The Sermonator

Things that I, lay minister, have found out about sermons over the past year:

First of all: Give me the more unfamiliar, unlovely texts; the ones that no one remembers from Sunday School. For some reason I find them more intellectually engaging and actually easier to tackle with the congregation than the ones that come with a lot of preconceived assumptions and sentimental baggage. My idea of preaching hell is doing so on Christmas, Easter or the Sunday we tackle the Beatitudes. I'm just weird that way. Good thing I'm a layperson.

I've also found that there's something about small worship gatherings that throws me off-kilter. You'd think it would be just the opposite; that an intimate group of familiar faces would set me at ease. No. To me, behind the pulpit those Advent or Lenten evenings, it's like doing standup at closing time in an unpopular bar. I feel like I'm dying up there.

And then there's The Sermonator. This is my affectionate name for someone in our congregation who has taken it upon herself to become my personal trainer for preaching. Now, you have to understand that, being the very anal-retentive, self-critical soul I am, I start mentally dope-slapping myself for my homiletical inadequacies the moment I step out of the pulpit. I need, and appreciate, having some knowledgeable, objective other give me honest feedback, positive and negative -- even when the latter feels like a final rapier-stab to the heart after my post-sermon self-recrimination sesson; because at least it's coming from somewhere other than my own head.

But The Sermonator does not fall into the category of respected reality-checker. Imagine instead the love child of Ethel Merman and Cheers' Cliff Claven, and you'll get some idea of her m.o. The Sermonator is someone who, after a Sunday where I was feeling ill and ran through the sermon a bit breathlessly just because I needed to sit down as soon as possible, collared me in the fellowship area after the service and told me, loudly, "YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SO NERVOUS! WE'RE ALL FRIENDS HERE! JUST PRETEND WE'RE ALL SITTING HERE NAKED! I'M SURE YOU'LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME!"

Thank you. Thank you so much.

The other week I did a fill-in Lenten service for our pastor -- one of those dreaded small-group homilies; my discomfort compounded by the gravitas and majesty of the text, Hebrews 12:1-2: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Oy. I spent all day writing the homily; thought it was crap; gave it anyway.

Afterward one of my respected reviewers described my message as "interesting," an adjective that felt like a baseball bat to the solar plexus. I said a few goodbyes and fled to my car...only to notice The Sermonator hot at my heels.

"I JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU," she declared, "THAT I THINK YOU'RE DOING A LOT BETTER!"

At this point I felt a weight descending upon each shoulder -- my good and bad angels had chosen this moment to manifest.

My good angel was in the guise of a pleasant Southern matron sipping a sweet tea.

"Well, bless her heart," exclaimed the good angel. "That gal is doin' the best she can, just like you."

My bad angel bore a distinct resemblance to Chelsea Handler. In one hand she held a pitchfork; in the other, a large vodka martini.

"SHUT UP!" screamed the bad angel. "SHUT UP! SHUT THE *&#@ UP!"

I decided I'd better pay more attention to the good angel. But I poured myself a big ol' glass of merlot -- we're out of vodka -- when I got home.

Friday Five: They Say It's Your Birthday

This week's RevGalBlogPal Friday Five asks us our opinions about birthdays:

1. What are your feelings about celebrating birthdays, especially your own?
I enjoy celebrating other people's birthdays far more than I do my own -- not just because I'm getting older, but because my family just didn't "do" birthdays well. Which brings us to...


2. Do you have any family traditions about birthdays?
Birthdays in my family tended to be more like the Costanza family's Festivus day -- Airing of Grievances and other assorted drama. I escaped this kind of thing on my birthday only because my birthday is the day after Christmas, and as such it was usually subsumed into that celebration; I mean, when your competition is Baby Jesus, you can't win when it comes to birthdays. When I was small my aunt M would take pity on me and throw a birthday party for me in June; but it just wasn't the same.

3. Is it easy to remember friends' and family members' birthdays? If so, how do you do it?
It's extremely difficult for me to remember people's birthdays, I think because I've never made a big deal about my own. I find Facebook to be very helpful in reminding me about birthdays; also those online card companies that, if you're a member, send you reminders about loved ones' birthdays several days ahead of time. This question, by the way, is inspiring me to add a "birthdays" sheet to our household Three-Ring Binder of Useful Facts, especially since Fellow Traveler also has trouble remembering birthdays.

4. What was one of your favorite birthdays? (or your unhappiest?)
My unhappiest birthday was when I was about five, sick in bed with pneumonia; definitely not fun. One of my favorite birthdays was a few years ago when Fellow Traveler treated me to a romantic bed-and-breakfast getaway up north on the Leelanau Peninsula. As luck would have it, an unseasonable warm snap hit the area when we arrived; imagine green grass, rain and peasoup fog in northern Michigan in late December. Then, just as suddenly, the temperature plunged again, bringing with it a combination ice storm and blizzard; this made for a rather cozy evening trapped at our B&B, drinking wine and playing Scrabble as the wind howled and ice pellets slammed into the windows outside...driving home the next morning, not so much. But in retrospect it was a pretty swell time overall.

5. Post anything else you want to share about birthdays, including favorite foods, songs, and/or pictures.
During the aforementioned birthday trip to the Leelanau, we visited a lovely rustic Italian restaurant called Trattoria Funistrada. Finding it involved navigating up and down curving, hilly back roads at night in fog thick enough to cut with scissors. By the time we crept into Burdickville, the little Glen Lake neighborhood where the restaurant is located, FT and I were both literally aching from the angst of stressed driving; so how wonderful to walk in and find a warm, friendly place that seemed to have been dropped into this unlikely landscape directly from rural Italy. We had a great meal there; conversed with the people sitting all around us because it's that kind of restaurant; had a lovely time. For some reason Funistrada's website seems to be down, but you can read some reviews (including mine) here.

Potlucks: The Original Food Rave

Today someone sent me a link to a story in the New York Times describing the phenomenon of "food raves" -- ephemerous underground restaurants, patronized via word-of-mouth, that give up-and-coming young chefs a chance to build a customer base without having to deal with the sometimes considerable licensing fees and bureaucratic hassles involved in the currently trendy pursuit of running a food cart.

My first thought, upon reading the article, was, " Good for them." My second was, "I wish we had food raves in our area." And then it occurred to me: What's another example of cooks showing off their signature dishes to a large crowd in a semi-spontaneous way?

Church potlucks.

Whoddathunk we were on the cutting edge of foodie culture?

Potlucks, at least in my state, have had to go increasingly underground because of onerous health department rules regarding advertising meals to the public; basically, if the food isn't made on premises according to state regulations, by people certified to handle food for public consumption, you can't advertise the meal outside your organization. Bulletin or newsletter blurbs are okay, for now; but mention a potluck on your church signboard or newspaper blurb and you're likely to get a frowny-faced visit from a local health department inspector. A couple of years ago our church ran press releases about our midweek Lenten worship that happened to mention a pre-service potluck, and we were promptly spanked by the Powers That Be. You can bet that schooled us.

People who know me are well aware of my liberal credentials. But these are cases where I feel real sympathy with my conservative neighbors who deeply resent this kind of nanny-ish state intrusion into what is simply a group of friends and neighbors coming together for a meal.  Especially when we all know supermarkets with perpetually sepulchral-smelling meat counters filled with irridescent steaks and gray chicken, or restaurants where we would no more order the egg salad sandwich than directly inject the salmonella into our veins, it seems inefficient, as well as petty, for local bureaucrats to make church kitchens -- at least in my lifetime experience a bastion of proud, obsessively hygienic church ladies who've never seen a church surface they didn't want to scrub with Comet, Pine-Sol or Murphy's Oil Soap, who'd likely commit hara-kiri with the ubiquitous church-kitchen electric knife if they ever inadvertently gave someone food poisoning  -- a front line of their war against food contamination.

I've worked in the public sector, engaging in what we believed was improving quality of life for citizens, catching that crusading spirit, and I truly understand how easy it is for health inspectors to see the world as one big, roiling cauldron of pathogens that they have been tasked with controlling at all costs. But -- I mean -- come on. For some reason I trust that Mrs. Tannenbaum's locally famous bratwurst potato salad isn't going to kill me. Not that I know a Mrs. Tannenbaum who makes bratwurst potato salad. Or that, if there were a Mrs. Tannenbaum, she would bring bratwurst potato salad to a potluck. Or that I know of any potlucks, anywhere, held by anyone. I'm just saying.

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.

My Future Flower Bed?

I'm too tired right now to write that catch-up post I talked about last night...but I want to commit to posting every single day, so in that spirit I present to you a handy video about starting a new garden bed. I'm seriously considering trying the "lasagna" method for the annual bed I want to start next to our front garage.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid702217133001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAEBQ1X8~,4LcKJKyjVWFA5YuyjNPXYzRLy0uw4H-T&bclid=773439037001&bctid=1521609018

Friday FIve: "Good Things" Quick Picks

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five asks us for a "quick pick of five good things in our lives.

This challenge came at a good time for me, because lately we've been having to focus, not on good things, but worrisome health things. I'll write more about this tomorrow, when I catch you up on what's been happening in my life since my blog hiatus. Anyway...it's good to remember good things. So here goes:

1. Our family extracurricular activities. Our footloose-and-fancy-free schedule has gotten a bit more structured these days, as we've taken on two very different tasks. Since our church secretary cut drastically back on her schedule due to health issues, I've been working at church one day a week as unpaid secretary/newsletter editor. There are four of us, each with a slightly different set of daily tasks. I've enjoyed this pretty much (although I did have to put my foot down about our church's heretofore que-sera-sera approach to its newsletter, and institute due dates for content).

Meanwhile, we were visiting the local antique mall about a month ago when we noticed a little empty corner booth. Fellow Traveler said, "That would be a great place to sell our stuff." (Said stuff being her formidible collection of estate sale goodies.) This is a nice, tidy venue, with real antiques and collectibles. We asked the owner about rent, and we discovered that, as long as we volunteer to work in the store one day a week, we can rent booth space quite inexpensively. The owner, after quizzing us a bit and finding out that we know a little bit about antiques and collectibles and have experience in "people" occupations, made us an offer and we said, "Sure!" About 15 minutes later, as we drove away, we turned to one another and murmured, "What did we just do?" But this has been a pleasant little pastime once a week. We meet lots of interesting people, get along well with the landlord, are learning more about the business -- and we sold a couple of our things.

2. Bear. Our adoptee dog -- Fellow Traveler's aunt's-and-uncle's dog, who was about to be put down after the aunt died and the uncle wound up in the hospital -- is a real joy. And this is an especially good thing for me because I frankly had not been completely sold on the idea of another dog. I wouldn't have let the cousins-in-law kill Bear; but I'd envisioned fostering her for a few weeks until we found some suitable adoptive family. What happened after we brought her home, though, was remarkable: After a week of getting to know Chica and Mollie and learning the rhythms of our home, and after regular daily exercise and a balanced diet, this largely inert, morbidly obese lump of a dog started responding to us; her sweet personality began to emerge; and she started moving on her own -- running, even. Now I have to huff and puff a little to keep up with her some days as she gathers the courage to explore our woods. Chica, for her part, after about a day of poutery, has become a good pal to her new, older friend.

3. My tomatoes. The photo to the left is not actually a photo of my tomatoes; but my little tomato seedlings are starting to look like that photo. I have mixed cherry tomatoes; mixed heirloom standard-size tomatoes; currant tomatoes; "Black Trifele" and "Black Zebra" tomatoes; and a few six-year-old seeds that I stuck in a couple of peat pots just to see what would happen, that successfully germinated.




4. Our beekeeping experiment. We don't have our bees yet -- but we do have our hives, our bee suits, our tools and various and sundry other beekeeping things. We recently attended a beekeeping conference at Michigan State University, my alma mater -- I thought Wolverine fan Fellow Traveler would spontaneously combust upon setting foot on campus, but she was a good sport all weekend, venturing as far as the Student Union for a taste of the MSU dairy's famous ice cream -- so we're also fairly knowledgeable, at least we think, about what to do when the bees get here at the end of the month. Maybe.

5. Our recent visit with Miss Ruby. We were surprised and delighted to get an e-mail from Daughter-in-Law telling us that she was coming to Michigan with Ruby to visit her mom, various relatives and her best friend from medical school. Since The Kids believe that we live in Terra Incognita, and since DiL's other visits were all in the southern part of the state, we traveled to the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, both Fellow Traveler's and DiL's former home base, to spend the day with Ruby, stay overnight and then lead SiL to her aunt-in-law's home in Bay City. So we got to play with the grandbaby the better part of two days. Ruby is growing so fast -- she literally grew out of one pair of shoes the morning after we arrived at Other Grandma's house -- and she is not only on her feet but constantly on the move. She's also an enthusiastic talker, even though her active vocabulary right now is rather limited: "Mama";"Dada"; "No"; "Amma" (which we discovered means any convenient, attentive gray-haired lady). Her favorite word, out of all those, is "No" -- delivered without anger or petulance, mind you; just a matter-of-fact statement of opinion. She's a little pistol, is Ruby. And we're glad we got to see her.

Friday Five: "It's Only Words" Edition

From the RevGalBlogPals website today:


There is a dramatic and surprising venue for Spiritual Formation/Sunday School classes at my church: Each week a different person teaches about a "word" that expresses his/her passion or interest. The first week someone spoke about "hospitality" with abundant treats on her mother and grandmother's china arrayed on tables. Other words have been "connectivity," "Trinity," "money," and "dreams." No one knows which person will be teaching until the class convenes. I am teaching this Sunday and plan to talk about "stirrings."


For this Friday Five, please list five words that identify your passions, spirituality, and/or life. Describe as much or as little as you wish.

First of all -- this is s pretty cool idea for a small group.

Now -- on to my Friday Five! These are, by the way, in no particular order.

Curiosity. I want to know stuff; that's one of the defining characteristics of who I am. This has, in my life, sometimes gotten me into trouble ("Hmmm....what's going to happen if I stick this loose plug into the light socket?")...but usually it's a quality that's stood me in good stead.

Faith. Even if it's very weak...even if some days I can't even precisely define what my faith is in. When I tried living without faith, it didn't work out so well.

Persistence. As Fellow Traveler can tell you, I tend to hang onto projects -- or problems -- for dear life, until I get the outcome I want.

Quiet. I've heard, "You're so quiet," my entire life. And sometimes I perceive that as a criticism, not simply an observation. Fact of the matter is, when I feel like talking, I can talk your ear off. (Ask my friends.) But in social situations I do prefer to take things in, to listen, to formulate my responses carefully. And I cherish quiet moments in a life that's often a swirl of activity and data.

Growth. I enjoy growing things...and I enjoy growing myself; learning new skills, developing insight; moving forward into the next thing. I'm not sure if this is a virtue or the opposite of the contentment that's the goal of a monastic life, but -- I prefer it to the opposite.

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.

A Post-Holiday Friday Five

Today is Tree-Untrimming/House Undecorating Day -- not one of LC's favorite tasks, but something that must be done. It's also the day that I, like my mom, write up a short review of our Christmas, pop it in a little envelope and add it to the box where I keep our creche.  So it's rather appropriate that this week's RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five asks us to review the past holiday season -- the good, the bad, perhaps the ugly, although I hope not.

1) What food item was one of your favorites this year - a definite keeper?
It hurts for this scratch-cooking foodie to say this, but...it was really, really nice to enjoy a Honeybaked half-ham, handily delivered to the door, this year. (I made roasted acorn squash and Brussels sprouts, and a heap of mashed potatoes.)  We'd sent a full ham dinner to one set of relatives for Christmas, got a handsome discount because of that, and decided to use the savings on ourselves. We can definitely get used to this new tradition. But we've now both had enough ham, Honeybaked or otherwise, to last us until next Christmas.

Oh -- and, after the panic about finding my old family recipes, I did discover a new and improved sour cream sugar cookie recipe. That one's a keeper.


2) Was there a meal or party or a gathering that stands out in your mind from this most recent holiday season?
Christmas Eve morning saw us at the bedside of a dying friend and neighbor; not really the gathering I'd expected or hoped to have on that day, but it was what it was; and if our presence gave our friend extra comfort in her passage into life eternal, then God bless that day.

One of the nicest gatherings was, ironically, just one day after. You see, we had planned to have our hamfest on Christmas Day -- an intimate, even romantic meal, just the two of us. That was before FT's 90-year-old uncle called us up to invite us to their house for Christmas. Uncle was an avid fisherman back in the day, and we'd sent him and FT's aunt some salmon filets for Christmas. "We don't know how to cook these," he told us. "You two will have to come and do it for us." Which of course was just a ruse to have us come and visit them. Their own children, for various reasons, maintain minimal contact with them, so FT and I are their defacto family; we'd helped them put their Christmas decorations up around Thanksgiving, mainly to keep Auntie off the ladder, and had made them dinner that day as well. So that is where we spent Christmas Day -- squeezed around the generally unused dining room table in their tiny dining room, eating a rather simple meal; but enjoying it very much. (I did learn, however, that while Finns love beets, they do not love pickled beets; a note for next year.)

3) Were you involved in a jaw-dropper gift? Were you the giver or recipient or an on-looker?
Well, I"m pleased to say that I was a giver, a co-giver and a recipient. I was co-giver of Bananas, a humongous, ginormous stuffed gorilla we gave Miss Ruby for her birthday. We had feared that this was more an exercise in wretched excess on the part of Grandmas than a gift that Ruby would actually like -- we were even afraid that the huge ape would frighten her --  but Ruby loooooves Bananas. And her parents have taken to dressing Bananas in various themed clothing from week to week (fellow half-century fossils might remember the store mannequin in the Monkees' old TV show that was used similarly). So we're very happy Bananas made such a hit with the whole family. (And we'll just mention that, power shoppers that we are when it comes to our grandchild, we bought Bananas at a 70-percent-off store-closing discount.)

I was the jaw-dropped recipient of a Kindle, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog.

And I think I managed to jaw-drop my dear partner with her deluxe beginning beekeeping kit. This gift had started out as a meager purchase of a few essential beekeeping tools, as a kind of teaser/encouragement until FT could get some advice on what sort of hive and clothing to purchase. But it growed. And now all FT has to do is paint her hive (she's thinking maize and blue) and, this spring, fill it with bees. (This weekend we're going to visit with our cider-making/beekeeping friend Wally for some expert advice in this endeavor.)

4) Was there at least one moment where you experienced true worship?
I assisted for the first time on Christmas Eve -- I've never had that experience, of assisting when the church is packed to the rafters, and it was very meaningful to me; particularly assisting with distribution, being able to place the Body of Christ in so many hands, look into so many eyes and say, "...for you."  I think that was the high point of my Advent/Christmas worship experience.

That and -- as unexpected and sad as the day was -- being able to pray with our dying friend just moments before she passed on. When I did this, all my existential doubts and sadness and discomfort and other distractions swirling about in my head made way for a kind of calm certainty that I was merely a vessel for a Mystery far bigger and more profound than my puny presence, and that the Church of all ages and places was with me as I made the sign of the cross on my friend's forehead, and prayed, and read the 23rd Psalm to her. After she passed, I again found myself feeling rather awkward and incompetent as the hospice professionals took over and I tried making awkward conversation with our friend's partner and other visitors. But for a brief time I was in a special kind of sacred space.


5) What is at least one thing you want to make sure you do next year?
After my mindblowing three-day cookie-baking marathon -- next week I want to make sure that I start this project far earlier in the month. I know growing up that my mom would very often begin the weekend after Thanksgiving, and freeze the cookies until the holidays. I will also make a comprehensive list of what I need -- not only the ingredients themselves, but how much of them. And I will make the time to include my honey drop cookie recipe, another old favorite that didn't make the cut this year just because I was too tired.

BONUS: What is something you absolutely must remember to do differently... or not at all!
My attempt at incorporating a water feature into our Advent wreath was indeed beautiful and evocative -- but not very practical. Among other things, it takes a tremendous number of floating candles; the water needs to be changed regularly; and the bowl is subject to smudges and water marks. I made it; I'm glad; next year it will be different. We are thinking about going back to one real Christmas tree in the house. We miss a real tree. And -- no attempt to create an Advent blog or special Advent feature on this blog this year; not unless I get really bored and/or inspired somewhere in the middle of the Pentecost season and write it all up in advance. My relationship to Advent devotionals is much like Charlie Brown's relationship to Lucy's football -- so very tempting to undertake, but I just know it's not going to end well.

Recipe Interlude: Sour Cream Cut-Out Cookies

When we got back from our California trip, my window of opportunity for cookie-baking had been narrowed considerably -- especially considering that our cookies were mostly for export out of state.

So I steeled myself for about three days of nonstop cookie baking. I went to find my tried-and-true recipes, in my mom's old cookbooks.

I couldn't find the books.

The old, tattered Betty Crocker cookie book -- not in the bookcase. Ditto the old Br'er Rabbit Molasses book. The stained spiral-bound Lutheran ladies' cookbook -- not in the bookcase.

I went to the garage office, where I still have a few boxes from our house consolidation, and tore through them looking for any old cookbooks. No luck. I came back inside and looked behind the other books in the bookcase, thinking I may have squirreled these unlovely but useful books somewhere out of public eye. Nope.

Argh.

Then I vaguely remembered having a fish-or-cut-bait moment, as we cleaned out our garage that spring after I sold my house, looking at a box of battered old books and loose recipes and making an executive decision to let it all go.

This was probably a smart decision at the time. Yet now I felt sad; another connection to my mom and my roots lost. I remember my mother telling me about writing for all sorts of free cookbooks from food companies when she was a newlywed. I remembered her own handwritten recipes in a falling-apart ring binder. All gone now, I sighed.

Until I snapped out of it and reminded myself that the recipes are not lost forever. And my particular family cookie menu has found a new generation of appreciative eaters in our kids.

So I got online. I found the Betty Crocker mother lode of cookie recipes. I did general searches on other recipes. And I did it; I replicated the standard LutheranChik Family Christmas cookie plate.

Not only that -- I actually found a better sugar cookie recipe than the one I had. (Sorry, Lutheran church ladies.) The recipe I'm about to share with you makes very soft, lovely, delicate cut-out cookies. And of course they're not just for Christmas. Think about making these, say, for a sweetie on Valentine's Day, cut into hearts and iced and sprinkled with glistening sugar:

Sour Cream Cut-Out Cookies

1 C. butter 1 C. sugar 3/4 C. sour cream (light sour cream works okay but nonfat sour cream does not) 1 egg 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. salt  1 tsp. nutmeg 4 1/2 C. flour


Cream together butter and sugar. Add the sour cream, egg and the vanilla; mix well. Stir in baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. Gradually add flour until dough is too difficult to stir. Mix the rest by hand. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick. Cut into desired shapes with your favorite cookie cutters. Space cookies about 1 1/2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 6-8 minutes in a preheated 350-degree oven or until lightly browned at the edges. Cool completely on wire racks. Decorate as desired.

These tend to dry out quickly, so enjoy them within a few days of baking them. They can also be made ahead of time and frozen,un-iced, then thawed and decorated right before serving/giving them.

LC's Semi-Random Bible Verse of the Week

God shall crush the heads of his enemies,

and the hairy scalp of those who go on still in their wickedness. -- Psalm 68:21

This verse jumped out at me as I was reading the appointed Psalm for today's BCP Morning Prayer. I know this is no laughing matter from a theological standpoint -- there's a reason why not every verse of every Psalm makes it into the Sunday lectionary -- but you've got to love the Psalmist going all WWE on his enemies here.

I'm not sure I'm up to praying for the crushing of my enemies' hairy scalps. Public embarrassment, maybe; but not breaking their heads. Maybe that's a 21st century developed world thing.

Honeybees and Do-Bees

We have a beehive in our living room right now.

It's kind of cute. It was marketed as an "English garden hive," as opposed to the workaday boxes one sees in commercial beeyards; it is somewhat smaller than a standard hive, with a peaked roof and copper flashing, and looks like something Peter Rabbit might have hopped past on his way to the carrot patch.

With this hive came an assortment of beekeeper gear: a hat-and-veil combo; gloves with arm gaiters; a smoker; a hive tool; an instructional DVD.

I, the Christmas elf who produced this hive and kit, had  gently quizzed FT earlier in the year about her sincerity in taking up beekeeping. Are you sure? Are you sure this isn't like the dark-of-night, REM-sleep-fueled conversation you had with me several months ago when you suggested to me that an urban chicken coop might be a fun backyard project, and then the next day when I recalled that comment over breakfast you stared at me in horror: "I told you what?!..." No, FT insisted repeatedly; this isn't like the phantom egg farm; this is for real; I want to be a beekeeper.

Which is actually pretty exciting. Although we have to get cracking on ordering that most important element of the equation, namely the bees, a task that I understand needs to be done right about now for an April shipment, due to high demand and short supply. I'm anxious that this timeline is somehow going to conflict with FT's jaw surgery -- what if the bees come when she's recuperating, whacked out on painkillers and not ready to participate in the task of introducing the bees to their new digs in our back yard?

I want this to be FT's project, not mine; but I'm hoping she reconnects with our new friend Wally from a surburban apple orchard and bee yard on the outskirts of Bay City, a delightful older gentleman who, once he heard about FT's interest in bees, was ready to take her under his wing (so to speak) and share his expertise. Wally can give us the 411 about procuring our bees. I also bought FT a year's membership in the state beekeepers' association, so maybe we can find some encouragement and assistance a little closer to home as well.

So there's that, happening at our house right now.

In the meantime, we are becoming bees ourselves: do-bees at church, doing things -- generally things involving computers -- that other people can't or don't want to do. Today, for example, while I'm staying at home nursing a bad head cold, the somewhat well-er FT is at church, helping the Finance Committee switch its data over to a new computerized data management system. For my part, I'm entering data for the quarter into our online event and scheduling calendar. I sometimes feel guilty about dragging my non-Lutheran-from-home partner into the inner workings of our church; but she enjoys solving computer problems -- and, as a relative newcomer, she a certain amount of freedom to express herself and get things done that someone enmeshed in the complicated interpersonal relationships and histories of our congregation probably doesn't. One of our perpetual organizational problems is a reluctance on people's parts -- in part I think a function of our congregational demographics and local culture -- to own and execute final decisions; I remember a short-lived stint on the Evangelism Committee where a mind-numbing, hour-long handwringing session involving the purchase of customized church coffee mugs -- "I don't know what to do next...do you know what to do next?" -- was enough to make me hand in my resignation in frustration; "I am not going to waste any more hours of my life discussing how to get a picture on a coffee cup and calling that evangelism," I told the pastor.  FT, by contrast, doesn't have a problem with just doing something that needs to be done, committee be jiggered, and explaining it later...in the words of another military gal, the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission.

I myself have made the commitment to volunteer in the church building one day a week. Our pastor is transitioning into a new house away from the parsonage, our longsuffering volunteer secretary is wanting and needing a break, and so a few of us are going to rotate days in the office, answering the phone and being available for any walk-in assistance. I have plenty of my own church-related tasks to keep me busy on my office day, so it gives me an opportunity to work on those without succumbing to the temptations of the home sofa office.

All of which is to say...things are buzzing around here. In a good way.

The Rekindling of Desire

Let me introduce you to my favorite holiday toy:

Yes, it's true; I have succumbed to the electronic lure of the Kindle.

I've been a Kindle skeptic for a long time. There's the creepy Big Brother thing about dependency upon one company for e-books (a company that is constantly collecting personal information about customers and that has in the past deleted customer purchases, with a refund but with no cogent explanation); there's the angst about increasing the digital and informational divide even further between the technology haves and have-nots (most of the people in my church, for instance, regardless of age, have no access to the Internet or even a decent personal computer). There's the issue of longevity -- what happens to my books if I break my Kindle, or if Amazon ever decides to change its technology? And there's the issue of tactile pleasure -- sometimes there's just nothing like turning the pages of a book.

Yeah; I know. But my new Kindle is just...so...cool.

I mean -- I've already downloaded a couple dozen freebies; everything from the Iliad to The Voyage of the Beagle to a short tome on Amish gardening tips. My Kindle is wi-fi enabled, so I just book-shop right on it, 24/7, click the "buy" button (even for the freebies) and -- ka-ching! -- my book is suddenly there, ready to read. Wow.

For the past several years I've listed "reading more" as a New Year's resolution; and for the past several years that hasn't really happened. But now I find that I've already made it through one of my e-books (and learned that baking soda is a cheap and easy amendment to acid garden soil). And I'm headed for one of the Great Books now...perhaps the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Analects.

Ooh -- shiny.



A "Looking Backward, Moving Forward" Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five asks us to name some blessings we've received in the past year while also expressing some hopes for the year to come. I can do that. So here they are.

Blessing #1: Miss Ruby. While technically she's a blessing from 2009 -- this has been the year to watch her grow from a tiny babe in arms, all potential, to a very smart, active little girl with a unique -- and dare I say big -- personality. One of her little cousins recently confided to Son #2, "I just don't know what we'd do without our Ruby."

Blessing #2: Chica.  It still hurts to think about Gertie and the day she died -- I honestly feel a brief resurgence of sweaty-palm panic whenever I pass the spot on the highway where the accident happened. We truly did not think we'd ever have another dog. But Chica, our little Heinz 57 mutt from the pound, has turned out to be a wonderful companion, with a personality all her own -- alternately sweet and spicy, as befitting her name. Mollie the cat, a veteran of many dogs over the years, still isn't quite sure what to make of this one. But we love her lots.

Blessing #3: The Stutzman Family. This year we got to know a local Amish woman, Mary, a widow with six children still at home, who sells baskets and soap in her backyard shop and in local Amish stores. Over the past year we've gone from casual visitors to her store to "Sit down and have some coffee" friends; which to me is a gift. And we've also grown to love Mary's kids, who are just a joy to be around -- who are polite and respectful to adults, and kind and helpful to one another, while maintaining free spirits and an impish sense of fun. I wish that some of our neighbors who think of the Amish in stereotypes -- usually negative -- could have the experiences we do with this family.

Blessing #4: A New Doctor.  It took me several months of Internet research -- but I finally found a primary care physician within reasonable driving distance who has an interest in integrative medicine and who treats me like a human being rather than a set of billable procedures to be squeezed in between pharmaceutical reps. Not that I am bitter or anything.

Blessing #5: Fellow Traveler. Yes, I am being sappy and cornball and obvious here...but especially this year, after observing and experiencing some major interpersonal pathology in other people's relationships, I am more than ever grateful to be traveling on the same life path with my Fellow Traveler.

Bonus Blessing:  Our Wii Fit. Yes, I'm serious. Even though I haven't been on it for a month due to travel and Christmas preparation and the fact that our heavily laden Christmas tree is too close to the television for me to be bouncing around on the board. This is one of the only exercise regimens I've ever been able to stay on for an extended period of time. When the tree goes down...the Wii comes back on.

On to wishes for the new year:

Wish #1:  Fellow Traveler's rheumatoid-arthritis-related TMJ became so bad this past year that something had to be done...so now, after a long and often frustrating diagnostic process through the VA system, she's been cleared for outsourced surgery. We identified some oral surgeons in our general area of the state who seem to have expertise in jaw issues and are getting a consult from them. My wish is that this surgery -- which may wind up being anything from trying to create an artificial cushion in the RA-ravaged joint space to a titanium joint replacement, any option involving some delicate surgical work -- be a success so that FT can be free of the intense daily pain she suffers.

Wish #2:  Now that I have a doctor who suits me, it's time to deal with my health insurance. I have been arguing with Blue Cross for months now about whether or not I'm an actual subscriber (this despite my producing bank records of my ongoing automatic premium payments, and their regular delivery of the company magazine); the company changed my card number without my knowledge, and now refuses to send me a new card. I've been paying my medical costs out of pocket, then forwarding the bills to my insurance agent -- so far with no response from Blue Cross. In the last month I've had not one but two suggestions (one generated by a random discussion between two retirees we overheard in a restaurant when we were in California) that another Large Health Insurance Company is much easier to work with. So -- even though I grew up in a family atmosphere where Blue Cross was only a few pegs lower than God on a scale of life necessity and trustworthiness -- it may be time to make a change.

Wish #3:  This is a perpetual wish on my part, but...I'd like to improve the organization of our household, my personal items and, perhaps most importantly of all, my time. We've actually made strides in this area in the past year; but sometimes I am still overwhelmed by "stuff" and by a kind of randomness (often enabled by yours truly)  that feels like chaos. I really want to find that golden mean between Stepford Wife and Hoarders.

Wish #4: Having begun a successful transition from straggly shrubbery to perennials around our gazebo, I wish to keep that horticultural success going with a new and improved herb garden (thwarted last year by issues with our plumbing that necessitated digging up what used to be my herb bed) and a new flower garden along our front garage. This last project was actually suggested by the non-gardening FT, out of the blue: "Why don't we dig a strip along the side of the garage and plant flowers there?" Who am I to argue with this? (FT's sudden interest in flowers may be a function of her desire to keep bees, which I affirmed on Christmas by giving her an entire bee hive -- sans bees -- and newbie beekeeper equipment.)

Wish #5: Another standing item on my New Year wish list: I want to learn something new this year. I'm not too choosy about what that is. Practical skills (like piecrust making, perhaps?) are always good; or I could really live in the leap and take on some intellectual task that's so far stymied me (calculus? euchre?).

Bonus Wish: This has been a wish of mine for some time -- also, frankly, something of a source of guilt and stress: I want to begin blogging regularly again. One of the reasons I stopped was because I felt that my blogging was beginning to direct my life, instead of my life informing my blogging; sort of like those reality TV shows where the reality has given way to scripts and mugging for the camera. I think I'm at a good place to begin again.

A Festive Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five focuses on the things that really make Christmas for us. Here's my list:

1. Our Advent wreath and calendar. Even though we're not always faithful in lighting the wreath candles, even though we sometimes have to play catchup for a few days with the calendar...we do find a lot of value in observing this season before Christmas in a real, tangible way. It feels pleasingly countercultural; it keeps Christmas, Inc. at bay at our house.

2. Trimming the tree. Or, in our case, trees, since we have two of them. I just love doing this. At our house we wait until just before Christmas Eve; we put on Christmas music, have some eggnog or Christmas tea, and make an event of it.

3. Baking cookies. We do this mostly for export...but it's still fun. And I still have to restrain myself from a repeat of the year in which I made 18 different kinds of cookies.

4. Anonymous gifting. We usually adopt a child or vulnerable adult from our community "giving tree." Oftentimes the requests are so modest that they're almost heartbreaking -- like the child whose card we took one year, who asked for food for her family. "Meet and exceed expectations" is our guideline for giving.

5. The Christmas Eve service. This year it will be more special because I will be assisting at it for the first time. We have an old-fashioned candlelight service with the Eucharist; we hear the Story once again; we sing familiar hymns. Afterward we come home and have a little pre-Christmas-day nosh of Christmas delectables, and exchange our gifts. Good times.

Bonus: What is one thing that really DOESN'T make your Christmas? Definitely the shopping and spending frenzy. We find gifts for our family all year long, so by the time the stores start bringing out the Christmas merchandise we've already finished buying presents, so we've effectively disconnected from most of the Christmas craziness. When I was working, the thing that used to get me the most were the obligatory (de facto, even when the bosses assure staff that they can opt out  if they wish) workplace gift exchanges. My church's annual yard sale was enriched for many years by the cast-off candles and other assorted unwanted tschotchkes I'd have to drag home from Christmas parties. The best workplace Christmas gift exchanges I've ever participated in either involved white-elephant gifts or a very low cost ceiling -- say $5 -- that really challenged givers' creativity and knowledge of their giftee.

Blogging Advent

Hey -- I've started a new Advent blog. Check it out here .

Friday Five: "American Pie" Edition

I am simultaneously feeling holidayed out and amped up for a very busy Advent month that also includes a cross-country trip...so I was ready for a fun RevGalBlogPal Friday Five. And we have one: All About Pie.

1)Are pies an important part of a holiday meal?
Absolutely. My mother was the best pie baker ever, and we always had pie for holidays and other special occasions. These days we tend to rely on our friend Dan the Amish baker for our pies, but we still crave them on special days.


2) Men prefer pie; women prefer cake. Discuss.
I think whoever came up with this idea was not from the crust-intensive Upper Midwest where the women like their pie just fine, thank you. I'm fond of gingerbread, and Fellow Traveler and I both like white cake on the rare occasions when we eat cake...but that's about it.

3) Cherries--do they belong in a pie?
I think they're fine in other people's pies, yes.

4) Meringue--if you have to choose, is it best on lemon or chocolate?
Again, yes. On rhubarb cream pie too.

5) In a chicken pie, what are the most compatible vegetables? Anything you don't like to find in a chicken pie?
If you ask Fellow Traveler, who was OD'd on frozen pot pies in her childhood, she'd say that chicken pie was not compatible with eating, period. Me, I don't mind savory pies; but if I'm going to eat a pot pie, chicken or otherwise, I want the peas in it to be bright and firm, not gray and mealy. Bad peas can really ruin a dish.

Bonus: What is the most unusual pie you have ever eaten? That would have to be concord grape juice pie, one of the specialties of our local Amish community. While most cookbook recipes for grape pie require a messy process of cooking whole grapes, then running them through a food mill and cooking down the residual juice, our Amish friends tell us they use their own canned grape juice and make a kind of transparent custard with it. However they make it, I like it and want to make it some day. 

Bonus bonus: What is the most unusual pie you haven't yet eaten? This Christmas, which we will be spending at home, I'd like to try my hand at making tortiere, the French Canadian spiced meat pie that's a tradition during the holidays. Fellow Traveler has hinted that, unlike pot pie, she might enjoy this very meaty, un-veggie-laden dish. I'm thinking of making little muffin-cup tortiere canapes; somethin' like that.

Friday Five: "Surprised by Joy" Edition

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five has a Thanksgiving theme, with a twist: What are five unexpected blessings we can be thankful for?

This is an interesting question for me, because I tend not to be too fond of surprises. I can be wound a little tightly, and sometimes I need to slowly warm up to new experiences. But, sometimes, they're good things. Here are a few.

1. Fellow Traveler. Five years ago I certainly never envisioned myself living in domestic tranquility with the love of my life. This has been a very good surprise.

2. A granddaughter. Ruby was a surprise all around; and both the nine months of this pregnancy and the past year have been jam-packed with baby-related changes in our lives, including her parents' wedding and move across the country; including my first experience taking care of a tiny child.. In two weeks were on our way to SoCal to visit The Kids in their new home; my first trip out West. But it's all good.

3. Chica. Fast-forwarding to this summer: When Gertie died this summer, I was pretty certain that we wouldn't share our lives with another dog. So was Fellow Traveler. Who knew that, two months ago, we'd find a compelling photo of a cute little canine on Petfinder, resolve to save her from the animal-shelter gas chamber, and come home with one of the sweetest dogs we've ever had the privilege of knowing? Chica -- who at this very moment is sitting on the sofa with me, recuperating from her Special Lady-Dog Operation -- is a gem; cuddly, friendly to all, smart and well-behaved.

4. The joy of not working. I have to admit -- when we decided as a household that we could get by fine on one income, I couldn't help the feeling that I was doing something very, very bad, and that the Universe was about to punish me. Chalk that up to a combination of familial work ethic, coming of age at a time when having a serious career was a hallmark of being a liberated, self-empowered woman, and feeling guilt over our many friends and neighbors who find themselves under- or unemployed these days.  Almost immediately I tried to justify this not working by studying for a new job instead; until I got real about my complete lack of interest in spending my days proofreading lines of HTML code. And then I foundered for awhile. It's only recently, maybe even in the past couple months, that I've been able to feel truly okay about a life that alternates domesticity with volunteerism. Will this be my status forever? Probably not. But when I engage the workplace again, it will be as someone whose work life is no longer based on fear and guilt and people-pleasing.

5. Living in mid-Michigan. Until recently I've always felt a dissatisfaction with living in this area; I always saw my future, and then our future, somewhere else -- the Leelanau area of northern Michigan, or perhaps even out East in Fellow Traveler's old stomping grounds. But in the last couple of years we've really planted some roots on this land in this place. While it's not obvious to a casual visitor, and frankly wasn't even obvious to me as a native -- there are real blessings in living here: the woods and waters and wildlife; the Amish community; the slower pace of life. We still travel; still enjoy exploring new places and going back to our favorite getaway areas; but we are thankful whenever, after such a trip, we find ourselves turning into our own driveway once again.