Is it Christmas yet?

Dearest blog reader

I hope that this finds you doing well.  I am fine. As I stand looking west in the wedding meadow, watching the sunset approach at the end of a blustery day, I cast the last of the thorn trees into the fire. Hallelujah!  My face is covered in soot. My back hurts so bad that I doubt that I am actually the same person who managed to ride 80 miles to Bloomington a mere month ago. I must have been dreaming that I made that ride.

One job is done; crossed off the wedding list. One million more are left on a list that will end with “cry uncontrollably” as I walk down the aisle with Grace. Let's ignore thoughts of that for a while.

Rich butterscotch cookies were the cookies of the week. I was a little disappointed. The cookbook editor was apologetic. They were apologizing that the recipe took a pound of butter. I say stand tall and proud; at least until they cart you off for your angioplasty. I have already figured out the way around that. I augment all of my cookie recipes with a couple of Lipitor; no muss, no fuss multi-tasking.

Speaking of epicurean delights, last week while you were enjoying reading Bev’s blog about the mother of the bride’s dress, (didn’t she do great?) she and I were out in downtown Indianapolis enjoying dinner and square dancing. The square dancing was great. The caller was great; the supper not so much. How can you serve dinner to Hoosiers who would be interested in square dancing and not serve bread? It was an epicurean desert, not dessert, nor delight. The dancing was so much fun Bev and I are going again in May. I think that I will smuggle my own bread in. Is that a baguette in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

 I want to thank all of you who have left your flannel sheets on the bed. I have heard about a couple of you who have panicked and tempted the fates with their removal. However, in spite of panicky flanks, the center has continued to hold. The apple trees have just started to bloom. Bev and I had a fire out on the patio last night and hope sprang eternal that I would be drinking fresh unpasteurized apple cider there in September. 

Just one more week to go. Next week at this time, I will be finishing the first leg of cover Indiana. For those who care, the weather will be Sunday; sunny and 61, Monday; rainy and 64, and Tuesday; cloudy and 67. I will be on a bike, riding for a good cause and getting to know my fellow riders. I am looking forward to it. It is a goal that has grown over three years from “I hope I don’t die trying to get around this country mile” to 350 miles in a week.

I want to thank those who sponsored me. Your generosity is amazing. You will buy a lot of shingles for Habitat for Humanity. Why shingles? It is obvious. You’re the tops. If you have been putting it off, there is still time to donate. Simply go to http://www.hfhcoverindiana.org/ and hit the make a donation button.

I had my bike tuned up last week. I have been training hard. In March I road 485 miles. Work was tougher this month and wedding plans had to be executed so I cut back to around 375 miles. I feel very ready. One of my sponsors has given me the topic that they want me to write about for their leg of the trip. Becky wants me to write about the bible story that is most like this ride.  I have been thinking about it and I know which one I will use. I was telling Grace about the topic and she knew exactly the story I was going to use in a second. Actually, it is my favorite bible story and I can make it fit any situation. Stay tuned. It’s a doozy.

Becky has put her topic on the board. That means that I still need topics from Meg, Bev, Sue, Susan, and Amy.  Any topic is fine. Just email them to me or leave them in the comment section.

This week, I will pack my bags, throw my ipad and charger in the suit case, make sure that I have my sun screen, and my tooth brush. Every morning this week, I will wake up and ask, “is it Christmas yet?”

Take care,

Roger

 

How much is that dress in the window?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. The lovely Beverly is making her second appearance in this blog's history. Sit back and enjoy.

I had the epiphany when I blurted my frustration to a near stranger.  I had just been to the mall. I had been trying on dresses that I might wear to Grace’s wedding,  purchasing one potential candidate, and  taking it home to hang with the 5 others hanging in our entry. This way, when I walk in and out of the house, I can see which one speaks to me in just the right mother-of-the-bride tone. The voices of the dresses were beginning to get a little high pitched.

“not dressy enough!”

“too dressy!”
“too young-looking”
“matronly!”

Roger, in a gesture that expresses both his brilliant humor, and endearing kindness, has been naming the dresses in the entryway.  “Classy” is hanging next to “Hoochy Mama”, and he greets them like old friends coming in and out of the house.

“Well hello! Aqua-with-pockets!”

“Hi, Looks-like-a-nightgown!” (his second favorite, after Hoochy Mama)

But even he is growing weary of his tender shenanigans. When I showed him my latest potential online photo of one I might order, and waited for the next clever name, he looked at me blankly and said, “Do you like it?” The fun was waning. My 9 year old nephew, Max, knows about this. His mom asked him recently what he thought of a dress she had tried on for size.

He replied, “I’m not very good at this game.”

My trip  to the mall was on my way to my weekly volunteer gig teaching English to Burmese and African refugees. I walked in to find that class had been cancelled, because the group was listening to a guest speaker about property rights. I was annoyed. I was looking forward to my weekly two hours with Wah Nee Thu and Tee Na  to help me to get out of my head, which always quiets the dress voices. I  blurted randomly to the 2 other twenty-something volunteers,

“Well, I guess I can go back to the mall and try on more stupid dresses!” They looked at me a little scared. “I’m the mother of the bride.” I offered, and they both relaxed and nodded, as I confessed to my first world drama.

“My mom just went through that.” One of them empathized.

The other offered the comment that brought the simultaneous shame and relief that epiphanies can carry with them, “I have a few weddings to attend this summer, and I have been agonizing over what to wear, and I’m not even in the wedding.” She was particularly beautiful, and my instant thought was that she couldn’t possibly hear the same voices installed in dressing room walls, that I had been tuned into only 20 minutes before at Macys. It turns out that dress angst is universal.

On my way home, and yes, after trying on more stupid dresses, I started playing back the other conversations I had been having about THE DRESS with my sisters and friends. Discussions about sleeves and waistlines and shoes were newly lit windows into the tormented dressing rooms of their hearts.  

I pulled out my phone and called a couple of them. I spilled my angst, and they received it, and said beautiful things like, “whatever you wear will be just right”, and “I think you should just be yourself.”  In an email later, another dear sister of choice said, “you just want everything to be beautiful.” It’s true. We all want that.  The deep longing for beauty is the same for me as it is for young Katie the volunteer, and for Wah Nee Thu, an old farmer who would love to trade his American winter sock cap in for his straw hat on a warm day in Myanmar.  

Even deeper, we all want the mercy of being received and chosen for who we are—the ultimate forgiving fabric in the warmest of dressing room lights. Lord have mercy on the mother of the bride.

Take Care

Bev

Breaking out of a rut?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I come to you with the message of steady, steady; leave those cotton sheets in the linen closet a few more weeks. I can see the sweat breaking out on your brow with the temperatures jumping up into the 60s. Please, set the cotton summer weight sheets down and back away from the cliff. Nature knows. Our ability to drink cider in the fall is depending on our restraint. Just last week, while on an evening bike ride, I nearly ran over a robin. I know what you’re thinking. “I didn’t know you could ride that fast Roger.” I can’t. I am not sure why he stood in the middle of the road as I came around the curve looking up at me with forlorn eyes. I could look into his eyes and I am sure that I saw in them a depth of despair. While peering into those black bbs, I got the sense that he was thinking “Run over me please. I am cold and this winter is never going to end. There are no worms. All is lost. ”

I know that I did not write last week. Couple of reasons really. No. 1; a deep sense of bitterness and resentment had swept over me. Everyday the past two weeks, I have had to look at pictures of “friends” on the beach, of beautiful sunsets over large bodies of water. The low point was reading a sniveling post complaining about how cold the 60 degree high was. We vote you off the island. I had nothing good to say about you so I kept my fingers quiet.

No. 2; Last weekend my to do list had grown so long that not everything could be done. I took the opportunity to make a Good Friday great by riding from my door to Ben’s door 89.2 miles away. I didn’t realize that good biking roads could connect our places. Ingalls to Bloomington in 7 hours, including an hour’s respite in beautiful Franklin, IN having lunch at Don and Deb’s just across the street from the Johnson County Courthouse. A shout out to Bev for driving the support vehicle. She met me in Franklin for lunch, road with me for 10 miles and met me in Bloomington for the transport back. I loved the ride. I keep gaining confidence that the Cover Indiana ride in 4 weeks will be a blast. The only negative of the Bloomington ride was that the forefathers and mothers of Bloomington had some very sturdy oxen. You would have thought that at the end of their journey, where ever it was from, the oxen would have been too pooped to get up those hills that Bloomington is set upon. I know that at mile 82 there was one ascent that very nearly defeated me.

Saturday was spent with family sharing the Easter holiday with good food and fellowship. Then Sunday afternoon, the religious holiday was marked by sending the recurrent thorn trees into the very fires of hell. Great progress was made in the wedding meadow. One half of the thorn tree piles have met their destruction. The rest will go after a little spot of rain to moisten the tinder dry winter killed grass that dominates the wedding meadow landscape. Plenty of time remains.

However, time is of the essence in another area. Fund raising for the Cover Indiana Ride has fallen behind schedule. After an initial blizzard of activity and generous contributions and promised contributions, things have slowed down to a gentle flurry of activity. If you were intending to support the ride with a contribution, it would put my mind at ease if you would get on the website and make your donation. If you are more comfortable with checks, you can send it to me. Make it out to Cover Indiana and I will forward it on to Lafayette Habitat for Humanity. The website is http://www.hfhcoverindiana.org/ hit the make a donation button and select yours truly. Thank you. If you have already tapped out your donation funds, I appreciate all of the support that you have given to all of the other causes that compete for your generosity. Too much? Laying it on too thick? I don’t think so.

Big news! Last Monday evening, I recognized that my life had slipped into a rut. Changes need to be made. While we are long past the annual season for resolutions, my life sometimes marches to the beat of a different drummer. So on April 1^st, I resolved to break out of this joy deadening rut that I find myself in. Bev and I were eating supper on Monday. I looked past her lovely shoulders. The view from there is a white Hoosier cupboard where we keep all of the household cook books. I am guessing that we could select a different recipe daily and not repeat for a thousand years. We love cookbooks. Ever since I stole the first on from the Bryan Brethern Church, I have been hooked.

Bev and I were sharing the events our day. I was gazing past her lovely shoulders and my eyes come to rest on the Farm Journal’s greatest cookie recipes cookbook. There it was in flashing neon letters, my epiphany; you are in a cookie rut. Bev is a fantastic baker. Cakes, rolls, pies, and cookies roll out of her oven with great and appreciated regularity. She is very good and has had a brush of notoriety by placing 3^rd in the Indy Star’s pie contest a couple of years ago. I write notoriety because being famous is not greatness. Bev is a great baker. It augments her hospitality giftedness. It was the pushing out for notoriety that made her uncomfortable. The pie?  It was a lemon wild black raspberry pie that was of her creation. It was to die for. There was a lemony, creeeaaaamy, rassssspbeeery all in her flaky hooooooommmmmmaaaade crust.

Pardon me while I stop my pavloovian response. I lost track of where I was. I am in a cookie rut. In a cookie rut and I was staring at 350 of the greatest cookie recipes. I pulled out the book and was ashamed to see that the top of the book was covered in a thick layer of dust. Dust shouting down an indictment of the ruttiness of my cookie experience. In the past when Bev would ask what kind of cookies I wanted, I would respond “chocolate chip”; sometimes to “change” things up, I would ask for cat crap cookies. Cat crap to the uninitiated are really chocolate, oatmeal, peanut butter no bake cookies. As you dollop the melted butter, sugar, peanut butter and oatmeal concoction on the cookie sheet to congeal and harden they look like little mounds of cat crap. This is especially true if you feed a cat chocolate, oatmeal, sugar, butter and peanut butter.

In order to break out this life draining rut, I have resolved to make a different batch of cookies each week for the next seven years or so. As I opened the dust covered brittle pages, I notices several things from this 40 year old treasure trove. These farm bakers were making cookies for an active hard working population. They all start with 1 cup of Crisco. The recipes that are described as “rich” start with 1 cup of Crisco and 1 stick of butter; Hurrah. Also, I noticed that these are huge recipes. I picked one of the smaller recipes and it made 7 dozen. These people were cooking for large families and a couple of hungry, overweight farm hands. Seven dozen cookies a week in an empty nest house; I can do the math; Hurrah. I am breaking out of a rut or creating some ruts if I eat a dozen Crisco infused cookies a day for a year.

This conundrum can be overcome with recipe reduction and just a little generosity.  So friends and coworkers can expect my installments of the greatest cookies over the next 7 years. The first? They were a chewy honey cookie. You start with a cup of Crisco, a lot of flower, an egg, sugar, and a cup and a half of honey. Yum.

But you know what would make it just a little bit better . . . some chocolate chips.

Take care

Roger