The View from Here

Failure

I went to the doctor Friday for a general checkup. I had dreaded it all week. Actually I’ve dreaded it all year. I usually put it off until just before school starts. (I’m one of those people who is rarely sick, so I hadn’t been to the doctor since last winter’s virus.) Well, there was a mix-up at the lab and they didn’t get my paperwork done, so I had to reschedule for Saturday and dread it all over again!

On the way to town Saturday morning I tried to figure out why I put off going for a checkup. I have a great doctor that I trust. I’m generally concerned about health issues. I like to think that I eat a moderately healthy diet (everyone has a few vices, and I think you know most of mine) and although I don’t exercise like I should, I’m not a couch potato either. Yet, on the way to town I started feeling like a fifth-grader who forgot to study for her math test. It was one of those “Aha!” moments.

I dread going to the doctor because it’s the one area of my life where I feel like a failure. First thing the nurse does is take my blood pressure. Then there’s the nod of the head and the clucking noise, “A little high today.” Of course it is!! I have “white-coat hypertension”! For those of you unfamiliar with the term, there is a segment of the population that actually has a higher blood pressure rate at the very thought of going to the doctor. Mine starts rising when I leave the driveway.

Next we move to the scale. This is where I hang my head and pray that the number isn’t more than ten pounds higher than my scale at home. Luckily this time it is only five pounds higher.  It is however, higher than the number recorded at my last check up. The nurse isn’t clucking, but she’s writing it down and I know there will be a frown when my doctor reads it.

After I’ve looked at a magazine from cover to cover, my doctor arrives and at least gives me the good news that my cholesterol level is better, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine. That rates me a renewed prescription. Then there is the discussion of my family’s history of osteoporosis and the need for a new bone density scan. More talk about heart disease- another gift from my ancestors. Hey, I didn’t pick these people! Why should I be punished for a poor gene pool? Then the discussion of real importance- pain management.

After a series of accidents, conditions, and surgeries that have been mentioned in previous blogs, I have a need for pain management. My current problem is sciatica. The current treatment is exercise, which I’m not the best at doing, and medication, which I’m not fond of taking. However, I did agree to a cortisone shot. Seems to help for months at a time. The only problem is that it usually gives me a very strange headache, which it did. I was awake much of the night and missed church this morning.

So I left the doctor’s office guilty about my weight, worried about my bones and heart, hurting from the shot, and dreading the headache that would surely follow. Is it any wonder that I’m not excited about going back next year?????

P.S.

Refer to previous post. It isn't paranoia if they are really out to get you! I was digging up irises tonight and a yellow jacket stung me on the hand! What's next??

Close Encounter

            No, I didn’t post anything yesterday. That’s because I was a little shaken up after a SPIDER encounter. I’m not normally the squeamish sort and critters don’t usually bother me. I try to ignore anything in the yard because I know that everything has a purpose. However, after my wasp experience, I’m much more easily frightened by things in my house. (In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap: I went to bed in the dark, laid my head on my pillow AND a red wasp, and was stung on the face and hand.)

So-o-o, that being established, here’s what happened last evening. Gary and I were sitting in the living room discussing our day, when I suddenly felt something in my hair. I reached up to brush it away and felt something VERY big on the top of my head. I yelled, jumped around, told Gary to “get it off” and generally acted crazy for a couple of minutes. Gary couldn’t find anything. I went to the bathroom mirror and checked. Checked again. Brushed my hair. Checked again. Calmed down a little and went back into the living room.

I looked where I had been sitting and didn’t see anything. Slowly pulled the loveseat away from the wall and clinging to the back was a wolf spider the size of my hand!! Okay, so it was a little smaller, maybe three inches across, but it was HUGE in relation to other spiders I’ve encountered in the house. Needless to say, I was nervous all evening. I didn’t really want to sit there again. I checked all the cushions. Checked the sofa and chair.

Tried to banish all thoughts later when I went to bed. But I’m getting a little paranoid. These creep crawly things are out to get me!

WWJD?

          What would Jesus do? The phrase became popular a few years ago when our youth were encouraged to use it to help them with decisions about sex, drugs, and alcohol. My problems, and my decisions, are usually a bit more mundane, but I still found myself repeating the phrase Saturday night during a gospel concert we attended. It became my “calming mantra”.

We went to the Nazarene Church to hear The New Plainsmen. One of the members is a local boy, Brent Gordon. Great group, great music, great experience…except…except the woman behind me kept singing, loudly, off key, in my ear! She also talked during the prayer, fussed at her child (who left her seat at least five times), laughed loudly and talked to her husband throughout the entire concert. My first instinct was to turn around and glare at her. Then that annoying little reminder popped into my head. What would Jesus do? The answer came just as quickly- He would love her. He would be just as appreciative of her singing as he was of Brent’s or anyone else’s. He would forgive her for talking during the prayer and understand her concern for her child.

I hate it when He’s right. I was still annoyed, but not angry. I didn’t turn around or glare. I enjoyed the concert and was blessed by the experience. Oh, I’m not perfect yet. As soon as we got to our car I asked Gary, “Did you hear that woman behind us?” He had heard enough to know she was singing, but not enough for it to bother him. (He’s been losing his hearing for years.) I let it go. Didn’t fume about it all the way home. Didn’t talk about it the next day. Just let it go. Except for this. Except for a lesson learned…WWJD?

Christmas

           Yes, you read that correctly! It says Christmas. My husband and I went shopping today and I was amazed by how many Christmas items I saw. It’s July folks! I’m just getting over the whole “end of summer, back to school” transition. How could I possibly be ready to buy Christmas ornaments?! ‘Course at Hobby Lobby I only had to walk down a few  aisles to shop for summer clearance items, fall decorations, Thanksgiving table settings, and Christmas ornaments all in one shopping trip!

I do think it’s pretty smart to start now if you’re one of those people who makes homemade ornaments and cards and wreaths and Santa ceramics. There are kits and supplies for all of those things and more. I just can’t work up the energy for any more projects. Besides, I feel obligated to save a few things for my retirement years.

Speaking of kits and supplies…am I the only person who needs a guidebook at Hobby Lobby? I don’t know what half their stuff is, much less what I would do with it! (And I’m not picking on them; I’m sure the same can be said for any major hobby store.) I kind of understand the ten aisles of scrap booking supplies because one of my daughters does that. I’ve seen her work and visited a few stores with her. I won’t lie and tell you she doesn’t have to explain most of it to me, but at least I get the general idea. However, some of the things I saw today have me totally baffled. I guess there is a hobby for everyone. I just want to know when and how someone decides they want to make their own “clay-trimmed gift tags”! And can someone tell me what a “leather novelty bag” is and what it would hold? The thing was only three inches long by one inch wide. The kit said you could decorate it and put your “keepsakes” inside.

And who knew you could still buy paint-by-number kits??? I remember when my grandmother bought me one for my ninth birthday. I thought I was quite the artist by the time I finished it!

I used to have hobbies. I was one of those “crafty people” who made things. And I loved it! I spent years making dolls like the ones in these photos. I sold them at shows and to friends of friends. Then for a while I made some baby accessories. I painted t-shirts. I tried macramé, crochet, candles, frames, stuffed animals, pillows. Once I discovered gardening the rest just sort of fell by the wayside. I still crochet and knit when it is too cold outside for gardening or when I just need a new afghan, but I suppose I’ve lost the patience for anything more precise or demanding.

Okay, so I did buy a couple of earring kits, but those don’t really count. I just have to attach the little charms to the loops on the earrings and voila, “I made these myself!” Sounds good though. Maybe I’ll go back and buy one of those Christmas ornament kits. What’s your favorite color?

The end of summer blues

           Although by official records there is another month of summer on the calendar, my personal calendar reflects the truth of my life: only two weeks of summer remain. My recent trip to WalMart was further proof. School supplies are spilling from the aisles! I actually bought paper and glue so there is no doubt. I must soon go back to my other life.

I love teaching. I love my students and my colleagues. I even love school supplies. But the switch from languid summer days to life between the bells makes me sad.

I think about this every year. Summer used to be an endless, yawning void to be filled with swimming and picnics and brown peeling skin. Now swimming seems like too much travel and trouble because we no longer have our own pool. Picnics require planning and coordinating schedules. Brown skin is an invitation to another doctor’s appointment. Summer is no longer a season of leisure, but merely a brief few weeks of “summer projects” before I return to my other life. My own fault, but still cause for melancholy thoughts.

I suppose what I regret at the end of summer is relinquishing control again. My summer days are filled with choices, even if I do have several projects to complete. I decide what to do and when to do it.  I still awaken before dawn in the summer, but I do it by choice. I like getting up before the heat of the day. I like watching the sunrise. Once school starts though, rising early is a necessity. There is no other choice or my classroom will be filled with children creating chaos while they wait for their tardy teacher.

I work hard during the summer. I rake and hoe and water the garden. I write for hours at a time. I clean closets and organize our life. I do community projects. But again, those are choices. If I wake up in a lazy mood I can postpone or cancel or just do less. Not so once school begins. There are daily and weekly and monthly tasks to be completed. There are routines to maintain and deadlines to meet.

The end of summer also marks a return to my grownup persona. In the summer I can wear any old t-shirt and go barefooted and sit on the front porch licking a Popsicle, oblivious to whether or not it drips on my shorts. Once school begins I’m “Mrs. Maurer”, teacher and role model. I feel an obligation to dress appropriately and act accordingly.

Roles, routine, responsibility- these are the burdens of fall. They are burdens I accept, burdens I once dreamed of and planned for, but burdens nonetheless. And in the greater scheme of things they are merely the burdens of life. I just have the luxury of setting mine aside for a few weeks each summer. Perhaps I should shake off my melancholy and rejoice in the next two weeks of freedom- leave my shoes in the closet and buy some extra Popsicles. A grand idea perhaps, but I’ll probably do what I always do…wallow a bit in the end of summer blues.

Sunday digest

           It is far too hot for my brain to function on any sort of creative level, so I will give you my “bits and pieces” format tonight- just some news that I might not have covered in recent days. And if I did, well, go back and read the first part of this post again. 100+ degrees folks.

Speaking of heat, our son is getting settled in Phoenix. It has been 115 degrees there, and don’t give him any of that “dry heat” rhetoric. He said it is so dry and hot that his nose hurts when he breathes.  But he also said that Phoenix has lots of sidewalks and people use them. Imagine that!

Sadie update: She is back with her owner, less than ½ mile away, and doing fine. Her owner was a little surprised by the surgical scar, but not complaining. What still baffles us is why she didn’t just go home, and why no one came looking for her.

The evil dogs are busy tearing up two of my flower beds. If I don’t water the beds, my plants die. If I do water, the dogs dig them up. Also, I spotted two puppies yesterday!! I don’t want to even think about that.

Better news: Our grandson has learned to swim! I’m so proud of him and happy that he will now be much safer near the water. He’s had lessons before and always played in the water, but he has finally put everything together and become confident in his ability. That makes such a difference, especially in the water. I love to swim, so I’m not sure how I ended up here in the prairie without a pool in sight! Yes, I know we have a huge lake nearby, but I’m not crazy about swimming with fish and snakes and old beer bottles. Not my thing.

I’m going to work two days this week. That means that summer is almost over. Time to really get in gear and finish up a couple of projects that are still dangling.

This is survival time in the garden. The peaches are about finished. The grapes are gone. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Just have to water, water, water. My aunt gave me some okra, cucumbers, and melons from her garden. She is much better than I am at raising vegetables!

My hubby may have to go to the doctor tomorrow. His elbow is swollen and I suspect something has bitten him. We’ll take another look at it in the morning. I’m always cautious since I suffered through Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever several years ago. Not a pleasant experience.

Well, I’m off to cooler parts of the house. Better thoughts tomorrow, I promise.

All creatures

          I was in town at 6am this morning, watering “the hill” and thinking about the first day we set the flowerbed in place. That was the one and only time in the last twenty years that I’ve seen a horned toad. Now for those of you who have NEVER seen a horned toad and think it is some mythical creature like the unicorn, I offer these photos as proof of its existence. I had my camera with me that day to document the building of our flower bed, and by lucky coincidence looked down to see this horned toad in the grass nearby.            A horned toad, or more accurately, horned lizard, is “any of several small harmless insectivorous lizards of the western U.S. and Mexico having hornlike spines”. Not to argue with Mr. Webster, but I think the horned lizard is a symbol of the changing environment of America. It’s a clue to what’s wrong with our present and a glimpse of what our future holds if we’re not more careful.

            Let’s pause for a simple biology lesson. And I do mean simple. I’m certainly not “lab coat” material, if you know what I mean. However, I am a curious, contemplative person. I wondered why the little lizards I spent so many childhood summers chasing are no longer around in such abundance. I wondered why the one in my photo was the only one I’ve seen in twenty years. I found many of the answers on the Horned Lizard Conservation Society website.

Horned lizards eat red harvester ants. In fact, I learned that 65% of their diet is red harvester ants. Now, if you’re thinking “I don’t know one dumb ant from another” THAT is the answer and the problem all rolled into one. We’ve been absolutely plagued and bedeviled in this area by the imported fire ant- a totally different critter. Every WalMart and farm supply store in the county has at least a dozen baits and poisons for fire ants. Every group of gardeners has a different homemade treatment for the pests. But what happens is that very few people actually know the difference between one ant or another and they indiscriminately kill ALL ants.

That’s why I said that the horned lizard is a symbol of the changing environment of America. As we “civilize” more and more acres of wild countryside, we kill off more of the little nuisance creatures- ants, roaches, beetles, flies, bees, grasshoppers- that get in our way and make our lives uncomfortable. However, we forget that those creatures- nothing more than pests to us- represent survival for something else. Okay, so you don’t like horned lizards and you don’t care if they eat ants. From the website I learned that “In addition to horned lizards, other lizards will prey on harvesters. Various frogs and toads will too. Birds such as chickens, mockingbirds, plovers, flycatchers, cardinals, shrikes, blue jays, woodpeckers, and doves all eat harvesters.” Which of those do you want to get rid of? We miss the point sometimes that every creature is a part of the life cycle of the entire planet.
           Did you see the recent report on the effect of global warming on the Napa Valley vineyards? Did you read the Newsweek article about the “New Greening of America”? It seems that we’ve all become a little more aware of the subtle environmental changes taking place around us. But species extinction isn’t subtle, and that’s what we may get if we don’t start being more discriminate with our poisons. For me, the horned lizard is a reminder not to kill every creature that I perceive as a threat to my garden. I’ve never been much of an “organic gardener”, but even an old gardener can change her ways.

As I write this a woodpecker is enjoying the last couple of peaches hanging on the tree. The peaches had a few worms this year because we didn’t dust them or spray them with insecticides. We managed to get a good crop anyway. And I can watch the woodpecker enjoy his feast, knowing he won’t get sick just because I wanted better fruit. Maybe if we’re all a little more careful I’ll look out my window one day and see another horned lizard. I hope so.

My wish

           I wish I had money. I don’t mean “I need a new dress” money, or even “I want to pay off all my debts money”. I wish I had “won the lottery” money, or “inherited the estate” money. I wish I had “build Caddo a new park” money. I’m a person of ideas and visions and dreams…but unfortunately not the money to go with them. So far, I haven’t even inspired many others to let go of their money. Maybe I just don’t know the right people. There isn’t a single Hilton, or Gates, or Winfrey in my address book!

Each time I read about a ballplayer who has signed an umpteen million dollar contract, or a rock star who is wearing the latest $10,000 “famous designer” jacket, I want to slap someone. I want to shake people and say “WHAT ARE WE THINKING? ARE WE ALL CRAZY?” You see my theory is that there is enough money in the world to do anything, ANYTHING worthwhile we want to do- take care of every orphan, build new schools for every district, cure every disease, and build a new park for Caddo. The money is just being used for nonsense by people with no sense! If you don’t believe me track a few celebrities or politicians or CEOs for a week or two. Most of them are doling out money for “bigger and better things” in a desperate attempt to fill the void in their life created by egotism. I saw a report recently about a star who has five homes! Now how many houses do you actually need? Another reported that she didn’t really use four of the five of the bedrooms in her house- she just liked to look at them.

Okay, okay…I can’t justify everything I purchase. There is excess in my life. I own things I don’t actually need. But I have to believe that if I had money, LOTS of money, I would be generous to others with it. I would build parks and start programs and make changes. I wouldn’t buy designer shoes. That’s the kind of person I am and I don’t think having money would change me. Maybe that’s the key to understanding the people who do have lots of money and waste it on nonsense. They were always that kind of person.

I’m not really going anywhere with this. I have lots of ideas about what I would do with money. I see things every day that I would “fix” if I could. However, I don’t have any brilliant ideas about getting money or having money or making money. I’ve never been able to keep money for very long. But sometimes I wish…

First Peach

  I picked the first peach this week. It was so sweet and juicy!  I forget from one year to the next how wonderful the fresh peaches taste. Now the poor limbs are sagging from the weight of all the ripening fruit. I can see the tree from my office window.  Tomorrow morning I need to take the colander out and fill it. I’ll take some peaches to a friend and some to the neighbor. There’ll be plenty left for us to eat and freeze.

When I was a young girl I didn’t think it was so wonderful to watch the fruit ripening. When it got ripe it meant more work for me! I took some grapes (also ripening this week) to my Sunday School teacher and we reminisced about cutting grapes and picking peaches and chopping cotton. She, too, is a transplant- living first in Arkansas, then California, then here.

I spent many summers in California picking peaches, cutting grapes, and chopping and picking cotton. Also spent some winters picking a few oranges and olives. It seemed like there was always something to harvest in California.

One summer I worked in the “dry yard” cutting peaches. For some reason I had the bright idea that standing in the shed all day would be better than standing on a ladder. Shows how smart I was as a teenager! After about three hours of cutting peaches, smelling sulfur, and swatting at bees I was ready to go back to picking! But of course I’d agreed to work in the shed for the season, so that’s what I did.

When we moved to Oklahoma my harvesting days were over. Except for a little work in the vegetable garden, I avoided the fields. For a while I even vowed that as an adult I wouldn’t own a hoe or pick anything off a tree. How quickly we forget! I’ve gone full circle again, voluntarily. I guess it’s true- you can take the girl out of the field, but she’ll eventually miss it. I like the feel of a hoe in my hands. I like to pick fresh peaches. I like to cut grapes off my own vine. And I like to be outside, even though I seem to spend a inordinate amount of time on this crazy computer! So in the morning you’ll find me outside, picking peaches and cutting grapes…just like the old days.