Little Help?

I really don't know how to jump into this so I guess I just will. I try not to bother people with my problems, but sometimes even I need a little help.  I made a decision which has potentially good or negative ramifications I now I'm committed to a course of action. I have been asked to post about it since word has spread, so here goes:

Father's Day is coming this Sunday and I have decided to go to church services where my prodigal daughter is the copastor. I told her about this last Saturday but she hasn't responded so I don't know if she's aware that I'm coming or not. My religious beliefs are complicated but I do have some that I share with her. One is that "whenever two or more if you were gathered there I am".  So we will see if her anger will melt when we are face-to-face in His presence.

What I'm asking is something I dislike to ask for,  some assistance.  I vent and whine and grumble from time time about my broken health, but that's just fussing and fuming. I did ask for prayers for my son-in-law when we discovered he had cancer. By the way, he has  finished radiation therapy and been tested to see how effective the results were. We'll know more tomorrow.

So once again I ask you all for prayers if you believe in prayer and good thoughts if you don't. Not for me. But for my daughter. Pray that your heart will let go of her anger and resentments of her stepfamily and will open up the love I have for her and my grandchildren.

And while I'm at it, I just learned today that my grandson is going on his first deployment. To Afghanistan.  

It seems a strange to me the two of my grandsons have chosen to enter professions which put them in harm's way as a matter of course for their jobs.  So please don't hesitate to include them in your prayers and good wishes.

Good thoughts only please!  There's already too much hurt and suffering involved.

Sir? Or is it Madam?

Facebook stuff

Asked by my grandson: Is there anyone out there who doesn't like being called Sir or ma'am? Why?  

Answer:  I'm too much of a grandpa for formality.  Either you're young enough to see gramps or you're in my age bracket. Either way I regard sir as a barrier.

The Five and Dime

Some of you remember them, the five and dimes. They were not simply the economic equivalent of the dollar stores. Today you walk in, get a cart and pace down aisles which aren't that different from the aisles in any other store.

The five and dime. It was different.

It tended to be a little dark inside. Certainly darker than a modern store. And where there were patches of light they were exactly that, patches. There were spots of bright and shade in various places. It was almost like walking through a forest. Not that it was actually dark anywhere. There was plenty of light wherever you were standing. It's just that it wasn't all equally illuminated, some places were not quite as bright as others and it all seemed very much alive.

There were bins. There were wooden shelves. Some were waist high. Some taller. All were different. Einstein would've said five and dimes were very woody, not marble at all.

But maybe best of all, the packaging was minimal. Nothing in bubble wrap. Nothing in plastic. Little bags, cloth bags, net bags, you name it bags. Little cardboard boxes. Little wooden boxes. But no damned blister packs. Some things were just sitting there, you scooped up a handful of whatever, walked up to the counter and they were toted up, one by one.

Oh, I know, a lot of this is pure nostalgia . Being a child is so different from being an adult. But I assure you, the world has changed. In some ways, I won't deny, for the better. In some ways, however, it has changed for the worst. I go to dollar stores, they're a great place to get Friday prizes for my grandkids. But I have to admit, I wish I could take the kids out to a real five and dime, with shelves of tired old wood that they could see into if they stood on tiptoe. There was a certain magic such stores had about them. The magic that just doesn't exist in a modern store of any kind.

The moderns are all carved out of Einstein marble or injected out of plastic into certain forms and molds. They all look the same no matter what they sell. The organic, individual character is gone. Oh well, just put it down to me being old.

Notes: Friday prizes grew out of the celebration of the weekend between my son and me. They started out as Friday surprises. But when you're dealing with a small one, expressions tend to evolve rather rapidly into new words and phrases. I kept on hand a collection of this and that. Every Friday when we got home from school, it was time for something. He got to choose. Meat sticks were popular, but so was a stop at the ballon store. Eventually, Cory, my grandson joined in on the Friday tradition, and now it has moved on to James' and Cory's kids.

A word about Einstein: He loved a world, no, the universe, made of marble, not of wood. In his mind, marble was a planned and beautiful city built of stone mathematically measured and carved. And by wood he meant a forest, tangled, organic, messy. As models of reality, he liked the marble. He didn't like the wood.

Which is why he hated the random messiness of quantum physics, even though quantum mechanics was a direct consequence of his own work. I wonder if he had lived long enough to have known of the strange structure of fractals, which give a mathematical clarity even to forests, might he have found woodiness to be at least a bit more tolerable?

Post from the past

Technically, I have failed to post every day for Lent. My Tuesday post was a few minutes into Wednesday, so here's another. It is a Facebook post from December:

For a variety of reasons, no need to list them all , I feel better spiritually, emotionally, and physically tonight than I have felt in months. God willing, it will last. But in any event, tonight I am at peace. Tonight I am, in spite of having had a rather difficult couple of days, I find myself in surprisingly good shape tonight. I got a few things done today, and in fact I had just hung the third string of Christmas lights when James called. I need to go back to moment and point out that while I did put up Christmas lights for the first time in years the day after Thanksgiving, I only put up two because the third set was not working properly, since only the blue and red lights would come on, leaving the green ones dark. Since I couldn't find any new sets yesterday, I decided to go ahead and hang it up. And surprise, surprise, shortly after I plugged it in, the green lights came on. That made me quite happy. 

Then James called. He had Alex reading to me. Since Alex is recently in first grade, this is pleasant in and of itself. But the piece de resistance in this case was what he was reading was a little critter book I given in James on Christmas many long years ago. The dedication indicated to James that this was another little critter book which I knew someday he would give to his little critters when he was a father; and, sure enough, here it was happening. It's hard to top that! 

In spite of all the problems, I think it's going to be a good Christmas this year. I had a great start to Thanksgiving! I had breakfast at Denny's with James and his Orangemen.  And the score is as follows: I began with two orders of bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs, and hash browns. Jeremiah got half the bacon, Lexi and Alex got two of the other pieces, and I got one. Jeremiah got about one third of the eggs, with Alex and Lexi taking a pretty good chunk out of the rest. But I did get take some of them home. Since the kids have their own pancakes, I got to eat all of those. Lexi, Alex and I pretty much evenly divided the hash browns, since Jeremiah didn't like them. And Charlotte had to content herself with her own meal, since she was at the other end of the table. As any grandparents and tell you, that was a very good meal indeed! 

An addendum to Christmas Joy -- I forgot to mention that, while shopping at Target with Onna and Austin [oldest daughter and great grandson], I was looking for Christmas socks for my gift to Katie and Drew [the youngest of my Lost Lambs]. As we headed to checkout without having found any socks, Onna suggested we check the dollar bins. And there they were. Austin wanted a pair of socks with Santa on them, but I’d already bought several little things for him and Onna said no --Grandma holds the reins on Austin. But as I waited in the check out line I thought, why not? and hurried back over and grabbed a pair. It was only a buck, and Austin kind of liked them.

When we got home, I gave him the socks and he was ecstatic! When he went to bed , he refused to take them off--Austin always takes off his socks, even for a nap, but not his Santa socks. Such joy from such a tiny thing. Kids are wonderful. Grandkids are wonderful.