A Road Less Travelled

Yes, God gave us meat to eat, but not only that, apparently–

“God gave us vegetarians to eat, too!”

(As always, the quotee will remain anonymous.)

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I’ve finally started up a new renga on my renga blog. For those who are just joining us, a renga is collaborative poem in style of the Japanese haiku (essentially several haiku by different authors strung together into one poem). There is more information about writing renga here if you’re interested in learning more, or if you need to brush up on the rules.

I moderate the contributions, but I don’t hold them to professional artistic standards, so don’t feel shy about helping us out with a few verses. The more the merrier! If you’re really not interested in writing Japanese poetry–a condition hard for me to imagine, but one I am willing to accept in others –just drop by and leave a comment to let us know how we’re doing.

Let the renga commence!

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Inspired by our sail on Lake Superior:

in the prow of the ship–
nothing but waves
between me and the sky

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Last Tuesday a lady from our church died. Laurel Jean Price was 86, had lived a good, full life and died a wonderful, peaceful death. She was surrounded by her family and her church and she simply stopped. One of the nurses said it was the most peaceful death she had ever seen. Tonight we are going to gather together to remember Grandma Price and to thank God for her life and death. I might wear a little black to recognize the sadness of death, but I plan to wear mostly white and purple. I have decided that when I grow up I want to die like Grandma Price.

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In my last post I referred to the the ‘Evanses’.  I did this after intense research –okay, okay, I really just did a quick google search– into the proper pluralization of surnames ending in ’s’.  I settled on this method on the authority of this website, which provided this nugget:

When a proper noun ends in an “s” with a hard “z” sound, we don’t add any ending to form the plural: “The Chambers are coming to dinner” (not the Chamberses); “The Hodges used to live here” (not the Hodgeses). There are exceptions even to this: we say “The Joneses are coming over,” and we’d probably write “The Stevenses are coming, too.” A modest proposal: women whose last names end in “s” (pronounced “z”) should marry and take the names of men whose last names do not end with that sound, and eventually this problem will disappear.

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We returned safely Saturday evening from our stay by the shores of Gitche Gumee, otherwise known as Lake Superior. It was a lovely stay– a little bit chilly, with plenty of trees and a deserted beach. We went out on a sunset cruise on the the lake, which was downright cold, but I really enjoyed it. I’d never been out on any kind of boat before, and there’s something about standing in prow of a ship with my hair blowing in the wind and the water stretching out to the horizon that made me not mind too badly that I was slowly freezing to death. (Slight exaggeration: I’m told it was 46 degrees not counting a serious wind chill factor.)

We also spent some time on the beach with the Evanses, and discovered that it takes only a few people to move ridiculously large amounts of sand with their bare hands if they are either a little crazy, very determined, or both. I don’t actually have pictures of any of our sand creations, but I think they have a picture of the dam we built. See, there was this little creek flowing down the beach into the lake, and we thought, hey, it’s only five feet wide, if we had a shovel we could probably block that off… And the rest, as they say, is history.

There is more I could write, but now I should probably be off to unpack and do some laundry before the sand becomes a permanent part of my jeans.

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We got a call today. The lump is benign. To God be all praise and honor.

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 Look at me, I’m about to be informative. You know how last time I left on a trip I didn’t mention it on the blog until I’d been back for a couple days? Well, this time I’m giving you plenty of advance warning–we’re not leaving for another couple of hours and I’m already posting about it!

We’re going to be in Michigan for the rest of the week, hopefully coming back late, late Saturday so we’ll be zombie like (but home!) for the church the next day. So now when I don’t post all week, you’ll know I have an excuse.

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For some time now Crystal has felt a lump in her neck. She finally went to see the doctor about it because she suspected it might have something to do with possible thyroid issues she’s been having lately. He said basically, “Yep, there’s a lump in your neck” and sent her to have a sonogram done. The sonogram showed that yep, there’s a lump in her neck and they scheduled a biopsy for today. We should find out tomorrow what the lump is.

I know that the full implications of this lump haven’t sunk in for me yet. I don’t have any of the ‘what ifs’ running through my mind and I would love it to be because I am at peace. Nope, I’m just not really noticing how serious this could be. I’m just sitting over here, being all self-absorbed.

Now, the chances of Crystal having something life-threatening are very slim. And if she does have cancer thyroid cancer is the easiest to treat. But that doesn’t change that this could get very scary and difficult. Please pray for us. Please pray for Crystal. I’ll keep you posted.

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I am tired today. Why am I tired today? Because I haven’t been sleeping well the last couple of nights. Why not? Because it is hot. I can’t seem to sleep when it is hot and stuffy. Last night was the worst so far. I went to bed a little early and then ended up turning my light off around eleven which is not early for me, but isn’t really late either. And then I lay in bed feeling the mattress soak up my body heat and reflect it back to me in spades. I was hot, uncomfortable and awake, three things I hate being when I’m in bed. Now it is midnight and a thought flashes into my head. A way to arrange my furniture and fans that would make it cooler in my room. Of course, implementing this thought involved getting up, but I wasn’t asleep anyway so I figured what’s the difference. I could either not sleep in an annoying way or I could not sleep in a productive way.

So up I get and start moving stuff around. I only moved three pieces of furniture, but I reconfigured my fans so that they were functioning together. I finished, surveyed my handiwork and flopped back into bed. I put some soft music on and floated away. I was still a little warm, but it was much, much better.

Morning comes. It’s six-thirty and I’m awake. This is not unusual for many people, but I don’t normally wake up until a little after seven. So I’m wide awake and I realize I woke up because I’m cold. It seems I just can’t win. First I’m awake because I’m hot and then I’m awake because I’m cold. I wish my room could just make up its mind and pick one or the other. This going back forth is keeping me up at nights.

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