Comfort vs. Cheapskate

     As much as I love sleeping in on a holiday, I get up in the predawn darkness to shop the Black Friday sales, much as my hunter husband rises in the wee hours to be in the woods at sunrise and bag his game.  Loss leaders are a dream come true for a consummate cheapskate like me, and cheapskates like me are a nightmare to stores who count on customers to buy other things to recoup their losses on the loss leaders.  Just as any other shopping I do, I check the ads, buy only good sale items, and leave.  The only difference between Black Friday shopping and what I do the rest of the year is that it is dark.  In spiritual terms I could say I am trying to be the best steward of the resources God has given me, but the truth is I have always been cheap.  Black Friday bargains allow me to buy the nice gifts I would like my family to have without going over my budget.
     The Christmas issue of Good Housekeeping has money saving tips like assigning a set amount you will spend for each person on your list, drawing names to keep lists shorter, making postage, wrapping etc. fit within the gift budget, buying throughout the year etc.  I couldn't believe a magazine written for adult women would need to teach spending principles I figured out in grade school.  Growing up poor sure paid off for me, it kept me from forming great expectations. The expectations of today's middle class are much higher than when I was a child. Most of us baby boomers grew up in SILK (Single Income Lotsa Kids) homes.  The solution to not having enough money was living within your budget, not sending mommy to work.
     With the advent of credit cards and the example of our government, there is no longer any incentive for living within your budget except for us buy-hards who dislike debt.  Debt is just a four letter word for slavery.  Those who have no intention of paying what they owe are runaway slaves constantly changing jobs, locations, and phone numbers to avoid the "hounds" of creditors.  I hate debt, that common bondage is not an option for me.  I don't like long lines and shopping at 4 a.m.  I wouldn't face the crowds at Walmart Black Friday if they were giving away bars of gold.  But I love saving money and buying things for my family so I willingly sacrifice a few hours in the comatose crowds of crass consumers Black Friday morning. Those bargains allow me to stay in the black, and that helps me sleep comfortably the rest of the year.

Thanksgiving

     Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Its demands are few--food and gratitude.  Food is my love language, gratitude ought to be my lifestyle.  Thanksgiving has been relatively unexploited because neither family nor gratitude can be purchased, the only marketable requirement is food and we have to buy that on a regular basis anyway.  In keeping with the season, media is full of the generic gratitude considered acceptable in a post-Christian nation.  One story told of a man who transformed his life by sending a thank you card to someone in his life every day. This is a nice gesture that would certainly improve the sender's attitude as well as the recipient, but that is not the point of Thanksgiving.  Another article was about a woman who gives thanks to, not for, inanimate objects, thus removing the possibility of expecting appreciation in return. This may have changed her life but it probably had no effect on her latte or fabric softener.  In spite of her intentions, gratitude toward inanimate objects benefits only the giver. 
     I am so thankful that God had the inexplicable lapse of judgement to choose me to belong to him.  I do not have to waste thankfulness on lesser things like my prosperous nation or the turkey, I get to thank the God of the universe.  God would still be good if he had never done one thing for me but because he is God, he has given me everything.  Like any form of worship, the value of praise is in its object.  However humble the blessing and insignificant the giver, my praise goes to the most awesome being in existence.  And one day a year is set aside just for that--Thanksgiving.

Keeping Abreast

     I have become paranoid about posting poems before my poetry class has critiqued them.  They are so much better after I've reworked them.  This is the poem I brought to class last night.  It is based on a true story, Will really was the only male nursing student in a lab on breast exams, the rest is all me.  It was my first time writing a poem from three perspectives but it seemed to work.  I have no idea what Will will think of it.

                                    Keeping Abreast

Today's lab is: Guiding Women Through Breast Self-Examination

My son, the lone testosterone in a herd of female nursing students.
Always a loner, my Will,
content in his own company,
most at home in the woods.
He and his roommate have hiked
all over the "Bob".*
They make quite a pair. 

Pair off into groups of two.

Groups of two.  Must be the theme for the day.
...14...15  Thank you God, for making me odd.
I'll partner with Annie the practice dummy
and fake boobs.                --Will

I thought he might grow up to be
an outfitter, a hunting guide.
 
Guide her fingers around the breasts
as if they were the hands on a clock,
working from the outer edge
to the nipple,
moving from hour to hour
hunting for lumps.

This is like hunting
only we are hunting for something we don't want
to bag and tag--like a bear.
We are scouting for grizzlies.          --Will

It is important for her to distinguish
normal, rice textured, breast tissue
from lumps, which may indicate
a problem.

The problem is,
this is unfamiliar territory
so I'll need to search in a grid pattern.
Starting at the bottom of the hill,
I'll work my way up the trails
checking from side to side
noticing the terrain
searching for bears.           --Will

Even if a lump is found,
most are harmless
but occasionally they indicate cancer.
This cannot usually be distinguished
without a biopsy.

The woods are too thick to distinguish
between a black bear and a grizzly,
so I'll mark the position
of any bear sign
and investigate further when I have more light.           --Will

In school, Will was always better
with hands on learning.
I hope nursing school
gives him opportunity
for hands on experience.


10/23/11                                                                *Bob Marshall Wilderness

Great Moments in Mothering

     I never expected to be chosen as "Mother of the Year", I would have been lucky to make  "Mom of the Moment", but there are times I thought I was doing a pretty good job.  This event stands out in my mind because I was ironing and ironing was a rare, memorable event.  My husband wears uniforms to work and jeans and either T shirts or flannel shirts when he's home, so ironing doesn't come up all that often, but I used to do more of it when I was held captive in my home by young children.  I needed to put some freshly ironed clothes on hangers but didn't trust my toddler Tracy in the same room with a wobbly ironing board and hot iron, so I put six year old Will in charge of guarding the iron. His job was to hold the iron handle so it couldn't fall if his freshly warned brother got near the ironing board during the few seconds I was out of the room.
     Seconds later I heard Tracy crying.  With the disturbing distrust of a toddler, he had deliberately touched his thumb to the iron his brother was holding secure.  I was a "nursing" mom, by this I mean that I had medical training as a nurse aide at the hospital, so I sprang into Dr. Mom mode, carried Tracy to the kitchen, ran cool water over his thumb, snipped off a chunk of the aloe vera plant I hadn't got around to killing yet, and squeezed the cooling gel onto his thumb.  Congratulating myself on my quick thinking, I took my calmed child into his room for a nap.  As I picked up his doctored thumb to kiss his owie Tracy said, "It was the other thumb."

Today I am Free

     In honor of Veteran's Day, I would like to post a poem I wrote in 2009.

Today I am Free

Today I am free

to remember or forget

soldiers whose names I do not know,

who died in battles long ago

and those who perish yet,

in middle eastern sands

or other distant lands.

Today I am free 

to berate or celebrate

the USA will all its flaws,

unfair taxes, unjust laws,

who excludes the God who made her great.

I fight government's grasping touch

because I have so much.

Today I am free

to honor or condemn,

to sit in safety and abhor

the very thought of death and war,

or proudly be American

like those who bought my liberty.

Today I am free.

Joint Venture

    I love to travel because seeing new places and meeting new people is my favorite kind of adventure.  Lately I haven't had to travel far from home to have new experiences because my joints have expanded my view of the world of orthopedics.  The first joint to mutiny was my left knee.  We have a long history of not getting along.  When I was nine, I was playing in a sawdust pit with my friend Lori.  Lori called me and I turned to look at her. My knee did not.  Lefty never forgave me for forgetting her and from that time on my kneecap dislocated at painful and inconvenient times, like the time it caused me to say a bad word on the library steps at Bible college. Because it didn't happen on the few occasions I was in a doctor's office as a child, my kneecap periodically went AWOL until I was 24.  At that time Lefty had a memorable blowout in the automatic door of a Safeway store in Broomfield, Colorado and refused to go back to its semi-functional state.  Though we had been married four years at the time I required surgery, my husband tried to return me to my dad on warranty. The  surgery worked and my kneecap stays put these days but has significant arthritis and, out of spite for many years of making up for Lefty's deficits, so does my right.
     For years now my body has been going downhill, no thanks to my knees who don't want to go down anything.  For the past few years I have been going downstairs backwards.  The good news is it doesn't hurt a bit that way, the bad news is it's a little awkward out in public.  Last month Lefty became unbending, literally, so the doctor gave me a cortisone shot.  It must work like a lobotomy for stiff necked joints because since then it has been cooperative and pain free.
    Unfortunately my left shoulder felt neglected so cranked the discomfort dial from being a minor "catch" sensation to a "gotcha", so I went back to the orthopedic urgent care I had visited two weeks before.  I was relieved to find out my rotator cuff was fine.  The diagnosis was bicep tendonitis.  Doesn't that sound athletic?  I'm tempted to have that embroidered on a shirt.  The treatment is Celebrex and physical therapy.  Celebrex--good times.  PT, not so much. I can view PT as personal torture, a pain test or God's perfecting technique--that part of the adventure is up to me.

Top Drawer

    Yesterday when my husband was out hunting, I was in the bedroom hunting through my dresser drawers.  Our bedroom furniture came with small, velvet lined top drawers.  I'm not sure what purpose they were intended for but, in our case, they function as sieves which skim the flotsam that rises to the top of the other drawers.  In other words they are green velvet lined junk drawers. Despite all the years I have spent years building a tolerance for disorder (drawer rhymes with ignore, not a coincidence), I was overcome by an urge to "straighten things up" while searching through the top drawer of my nightstand.  In minutes, I had thrown out a handful of things and organized the rest into usefulness.  I was so inspired I even vacuumed the linty detritus with small, battery powered vacuum made to clean crumbs off the tablecloth that I bought because it was shaped like a lamb.  I moved from there to my top left dresser drawer where I store freebees my husband gets from sales reps, an assortment of reading glasses, points club membership cards, etc.
     That left only the top right drawer to be transformed, the card drawer.  I make my own cards (computer program, not craft), so at the beginning of each month, I make all the cards I will need and store them in that drawer.  The other cards in the drawer are special ones that I have received.  I enjoy making, sending and receiving cards but, I am not particularly sentimental, after a decent viewing period I throw them away.  But there are a handful special enough to keep close at hand, the kind I like to go back and reread.  I have nearly every card Reed has ever given me stored away in the basement.  Most of the ones tucked in the dresser are from my sons, scraps of spartan sentimentality a mother so longs to receive, especially when the relationship road has been rocky.  Tracy went through a difficult period when he turned 14.  Will's difficult period was from ages 2 to 17.  Those cards and notes make those "muddle" ages worthwhile.  My daughter loves me too, but she expresses it by remodeling our house and that is really hard to fit in a drawer. 
     I reread each card, discarding none, and stacked them neatly in the top right drawer, the green velvet lined drawer where I keep love.

Jobs I Should Never Have

     In the course of my roughly 40 years of employment, with lots of gaps for child rearing, I have had many different jobs.  Many of them were office jobs, which is somewhat surprising because, in spite of two years of high school office related classes, I am a very slow typist (ancient form of keyboarding).  What I should have gone into had I known myself better was nursing.  In my thirties I worked as a nurse aide at the hospital and currently work in home health care.  I love older people and giving them the assistance they need to stay in their own home, rather than a nursing home, is very gratifying.  My most satisfying and challenging career was being a mother, but I was downsized after 23 years due to lack of head count.  I had the privilege of being a stay-at-home mom (laughable misnomer) and because my husband is finally making the good wages they promised him in aircraft mechanic school, I make my living mostly as a kept woman, very part time as a home health aide and wasting time trying to be a writer.
     There are a large number of jobs I am unqualified for, those requiring more than basic knowledge (this is on/this is off) of computers for example.  I know a little about a lot of things but there are no jobs under the heading "trivia". However, there are some careers at which I would be terminally incompetent.  I should never work at a craft store. It doesn't qualify me for a handicapped sticker, but I am a craft impaired person.  I can do one craft, knitting baby afghans.  For dozens of years I have knitted dozens of afghans all the same pattern.  The only thing that varies is the color of the yarn.  Not only am I incompetent at crafts, I am uninterested in crafts. The only suggestion I would be able to give a potential customer at a craft store is to buy whatever it is preassembled.  Since craft supplies are usually found at fabric stores and I think sewing machines were invented as instruments of torture--"Confess or we'll make you sew bridesmaid dresses.", I am totally unsuited for work at a fabric store.
     A second contraindicated career choice is anything to do with plants.  I am known as Connie Kevorkian in the plant world.  Occasionally well meaning people will give me a plant as a gift, not knowing they are consigning it to its doom.  I can almost hear the hushed herbal horror when it realizes where it is. "Nooo, not the Black Thumb!"  I have one houseplant, an African violet without the sense, or ability, to leave.  It seems to flourish from neglect and I am good at that.  My vegetable garden was one tomato plant whom I named Juan, as in juan and only.  Juan was well grown and had several good sized tomatoes on him when I got him so, even I, didn't have time to kill him before he produced.  For outdoor flowers I buy only annuals.  I do not cover them when the weather turns cold.  I want them to die.  Every living thing has a time to die, for plants that time comes when they get to my house.  Hiring me to work at a nursery would be like hiring Typhoid Mary to work at a rest home. 
     It no longer bothers me that there are things at which I am hopeless because there are many things I am good at, including apathy about my failures.  Besides, there are always jobs available for incompetent, apathetic individuals. They are called government jobs.
 

Radical Christianity

     When we lived in the Denver area, we attended a very conservative Baptist church. So conservative, in fact, that the older members were unwilling to expand outreach in case the church would outgrow the 75 year old facility.  Changing locations or significantly altering the building would have been unthinkable.  The pastor felt some remorse over not being able to evangelize, but wanted to be faithful to those who "stayed by the stuff".  The reference is from the life of David when some of his warriors were too tired to go to battle, but stayed behind to guard the loot of previous battles instead. One of the pastor's favorite songs was "The old book and the old faith are the rock on which I stand. . ."  While that fit in well with the old building and old membership, I remember thinking how radical Christianity seemed to the religious conservatives of the time the church was beginning.
     This year in BSF we are studying Acts and I am struck again with the brash clash between the newborn church and centuries of Jewish tradition.  Though God's plan of salvation through faith in Christ has been in place since the beginning of time, 2000 years ago the old book and the old faith were written in Hebrew.  To the conservative Jews of the time, the doctrines of freedom from the Mosaic law and Gentiles as equals within the church were daring and possibly dangerous.
    It's easy, and much more enjoyable to figure what other people are doing wrong but I, too, have been susceptible to the desire to canonize my long held opinions and  TWIDT, The Way I Do Things. I am a big believer in tradition, but if tradition trumps teachability, it is simply well ordered sin. Now that the canon of scripture is complete, radical Christianity is not about changing doctrines, but it is still about changing lives.  I should be standing on the rock, but not with my hands in my pockets. If my life isn't being radically changed, I might as well be under the rock.