My latest amusement is....

FACEBOOK!

I am seriously too old for this Facebook phenomena , but once you create a 'face' you might as well enjoy it!

First, nobody really instructed me at the rules of the game, and the usual customers being 30 years younger and brighter than I , do not need explanations! But alas, my brain is slowing down and I really have no idea what I am doing most of the time as I peruse the internet and all of it's mysteries. So facebook is just another amusement.

Secondly,what if someone 'writes on your wall'? Are you supposed to write back, answer it, email them, call them on the phone , er, I mean cell? or what exactly is the etiquette here? To ignore seems so rude, for lack of another word, and yet, what is there to say? If I had wanted a chat I would have emailed them and I already felt pretty proud of myself for having 2 ongoing email accounts. Now why I have 2 accounts is another ridiculous story, but let's just say I don't really trust the computer systems that much...

Just this week I was checking my email and lo and behold there was a note from Facebook asking if I wanted a certain MLCross to be my friend! Imagine that! I don't even know who the heck MLCross is!! So I snooped around in Facebook to discover that this mysterious potential friend was born in 1955 and had no profile, no other friends and no picture. Highly suspicious. Why was I chosen to be the first and possibly the only friend of this person? Why aren't they more exciting than asking ME to be their friend? Hmmmm?? It cannot be for my looks, my age or my interesting blogs. It must be for another reason, more subtle and more cunning. Anyway. I said yes.

Then , to make this Facebook action even more interesting, a young(as in very young, as in the age of my #7 of 7 children young...) co-worker wrote on my wall asking when I was working this week. Now don't get me wrong, I was flattered to be asked, but really whatever happened to the email system I just got a handle on? how about one of the 2 phones I pay regularly for that we all must have ? Are these things now obsolete? Should I dump my land line(hear the hip terminology here?) and dump my cell and stop wishing I had Verizon instead of At&T because I like the little crowd that follows you around if you have Verizon? Shall I not care that in a month postage rates are going up again and throw away my stationery? Just buy a Laptop, find a connection by stealing from someone else's what have you, and log into Facebook! The solution to life's relationship issues!!

When I knew I was in over my head, however , was a few minutes ago. I decided to make a couple of photo albums, any excuse to share pictures will do, and so I did.
I made one of People I like, and one of Birds. Oftentimes these are one and the same, but nevermind , that isn't my point right now. After I finished uploading or downloading or whatever it is we do in these circumstances, I began checking out other options for the evening entertainment. LOST doesn't start for at least another hour. I found myself looking at "Your activities scheduled" and of course, being the well rounded, active person I am, there were none listed. Now here's the scary part: pay attention to see if you agree with me: I found myself clicking on the icon that said, and I am not joking Friends activities!! NO LIE< I AM SO TELLING YOU THE TRUTH!! I began laughing to myself hysterically(one of the sad parts of single living) and decided that should I be so boring as to need another person's activities update to make my evening interesting, well, I should really just go write a Blog or something. So consider this my therapy Blog.
Good night-time for LOST.

My Age is showing....

There are moments when I actually think I am still a young woman with dreams and plans for the future, with years ahead of me to live life to its fullest, climb any mountain, cross any river or scale any tree on a hike over the Appalachian trail.As a matter for the record, I had planned a walk around my block this very evening.

Not this weekend.

I am babysitting my eldest grandson, Eliot, now 6 years old(or almost to his 7th birthday as he would tell you), and his two young sisters. They are Nora, age-2.5 years and Bianca who is 16 months. Their mom and dad gleefully boarded an airplane for the Grand Canyon to discover the joys of hiking down and back out over Easter weekend, along with SouthWestern sister and her husband, who planned this venture months ago. They did smile rather mysteriously as they left, I am remembering now.

I first decided I may have overstepped my abilities to survive, as mom and dad's car backed out of my driveway and Nora screamed,to no one in particular,"I'M NOT TAKING A BATH!!" I promise you, I had not mentioned my love of bathing small children.
This followed by non-stop chatter about what we were having for supper -"I don't like soup Grammy" she chirped,as I chopped up the last carrot, placing it lovingly in the chicken noodle soup-pot I'd slaved over all afternoon. No Campbell's soup for these babies, home-made, yessiree, only the healthiest for them! Eliot looked at the pot simmering on my stovetop and exclaimed, "gee grammy, Im not even hungry". Ok It was just one meal out of many, after all they were staying almost a week. I could handle this, I have raised 7 children, had various daycare experiences under my widening belt, and even now work with pre-schoolers in the private sector. What was so hard about babysitting 3 kids whom I adored,and then of course adding little man Ethan on Sunday and taking them all to church? Piece of cake, cinch, no problemo, Who are these people who retire and never care for their own grandchildren? My, my, tsk tsk.

Things went smoothly really: supper eaten,albeit reluctantly,toys cleaned up(Grammy likes a clean LR floor you know) pajamas on,teeth brushed, baths avoided for the first night I assured Nora smugly, prayers said, Jesus loves me sung, dirty clothes gathered, dishes cleaned up, bibs washed for the next meal(why is breakfast so close in time to supper I ask??), floor given over to the dog not the mop, and the need to put them to bed the exact time their mommy told me to- hardly a problem.

Except, of course, it was 7:00 pm and as I collapsed in the chair, heaved a huge sigh of WHAT? RELIEF?? me, the mother of so many who capably raised an entire brood of little chicks a mere dozen years previously?? threw my feet up, and realized I had only had them since 5:30 pm, it was now 7:30 pm and there were 5 days to go. I think I may miss church this week.


Oh my, like I said, My age is showing....

The Gardener who writes

My favorite pasttime lately is to keep the TV in the OFF position, sit at the computer and ramble around looking at and reading people's blogs. I am so enthralled with what makes others excited, bored, angry, interesting. And there are some interesting people around , let me tell you!

I found one Blog called Orangette and it is all about cooking and is beautifully presented, very artistic. I found Bill of the Birds (thanks Jan) and he is so birdly-wise it truly amazes me! And what a following that guy has! He didn't write for a day and began his blog apologizing to his audience! Imagine if I had a following that even noticed I didn't write in my blog!?!

Today I followed links from one guy who writes alot about LOST(the cultic TV show I watch weekly...)and discovered some theologically thought provoking sights I will return to. He is found at www.provokingconversation.wordpress.com and has become one I check periodically...His links led me to a poetry loving sight which led me to a poem-which is what I wanted to share here. Frankly, it's content is for a daughter or two of mine I believe would enjoy reading it, but why confine this gentleman's work to a mere email when the world is at our fingertips?

Here it is:
Stanley Kunitz died in 2006 when he was 100 years old.He was apparently an avid gardener and writer as well.I think this is part of a larger poem, but I am not sure-

Touch Me, from Collected Poems

Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.

So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Wasn't that grand? I sigh after reading it, waiting for the full impact to penetrate my being. There are men who are such romantics and so full of words that pour out from somehwere within them. I hope someday to meet such a man, a gentleman perhaps, tending his garden.

The wind blows where it wills

I drove by a sign today that said "17 Days until Spring!" I can't believe it since it feels as though we hardly had any winter this year. I love winter and I love snow and only two miniscule snow squalls entered this Delaware area thus far.
Furthermore, whatever happened to the saying " March comes in like a LION and goes out like a Lamb?" I am shocked that the Lion today was sunny and warm and 60*, not exactly a roaring version.

As Spring quickly approaches, my lovely pink orchid began blooming. My houseplants are betraying me too, blooming in the dead of winter rather than waiting until Springtime warms the windowsill where they grow. I love flowers and group them in the same category as I do my birdwatching. I know their names vaguely and often can identify the more famous ones, say the Orchid, or the Rose or the Sunflower...but I have no botanical name with which to impress gardeners that are always comparing notes and exchanging cuttings. I love the flowers, I love the birds, I have no pressing need to become personally acquainted with the details of their lives. I have friends for that.

The best part of Spring approaching is the daylight factor. My job ends precisely at 6:00 pm when all the little children have been gathered by their loving parents and I am headed home at 6:01 pm. In the last few weeks I have noted the sunshine presence increasing daily as I drive homeward. It used to be that I went out to my car and it was dark and if not for the outdoor lighting at school, I could easily have stumbled on my way to the van. Now I have to decide whether it is dark enough for the lights of my car to go on for safety, and tonight I even looked for my sunglasses as the glare from the sunset entered beneath the visor!

All this chatter about Spring and Light returning is to bring me to my point about church yesterday. The sermon was taken from the book of Matthew, in the New Testament, and it was about letting our Light shine before men so that they could see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. I am to be the Light shining and doing good works to direct people to glorifying God. But today, a mere day after this sermon reminded me to glorify God intentionally, not nonchalantly or purposelessly, I was shocked by the ability of God to use an utter stranger to gain glory for Himself!

My van window blew out by the gusting wind a week ago and needed to be replaced. Naturally my insurance didn't cover this 'act of God' (their words, not mine!)So , although willing to drive with plastic flapping wildly in the breeze forever if I needed to, my GRAMMY self decided that it was too scary for transporting grandchildren as I often find myself doing. It must be replaced! The window man quoted $196.00 and after throwing out all of my usual tactics for receiving a lesser price, including memberships in AAA and AARP and how I wish I could have used FREE, he reduced it to $187. I made the appointment which included a 'free' mobile service to my work. Now here comes the cool part: the young man brought a tinted window pane instead of the correct clear pane needed. He said he could exchange it but I mentioned perhaps I didn't care if all my windows matched if he could reduce the price even more? "Well," says he, " Tinted is usually more expensive, but I'll ask". Now the Glorify God part: He walked over to me as I supervised the children on the playground on this Lamb like mid-winter day and said " The boss told me I could charge you $100.00 after I told him you worked with kids and were poor".

Can I just write here that God saved me working almost an entire day to pay for what the 'act of God' did to my van? I kind of chuckle thinking that God fixed what He broke!but more to the point He brought Glory to Himself with no help from me and my good works this time. He used the good works of a total stranger to glorify God. I was beside myself with Joy and excitement and went around work telling everyone what happened! Hopefully the very next time,(tomorrow?) I will be the one who brings Glory to God by my good works, because He is worthy.