It’s tedious. Removing calcium deposits from pool tile at the water line.
Our pool’s never been cleaned, so three tiles at the water line had to be scraped and scrubbed.
Doing a 20 by 40 foot pool with a hand scraper is like an ant sized dental hygienist cleaning your teeth.
A pumice stone polishes off the remnants, but that hard crusty stuff, it only comes off with scrapes, scratches and scrubs.
Continue reading RepriseMy mind turns, twists, moves and churns. Earthquakes of urgent thoughts turn into raging thought tsunamis.
It’s not what isn ‘t. It’s what is.
What’s isn’t, isn’t talked about. What is, is.
Raging waters flow uphill, gather speed, then dribble down the mind’s mountainside spilling into the deepest depths, depths that do not surrender the issues of thought, whether forgotten or taught, surrendered or caught, given or bought.
Words sound large, but quiet speaks loud. Its silence heals. The healing rest, the energizing of silence slips away in our loud, boisterous, information-based system of living. Yet the need to be still and hear the leaves rustle remains, even when it’s pushed aside.
A group of parents and kids were sitting around five or six tables strung together at a seafood restaurant. They’d been at a sports tournament and the kids had on various versions of their team paraphernalia.
Most of the adults sat at one end of the long chain of tables. The kids instantly gravitated to the other, with the boys in the middle and girls on end.
As is usually the case, the girls were quietly enjoying themselves, but the boys, they were loud, excited and boisterous.
Whether by conscious decision or not, a mother was sitting in the middle between the adults and kids. She was actively involved in the conversations on the adult side, but at the same time, completely aware of the actions and antics of the eleven to twelve year old boys at the table with her. Continue reading An Inconspicuous Smile
Last Friday I took my wife Janet out on the town! A five-course dinner date! I know! Right!?
But we live in the oldest town in Texas, and there’s not a great deal of five star restaurants in Nacogdoches, Texas. So we created our own “fine dining” experience in a mobile, drive around way.
I wrote down twenty restaurants and fast food joints up and down our hometown main drag. Each place was cut to its own little strip, and I put them all in a styrofoam cup that had all 5 courses scribbled on the outside. Janet blindly reached in the cup and pulled the first slip for the first course.
It was Subway. Janet objected. She said Subway had the most expensive drinks in town, so she wanted to go somewhere else. Eventually, she acquiesced, and we ordered one large half and half tea, two straws.
The second course was Bottle Cap Alley for appetizers. A quarter mile drive and we were there, but they didn’t have many choices. Basically, we settled for fried onion rings. Besides, the next course was vegetables, so we could get something healthy then.
The third course drawn, however, was another fast food place, Taco Bueno! My five-course meal deal idea was falling apart.
We had to be creative, but guacamole with fried chips was as close as we could get to vegetables.
The fourth draw for the main course drew a groan from both of us, and then the laughter. Dominos Pizza!
While they made the extra thin crust vegetable pizza, we munched on the chips, guacamole and onion rings. After that, the pizza tasted like saltine crackers with onions and tomato sauce on it.
There’s a bloated, clog up your arteries with grease feeling that was kicking in, but we were committed to a 5 course meal…
Dessert! Should’ve started there! A quick draw from the cup and it was Whataburger, the Texas standard for fast food burgers. It was a no brainer choice!
But ice cream and milkshakes don’t mix with lactose intolerance, and the scrumptious home style cinnamon rolls were 580 calories a piece! We settled on apple pies that were only 200 calories each. Did I mention they were fried?
It was fun though, and totally random! We’ll do it again, but not tonight.
Tonight Janet will be in the hospital.
We’re in Houston. At this very moment, Janet is in surgery to remove cancer from a kidney. She was diagnosed three weeks ago.
I’m scribbling to redirect my emotions, blind my thoughts, dull the heightened awareness that the future has changed.
How much, and to what extent it’s changed, we won’t know until the pathology report comes in next week.
If all goes well, this will be a one and done surgery.
If it goes really, really well, next Friday we’ll be celebrating the 15% chance that the cancer is benign.
That’ll be worth a five course meal for sure! 
There is something beautiful about clocks, but they seem to move so fast.
It’s true time speeds up with age, or maybe, we just speed up busyness and slow down awareness. I don’t know.
An early childhood memory is sitting still watching a wall clock and realizing that if you stare straight, stare straight and concentrate, you can see the minute hand move each second in the tiniest of tiny movements.
Not intentionally, I sit now staring at a clock deep in thought. Slowly an awareness of time dawns. Continue reading Swinging Pendulum
I was making my way to a book store downtown in my own little world, absorbed in my own thoughts, with no desire to interact with anyone other than get through and get gone.
A man came out of God-Tel, a local homeless mission, up the sidewalk from me. He started walking towards me and I dutifully moved to the right so we would cross in the socially acceptable manner.
He walked with no sense of purpose, and his steps had no urgency. I glanced at him to give the slight nod of the head that men give each other that says, “I see you. I recognize you and respect your presence, but I have no intention of talking to you”.
Instead of making the acceptable brief, expressionless eye contact and responding in kind with the same nod back, he looked away toward the street.
Not giving eye contact raised a red alert alarm, so I steadied my gaze on him as he ambled toward me. Continue reading Why Me?
There is a draw that is as deep as the call of the wild. Sounds of solitude, quiet, peace echo deep within a person’s heart. There is great treasure there, comfort, peace.
The constant barrage of traffic, TV, cell phones, music, constant stimulation all force quiet from the mind. The noise drives away peace like a drowning man gasping for life giving air, but only taking in a water death.
Sound gathers force, picks up momentum, and wisps its way past silence to leave us in a head pounding, over stimulation of constantly moving, changing, drowning noise.
Somewhere at the end of the noise is a place where silence welcomes one home, like a life long friend who’s always there with open arms, even when there’s no contact. Continue reading Listen to Silence
I know it’s unrealistic, politically incorrect, and uncool, but I loathe cell phones. Lucky people live where there’s no cell service!
Maybe it’d be OK if it was JUST a phone, but it’s a camera, recorder, computer and alarm clock. There’s more technology in a smart phone than all the systems added together used to send the first man to the moon! And whoever heard of microchips? Chips are supposed to be made by Lays, not drain the living life out you!
Plus, Europe says it causes cancer! And then you pay a ton of money for unlimited talk, text and gigabytes of data. Nobody should be bit by a giga!
Maybe it’s just me? Maybe if I grew up not knowing anything but internet and cell service, I would fully appreciate cell phones?
Nope!
In my old-fashioned, decrepit way of thinking, cell phones are like Congress: you get a lot of talk, end up paying a lot and get virtually no return on investment! (Virtually…see how I snuck in tech word there? No wait, it’s virtual. Nevermind.) Continue reading #Bring Back Rotary Phones
There was a long line for the first interview. It was person after person in rapid succession. I wrote “high risk, high reward” on his application because everything pointed to him striking out as an employee, but IF he made it he would be a home run.
A few days later I was getting pretty desperate and went back through applications. There he was. After a bit of head scratching, I called and left a message. Within minutes he called back as excited as an elementary boy alone in a candy store.
He was 15 minutes early to the second interview the next day, which is a good sign, but hyperactive as that same elementary kid who ate ALL the candy!
I asked him to tell me about himself. A gun fired and the race started. Without breathing, he told me he had graduated from high school seven years ago and everything about himself except which was his favorite tooth. Continue reading High Risk, High Reward
A man at work was diagnosed with cancer in a salivary gland. After extensive testing, the course of treatment was surgery to remove the gland followed by radiation. He was to be back at work in four to five weeks. Unfortunately, the cancer had metastasized and spread into his jaw bone. A 2 hour surgery turned into 14.
When he woke, he had a new jaw on one side constructed from grafted bone from his femur. The cancer had not spread to his brain, thank goodness. Instead of localized radiation though, he began six weeks of intensive chemotherapy. He caught pneumonia because his resistance was down and struggled daily, but after being off work over four months, returned, cancer free. Continue reading I Very, Very Happy
RabBits 