Friday, May 26, 2006
Mee-mee/Meem/Mem-ay...however you pronounce it.
I've been tagged. Sorry this took so long to get up. It's actually been in my word files for over a week, but y'know, things kept happening.
The Seven by Seven Meme
Seven things to do before I die:
1.See the Grand Canyon in person.
2.Participate in an act of civil disobedience.
3.Teach Sunday School.
4.Celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary.
5.Finish my log cabin quilt. I figure it’s gotta get finished some time.
6.Learn a language that is actually spoken in contemporary times. I studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Greek & Biblical Hebrew. Never Spanish, French. Sigh.
7.Not care what others think of me.
Seven things I cannot do.
1. Be patient about big decisions.
2. Understand how a pacifist religion with socialist leanings has been co-opted into the current administration.
3. Climb one of those rock walls you see in malls every so often.
4. Stick to one form of fibrous expression.
5. Stop giving the dog Greenies. He’d stage a coup, cornering me in the bathroom brandishing his leash as a whip with his curly tail.
6. Understand the inherent selfishness of humanity.
7. Prevent myself from lapsing into selfishness.
Seven things that attract me to my soon to be Husband1. The way he looks when doing the dishes. Or taking out the garbage. :::sigh:::
2. How he gives me a back massage every morning to wake me up at 6:30 to eat breakfast with him.
3. The way he plays with the dog after a life of never having one.
4. The way he makes decisions. He moves like a glacier while I move like an Alpine Skier. This frustrates me to no end, but I need the balance and so I love it.
5. He cares about me in the places I don’t care for myself.
6. He loves the things that I find to be flaws.
7. He watches me eat. Don’t know why, but I love that.
Seven Books that I Love.
1. His Dark Materials Trilogy (does that count as three?)
2. The Grapes of Wrath
3. The Red Tent (gotta go with Angi on that one. Read it. Just read it)
4. Savage Inequalities – Jonathan Kozol
5. Necessary Madness – Jenn Crowell (Remember the hype? In 1997, she wrote this book when she was 17.)
6. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson
7. The Mystery of Romans – Mark D. Nanos I had to find a seminary book to put in here. This one’s a good one. There’s a whole group of books that blow your hair back about how to look at Paul. Daniel Boyarin is another author to look for. I would have put the Bible, but I’m in the process of revamping my view on the Bible. When the Bible becomes your work, and that work becomes a pain, well…it’s a good book. I need to fall in love with it again.
Seven Things I Say1. Eight million. The Bible uses “40 days and 40 nights” to mean “a long time.” I use eight million to mean “a lot.” Don’t know why.
2. Mwah!
3. The Great Calveeeeeee-nooooooo That’s what we’re calling the dog now.
4.hon
5.oy vey
6. No! To the dog…a LOT. He peed on the corner of a 70 year old quilt today. Do you blame me? Damn, I talk to the dog a lot.
7. I left seminary because….
Seven Movies I have Loved. – Oh where to begin?1. Kramer vs. Kramer
2. Calendar Girls
3. Mrs. Miniver
4. Capote
5. Prozac Nation (the best description of what depression feels like. Really)
6. The 40 Year Old Virgin (I’m for equal opportunity in movie enjoyment)
7. Saved!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
This wedding crap is boring.
Don't you agree? I personally yawn with the ease of coordinating an event for 343 (invited, not confirmed) guests. It's leaving me with waaaaay to much free time. The key piece of evidence is the lack of blogging. When I was at seminary, loyal readers knew when it was midterms or finals because blog entries would increase from 3-4 a week to 10 a week. You can tell that I have too much free time on my hands as blogging as sunk to nil. But I digress.
Too much free time! That's what I have. I find myself simply sitting on the couch like a blob, staring at the Hitler History Channel, A&E, HGTV, The Food Network, and occasionally Animal Planet (right now it's the history of the marines...riveting). I suggested to Justin that I needed something else to fill my life, to break up the endless monotony of doing nothing. The Job is helping, but that's only 2 days a week. I need something more. "How about a new hobby?" No, I have enough hobbies. "How about making a gourmet dinner for me every night?" No, too much risk of bodily injury what from burns, food poisoning, etc. "Oh, I don't know, you feel like buyin' a house?" Yes! That's it! Planning for the wedding has just lost all of its challenge. Let's try and MOVE! Hey, and just to make it even MORE fun, why don't we try to move BEFORE the wedding! That sounds great!
Behold the New House, offer accepted last night:
Because my life wasn't full enough. Anyone know any moving companies that will take you from quote to move in six weeks? Anyone have a prescription for Valium I could borrow? Percoset? Vicadin?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mudders
Mmmkay, well, I got tagged by Angi for a "meme." My first. Sigh.... I don't know what the etiquette is, but I need a day to ruminate and let the questions marinate. Maybe two. Maybe the weekend. But I'll get to it. ::wink::
In honor of Mudder's Day which is rapidly approaching, I thought I'd tell you about my Dad. Many of you may have noticed that my blog has one of those weird addresses. Not blogspot, not typepad, not blogname.com. The Empusa part is the webite The Fiance and his brother set up AGES ago and don't really use. The RKM stands for Dad's initials. About a year before I started blogging, my dad said he wanted to start up a blog. Could the Fiance help him? That he could. He gave him a fruit stand on the information super highway, and empusa.net/rkm was born. "Bob Morris Speaks." But as with many things my dad ( and I ) do, what seems so cool when you first start out turns into drudge. No, not Drudge. But the verbal form of drudgery. Grammar avengers, I thumb my nose at thou! Thee? ;-)
But yesterday he sent something that he wrote about my Mudder. And I just had to let his voice be heard through the blog. Bob Morris Speaks Again.
Thursday
In the morning, unusually early, the telephone rang for Kathy. It was one of the nurses from Arden Courts. She was calling to let Kathy know her mom wasn’t doing so well, that she was having trouble breathing.
The nurse’s voice was a familiar one. Kathy is pretty close with most of the Arden Courts people. Five years ago, Kathy, her dad and her brother and sister all decided that her mom’s alzheimer’s had reached a point where it would be best if she was cared for there. As it happened, this was just before Kathy’s dad died. The place has changed some over those five years: people, ownership, the place’s name. Kathy’s mom has changed too. At age 88, she can no longer walk. She hardly talks at all any more, can’t feed herself, and sleeps most of the time. When people visit, she doesn’t know who they are. Over the entire period, Kathy has been there just about every day. Most days she feeds her mother herself, coaxing and cajoling with each spoonful. She’s been the one to make sure her mother’s hearing aids would get put in precisely the right way, to check to see that she’s dressed nicely, her hair fixed just so, her nails done and all. Kathy’s at Arden Courts so often that lots of folks there greet her by name.
Just not her mom.
After getting off the phone with the nurse, Kathy got dressed and drove the ten minutes to Arden Courts. Her mom was asleep and seemed to be breathing alright. Then, after a little while sitting by her mom’s bed, she spoke with the hospice people who were there. They would order oxygen, they said. But, experts in the grim business of knowing the signs, they said her mom only had a short time to live. It could be a few days, or a week.
Kathy called me at work to tell me all this, wondering if she should just stay there at Arden Courts by her mom’s bedside. But she needed to let the family know, and that was easier to do from home. Arden Courts would call if there was any need. So she left, and spent the rest of the morning getting in touch with her brother in Delaware, her sister in Ohio, our kids in Chicago and Philadelphia. No, there was no need for anyone to come right now. There was nothing anyone could do, really. Yes, she’d let them know when there was more news.
Kathy and I both sing in our church’s choir, and practice is on Thursday night. Should we go? What purpose would be served by hovering at home by the phone? We figured they could reach us by cell phone anyway, so we drove down to our church. Also, that way Kathy could let our friends in the choir know about her mom.
Lent was approaching, and our choir was working on the music of the season. The anthems were somber, the words evoking themes of sacrifice, pain and death. Kathy’s dad had died during this time of year, and since we sang much of the same Lenten music then, doing it again now naturally recalled the memories of that time. I’m afraid we really didn’t do our best singing.
In the car after choir practice, Kathy realized she had left her cell phone at home, so we decided to stop at Arden Courts, just in case anyone had tried to call. It’s on the way home. When we got there, the parking lot was almost empty. You need to punch in a special code to open two separate doors to get in. Kathy knows these codes by heart. Anyway, her mom was still resting comfortably as we entered her tiny room, where they keep the temperature at around eighty degrees. Old people tend to be always cold. We sat there for a few minutes, Kathy stroked her mom’s hair, and then we went home.
On the way, we talked about the fact that we had been planning to visit our son and daughter in law and five grandchildren in Philadelphia over the weekend. Should we cancel that? There’s nothing we can do here anyway, we can be back in six hours if necessary, maybe we should still go ahead.
“I wouldn’t want to die alone,” Kathy said.
Friday A Week
This time, when the phone rang, we were pretty sure what it was. We rarely get calls at 2:30 am. Kathy didn’t know this particular Arden Courts voice; she hasn’t had as much contact with the night shift people. “I’m sorry, your mother died about twenty minutes ago.”
“I’ll be right over,” Kathy said.
And then in kind of a fog we got up, got dressed and just drove over there. I’d never been there in the middle of the night before, and it was a bit unnerving to see some of the other residents up and walking around the way they do. We were only there a few minutes. After seeing Kathy’s mom, and asking a few questions about their procedures and such, Kathy sat next to her Mom’s bed and touched her face, then we got up and went home.
* * *
Later, after the week’s flurry of the funeral arrangements was behind us and family members had returned home, I was left with a quiet question. How did it work out, just how did the stars align to make it happen, that I would be married now these many years to someone who would be, well, the way she is. With infinite patience in care for a helpless loved one, with a seemingly unbounded capacity for personal sacrifice.
Kathy and I had our first date when we were fifteen years old (well, she was sixteen). She was a kid like any other kid. She had the average share of teenage run-ins with her mom – over things like not being allowed to go out to the drive-in, or spending too much time on the phone. And me, I suppose I was basically your average teenage boy. It’s hard to remember now, but I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t so perceptive way back then to figure out just what kind of person my cute young girlfriend would be 40 years later.
We got married when we were 21, and figured we knew everything there was to know about each other.
I guess that was true from the perspective of that time. But the real truth is that the person this young girl would become was far beyond my imagining. It wasn’t something I could have cleverly evaluated, like a good relationship investment opportunity, something I could have considered, calculated and predicted, figured out with savvy beyond my years.
What I ended up with, what I have, can’t be attributed to acumen. It really can’t be figured out or explained, other than to say,
She’s just a blessing. That’s all.
The Biz
About a week ago, we got the First Wedding Present in the mail. :::Angel Chorus::: The Fiance was out of town on business, had just left that morning, so the big ol’ box of wonder and mystery sat on the couch for 4 days awaiting his return.
With that said, there really was little mystery in what was IN the box. With modern-day online registries, it’s possible to check out what’s been given to you on a daily basis. The only mystery is WHO made the purchase.
A note on gift-giving. I don’t want you guys to think me shallow for my use of the registries. Most of our guests don’t have both stores in their areas, so we double-dipped a LOT when choosing things. We want to return as LITTLE as possible. So we’re keeping track to ensure that doesn’t happen. And it’s fun. :- ) I think you know by now that it’s important for gifts to have meaning when I give them. I hate gift certificates unless it’s to a place that I know the person LOVES (like a yarn shop). I hate buying decorative chotchkies that I know are just cop-outs for gifts with thought. So part of this registering thing abhors me. Most people are going to look through the list for something in their price range, check it off, and that will be that.
And then there’s the Fiance’s Aunt Alice, the giver of the first gift. I never thought a registry gift could choke me up so quickly. Aunt Alice, HER Aunt Fran, her daughter Renee all chipped in to get us the tablecloths we had registered for. Not meaningful unless you know the history.
Alice was the primary caregiver for the Fiance’s grandmother. This woman drove an hour and a half one way at least once a week to take her mother to get groceries. They talked every day. She was with her when she died, heard her ask on Christmas, “Is it Christmas? I wanted to make it to Christmas” before she died that night. Aunt Alice’s care of her mother reminded me of my mother’s care of my grandmother. There’s a sense that nobody gets it but YOU when the person dies. Nobody is going to miss her as much as YOU. YOU’RE the one who’s left with the empty house full of things, and all the sorting of clothes to do, the painful cleaning out. I told that to Aunt Alice when we went up to the funeral for the Fiance’s grandmother.
The Fiance’s family all moved far away from home, his dad’s family rarely sees each other. Everything but a few choice pieces that were “mine growing up” were to be lumped together & sold at an estate sale, the proceeds split among the next generation. I don’t know how, maybe the Fiance’s dad, but somehow, Aunt Alice (the executor of the estate) knew that Justin and I were in need of a dining room. And she knew that I loved the old 20’s-30’s style furniture that Grandma had sat at for years, that Justin and I sat at to eat cake the first and only time I met her. But another relative wanted it too. The story goes (and no, I’m not Snidely Whiplashing this) that they wanted to restore and sell it at auction, making a tidy profit.
I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know what fights there were, what wrangling there was, but Justin’s dad got a call two months after Grandma died, saying that Aunt Alice wanted us to have the dining room furniture. Grandma had known she wasn’t going to make it to our wedding and had told Alice that she wanted us to have her dining room set as a wedding present. All we needed to do was drive the 8 hours out to the PA/NY state border to pick it up.
I have to say, we’re really grateful. Justin and I had been looking at used furniture for a few months. Not finding anything in super condition for the price. I’m not big on thinking that God does little things like helping the Pirates win a ballgame. But it does seem that God wanted Grandma’s memory to continue somehow. We brought it in, cleaned it up some, gave it some updated seat cushions (thanks Aunt Phyllis!!!).
Aunt Alice could have gotten us anything from the registry. But she decided to pick out the items that would be the most meaningful to us, would have the most connection to past memories. Man, do I love her for it. Thanks for restoring my faith in the gift-giving abilities of others, Aunt Alice!
Cake anyone?
Friday, May 5, 2006
Next time I'm going for the epidural
I think this blog is going to become wedding heavy for a little bit. But no, it will not be about how the Coordinator isn't returning my phone calls (cause we don't have one), or about how the lobster just ISN'T going to be available from Maine (my future FIL is really allergic to crustaceans), or how I can't UNDERSTAND why no one has TOUCHED the Tiffany's registry.
All of my crafty energy is being focused on wedding stuff. The wedding quilt, I'm eventually knitting & felting the "card basket" using Wendy's kitty bed pattern but with higher sides (I hope I hope I hope), and lately we've been tackling...the favors. :::Dum dum dum:::
You guys saw all the CD's yesterday, all the packages of CD labels. What you didn't see where the 10 new color printer cartridges that I got AFTER posting yesterday...for the labels...the very colorful labels.
We're making our own favors, and considering we're foregoing the Jordan almonds wrapped in tulle for the mix CD that we're NOT sending out for burning, we're NOT sending out for printing, we've got our work cut out for us. But we wanted to make them ourselves.
Y'see. The Fiance is a shy guy. You don't mind me saying that, right, Hon? You're shy. You wrote in my V-day card this year...which I left on the mantle...and my mother read it. So the secret's out. He's shy. :-) Anyway while the Fiance's words are few and well chosen, he certainly has a way with the written word. He is even MORE expressive with music. In the movie High Fidelity, John Cusak's character -- let's just say I'm engaged to John Cusak's character from that movie. Without the smoking. He gives a little monologue about the construction of a successful mix tape. "You're writing poetry with someone else's words." That's what the Fiance does. When I went to Scotland to study abroad, I knew that he loved music, so I asked for songs that reminded him of me. I thought about the inside joke songs, the "hey this was the first time we made out" song. None of those were on there. What I got instead just blew my mind away. Here was a CD of about 15 songs of which I had heard maybe 2 of them. Completely new, completely made me dissolve on the plane ride across the Atlantic. Ever since then, he'llsurprise me with another one when I least expect it. I got one when I got off the plane six months later. There are 6 in all now (not including the 3 MP3 CD's I got for the long drive out to Chicago).
I thought (and he agreed) that it would be great to do the same thing for our guests. We want everything to have meaning for our wedding...we know that other people have done this as a favor, but it's a continuation of a special tradition for us. So we're including it. The rules: Each song had to have meaning for us. We had to keep the one-sided ones to a minimum. It had to be ambiguous (despite the singer's gender) whether or not a man or a woman was the object of affection. They couldn't ALL be love songs. They couldn't ALL be slow songs. We wanted to introduce our guests to some unknown artists. You don't hear Martin Sexton or Patti Griffin or Feist on the regular radio much. We wanted to use some old classics and some newer pieces. We know that most people aren't going to like all of the songs, some aren't going to like any of the songs. But we don't care. It's us. We're putting ourselves out there.
We started burning yesterday. So now it's time to work on the labels.
After 6 hours of tweaking, futzing, messing, experimenting, emailing to the other computer, test printing...
Behold!!! I have made CD ART!
It was fun. I learned how to wash out a photograph on the computer. I learned that the software Avery gives you for free isn't that great for editing text. I felt so friggin creative after the first one printed out!
One down. We have to do more than 4 a day between now and the wedding to safely get our numbers. But we can point to them and say "we made that, dangit!"
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Ode to Elopment - A Montage
Thank you for all of your well wishes and welcome backs. I really appreciate them. :-)
I started my job this week, and that's all I'll say about it. I've learned my lesson from Dooce. That was the beginning of the week. I will tell you this much, the return to the working world is a tough one. I don't think I've done one thing for eight hours straight in years. I'm used to flitting around all day from project to project to project. Having to actually sit and NOT multi-task...it's exhausting. Hello real life! The good thing is that it's only two days a week until after the wedding, leaving enough time for fittings, favor making, invite addressing, hair pulling, eye gouging. Hello fake life! I just can't believe the whole wedding industry crap. It sickens me, yet if you don't do it, you're a pariah. While the wedding has gotten away from us and become so much more typical than we planned, there is one reason we're not eloping.
Our officiant. She would kill us. Premarital counselling has been fun, that's for sure. Hi, Dot! Love ya!
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