coming of age

i register to be an overseas elector. this is a complicated process involving painstaking review of my passport details over the past three and a half years, to be laboriously uploaded onto a webpage that has an unexpected propensity to kick me out before the action is complete, which is proceeds to do, three times, before i finally succeed in reaching the final submission page.

why, you would think they were trying to discourage me.

in any case, i press on. it's taken decades, but this time around i will be an engaged citizen participating in civil discourse and determination. yes sirree.

bloomin' finale

in the aftermath of our sewerage drama i read up on toilet repair, seeing as i was absent myself from the proceedings in the basement. 

what i say is, the plumber plumb deserves his fee.

i ♥ the plumber

the plumber works his magic in the bowels of the house. he has a machine that shudders us to our foundations. he passes a long hose through the mysterious pipes that hold up our bathrooms. he has brushes and rags and towels and air freshener and a gallon of bleach. he has courage and stoicism that i cannot pretend to possess.

in short, i ♥♥♥ the plumber, especially because his first response to the sight of the bathroom is an unguarded o.m.g.

domestic goddess 2

the plumber promises to come this evening. he will bring his snake, he says, which will unchoke the pipes and restore our basement bathroom. 

that's all very well i suppose. but unchoking the pipes will not make the splattered solidified sludge at all vanish. indeed i suspect nothing short of specific human labor will do the job.

i hate business trips even more than usual today.

domestic goddess

today, i

mopthefloors processamountainoflaundry dustthefurniture dotheweeklygroceryrun buy35poundsofdogfood buyareplacementSIMcardforJ2'slostcellphone topupthegasoline gettheSIMcardactivated and havelunch.

that's at six disparate locations.

all before noon.

abba

i know an old man, a confucian chinese gentleman of the first water, who expects from his middle aged sons the deference he expected when they were wet behind their ears.

i know a middle aged man, the son of such an old man, for whom the old rugged cross made a difference to the patterns of a lifetime.

i know a teen, caught up in busyness and duty, who puts aside his friends for two weekends. 

my dad's in town, and we want to spend time together.

it is a beloved privilege to know these men.

back-up

there is an unexpected black sediment all over the basement bathroom floor. there are vile looking dark brown sludgy clumps suspended around the insides of the toilet bowl far above the level of any reasonable water line. there are pieces of flat long light brown toilet paper-like ribbons draping the sludge.

ewwwewwwwewwwewww. help.

blue

been a long coupla weeks.

gonna be another long week.

i hate business trips.

dogwash

here is Dog, freshly sanitized.

he almost gets a nice clip to go with the bath but i chicken out.

after all, as i tell J2, a golden retriever without his hair would be unrecognizable.

Dog would become dog.

voila!

on a roll.

for a young man

may you feel his abiding presence and unfailing comfort

may you surrender hopes and plans and find them anew

may you know that he is bigger than you can imagine

and that he can restore broken dreams. 

he can repay the years the locusts eat.

goodle

google tells me today is the beginning of summer. 

it doesn't feel like it. 

it feels like we're in the middle of summer with 

hurricane season and plenty of weeds thrown in.

not to mention bugs.

absolutely trivial pursuit

it took forever to break the 2100 barrier, but here we are!

amazing grace

...(he) is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine...

- eph 3:20

in letting go

and in trusting

because all other doors close

i discover grace

mercy 

kindness

to overflowing.

i will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground;

i will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

- isaiah 44:3

electrolux moment

J1 is back from field camp with a load of laundry to process. the commercial cleaners, i hear, refuse to take his stuff. too muddy, they say. it'll kill the machine. 

comes a time a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, an' a man's gotta get his army fatigues clean somehow. better you than me, son.

social movement

a twenty minute drive in the southern reaches of maryland becomes an eighty minute long gridlock. take the local road, J2 says. escape the beltway traffic. the local road is a ribbon of tour buses and traffic cops unfortunately. the 2011 u.s. golf open has come to town.

oh well, i tell J2, we have a good excuse to be late. we were in the u.s. open jam, has infinitely more cachet than there was an accident on the way here.

epiphany

what to avoid in our next home:

• stairs,
• wall-to-wall carpeting,
• a yard, yard work, and weeds.

home maintenance

of all the chores that befall the hapless homeowner i think the most thanklessly inexorable one must be weeding.

i hate the dandelion with a passion.

hustle hustle

the thing about keeping an open table to which people have a standing invitation is that sometimes they actually turn up and then you have to scramble to find stuff to organize into a passable meal. 

brokenness 2

once it was the blessing, now it is the lord...

once his gift i wanted, now the giver own.

-a b simpson

in submission there is a peace.

thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of life.

-ps 16:11

drattit

HOM's business trip has its advantages:

• computer for my exclusive use,
• dinner promptly at six, and
• bedtime as early as i wish.

even to my hopeful ears i sound unconvincing.

(new) facebook rant

now that people have stopped hugging and jabbing on my fb page i begin to notice new irritants:

• the check-in function, by which i am forcibly apprised of people's dinner locations entertainment venues and dirty secrets,
• the poll questions, where people ask you whose head do you think should roll for this? and you click george or tin-tin or so-and-so's pet dog, in a sort of delusional mini-gallup,
• TripAdvisor - Cities I've Visited™. the cities you've visited i mean, and how nice of you to tell me.

duh?

the headline reads, prediabetes may protect against incontinence symptoms. here is what the lead investigator concludes: there is, however, an "excessive tendency to think metabolic syndrome has only negative aspects in our health. there is nothing with only negative aspects. clinicians and researchers should be careful not to have excessive prejudices against one health problem (such as metabolic syndrome) when they see a patient or do research," dr. Park said. J Urol. 2011;186:175-179.

one begins to wonder at the usefulness of research questions being asked and to marvel at the tautology that embellishes some conclusions.

fashionista

i attempt to follow a talk on inflammatory bowel disease on the computer. it is a battle lost.

the speaker has this fascinating structure suspended from a series of large beads at rest between her lapels. it proves too acutely distracting.

puzzle

me and J2

5 days

748/750

nooo

war against weeds

i totally get how the forest grew up around sleeping beauty:

• she had briars
• and one hundred years.

in contrast:

• we have broadweed
• and just one season.

and we are giving her a run for her money.

brokenness

torn between

opposing desires

conflicting priorities

submission & defiance

faith is a long lesson

my power is made perfect in weakness.

-2 cor 12:9

groundhog day 2

parenting a teenager who still lives at home:

let go 

panic wildly

pray hard

repeat

one holy passion

hast thou not bidst me love thee, God and king?

all, all thine own, soul heart and strength and mind.

i see thy cross; there teach my heart to cling:

o let me seek thee and o let me find!

-george croly

so many distractions.

so much uncertain anxiety.

such grasping desires.

such short memory.

he stoops to my weakness.

but i forget often.

conscience

classes end early for J2. she has a succession of free periods and no assignment. she wants to slope off. her teachers have no objection.

can you come pick me up, she says. from the front of school, please. so that i look more legit.

!@#$%!! ???

you've got mail!

the new iMac has a superbly ferocious spam filter. what this means is that hardly get any email gets through to the legitimate inbox, which makes for a much more flatly bland experience every time we do a get mail these days. 

on the other hand, the spam box has become a fecund nest of unsavory suggestion shameless importuning and optimistic bluff. i am constantly surprised at the sheer abundance of different spam emails offering enlargement help. it makes you want to ask, just what are these people thinking?

groundhog day

3 p.m. go to airport

wait an hour to reach wrong counter

wait another hour at counter

check in

wait six hours for flight to be cancelled

wait to claim baggage

wait to validate cancelled ticket

1 a.m. reach home

have dinner

9 a.m. go to airport

well not me, HOM. 

BUT i get to stew along to welcome him home to cook him dinner and to drive him off again. 

so, for his sake and mine, i fervently hope today goes better.

spring chickens

teenagers are

surprising

mercurial

idealistic

hopeful

sharp

also,

hairy

possibly maybe 2

i think that, given time, and greater fellowship, with continued dependable unfettered access to data, from every device at my disposal, out of any location i choose, i may well grow rather fond of the new server that HOM has just spent much of the night setting up.

indeed, there is even a case for a second server, to back up our entire life which is now hosted on the first. 

possibly maybe

the new server. is. up.

i think?

we hope.

vuca

volatility uncertainty complexity ambiguity. 

these just about sum up my total experience with computers. 

today i discover SOME MORE ENTIRE folders of email MISSING. 

telogen effluvium

here is a basic home decorating tip for dog owners: always match your floor color to your dog's hair color! or, choose your dog according to your floor! because there are things we cannot change, and one of them is the hair shedding ritual in early summer. but there are things we can, one of which is how much the free-floating hair is camouflaged.

every year at this time i am sorely tempted to send Dog to the groomers' for what is kindly described as the summer cut.

techno-flop

a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, working in a clinic, the phrase we dreaded to hear in the mornings was, server is down. 

well, our new server is down and back in the box and on the way home to its maker. amazon.com's efficient returns service is impressively hassle free i must say. which unfortunately is much more than i can say of our erstwhile server.

geek alert

i think we should add a server to our home network, HOM murmurs. or something in that vein. it will streamline our storage and free us to access our files from multiple sites. size will no longer matter.

the only dinky little server i know that belongs to an actual individual is the one on my brother D's desk, and hey, i always thought that was a crazy indulgence unlikely to infect my nice rational family. this just goes to show that one never knows.

what i do know is that it had better look invisible.

bump in the night

here's my wish list, for the things i hope to find again one day, somewhere in this magnificent technological wonder*:

• the emails within the folder,
• the photos within their albums, and
• the documents that i kept in the photo albums.

also, i would like to know where the music is that used to be in my iTunes.

*our new iMac.

gasp

the iMac is home from the store. the colors are sharper. the keyboard is brighter. the fonts are fresh. iWorks can do more. it is altogether a more intuitive system, they say. people say the strangest things.

also, i believe we have entire folders of email missing.

technical woes

the new computer and the old are in the store for data migration. i am reduced to fumbling at a minuscule keyboard and peering at a dollhouse sized screen.

don't get me wrong. i'm grateful to have the iPod Touch. but i can't help feeling like a beached whale, now can i?