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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Shred of Integrity (#501)

By now I've decided that the recurrence of the word "integrity" everywhere I go this week is not just a coincidence. And that maybe--OK, more than maybe--Somebody's trying to tell me something.

Pastor Tom Blasco at Great Plains Community Church spoke of it on Sunday, and I nodded and "amened" my way through the sermon with ease. He only addressed integrity as it affects my relationships with others: Do I tell the truth? Do I do what I say I will do? Do I agree with God when my actions and attitudes don't line up with His commandments? That kind of thing.

Don't get me wrong: It was a great sermon. It's just that sometimes, when I say "great," I mean that this particular sermon didn't require a specific response from me. Great means "off the hook for another week."

But as it turns out, God was using Pastor Tom just to lay the groundwork. Ouch.

Twice today, once in a book I perused at Barnes and Noble, and the second time during a chance viewing of Oprah, the same message hit home.

Integrity is broken with serious results when we break our promises to ourselves. When we commit to a course of action and then renege. When we raise our hand at church to indicate our intention to pray for a missionary, and then never think of him again. When we admit we're addicted to a time-waster or a health-ruiner, and promise to turn, but don't.

I would never think of breaking a commitment to someone else, but I rarely succeed in accomplishing the important goals I set for myself. Each time I fail, I trust myself a little less. I am a little less whole, have a little less integrity.

For now, I think I'll make fewer promises to myself, and concentrate harder on fulfilling them. Maybe there's still time to turn this thing around.

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Winding Down (#502)

I've been thinking about the processes I go through in winding down a year, beyond the making of resolutions, which I don't do. My processes serve somewhat as resolutions might, I guess, since they set me up for a fresh start in a number of areas of my life.

I make sure all the clothing and household items I've collected to be donated are actually given away this week. I transfer all the dates for 2003 that I've been saving to put on a new calendar, which Kevin gave me for my birthday yesterday. I delete tons of useless "favorites" and otherwise attempt to reorganize my computer files. (I am not good at this.)

I make sure the finances are in great order, both the personal and the business, and that any tax issues that must be addressed before year's end, are. I catch up with paper filing. I clean out the refrigerator. I break out a fresh journal and a new Bible-reading schedule. I clean all my jewelry.

And then, right before we go out to ring the new in, I take a luxurious nap.

What do you do to close out the year? Are you a resolution maker, or not? If you are, are you a resolution keeper? How does that work? I'd love to hear from you.

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Post Modernity (#503)

My earlier blog on "Relevant Church Names" has not resulted in a formal church name generator, but I'm OK with that. It has, however, resulted in tons of discussion off-site, including at my young friend Hanna's college graduation party the other night.

Her friend, Paul, a philosophy major, opined over hors d'eovres that if he were naming, he'd choose "Pilate's Sink." I like it a lot, but got to wondering later if maybe Paul's hands were sticky when it occurred to him.

Scott says he found a church called "Levi's Table," and, scriptural literates though we are, we just don't get it. Doesn't it sound kind of like the type of operation Jesus might have overturned in the temple in a righteous fit of anger?

I had a sore toe last week, which put me in the mind of "Magdalene's Ointment," but is that a good way to pick a church name?

Doug made himself Cream of Wheat this morning, and I couldn't help but think about how tragic it would be if he traded his birthright for a mess of it, and thus emerged "Esau's Pottage."

Getting ready for a McKenna Christmas Feast at our house has got me cooking up names with a culinary twist. Off the top of my head, the best I've come up with so far is "Herod's Platter."

Just be thankful I'm not in the ministry.

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The B’s Don’t Have It (#504)

Just a programming note: Blogger's not working on my computer, and neither is my comments feature. Both are fine on Doug's computer, though, so I can blog and check comments from here if I can pry him loose. I am also completely and mysteriously unable to go to Bethany's site, and Bridget's. I am sad.

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Name Calling (#505)

My daughter Carrie has a job at the hospital in the town where she goes to college. Her job is as a "sitter" for patients who can't be left alone.

After her first day, she told us she'd been assigned to care for "mutes and loonies." She said it with a lot of love.

Today, I asked if she'd met anyone interesting lately in the men department. She said sure, there were guys hitting on her, all right, but they were all "pigs and perverts." She didn't say it with a lot of love.

Mutes and loonies, pigs and perverts. What a life.

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Affluent, Too? (#506)

The dear girl mentioned below has contacted me again to clarify that while she battles a frightful cold, she isn't coughing much.

After checking my Webster's, though, I stand by my earlier description of her. Dry cough or productive cough, it matters not. She is effluent.

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Social Security (#507)

A kind friend of mine requested that I send her scenes from my novel-in-progress, by email, and so, trepidating, I did. (My husband is the only one who's read any of it, and I was happy enough with that.)

Her response was just like her, generous and effluent.

"Fantastic dialogue, makes me want to know these characters better. A real page-turner, except you have to scroll down..." (A little cyber-humor.)

I guess if I were more secure, I wouldn't immediately have thought, "What if she really means it's a real scroll-downer?"

I know. There are medicines that can help with conditions like mine. But first, I'm gonna' email her once more, just to be sure...

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Mouths of Babes (#508)

Wow...two entire years have passed since my first blog entry on fallible! Thanks, Scotty, for getting me started...

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Gold Mining (#509)

Solidifying and verifying an older person's lifetime memories is a process filled with laughter and tears, but essential if the future generations of the family hope to preserve precious history.

My brother had my grandfather's home movies made into a DVD, and we viewed it with my mother today. The show started with my mother about age eight, and ended with my little sister Mary as a toddler. It included a lot of footage of my brother Patrick, who died when I was almost two. None of us had seen these movies, ever.

John warned my mother about the scenes of Patrick, and told her to be honest if she didn't want to watch them. She did remarkably well reliving that part of her life, seeing him in his cowboy outfit, which weighed him down as he endeavored to climb into his Kidillac Pedal Car, and herself in short shorts and midriff top. She smiled with watery eyes at the scenes of him passed from adoring grandmother, to grandfather, to daddy and back into her arms again.

His time was short, but sweet, both then and again today.

Mom narrated throughout the silent movie, filling us in on her aunts and uncles and grandparents and childhood friends. She saw her buddy Mary Sue and said, "And to think she's still my friend."

And then we came to a moving picture of a large woman, whose presence filled the screen, and my brother said, "Mom, who is that?"

"She's our neighbor when we lived on 70th Terrace, around 1938," she said. "Her boobs were huge and stuck straight out."

"Well," my brother said, philosophically, "I bet they don't now."

You come together hoping to hold onto the distant past, and find pure gold in the present moment.

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Fountain (Pen) of Youth (#510)

I purchased another fountain pen yesterday, the second one in a month. I've entertained a lifelong intrigue with fluidity, the graceful, effortless motion of hand and heart, the very essence of penmanship produced with a fountain pen.

If you learned to write in cursive with such an instrument, the redeeming virtues of all other pens are lost on you. You handle a fountain pen with a sense of purpose, having had the importance of your undertaking impressed upon you by the likes of Sr. Sheila Ann, Sr. Rose Ellen, and Sr. Kathleen Patrick, in that order. (By the time you reached 8th grade and Sr. Agatha Francis, ballpoint pens were infiltrating even the Catholic schools, and the beautiful penmanship movement was crumbling from within.)

It was the Palmer Method the Sisters of St. Joseph taught us, and I might have found it unacceptable that they all wrote identically, if they hadn't all written perfectly. Indeed, a girl who conquered the techniques of the Palmer Method as well as I did was often found to have a vocation to the sisterhood in the bargain. The two went pen in hand.

I've been a calligrapher since Scotty was a baby, when I took formal lessons and mastered the basics. It proved a wonderful creative venture for me, even helping to supplement our income, until five-year-old Scott spilled an entire bottle of indelible black India ink on the dining room carpet, and the spell was broken.

It is calling me again.

I am now pursuing the art of Spencerian Penmanship, much like the Palmer Method of my childhood, but with the extravagant flourishes I've come to crave.

Sure, I still buy 10 Bics for a buck like everyone else. But it's getting harder and harder to sign my name with such an imposter, without remembering the life's work of the good sisters, and repenting.

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Barista Blogger (#511)

I have a young friend whose blog I read. She is a woman of few (just so you know I'm not speaking of myself!) but meaningful words. She is frustrated when the words won't come at a pace to satisfy her voracious readers.

I hope her readers are willing to wait, though, willing to give her the time she needs to formulate her thoughts into a sequence of words which will be something she really wants to give. If she does less than that, they will be unhappy, and will likely lose their eager anticipation of her next offering.

It all reminds me of my addiction to Starbuck's. I want it daily, every day, once per day, without fail, sometimes so badly that when I arrive there, breathless, I add to my instructions, "Hurry! I just can't wait any longer!"

But if I indicate my desperation, the barista might inadvertantly short-venti me in her desire to please quickly, and then where would I be?

Adding cold milk on top of hot froth, that's where.

And so, instead, I sweet-talk her, encourage her to relax and take her time, hoping she's not worried about the line of customers accumulating behind me, wanting theirs.

I might wait a bit longer, but I'm rarely disappointed.

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Sounds Suspicious (#512)

There's a radio show here that's been on the air for what seems like forever, called "Kansas City's Moneyline." It's a call-in show, and the host, an amiable accountant named Peter Newman, uses the tagline, "We're here to take all your money questions."

Last Saturday, Peter was on vacation, and several men were filling in for him, trying to give the show the same personality it would have if the host was there.

After the top of the hour news, the fill-in guy came back to the microphone and said, "Welcome to Kansas City's Moneyline. We're here to take all your money."

So that's what happened.

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Gone Fishin’ (#513)

Doug and I are in the "Just Give Us All Of It" tax bracket. And since we started (n)genius media, inc. five years ago, the forms we must submit on an almost daily basis are overwhelming.

Last January, our corporation mistakenly payed a huge chunk of change to the feds, on the advice of our accountant, who did not realize we'd been making monthly payments all along. We're still trying to get our refund.

In the meantime, though, we screwed up our quarterly employer's report (put a piece of info on the wrong line, or something) and now they claim we owe them a tremendous penalty for filing incorrectly.

And we owe them immediately, if we wish to avoid further interest and penalties.

Some days, I want to walk with Jesus for the right reasons. I want to get to know Him better, to draw close to him, serve Him, and love Him.

Other days, I'd just like to be sidled up next to Him when He catches the fish with the coins in its mouth, and He pays off the disciples' back taxes with the proceeds.

Some days are better than others.

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(No Title) (#605)

The trend for new churches these days seems to be quite possessive, at least as far as their names go. Here in Kansas City, we are home to Jacob's Well, Solomon's Porch, and Beggar's Table. Is it just me, or is it becoming difficult not to picture houses of worship called Dog's Crumbs, Abraham's Bosom, and Baptist's Locusts? Hey, I know: Shulamite's Pomegranites. If you have better ideas--or weirder--submit them here. You will be providing a needed service to Church Namers everywhere. Better yet, maybe one of you enterprising programmer types (Sco?) could create a Church Name Generator. The idea is all yours for the cost of a nice link to fallible.

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(No Title) (#606)

My daughter Carrie has been home for Thanksgiving break for all of an hour. After raiding the pantry and fridge (just to see some real food, she says) and shooting the bull with her dad and me, she retires to the piano. I can tell she misses it when she's gone. She plays and sings her way through her repertoire of ballads, sounding so beautiful I'm crying in the next room. There's one I'm yearning to hear called "I Need You At the Dimming of the Day," but I can't think of the name of it, or the tune. "Carrie," I call to her, "play that one I like..." "Which one?" "You know--the one..." "Oh, that one?" "Yeah, the one that chick sings--" "Oh, you mean--" "That's it." So she starts playing again, and singing--"just for you, Mom"--and I marvel at the gift God's given me, my grown-up little girl, only one thin wall away. I join her then, and the thanksgiving season begins.

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