on our doorstep. This time it wasn't about borrowing a saw. She told us that the other partner had been diagnosed with a large, inoperable tumor in her lung, and was about to undergo chemotherapy. She sank down into our sofa and, blinking away tears, began unloading about her partner's illness; problems with her live-in parent; loss of an elderly friend; her overwhelming physical and emotional fatigue and worries about money.

So here we are again, trying to help this couple without becoming completely sucked into the vortex of their household trials. We said we could help take the sick partner to chemotherapy once or twice a week. Knowing how difficult it was for the well partner to make meals for the household -- the sick partner tended to be the family cook, but is now too weak to do that -- we decided we'd make food for them once a week; enough for a good meal and leftovers. FT, who has facility with computers, offered to help fix their computer so that the sick partner can maintain some contact with her family through e-mail.

Yesterday we dropped by to pick up the computer. The ill partner, who just finished her first round of chemotherapy, met us at the door, ashen-faced, surrounded by a pack of yapping toy dogs (the result of a failed let's-make-money-selling-puppies Grand Plan, plus a rescue dog, plus Mama's dog). She let us in, then pulled me aside amid the chaos of the dogs and the durch-und-unter of the tiny living space and the vacantly cheerful, nonverbal mother-in-law who spends the day just sitting at the kitchen table.

"I need some spiritual guidance," she said. "I've been trying to pray. I pray an act of contrition and and Our Father every night. And I've been doing some bargaining with God too. But...I'm just really scared right now."

I can't remember exactly how I responded to her; something about how every prayer is a good prayer and to just keep talking to God; some sort of unnerved, caught-off-guard church-geek gibberish. I also told her to call me if she just needed to talk or wanted me to come over.

It's a daunting thought, being asked to provide the closest thing to pastoral care that this lady is willing to accept.. I had my Moses/Peter moment: "Um, no, God, you really don't want me to do this job. Because deep, deep down I'm shallow; too shallow to walk the valley of the shadow with anyone. You want someone with spiritual chops; not me." But now that I've had a day to think and pray about it, I know that I am being called to carry Christ, somehow, into the life of this individual. How that happens...well, we'll see.

Wild Hares

I am spending much of this beautiful, post-storm June day on the sofa staving off a headache that I fear is the precusor to whatever viral bug has stricken Fellow Traveler.  I'm holding my nose and drinking Airborne (yes, I know, there's no proof it works; don't judge), and hoping that the heaviness behind my eyes doesn't begin a predictable chain reaction of sore throat, stuffy sinuses and fever.

I need badly to get outside and do things. Our last trees of the season arrived yesterday -- a pair of sourwoods and a Carolina silverbell -- plus a native autumn clematis vine, all of which need replanting somewhere in our increasingly crowded wood margin. And I'm behind on some of my succession planting plans, and in starting some perennial flowers for next year.

Amid this retrogressive two-step, though, I have developed a number of what Fellow Traveler calls wild hares...you know, those sudden new interests; those odd, persistent promptings to do some new thing.

I've always had a thing for magnificent obsessions. One year, as a child, it was learning shorthand from my mother's old high school textbook. (Not terribly successful.) Another year it was stamped embroidery and rick-rack lace. Then I become completely engrossed in poultry raising. As an adult, I went through The Year of Knitting and The Year of Self-Help Psychology and The Year of Two-Mile Walks and the Year of Making Cakes From Scratch.

Here are a two of my latest wild hares:

Going to the library. I used to be a library geek, even in our book-deprived community. I used to take out a half-dozen books at once and read them all in a weekend. (And then forget to return them; I hope the library board have invested my fines in some fund for a future expansion.) Then my mom died. Then I met Fellow Traveler. Then I got busy. And I forgot about reading books. Wow; I can't believe I just typed that; but I did. This summer, though, I want to read some books, just to read them. The other day we were talking about antiques, and I remember how my aunt used to find interesting old books in secondhand stores -- books that sold for a dime, or by the foot -- and read them. I'm interested in reading a couple of those -- jackets long gone, covers faded, signed in fountain pen on the inside by some long-gone owner. Maybe a travelogue, or a treatise on botany or beekeeping, or one of those progressive novels for girls featuring a plucky heroine defying convention by tenting with the Campfire Girls or going off to college. That and a book by a Michigan author. Traverse magazine's latest issue has a list of 30 beach reads by Michigan authors; that might be a starting point.

Mosaics. We spent many weekend afternoons last year learning how to work with stained glass. Fellow Traveler loves this. I love the look of it, and there are parts of the process (like grinding) that I enjoy and think I do fairly well...but I don't have FT's ambition to launch into a full-bodied, serious art project in this medium -- because frankly I don't think I'm good enough. If I'm going to fail, let me fail with some fairly small, low-investment objet d'art. But the other Sunday we took an afternoon trip to our stained glass instructor's shop for some supplies, and while we were there I found myself attracted to the mosaics in progress in her classroom; someone was in the process of covering a cement replica of the "Bird Girl" statue made famous on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and I marveled at the tiny bits of stained glass the student was carefully placing on the statue. Then in a book I saw a mosaic patio table using bits of broken china and other colorful tiles, and a mosaic bird feeder made out of a basic $10 pine model covered in ceramic pieces and flat-backed marbles. I can do that, I thought. Not only can I do that, but I can do it using the rather large amount of scrap glass generated by other stained glass work.

I have strangled other wild hares. My interest in terraria, for instance, died a-borning, mostly because I realized we don't have adequate natural light in our home for most houseplants of any kind, and no spot in our living areas that would really do such a project justice. I also experienced a momentary interest in making cheese -- you know, like Martha Stewart telling us that homemade mozzarella is "quite easy and fun" -- but after coming to from that patio reverie I had to remind myself that, no, what I really like doing is eating artisanal cheese.

I haven't had any church-related wild hares of late...ironically, the more involved I am in lay ministry the less proactive and innovative I want to be. My pastor and a couple of other folks want me to lead Bible study Sunday mornings, and I've enjoyed the couple of times I've led Bible studies for our quilters' group during our pastor's recuperation from heart surgery; but my reaction to the sample Book of Faith Bible study we ordered was a big "Meh," and flashbacks to my mind-numbing experiences sitting in on Navigator Bible studies in my college dorm.

We'll see what becomes of the hares bouncing around in my brain this summer.

The Joy of Not Working

I'm writing this on a cold, wet, sinus-swelling day here in mid-Michigan, after a quick walk outside to inspect the grounds (those last stubborn holly seedlings are still resisting greening out, but dum spiro, spero), and to quickly pop a four-pack of sweet williams into the new perennial bed before they became too sodden in their plastic container. Earlier this morning I wrote a review of Sunday's lessons, with questions for reflection, for our church blog. When I'm done with this post I might wander into the kitchen and clean up a straggle of evening dishes before they begin to multiply in worrisome ways.

It's a slow day, by both choice and circumstance. But as I sit here I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to have a slow day, in a way I didn't have when I was working for a paycheck.

What would I have done on a day like this back in the old office -- a day where I didn't feel on my game either physically or mentally? Probably a lot of purposeful action with little work product actually being done, and some surreptitious Web-surfing and subsequent self-guilting in between.

So it's a blessing, even as I'm swallowing my Advil, to enjoy the freedom of a dark, dreary day where not a lot gets done, without the looming presence of multiple bosses and incoming assignments from other people.

That's one thing. And I'm also blessed to be able to (when weather finally permits) engage in some heavy, sweaty, grunt-inducing physical labor. Who needs a weight room when pounds of soil await moving outside? Who needs special flexibility exercises when there are seeds and seedlings that must be planted, and unruly growth that must be pruned? And it's labor that results in a tangible, seeable, living result; unlike years of PR pitchmanship on the sinking boat of  increasingly irrelevant social services -- services that most of the intended recipients emphatically don't want.

So my days have a rhythm and a purpose even without a timeclock. I usually work on the church blog and its Facebook companion very early in the morning -- I'll occasionally work on drafts for other days of the week, but I haven't really gotten into multitasking here. Then FT and I have morning coffee and breakfast together and informally review the day ahead. Mondays, and sometimes another day each week, we go to church for a half day; FT works on church software issues while I check phone messages or work on my own church-related tasks. Oftentimes we pair our "church day" up with grocery shopping, since church brings us a few miles closer to Midland, or we go visit FT's elderly, infirm aunt and uncle, and help them with a few outdoor chores.  We come home and do household and outdoor work. In the early evening we like to take a family "ride" around this or that neighborhood, a ritual that we tell ourselves if for the benefit of our easily bored dog but is really about spending quality time together. FT paid a profound personal price to earn the freedom of this kind of life; but we're so thankful that we can live it.

We never don't have anything to do. The other day we were wondering how we managed when I was working 40 hours a week. And we have some big projects looming ahead, most notably finishing up work on our garage office and really, truly getting started on working with our stained glass, instead of playing around at the edges of this pastime; and, next year, getting our honeybees.

I think about looking for a paying job again -- not this summer or even fall, because our schedule is too full to attempt a new job, but sometime. I worry, not about our current living expenses, but about the future, and also about keeping my skill set sharp. I'm frankly not sure I want a job, as they say, "commensurate with my education and experience"; that's the phrase that keeps getting me into situations where my job winds up eating my life. This old dog is willing to either learn a new trick or to keep busy in some non-status-laden, non-high-commitment position; a job I can truly leave behind when I go home. (Are there even any such things left -- status-laden, high-commitment jobs?)

But in the meantime I'm happy to "chop wood and carry water" in our own little world of work here.