Embrace the Thin Mint?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. The weather broke for a week. I rode 106 miles outside. There were no potholes. The assassin deer mommas have just passed the half-way point in their pregnancy. They have had the ultrasound done and have posted the instagram on Antlerbook. The yearlings are turning bitter that mom doesn’t pay attention to them any more. Their fathers have been distant at best, absent at worst.

These situations all produce the perfect recipe for fostering another generation of ruthless killers. I was reading my biking magazine yesterday. They were providing the results of a reader survey. One of the questions was “what are the animals that you’ve collided (or had near-misses) with on the  roll."  I provide you with the results. I do have a couple of problems with their methodology. Surely dog encounters are very common. Yet, they are not mentioned. Also, should squirrels even be mentioned? You would barely even notice the bump or thump or whatever if you hit a squirrel. They are little better than wooly worms which I will crush with ruthless abandon next October in repayment for the winter they predicted this year. As the graph clearly shows, the assassin deer are tops in frequency and lethality. Those antlers aren’t for show Gertrude.

Yesterday was a momentous day. I finally reached the nexus of $4 in my pocket while in the presence of a Girl Scout in February. I suppose that I shouldn’t try to eat my way to a better outlook on life. But there you go. It has served me well for 51 years. No need to stop now. I do feel comforted with a sleeve of Thin Mints; two sleeves in a box, 16 disks in a sleeve; thirty-two disks of melt in your mouth, minty, chocolaty goodness. Thirty-two disks waiting to be dunked in a glass of milk and savored. The way that they are packaged just perfectly, one can tear the closed end; cup your hand at the end, lift the other end. The Thin Mints will all topple over and pour out straight, like a world record attempt of domino toppling. No plastic grabbing a disk edge, no secondary ripping of the package, they pour gently out into the palm of your hand four at a time; the perfect dipping number.

I wonder if Girl Scout cookies vie for not being in the box to be frozen or even worse forgotten in the freezer. It certainly would never happen to a box of Thin Mints but the Cranberry Citrus Crisps have to be a bit worried. The Thanks-A-Lot screams of youthful angst; “thanks a lot for buying me and then shoving me in the freezer while you eat your favorite Thin Mints. As time goes on and you go looking for another bag of raspberries, tomatoes, or green beans, I keep being shifted back and forth sinking slowly to the bottom of the freezer. Now, I find myself under the ham. That’s right I will slide past my eat by date under the ass of a pig. Thanks-A-Lot.” That never happens to the beloved Thin Mint.

I have often had a hate-hate relationship with youth fund raisers. I have often felt that it was little better than exploitation. What do you do if you have a million rolls of wrapping paper, 10,000,000 light bulbs, a gazillion pounds of pop corn? How will you get rid of them while keeping sales costs low? I know let the children pawn this stuff on their parents, relatives, and parent’s coworkers. Give a little to the organization and overcharge for the actual value of the product. I cringe at the thought of eating $5 popcorn. The thought of wrapping 2 presents with a roll of $5 wrapping paper makes me nearly homicidal. I have found a remedy for this conundrum though. “Do you want to buy some popcorn, Mister?” “No kid, here’s $5 now go find someone else to bully.” This way the organization receives funds to continue their good works and I don’t have to gag on $5 popcorn. If I wanted to spend $5 for cold popcorn, I would go to the movies.

I don’t have these irrational reactions with the Girl Scouts. I gladly seek them out. I look forward to going to the store in February. If the lovely Miss Beverly needs some vanilla for a pie, I gladly volunteer. I go to the drawer where I keep my $4 bills and happily drive 10 miles for the opportunity to buy the minty, chocolaty goodness.

Yesterday, I had the most delightful encounter. The Girl Scout in question had been at this for a while. No Crayola, or sharpie decorated poster board for her. She was a seasoned veteran of the Thin Mint crusades. Her sign was about 4 ft high with l.e.d. lights drawing the panicked buyer’s attention. I say panicked because she wasn’t in the front of the store where I had expected her. I had even stopped by the bank on the way to the grocery store to make sure that I had my supply of $4 bills. I walked in ready to embrace the cookie and there were none to be found. Crud! What do I do? Do I go on home and tell the lovely Miss Beverly that they were out of milk or that I forgot to go to the store to get milk; then “volunteer” to go back in a couple of hours?

I decided to be a grown up, get the milk, and hide the cereal when I got home so that I would have to come back in the afternoon. I paid for my milk and headed for the door when the l.e.d. cookie light caught my eye. Thank you Jesus, thank you, thank you Jesus! “I’ll take two boxes please.” After some good natured ribbing from a neighbor about how far I would have to ride to work those off, the Girl Scout and I had a wonderful conversation about her father’s practicing for the Boston Marathon, about bike riding and my goal of Ride Across INdiana in July; and how far her father and I were from reaching those goals with the winter we had had.

That’s right Girl Scout cookies now. Crocuses and snow drops pop up in a week or two. Tulips and daffodils are just around the corner. They will come. I just need to enjoy Thin Mints now.

Take care,

Roger

I think I'll sit this one out?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing pretty well and in a surprisingly upbeat mood in spite of the surprising six inch snow on Friday, followed by the light dusting one inch snow last night. I feel like we have been retrained; our sense of disaster has been reset. A six inch snow last December would have sent the weather persons to the cameras and the reporters to the street and the dairy aisle to cover the stories of human suffering. Mayor Ballard would rush to the camera, closing the city government; explaining how difficult it would be to clear the roads in these awful conditions. Friday came; six inches fell, and we turned our coat collars up and went about our lives. I hope that we have finally hit our emotional nadir and are ready to enjoy a glorious spring.

This week has seen the passing of a milestone for me. I try not to use the word milestone lightly. It struck me that there are few milestones that come around at the age of 51. Earlier in my life they whizzed by the window at amazing speed. I could drive at 16, vote at 18, and drink at 21; three in five years and then nothing for 30 years. You could point out that graduation, marriage, children, are milestones also. However, those are events that are not universal. Many people miss some or all of these and many other milestones in the pursuit of their full and rewarding lives. I am pointing to the American universal milestones. I believe that driving, voting, drinking and the colonoscopy at age 50 and death are the big five. Actually, it is the big one milestone and four God willing milestones.

As I approach the age that my father passed in a farming accident, I compare my experiences to my father’s experiences. Soon, I will be on my own; no memories of dad’s reactions to events for guidance. The colonoscopy is a milestone that falls into the same category. Dad was old enough to have received a colonoscopy. However, the world wasn’t old enough. Fiber optics was in its infancy when dad was fifty. Back then, they would have had to go up in there with a flashlight and a camcorder. While it is the large intestine, it wasn’t that large and the entrance is pretty small. Thinking about it there are now two common procedures that reveal two parts of the human anatomy that were uncharted territory 28 years ago; the pregnant woman’s womb and the fifty year old man’s colon.

The ultrasound came into vogue in the two years between our son’s and daughter’s birth. There was no medical need for filming Ben. Grace also had no need, but by that time anxious parents could pony up a couple of hundred bucks for a landscape portrait of the moon that the doctor and technician swore was a perfect little girl. Thankfully, ultrasound technology has improved through the years.  Last week, I saw a picture on Facebook that described their beautiful daughter and how her foot was prominent each of the pictures. The pictures were so pristine that I could actually see the Nike Swoosh.

Just as the ultrasound has revealed the mysteries of the womb, the sex of our children and fewer baby shower gift returns, fiber optics have given more 50 year old Americans diarrhea than bad fish at Chuck’s sushi buffet. Everyone told me that the procedure isn’t that bad. It’s the prep, which is stupid. The prep is part of the procedure. Just like grilling is part of the eating steak procedure, prepping for a colonoscopy is part of the colonoscopy procedure.

I don’t know about you but I have a really hard time breaking something just to see if it works. It is counterintuitive. I have a very fine functioning intestinal system. There is no need to mess it up to see if it is broken. It is not broken. I can eat beets, greens, hamburgers, all sorts of things and a few hours later everything comes out just like it should. It ain’t broke so don’t try to fix it.

Sure, I had a terrible habit when I was in elementary school of eating mimeograph fluid soaked paper. Surely that stuff was carcinogenic. It smelled carcinogenic. Don’t ask. I have no idea why. Some kids ate paste. I ate paper. Those were simpler times. Maybe I thought I was a goat. Who knows? I ate paper. I ate a lot of paper. Me and my buddies used to have races in the back of the room to see who could eat the times table fastest and then have to blame the dog the next day when we couldn’t turn in our homework. So theoretically, I get it. My 2^nd grade spelling test could have lodged someplace down there and festered over the years, leaching mimeo fluid into the lining of my large intestine leaving a polyp producing time bomb waiting to detonate. But why worry about the improbable?

I was able to postpone the inevitable last year at my annual check up. “Why are you here,” the doctor asked. “As I near fifty, I figured that I needed to get a baseline established,” was my answer. Thankfully, the doctor was running late and did not check the chart carefully. When I got home, the lovely Miss Beverly asked when my colonoscopy would be scheduled. She remembered that I was fifty last year. I shrugged and said that doctor didn’t say any thing about a colonoscopy. I am in pretty good health. “I suppose fifty is a guideline.”

This year rolled around. My annual check up was scheduled. I lied about my birthday on the check in form 6/22/64. Damned governmental intrusion, that date didn’t match up to my computer records and if I wanted the insurance to pay for the visit, I had to come clean; 6/22/62. I was a year late. The big procedure and its prep were scheduled 3 days later.

I will not go into the gruesome details. I dutifully drank both helpings of intestine grenade. It detonated perfectly. After the first one, I admit that I wondered why they couldn’t just put windshield wipers on the camera. We put men on the moon once upon a time. Miniature windshield wipers shouldn’t be that difficult. The other thing that caused me to chuckle was the following exchange. At one point, the admit nurse told me, “if we poke through the bowel, we will rush you to emergency surgery.”  A couple of minutes later, the nurse said, “You look worried.” I pointed out to her that she just told me that “if we poke through the bowel, we will rush you to emergency surgery.”

In the end, (pun intended) I have the colon of a twenty year old and I have the pictures to prove it. I am thinking of posting on Facebook. It may make my Facebook movie. A twenty year old colon is important. I need a twenty year old colon when I am 51 to reach the 150 year milestone. (My blog; On the Launching Pad; 6/24/2012).

So I that’s that; the first of 9 more is done. Actually, upon further reflection, I may skip that last one and see what happens.

Take care,

Roger.

So You're the One?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The light dusting of snow refreshed our winter tableau nicely this morning. I am thinking about teaching our dogs to eat beets. That splash of red would be a nice diversion from the everyday yellow and white snow. Even better! I may teach one to eat beats and leave the other one alone. That way I would have red and yellow on the pallet of my winter landscape. That is what I love about winter. After a time, you become so desperate for an escape from the frozen winter tundra, that finally after reaching depths of despair you look outside of yourself to make things better.

This is something that the folks from the northern climates know so well and why they are so good at the winter “sports.”

I do like watching the winter “sports” on the Olympics. First, I love the Olympics. It is a worldwide celebration of judgmentalism. You hurled your way down a mountain on an 8 inch wide board, managed to clear some hand rails left over from a previous civilization and made it all of the way down the mountain intact but you’re a loser because you didn’t get enough height or show enough flair on this or that jump.

Even the opening ceremony is all about judgment. Belize, please, get a real delegation. Canada had 320 winter “athletes” to which I respond, “yes, but its Canada.” My daughter takes exception to my air quotes of “sports” and “athletes.” I believe that any “sport” that basically relies on gravity and the reduction of friction is really just a physics experiment and not really a sport. Further more “athletes” who participate in such experiments are really just scientists who have no real need of athleticism. She points out that the cross country skiers have a resting heart rate of 24. “That’s proof of athleticism,” she says.  She claims that they will live forever being that fit. I pointed out to her that first, no one lives forever. Second, I challenged her to name me one 80 year old cross country skier. She couldn’t. I gave her a break. “Name one 70 year old cross country skier.” She couldn’t. “Okay,” I said “Name one 60 year old cross country skier.” She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t; because no cross country skiers live that long. They aren’t athletes. They’re bear snacks; skiers on a stick out in the woods.

Speaking of judgment and the opening ceremonies; did you see those sweaters that the Americans were wearing? They were like the ugly Christmas sweaters of the Olympic Games. Ten years from now hipsters and hipster wannabes will be having ugly patriotic sweater parties on the 4^th of July. They will be hanging out drinking wine in all of their bitter ironic ugly patriotic regalia being too cool to go to the fireworks display. I’m lovin it.

 

The Olympics are a great topic. However, I really wanted to write about Facebook. It is celebrating its tenth birthday. What a ten years it has been. It is hard to believe that I have been friending, sharing and commenting for 20% of my life. It is even harder to believe that I have 20% of my social life squirreled away on Facebook’s servers just waiting on the Nebulous Society of Anonymity to take a peak at and determine how dangerous I may or may not be. Pick your friends wisely as momma used to say.

As this birthday party has approached, I have noticed two trends. First is the recent spate of “what character are you?” quizzes; or as I like to tauntingly call them Myers Briggs for dummies. Forget about how the different pillars of personality may play and interact with one another, the public wants to know what fictional character they are like. I never knew that I was surrounded by stars. I’m Hermione. I’m Harry. I’m Bilbo. I’m Gandolf. None of my friends are an orc extra on the screen for a second in the big battle scene. No one is the 12 year old young witch in Hogwarts walking behind Harry into the great hall. No, every one I know is a star; just the cool well adjusted stars though. No one has claimed to be Voldemort with his homicidal eccentricities, no sniveling Peter Petegrew cowering in the corner doing the evil lord’s bidding.

Why is that? Why are none of my friends even a little bit sociopathic? Why isn’t at least one a psychopath? It stands to reason that someone’s test results would say that they are  off of their rocker, but they haven’t. Everyone is well adjusted and a star. They also must have surprising levels of humility. With that many stars in one grouping, petty jealousies could easily tear friendships apart. However, it appears that everyone plays their part well and all is hugs and kisses out on the set.

The second trend that has caught my eye this past week is the movies that Facebook can make of your profile. They go in; take a look at your pictures; see how many are liked and get comments. Tallying all of the votes cast by your friends and their acquaintances, the most popular are harvested and placed into a “movie” with music. I write “movie” because it is more technically a slideshow. However, everyone knows that slide shows are the most boring form of artistic expression known to man. No, it does not matter. Even with musical accompaniment, a slide show screams boring.

Friday afternoon, I saw the first one pop up. By Friday evening, there was a blizzard of movies hitting my news feed. It was so popular that by Saturday afternoon a booger picker had made a parody of the Facebook movie; showing us his technique and love of booger picking. I hope that he posts his Harry Potter character soon. The psychopaths may have a winner.

I am not much of a joiner of Facebook fads. I have never watched a cat video. I don’t care if it “really is the cutest one you’ve ever seen.” I don’t watch the touching posts no matter if “this one will make you cry.” I only use Facebook to see how many of you are tired of winter already, have grandkids that you are proud of, and track assassin deer sightings. Other than that I am out of it. I do like the Facebook movies though. The lovely Miss Beverly drew me in with family pictures, Ghana pictures, Ben pictures, and wedding pictures. The picture of the raspberries on the kitchen counter may be my favorite. For me, it is the winter of 2014 antidote. I look at it and feel 50 degrees warmer.

I was so excited looking at Bev’s movie that I immediately went to my page to create my movie. I hit the button. The “we’re working on it” icon started to spin. A minute later I received the following “Thank you, Roger. Mark and the Facebook Team.” It appears that Mark and the team couldn’t make a movie from my five pictures. I hit the button again; knowing there must have been some malfunction. No malfunction; it appears that Mark and the Facebook Team had found that orc on

screen for just a second in the big battle scene.

Take care,

Roger.

All the Cars I loved Before?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. It was enjoyable to turn the keyboard over to the lovely Miss Beverly for the blog entry yesterday. She is such a good writer.

It is a great day for Ground Hogs day; the Super Bowl, a Sunday, blog writing day, and the tender affections of the lovely Miss Beverly. I don’t know if the metaphysics can be worked out again but sign me up for the Bill Murray role. I can even handle another 3 inches of snow. Speaking of which, I hope the ground hog got frostbite this morning. They are just big field rats; big field rats that eat soybeans from farm fields and dig out the foundation of your barns.

The cold continues to suck mice into our house. As the old clique mentions, we have decided to make this lemon tree provide fresh squeezed lemonade. We have hit on a surprisingly popular buffet concept. We call it Snappy’s Peanut Butter Buffet. We are committed to serving the mouse

community all of the organic peanut butter they can eat. We have been doing steady business. It appears that we need to get a healthier clientele. So far, all eight patrons have eaten themselves to death. It is sad. However, it hasn’t slowed business yet.

I appreciate the kind words about last week’s story. It is still an exciting story to tell. I was amazed when I found that all of the verbs were in the present tense. It was like my fingers were translating mental images in 2014 and not in 1979. I found myself having to edit the present back into the past. It was a unique writing experience.

Last week’s blog was intended to be a recounting of all the cars in my life. You could say that it was sidetracked by the freight train of that singular story. The only problem is that it leaves the stories of all of the other cars left untold. They were fine cars and fine stories. Like Doug Pitt, Brad’s older brother, he as a perfectly captivating story to tell but let’s face it he’s Doug and not Brad.

At the time of standing by the railroad crossing contemplating the what might have beens, I was within a year of being granted the privilege of driving. Living on the farm vehicles to drive from here to there were plentiful. These had a social hierarchy that revolved around the age of the vehicle and the general state of repair. Being the newest driver, my lot fell to an Opal Kadet. It was a sub-compact red wagon. It’s overall mechanical fitness was best exemplified by the fact that you could rock the transmission back and forth in it’s mount with the handle. This amount of play was also transmitted to the handle based on the amount of torque the little 4 cylinder engine produced. The moving gearshift handle made for an interesting shift when you would reach over and it may or may not be where you left it.

That was a fun car that taught me everything that I needed to know about defensive driving. You see the brakes did not work very well. The emergency brake was well named in that car. You never knew if when you pushed on the brakes if they would have any stopping power. You may well be coming up to a stop sign and push the pedal all of the way to the floor and not slow down. In fact because of the panic reflex, you could likely also depress the accelerator and speed up. So a careful driver would soon learn to have your hand hovering over the emergency brake ready to pull on it like a parachute ripcord as you came up to a changing light.

Luckily, I drove that Kadet for two years without incident. I was able to put myself in a 1976 Camero. It was the color of green M&M’s. This was quite unfortunate because green M&M’s were reported to make you horny. This is also the car in which I used to court the lovely Miss Beverly. Sister’s being what they are, the car being the color that it was, me being in the state that I was in (no not Indiana), that Camero was dubbed the “Horny Mobile.” I know how Oscar felt when people hurtfully named his car the “Weiner Mobile.” I can feel his pain. Well because of or in spite of the name, it worked out and Bev and I drove off into the sunset towards Lafayette on the evening of June 8^th with the just married sign taped to the back window.

The horny mobile got me through college. Yes, you guessed it. It was the too small car featured in “A Pressing Memory”, written last November. The horny mobile ran great on into my first paying job. The lovely Miss Beverly had spent a summer working the night shift at Frito Lay (no relation to the horny mobile.) She had worked a lot of overtime so we had a nest egg built. In the fall, Bev lost the car keys.

I don’t know if it is nature or nurture, but the lovely Miss Beverly under appreciated car keys in the early days of our marriage. Growing up on a farm, it was easy to do. One did not carry keys with them. No one was around to steal the car; just leave the keys in it. That way you never had to remember where you left them. The keys were rarely locked in the car because we never locked our cars on the farm. Well Dorothy, we weren’t in Kansas any more and you couldn’t leave the keys in the car. They would be taken out of the car, set down, and forgotten. Thankfully, there was a positive way to reinforce the care of car keys. We established key appreciation day early in our marriage. Every other Thursday, the lovely Miss Beverly and I would appreciate the keys. We would make it a point to know where they were at all times during that day. The habits learned during key appreciation day were soon carried over to everyday and we would go months without the keys being lost.

However, on one October night, distracted by a huge genetics test, Bev lost the keys while on campus. She came home to tell me, and I went out and bought a brand spanking new Subaru Hatchback. It seems a bit impulsive. The horny mobile was old. We had the money, or knew of a bank that had the money, and had yet to experience the joy of being upside down on a car loan. That blue car took me back to my manual transmission days with the Kadet. Fortunately, the brakes worked perfectly. In fact, it was the perfect car until our backs gave out with putting Ben into the car seat with a two door car. That lead to the dessert years of minivans; the brown, the blue, the blue, the red minivans of our child raising years; years and minivans that brought the lovely Miss Beverly and I to our great farming adventure. Minivans not only hauled soccer teams and skateboard crews, they also doubled as Farmer’s Market vehicles. Pull out the back seats, lay down a tarp; and Old MacDonald was off to Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning.

Those dog days of automobile ownership are past. Bev and I have gravitated to the machines that we like best. She has another Subaru. I am fond of used Lexus’. Two weeks ago, I was cleaning the $6.67 out of the console of my 2000 Lexus with 272,000 miles on it, getting ready to put 200,000 miles on a younger sibling, thinking about all of the other cars that I had driven, thankful for getting from point A to point B.

Take care,

Roger

4675 steps to what?

Hello Blog readers. I, like my beloved Roger, hope this blog finds you doing well. I’m here to alert you local readers about a class Roger will be leading starting this Wednesday. It is called 4,687 steps to following Jesus (in community). As I scan my social media feeds, and some of the book titles on our shelf, it reminds me of how we came up with the title. “Seven Things that your Brain is Doing Wrong” (or was it eight?—stupid brain!) followed with “The 12 things Dieticians never Eat” (subtitle, “don’t read this right after a weekend breakfast”), and The 10 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I saw this last one on one of my high school student’s bookshelf on her audio reader app on her phone. She is pretty effective at being a Teen. Must be good stuff.

So what is it with humans and numbers? Curious. Roger and I were pondering this one day a few years back while walking the country mile around our farm on a warm day (sigh.)  We were planning/dreaming a book about marriage, which seemed to always feel like a possibility on that 3^rd mile of our walk after we had trudged through mile one (“I could be doing so many other things!) then striding through mile two (this is so good for us. We should do this more often.) During mile three, somewhere around when we finally agree on the right speed, we have the sauntering thought, “this is the beloved Roger/lovely Miss Beverly that I really liked way back then.  We calculated how many steps we had taken to that point, and there was your title.

Since we haven’t written the book yet, (so far we have, Chapter One: take walks together) we borrowed the title for the class we did together in the fall. It was 4,687 steps to following Jesus (individually). If you want to know what it was about, it can basically be boiled down to what our campus minister, Roger Callahan told us when we were 25.

Keep showing up.  This class for February and March will be about showing up in community; finding a way to stick with people who may or may not be reading the same books or eating the same highly effective foods as you. He will be using things that Jesus had to say, and also Life Together, a book Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about a Christian community that formed in Germany during the Nazi period.  

If you’re interested in figuring out what “showing up together” might look like, and don’t mind if its going to take more than 12 steps, come join us on Wednesday nights at Pendleton Christian Church, starting Feb. 5, 6:30-7:30.

Beverly