Catch-Up-Hodgepodge

Since my last entry exciting things, peaceful but interesting to me, have happened.

Ginny and I enjoyed a happy weekend just hanging out. Talking, praying, working in our garden. When I say working in our garden, I mean that we sat outside and talked about things that we could do in the garden, but we didn’t actually do a thing but enjoy. Not a lick of work.

Last week I’d given her a cigar plant, a tall bush with bilateral fan-shaped leaves covered with small tubular red flowers. The guy I got the plant from said it would attract hummingbirds. And within three days of my replanting the bush in our garden, sure enough hummingbirds began to feed from it.

Also as we sat talking, an enormous red-shouldered hawk landed on a birdbath isolated in a corner of the yard and drank.

So from tiny birds to huge ones, we enjoyed their display.

We talked about coping with depression and I feel so silly for not recognizing how depression had gradually seeped into my mind. I’ve renewed some positive thinking techniques to combat that (No happy pills for me thanks). Already I see a marked improvement.

We talked about how life can change in a matter of seconds; a phone call, a winning lotto ticket, a traffic accident, a hard-drive crash. While Ginny and I resist change, we’re quite happy with the way things are, we also prepare for it—at least the ones we can see coming.

We prayed the ancient prayer, “In Thy light, may we see light; and in Thy straight path, may we not stumble”.

We reflected on how much our fortunes have changed in recent years. And we acknowledged that God is our ultimate source of provision. That renews our thankfulness.

One sad/funny thing happened at the grocery store:

The store offers discount cards; but you have to give the card to the cashier before she rings up your purchases or you don’t get the discount.

I did not know this.

So, we are in the checkout line.

I’m at the front of the cart unloading groceries onto the conveyer belt; Ginny is at the back of the cart making out a check to pay.

She suddenly realized that we had not given the cashier the discount card.

Ginny began to wave the card at me and shout, “Give it to her! Give it to her”!

I did not see the card in her hand.

I had no idea why she was shouting at me.

Being a dirty old man, immediately my mind flashed back to a scene from porno movie about a fraternity party.

This threw me into great mental confusion.

I began laughing.

Ginny puzzled over why I was laughing about a discount card.

But with all the people around I could not explain until we finally got out into the parking lot and were putting our groceries in the car. My explanation tickled her and we stood there laughing like fools about the discount card and the porno film.

“Only you would think like that,” she said.

That’s one trouble with pornography, flashbacks occur at inappropriate times and places. As the Scripture ought to say, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they are nothing at all like John Cowart”.

Ginny and I continue training for our Civilian Emergency Response Team. In teaching us how to deal with bombs and other explosive devices, our instructor said, “Stay away from it. Keep other people away from it. Or be a canary”.

The canary remark refers to the old coal-miner’s practice of lowering a caged canary into the mine to test for poison gas—The sensitive canary died first.

When one class member asked how close to the bomb is it safe to get, the lieutenant said, “If you can see it, it can see you”.

That’s something to remember.

Yesterday I had brunch with my friend Barbara White. I had not seen her for about six weeks; she’s tied up ferrying her grown daughter back and forth for chemotherapy treatments.

Usually after a breakfast at Dave’s Diner, we come back and sit in my garden to talk, but since the day was so hot we just stayed at Dave’s for a couple of hours.

Nothing deep in our conversation. Mostly we talked about movies…

But when we began to talk about prayer, Barbara observed, “God has never once answered any prayer of mine that began with the word Why”.

That’s something to think about.