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Fluppy Love (#260)

My post on stuff we sleep with generated some great responses, making me think about the whole "adults in bed with stuffed animals" phenomenon.

I slept with dolls when I was a kid, but I was never attracted to stuffed animals in any profound way. I don't even remember purchasing more than a few for my own kids over the years (although they received nigh unto a gazillion from friends and relatives).

But something snapped in me on September 11. Of course, for the first week or so, I--like so many Americans--couldn't imagine plunking down a buck for frivilous non-essentials ever again.

That's why I still can't explain the feeling of passing an aisle in Osco Drug Store and having the display of floppy dogs bark my name. You know the ones: So lightly stuffed that they "flop." (Scotty had one when he was little that he called "Fluppy Dog." Fluppy sounds even floppier than Floppy, don't you think? Words like "Fluppy" were early indicators that Scott would become a linguist, but I digress...)

I marched straight to the fluppies, and purchased one for each of my kids (by then, nearly grown) and one for me and Doug to share. I don't know what the kids thought when I presented them with their doggies the next time we saw them. I remember hugging them tightly and making a little speech about 9/11 and comfort fluppies. "OK, Mom," they said, and they looked at me awfully funny, but I couldn't help myself.

As for me and my husband, we slept with our fluppy for months. Now that I think back, Doug didn't protest even once.

Now, Fluppy Dog is draped over my desk chair, hanging by his two front legs, looking like he wishes we needed him more than we seem to. And who knows? Maybe we do.

Do you have, or have you ever had, an irrational attachment to a stuffed animal? Discuss.

Posted by Katy on 11/09/04
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Sooner or Later, We All Sleep Alone… (#261)

Presuming you find yourself alone in bed at least on rare occasions, do you pile non-sleep-related stuff into the bed with you?

In my post on books-to-be-read (see below), Michael Main says that while his dear wife Amy recovers from surgery on the couch, the bed is filled with books. He even claims on his blog to have slept, in Amy's absence, with some guy named Chuck, but we won't go there.

If Doug's out of town, an assortment of Dougie substitutes ends up on his side, although they bear no resemblance in either form or function to the fellow they replace. On any given night, I might gather unto myself several remotes, my iBook, a flashlight just in case, the printout of his flight and hotel information, a Country Living magazine, the baby afghan I'm crocheting, a Bible, a teddy bear, and a huge container of Tums.

Even at that, I think I'm less kooky than my dear friend JoAnn. We were roommates in our youth, and she spent every night with a giant pile of unpaid, overdue bills. I can't imagine she got a lot of rest.

I don't want to know who's in your bed, OK? But if you want to share what's in your bed, that would be fun.

Posted by Katy on 11/08/04
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Still Dreaming (#262)

It's just a matter of time before one of my kids ends up making me a grandma. (If you happen to be one of my kids, and you're reading this, please understand that I can wait. Really. Patience is a virtue and all that...)

I dreamed of my own wonderful grandparents the other night. My grandma Baga died when I was nineteen, and my grandpa Papoo when I was twenty-two, but they're as alive and lively as ever in my imagination--whether I'm sleeping or wide awake.

Baga taught me everything I know about domestic divahood. When I was about five, she pencilled large x's on a linen tea towel, so that I could embroider a turkey-red butterfly on it as a gift for my mom. When we cleared out my mom's house a couple summers ago, there was the towel in the kitchen drawer, ironed creases still fresh from when it had been folded forty years earlier.

Baga taught me to make a fine and flaky pie crust, how to thread her old Singer, and how to feed the bed sheets through the wringer on the washing machine. She instructed me on the fine art of mixing liquid starch in the kitchen sink, and then dipping Papoo's dress shirts in the stiffening concoction until they were just the right consistency for ironing. I still feel guilty when I use spray starch.

By the time I was six, I was knitting scarves and simple hats that tied under the chin and soon graduated to yarn houseslippers with pom-poms on top and even mittens. None of those early masterpieces survived, because they were happily used up by me and my sisters.

Papoo was a fabulous gardener, and I loved following him around while he harvested what Baga and I needed to cook dinner. Before he came into the house with the pail of corn on the cob, carrots, green peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, and raspberries, he washed the dirt from everything with the hose by the back porch. It wouldn't do to drag dirt into Baga's clean house, that's for sure.

From Papoo, I learned about running a business and the magic of compound interest and how to build a house without taking out a mortgage. I learned how to ride with my little sisters sitting on the open tailgate of a Rambler wagon in the back forty, and have only one of us at a time fall out. I learned how to bait a fish hook and how to tell a fish story.

If you could have the best grandparents in the whole wide world, what would they be like?

These days, is a grandma a facelifted, tummy tucked woman who lives six months out of every year in Europe, but sends personal emails to all her grandkids while she's away?

Is a grandpa a man who golfs with the guys down at the club every weekend, no kids allowed?

I want to be a wonderful grandma, when the time comes. What does that even look like these days? What should it look like?

Posted by Katy on 11/08/04
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So Many Books, So Little Time… (#263)

I weeded through my bookcase (and by that I mean, the one by my side of the bed, as opposed to Doug's bookcase or the many other shared bookcases throughout the house) yesterday.

I sent a number of politcal books upstairs to their next-to-final resting place. Once they go up, the next stop is the Friends of the Library donation bin. Then again, I might reconsider and hold on to them for posterity.

Heck, I've got a humor book called "The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew" that I wouldn't part with for the world. ("Bushisms" are funny, but Spiro T. Agnew is a classic.) It's sits right next to a mass market paperback (I think it sold for 79 cents) called "The True Story of the Beatles." We're talking antiques here, people!

I organized what was left on my personal bookcase so that I've got a whole half-shelf devoted to my "to be reads." Every time I glance at that shelf, I smile.

"A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" is a novel I meant to read in the '70s and you know what? I'm going to get to it before I'm in my 70s! In addition, I'm anticipating the joys of "Empire Falls," by Richard Russo, "Peace Like a River," by Leif Enger, and Anne Tyler's "The Amateur Marriage."

Then there are the novels by friends: Nancy Moser's "Second Time Around," BJ Hoff's Emerald Ballad Series, Lisa Samson's "Songbird" and "Tiger Lillie," and even "Godiva," the first novel of our pastor from the good, old Jesus freak days, David Rose.

Do you have a collection just dying to be read? What's on your bookcase?

Posted by Katy on 11/06/04
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A Whole Bunch of SUVs, or What? (#264)

In years past, after the idea of the "moral majority" had fallen by the wayside, the term "family values" became huge in certain constituencies. I never heard those words spoken even once, though, during this election season.

But this morning, as media people interviewed commentators about the possible reason for John Kerry's defeat, the term "moral values" was repeated on any number of networks.

Evidently, the suspicion is that it wasn't the economy, stupid, and it wasn't the war, stupid, either. Word among the pundits is that the Kerry campaign may have inadvertently looked down their noses at those whose "moral values" ultimately drove them to vote for President Bush.

As I flipped through the channels, I must have heard the word "moral" twenty or thirty times in as many minutes, and it struck me as bizarre, since it's not a word that's bandied about in polite society much anymore.

It must have sunk in with the populace at large, though, or at least with the people responsible for writing closed captions for Fox News.

Linda Vester reported that John Kerry and his entourage were filing into their SUVs on the way from his Beacon Hill home to make his concession speech.

As the cars pulled away and Vester referred to the "motorcade," the closed caption read, "They'll morality-cade over..."

Americans are an impressionable bunch, aren't we?

Posted by Katy on 11/03/04
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Vote Early, Vote Often? (#265)

Terry McAullife, chairman of the DNC, had this to say on the news this morning:

"I'm telling people make sure you go out and vote all over the country."

No wonder people are confused!

Posted by Katy on 11/02/04
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How the Frighty Have Fallen! (#266)

Back in the day (and I'm talkin' THE day, which means, obviously, the sixties), we took Halloween very seriously.

Of course, I grew up Catholic and back then at least, Catholic kids were taught that All Hallow's Eve--the eve of All Saints Day, which is today--was a night for driving out evil spirits before the Holy Day. With that religious instruction firmly established, who wouldn't want to dress up as scary as unhumanly possible?

It was all for the saints, in my day.

No wonder I felt guilty the night I donned my Brenda Starr costume. In essence, I was betraying my spiritual tradition. I wore a shirtdress cinched tight at the waist with a crinoline petticoat underneath, lending the illusion of womanly hips. I layered on the bracelets and pearls and earrings and even hose and heels--those cute little 1" French heels were the style.

The mask was the piece de resistance, the only glamorous mask in all of Katz Drug Store, with its flaming flipped tresses and cobalt blue eye shadow. The luscious lips had a tiny slit through which to breath--ever so shallowly--and to make lady- newspaper-reporter-like requests for nickel Hershey bars and candy necklaces.

Brenday Starr, my eye. In my Catholic neighborhood, filled with the faithful--pirates, skeletons, witches, ghosts--it was assumed I was the area streetwalker. All that was missing was my pimp.

There were no prohibitions against wearing our scary stuff to school, either. The more dreadful the Halloween, the nuns said, the happier the saints would be the next day. If I remember right, even November 2, All Souls Day, figured into our theology. If we dressed as ghoulies and ghousties and things that go bump in the night, the pour souls in purgatory (where we would soon enough find ourselves, completely dependent upon the generous novenas and horrifying costumes of those we left behind) would be scared right into heaven.

You can imagine how, after the high theatrics and religious fervor of my impresionable youth, I am dismayed with the blase manner in which Halloween has unwound these past few decades. By the time my own unfortunate children came of age, they attended Christian schools and I discovered--to my horror--that they were required to dress as heroes of the Bible.

Not just any biblical characters, mind you, since we all know where that might lead--some smart-alec kid would show up as Lazarus just raised from the dead, still wrapped like a mummy and stinking to high heaven. And then there's the kid who'd claim to be the naked demoniac or the sultry Bathsheba about to step into her hot tub.

So Christian children everywhere were reduced to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or one of the several Marys--as long as it wasn't Magdalene before she got saved.

These days, even the public schools are bastions of supernatural correctness. This year, one school forbade anyone to dress as a witch. Not because it's too frightening, but because the school (and I assume, the ACLU) doesn't want to offend....witches.

Things have gotten out of hand. What about the conventional wisdom of keeping Halloween as a prelude to the veneration of the saints, people? And what about the poor souls in purgatory?

Is nothing sacred?

Posted by Katy on 11/01/04
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Dueling Seasons (#267)

You already know I'm starting to get in the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, this year my Christmas spirit is colliding head-on with the tail-end of election season.

Because of that untimely collision, I'm thinking stuff like this:

If Joseph and nine-months-pregnant Mary could travel seventy miles on foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem with one donkey between them in order to obey the edict of the emperor (to fill out a census), why would a registered voter in America consider himself "disenfranchised" if he's simply required to vote in his own precinct rather than some precinct of his random choosing?

Is there such a thing as Seasonal Overlap Disorder?

Posted by Katy on 10/29/04
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We Have Not Because We Ask Not… (#268)

By the time Halloween rolls around, I'm pretty much gearing up for Christmas. Forgive me if it's a little early to be talking about it, but I'm in the spirit.

When I was a young bride and a new mother, I had no choice but to plan basically a whole year in advance. I doled out my dimes and quarters a few at a time, accumulating trinkets for the kids throughout the year, in hopes that there would be an impressive pile under the tree on Christmas morning.

These days, I don't start stockpiling gifts the day after Christmas, like I used to. Now we try to find out one big thing each of the kids really wants (and this year we have a new "kid," my son Scott's wife, Brooke!) and then fill in around that one item with a few smaller things.

So, all you kids out there, what do you want for Christmas? Each kid is allowed to name one big material item, no matter how ridiculously unreasonable. In addition, please name three non-material items you'd love to have. These can be global in nature (like "Whirled Peas"), relational (like "to become closer friends with my neighbors" or "to find my soul-mate") or character-driven (like "to have a better work ethic" or "to be kind to animals and small children").

I'm thinking if we dare to put these requests in writing, some of them might even come true before Christmas ever arrives...

Posted by Katy on 10/29/04
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You, Too, May Have Money Coming To You! (#269)

If you're at all like me, you try not to look too closely at your bills.

I don't mind opening them, or scanning them to make sure no one's charged tickets to Hawaii on my card or something, but the fine, fine print?

That's where, if you look hard enough, you'll see the screwball taxes on your cell phone, and the charges for services you thought you'd use and meant to cancel a long time ago.

And then there's my personal favorite, the so-called "special usage fee" of $2.95 or whatever. Oh, yeah. That one always makes me feel really special.

I don't know what I was thinking, but today, before I could stop myself, I opened an SBC phone bill and actually thumbed through it. Not just the page which shows the amount due, but the other pages, too.

The word "Yahoo" popped off the page, probably because I knew it had been untold ages since anyone in this house had used anything with that name. Maybe you Yahoo, but we don't.

Right there, in black and white, I was being charged $15.95/month for Yahoo Internet Dial-Up Services. Dial-up? Another red flag. Even I, as thoroughly un-tech as I am, know our Internet service arrives via satellite.

And, of course, once I located the itemized extortion, it became my moral obligation to deal with it. And that's why I try not to look. I've got about as many moral obligations as I can handle right now, and if I have to pay a little extra to avoid taking on another, sometimes it seems worth it. The hassle involved in making sure I'm not getting the screws put to me could turn into a part-time job--and who has the time for another one of those?

It took an hour and a half of runaround on the phone, speaking to the world's most unhelpful and uninformed employees (except for Tina, the one of ten who finally solved my problem, and who I praised to her manager), before I got to the bottom of it.

I've been being charged for SBC Yahoo dial-up Internet service since February, 2002, a service I've never used and did not request.

Check your bills, you guys! I've got a cool check for $500 bucks coming my way, or my name's not Kathleen Raymond.

Funny, I've had an SBC phone number since 1972, but nine out of ten SBC employees swear--when I claim they owe ME money--that they have no record of anyone with that name.....

Posted by Katy on 10/26/04
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Time-Zoned Out? (#270)

"So what do you do all day?" Dr. Laura asked.

The caller, a young stay-at-home mom, had just complained to Dr. Laura that she wasn't accomplishing anything with her days. Evidently, she often found herself still in her pajamas when her husband arrived home in the evening, with no good excuses.

"Well, I watch TV and I'm on the Internet a lot. Oh, and I email my friends every day. We instant message, too."

"But you don't do anything," Dr. Laura said. "What news could you have to tell your friends if you don't do anything?"

Then, to my personal dismay, Dr. Laura described her typical day, which starts with the alarm clock shrieking at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am. Unbelievably, she doesn't hit the snooze button. No, instead she gets dressed and walks for a full hour on her treadmill while she watches the morning news. By 6:45, the hardest part of her day is already over, and then she's ready to take on the world.

It's been about a month since I heard this conversation, and I haven't set my alarm since. I have trained myself to awaken naturally, with the birds or the light or the rooster a couple of houses over or the train in town, or whatever. Suffice it to say, I do wake up--and it's almost always at the crack of 6:30.

No sooner do my eyes fall upon the digital clock than I think of Dr. Laura. This morning, I turned to Doug (who was sound asleep) and groaned, "Honey, Dr. Laura's already been up a whole hour...she's already exercised, caught up on current events, and is ready to go do the right thing...."

He opened his eyes, turned his head, and took in the time.

"Relax," he said. "She's got nothing on you. Her alarm won't go off for another hour. She's in California, remember?"

I snuggled up to him, smiled, and closed my eyes. I guess I really do have it all.

What could be better than a comforting husband in Central Daylight Time?

Posted by Katy on 10/25/04
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Just Thought I’d Ask (#271)

One of the postmodern criticisms of the traditional evangelical church, if I'm understanding this correctly, is that we've formed a Christian sub-culture in which we isolate ourselves from the larger culture, effectively stifling the creation of truly beautiful music, art, and literature from within our ranks.

We were so frightened of disobeying Jesus' injunction to be "in the world but not of the world," it's now believed by many, that we backed off from being even in it, preferring instead to subsist in a ghetto of cheesy contemporary Christian music, Kinkade paintings, and sexless prairie romance novels.

If this is true (and I'm not saying it isn't), what is the antidote? And what in the name of all that's holy did Jesus mean when he commanded us to be in the world, but not of the world?

Any guesses?

Posted by Katy on 10/24/04
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Third Party? (#272)

Okay. I'm watching Brit Hume deliver the news on Fox and I'm positive this is what I heard:

"A new poll shows President Bush ahead among women, men, and independents."

Is it just me?

Posted by Katy on 10/19/04
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I Always Knew I Loved That Girl! (#273)

I've thought very highly of fellow blogger LaShawn Barber since I discovered her site six months or so ago. If you haven't checked her out yet at http://www.lashawnbarber.com , you should. She's brilliant, bold, and blessed with a good heart and a strong mind.

And maybe even an overactive imagination.

We had reason to correspond by email a couple of times this past weekend. She wanted to link to fallible in a post of hers, and was dismayed to find that her new blogroll didn't inlcude my site. (I had not noticed that fallible wasn't there, but she had.) She used to have fallible on her roll, and within minutes of her sending me the email, there it was again.

Today, I was scanning her blogroll and found the source of her supposed oversight. When you get down to the letter "i" in her alphabetical list, there I am.

LaShawn Barber is my new best friend! She'd be yours, too, if she called you "infallible."

Posted by Katy on 10/19/04
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All In A Day’s Housework (#274)

For about two years, I paid to have my house cleaned. The first two girls came recommended. Their names were Jennifer and Heather, from a little podunk town even littler and podunker than the town I live in on the edge of Kansas City.

Jennifer was in charge, and I liked her too much to believe she'd last long. I was right. One day, Heather showed up with Chelsea and starting that day Heather--clearly not as accomplished a domestic diva as Jennifer--was giving orders.

Chelsea decided to become a nurse tech so she only showed up three times, if I remember right. But Heather seemed to have no lack of friends, and Rhonda took over where Chelsea left off.

Rhonda was OK, but by the time she came on board it was hot outside and her shorts were short enough and her cleavage deep enough that I kind of wished my husband didn't work at home anymore. Of course, if he rented office space we couldn't afford house cleaners, so it was kind of a draw...

But then again, Rhonda didn't last. The last time I saw her she was leaning over some expiring flowers near my front porch, explaining to Doug that she was going to start her own landscaping business and that she'd love to have him for her first client.

Like I said, we never saw her again.

The first time Heather showed up with Skye, I knew I'd soon be cleaning my own house again. For one thing--and I apologize in advance if your name happens to be Skye--the new girl was one of those chicks who doesn't have a last name. I never even asked, although I'd known Heather's last name from day one. Skye is like Madonna without maternal instincts, or a mono-syllabic version of The Artist Formerly Known As.

You don't ask for her full name, because you know in your heart the answer will be, "It's just Skye..."

Sure, it is.

Heather and Skye haven't been around for several months. They were supposed to come a couple days before Scott and Brooke got married, and they'd been penned in on all of our calendars for two months. That day, I waited and waited and finally reached them on the incoming-calls-can-only-leave-messages and-we'll-call-you-back strange prepaid cell phone the two of them shared.

"We've been trying to call you," Skye said. (We'd been sitting by all the phones, waiting for any one of them to ring.) "Our car broke down. Can we come tomorrow instead?"

"No," I said. That was all I said. There was no time for idle chit-chat. I had a huge house to clean, an out-of-town guest on her way, a rehearsal dinner to throw, and a son to marry off.

We haven't heard from them since, until today.

Skye called on her funky outgoing-calls only phone and Doug answered. Tears fell from the Skye as she told her sad story so loudly that I could hear her three rooms away and I'm half deaf. Doug kept saying in that kind and sympathetic way of his, "You're kidding..." and I kept yelling loudly enough for her to hear me, "That's right, she is!"

Call me a fair judge of character, but I was not surprised to find out from my brother-in-law the cop that while there are several warrants out for Heather's arrest, she is not now nor has she been in jail.

I've heard of financial planning, but attempting to raise bail money before you even get busted is over the top.

My house was never too clean when they worked for me. So now it's dusty, and they're not getting my $1200.00

That's right. They tried to extort $1200.00 bail money from my good-hearted hubby, and nobody's even in jail.

I'll tell you, with some people, the Skye's the limit.

Posted by Katy on 10/16/04
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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 Follow Katy on Twitter Follow Katy on Facebook 123 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. Search Advanced Search Syndicate Login E me at katy @ ngenius.com	Fluppy Love (#260) My post on stuff we sleep with generated some great responses, making me think about the whole "adults in bed with stuffed animals" phenomenon. I slept with dolls when I was a kid, but I was never attracted to stuffed animals in any profound way. I don't even remember purchasing more than a few for my own kids over the years (although they received nigh unto a gazillion from friends and relatives). But something snapped in me on September 11. Of course, for the first week or so, I--like so many Americans--couldn't imagine plunking down a buck for frivilous non-essentials ever again. That's why I still can't explain the feeling of passing an aisle in Osco Drug Store and having the display of floppy dogs bark my name. You know the ones: So lightly stuffed that they "flop." (Scotty had one when he was little that he called "Fluppy Dog." Fluppy sounds even floppier than Floppy, don't you think? Words like "Fluppy" were early indicators that Scott would become a linguist, but I digress...) I marched straight to the fluppies, and purchased one for each of my kids (by then, nearly grown) and one for me and Doug to share. I don't know what the kids thought when I presented them with their doggies the next time we saw them. I remember hugging them tightly and making a little speech about 9/11 and comfort fluppies. "OK, Mom," they said, and they looked at me awfully funny, but I couldn't help myself. As for me and my husband, we slept with our fluppy for months. Now that I think back, Doug didn't protest even once. Now, Fluppy Dog is draped over my desk chair, hanging by his two front legs, looking like he wishes we needed him more than we seem to. And who knows? Maybe we do. Do you have, or have you ever had, an irrational attachment to a stuffed animal? Discuss. Posted by Katy on 11/09/04 Permalink Sooner or Later, We All Sleep Alone… (#261) Presuming you find yourself alone in bed at least on rare occasions, do you pile non-sleep-related stuff into the bed with you? In my post on books-to-be-read (see below), Michael Main says that while his dear wife Amy recovers from surgery on the couch, the bed is filled with books. He even claims on his blog to have slept, in Amy's absence, with some guy named Chuck, but we won't go there. If Doug's out of town, an assortment of Dougie substitutes ends up on his side, although they bear no resemblance in either form or function to the fellow they replace. On any given night, I might gather unto myself several remotes, my iBook, a flashlight just in case, the printout of his flight and hotel information, a Country Living magazine, the baby afghan I'm crocheting, a Bible, a teddy bear, and a huge container of Tums. Even at that, I think I'm less kooky than my dear friend JoAnn. We were roommates in our youth, and she spent every night with a giant pile of unpaid, overdue bills. I can't imagine she got a lot of rest. I don't want to know who's in your bed, OK? But if you want to share what's in your bed, that would be fun. Posted by Katy on 11/08/04 Permalink Still Dreaming (#262) It's just a matter of time before one of my kids ends up making me a grandma. (If you happen to be one of my kids, and you're reading this, please understand that I can wait. Really. Patience is a virtue and all that...) I dreamed of my own wonderful grandparents the other night. My grandma Baga died when I was nineteen, and my grandpa Papoo when I was twenty-two, but they're as alive and lively as ever in my imagination--whether I'm sleeping or wide awake. Baga taught me everything I know about domestic divahood. When I was about five, she pencilled large x's on a linen tea towel, so that I could embroider a turkey-red butterfly on it as a gift for my mom. When we cleared out my mom's house a couple summers ago, there was the towel in the kitchen drawer, ironed creases still fresh from when it had been folded forty years earlier. Baga taught me to make a fine and flaky pie crust, how to thread her old Singer, and how to feed the bed sheets through the wringer on the washing machine. She instructed me on the fine art of mixing liquid starch in the kitchen sink, and then dipping Papoo's dress shirts in the stiffening concoction until they were just the right consistency for ironing. I still feel guilty when I use spray starch. By the time I was six, I was knitting scarves and simple hats that tied under the chin and soon graduated to yarn houseslippers with pom-poms on top and even mittens. None of those early masterpieces survived, because they were happily used up by me and my sisters. Papoo was a fabulous gardener, and I loved following him around while he harvested what Baga and I needed to cook dinner. Before he came into the house with the pail of corn on the cob, carrots, green peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, and raspberries, he washed the dirt from everything with the hose by the back porch. It wouldn't do to drag dirt into Baga's clean house, that's for sure. From Papoo, I learned about running a business and the magic of compound interest and how to build a house without taking out a mortgage. I learned how to ride with my little sisters sitting on the open tailgate of a Rambler wagon in the back forty, and have only one of us at a time fall out. I learned how to bait a fish hook and how to tell a fish story. If you could have the best grandparents in the whole wide world, what would they be like? These days, is a grandma a facelifted, tummy tucked woman who lives six months out of every year in Europe, but sends personal emails to all her grandkids while she's away? Is a grandpa a man who golfs with the guys down at the club every weekend, no kids allowed? I want to be a wonderful grandma, when the time comes. What does that even look like these days? What should it look like? Posted by Katy on 11/08/04 Permalink So Many Books, So Little Time… (#263) I weeded through my bookcase (and by that I mean, the one by my side of the bed, as opposed to Doug's bookcase or the many other shared bookcases throughout the house) yesterday. I sent a number of politcal books upstairs to their next-to-final resting place. Once they go up, the next stop is the Friends of the Library donation bin. Then again, I might reconsider and hold on to them for posterity. Heck, I've got a humor book called "The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew" that I wouldn't part with for the world. ("Bushisms" are funny, but Spiro T. Agnew is a classic.) It's sits right next to a mass market paperback (I think it sold for 79 cents) called "The True Story of the Beatles." We're talking antiques here, people! I organized what was left on my personal bookcase so that I've got a whole half-shelf devoted to my "to be reads." Every time I glance at that shelf, I smile. "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" is a novel I meant to read in the '70s and you know what? I'm going to get to it before I'm in my 70s! In addition, I'm anticipating the joys of "Empire Falls," by Richard Russo, "Peace Like a River," by Leif Enger, and Anne Tyler's "The Amateur Marriage." Then there are the novels by friends: Nancy Moser's "Second Time Around," BJ Hoff's Emerald Ballad Series, Lisa Samson's "Songbird" and "Tiger Lillie," and even "Godiva," the first novel of our pastor from the good, old Jesus freak days, David Rose. Do you have a collection just dying to be read? What's on your bookcase? Posted by Katy on 11/06/04 Permalink A Whole Bunch of SUVs, or What? (#264) In years past, after the idea of the "moral majority" had fallen by the wayside, the term "family values" became huge in certain constituencies. I never heard those words spoken even once, though, during this election season. But this morning, as media people interviewed commentators about the possible reason for John Kerry's defeat, the term "moral values" was repeated on any number of networks. Evidently, the suspicion is that it wasn't the economy, stupid, and it wasn't the war, stupid, either. Word among the pundits is that the Kerry campaign may have inadvertently looked down their noses at those whose "moral values" ultimately drove them to vote for President Bush. As I flipped through the channels, I must have heard the word "moral" twenty or thirty times in as many minutes, and it struck me as bizarre, since it's not a word that's bandied about in polite society much anymore. It must have sunk in with the populace at large, though, or at least with the people responsible for writing closed captions for Fox News. Linda Vester reported that John Kerry and his entourage were filing into their SUVs on the way from his Beacon Hill home to make his concession speech. As the cars pulled away and Vester referred to the "motorcade," the closed caption read, "They'll morality-cade over..." Americans are an impressionable bunch, aren't we? Posted by Katy on 11/03/04 Permalink Vote Early, Vote Often? (#265) Terry McAullife, chairman of the DNC, had this to say on the news this morning: "I'm telling people make sure you go out and vote all over the country." No wonder people are confused! Posted by Katy on 11/02/04 Permalink How the Frighty Have Fallen! (#266) Back in the day (and I'm talkin' THE day, which means, obviously, the sixties), we took Halloween very seriously. Of course, I grew up Catholic and back then at least, Catholic kids were taught that All Hallow's Eve--the eve of All Saints Day, which is today--was a night for driving out evil spirits before the Holy Day. With that religious instruction firmly established, who wouldn't want to dress up as scary as unhumanly possible? It was all for the saints, in my day. No wonder I felt guilty the night I donned my Brenda Starr costume. In essence, I was betraying my spiritual tradition. I wore a shirtdress cinched tight at the waist with a crinoline petticoat underneath, lending the illusion of womanly hips. I layered on the bracelets and pearls and earrings and even hose and heels--those cute little 1" French heels were the style. The mask was the piece de resistance, the only glamorous mask in all of Katz Drug Store, with its flaming flipped tresses and cobalt blue eye shadow. The luscious lips had a tiny slit through which to breath--ever so shallowly--and to make lady- newspaper-reporter-like requests for nickel Hershey bars and candy necklaces. Brenday Starr, my eye. In my Catholic neighborhood, filled with the faithful--pirates, skeletons, witches, ghosts--it was assumed I was the area streetwalker. All that was missing was my pimp. There were no prohibitions against wearing our scary stuff to school, either. The more dreadful the Halloween, the nuns said, the happier the saints would be the next day. If I remember right, even November 2, All Souls Day, figured into our theology. If we dressed as ghoulies and ghousties and things that go bump in the night, the pour souls in purgatory (where we would soon enough find ourselves, completely dependent upon the generous novenas and horrifying costumes of those we left behind) would be scared right into heaven. You can imagine how, after the high theatrics and religious fervor of my impresionable youth, I am dismayed with the blase manner in which Halloween has unwound these past few decades. By the time my own unfortunate children came of age, they attended Christian schools and I discovered--to my horror--that they were required to dress as heroes of the Bible. Not just any biblical characters, mind you, since we all know where that might lead--some smart-alec kid would show up as Lazarus just raised from the dead, still wrapped like a mummy and stinking to high heaven. And then there's the kid who'd claim to be the naked demoniac or the sultry Bathsheba about to step into her hot tub. So Christian children everywhere were reduced to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or one of the several Marys--as long as it wasn't Magdalene before she got saved. These days, even the public schools are bastions of supernatural correctness. This year, one school forbade anyone to dress as a witch. Not because it's too frightening, but because the school (and I assume, the ACLU) doesn't want to offend....witches. Things have gotten out of hand. What about the conventional wisdom of keeping Halloween as a prelude to the veneration of the saints, people? And what about the poor souls in purgatory? Is nothing sacred? Posted by Katy on 11/01/04 Permalink Dueling Seasons (#267) You already know I'm starting to get in the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, this year my Christmas spirit is colliding head-on with the tail-end of election season. Because of that untimely collision, I'm thinking stuff like this: If Joseph and nine-months-pregnant Mary could travel seventy miles on foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem with one donkey between them in order to obey the edict of the emperor (to fill out a census), why would a registered voter in America consider himself "disenfranchised" if he's simply required to vote in his own precinct rather than some precinct of his random choosing? Is there such a thing as Seasonal Overlap Disorder? Posted by Katy on 10/29/04 Permalink We Have Not Because We Ask Not… (#268) By the time Halloween rolls around, I'm pretty much gearing up for Christmas. Forgive me if it's a little early to be talking about it, but I'm in the spirit. When I was a young bride and a new mother, I had no choice but to plan basically a whole year in advance. I doled out my dimes and quarters a few at a time, accumulating trinkets for the kids throughout the year, in hopes that there would be an impressive pile under the tree on Christmas morning. These days, I don't start stockpiling gifts the day after Christmas, like I used to. Now we try to find out one big thing each of the kids really wants (and this year we have a new "kid," my son Scott's wife, Brooke!) and then fill in around that one item with a few smaller things. So, all you kids out there, what do you want for Christmas? Each kid is allowed to name one big material item, no matter how ridiculously unreasonable. In addition, please name three non-material items you'd love to have. These can be global in nature (like "Whirled Peas"), relational (like "to become closer friends with my neighbors" or "to find my soul-mate") or character-driven (like "to have a better work ethic" or "to be kind to animals and small children"). I'm thinking if we dare to put these requests in writing, some of them might even come true before Christmas ever arrives... Posted by Katy on 10/29/04 Permalink You, Too, May Have Money Coming To You! (#269) If you're at all like me, you try not to look too closely at your bills. I don't mind opening them, or scanning them to make sure no one's charged tickets to Hawaii on my card or something, but the fine, fine print? That's where, if you look hard enough, you'll see the screwball taxes on your cell phone, and the charges for services you thought you'd use and meant to cancel a long time ago. And then there's my personal favorite, the so-called "special usage fee" of $2.95 or whatever. Oh, yeah. That one always makes me feel really special. I don't know what I was thinking, but today, before I could stop myself, I opened an SBC phone bill and actually thumbed through it. Not just the page which shows the amount due, but the other pages, too. The word "Yahoo" popped off the page, probably because I knew it had been untold ages since anyone in this house had used anything with that name. Maybe you Yahoo, but we don't. Right there, in black and white, I was being charged $15.95/month for Yahoo Internet Dial-Up Services. Dial-up? Another red flag. Even I, as thoroughly un-tech as I am, know our Internet service arrives via satellite. And, of course, once I located the itemized extortion, it became my moral obligation to deal with it. And that's why I try not to look. I've got about as many moral obligations as I can handle right now, and if I have to pay a little extra to avoid taking on another, sometimes it seems worth it. The hassle involved in making sure I'm not getting the screws put to me could turn into a part-time job--and who has the time for another one of those? It took an hour and a half of runaround on the phone, speaking to the world's most unhelpful and uninformed employees (except for Tina, the one of ten who finally solved my problem, and who I praised to her manager), before I got to the bottom of it. I've been being charged for SBC Yahoo dial-up Internet service since February, 2002, a service I've never used and did not request. Check your bills, you guys! I've got a cool check for $500 bucks coming my way, or my name's not Kathleen Raymond. Funny, I've had an SBC phone number since 1972, but nine out of ten SBC employees swear--when I claim they owe ME money--that they have no record of anyone with that name..... Posted by Katy on 10/26/04 Permalink Time-Zoned Out? (#270) "So what do you do all day?" Dr. Laura asked. The caller, a young stay-at-home mom, had just complained to Dr. Laura that she wasn't accomplishing anything with her days. Evidently, she often found herself still in her pajamas when her husband arrived home in the evening, with no good excuses. "Well, I watch TV and I'm on the Internet a lot. Oh, and I email my friends every day. We instant message, too." "But you don't do anything," Dr. Laura said. "What news could you have to tell your friends if you don't do anything?" Then, to my personal dismay, Dr. Laura described her typical day, which starts with the alarm clock shrieking at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am. Unbelievably, she doesn't hit the snooze button. No, instead she gets dressed and walks for a full hour on her treadmill while she watches the morning news. By 6:45, the hardest part of her day is already over, and then she's ready to take on the world. It's been about a month since I heard this conversation, and I haven't set my alarm since. I have trained myself to awaken naturally, with the birds or the light or the rooster a couple of houses over or the train in town, or whatever. Suffice it to say, I do wake up--and it's almost always at the crack of 6:30. No sooner do my eyes fall upon the digital clock than I think of Dr. Laura. This morning, I turned to Doug (who was sound asleep) and groaned, "Honey, Dr. Laura's already been up a whole hour...she's already exercised, caught up on current events, and is ready to go do the right thing...." He opened his eyes, turned his head, and took in the time. "Relax," he said. "She's got nothing on you. Her alarm won't go off for another hour. She's in California, remember?" I snuggled up to him, smiled, and closed my eyes. I guess I really do have it all. What could be better than a comforting husband in Central Daylight Time? Posted by Katy on 10/25/04 Permalink Just Thought I’d Ask (#271) One of the postmodern criticisms of the traditional evangelical church, if I'm understanding this correctly, is that we've formed a Christian sub-culture in which we isolate ourselves from the larger culture, effectively stifling the creation of truly beautiful music, art, and literature from within our ranks. We were so frightened of disobeying Jesus' injunction to be "in the world but not of the world," it's now believed by many, that we backed off from being even in it, preferring instead to subsist in a ghetto of cheesy contemporary Christian music, Kinkade paintings, and sexless prairie romance novels. If this is true (and I'm not saying it isn't), what is the antidote? And what in the name of all that's holy did Jesus mean when he commanded us to be in the world, but not of the world? Any guesses? Posted by Katy on 10/24/04 Permalink Third Party? (#272) Okay. I'm watching Brit Hume deliver the news on Fox and I'm positive this is what I heard: "A new poll shows President Bush ahead among women, men, and independents." Is it just me? Posted by Katy on 10/19/04 Permalink I Always Knew I Loved That Girl! (#273) I've thought very highly of fellow blogger LaShawn Barber since I discovered her site six months or so ago. If you haven't checked her out yet at http://www.lashawnbarber.com , you should. She's brilliant, bold, and blessed with a good heart and a strong mind. And maybe even an overactive imagination. We had reason to correspond by email a couple of times this past weekend. She wanted to link to fallible in a post of hers, and was dismayed to find that her new blogroll didn't inlcude my site. (I had not noticed that fallible wasn't there, but she had.) She used to have fallible on her roll, and within minutes of her sending me the email, there it was again. Today, I was scanning her blogroll and found the source of her supposed oversight. When you get down to the letter "i" in her alphabetical list, there I am. LaShawn Barber is my new best friend! She'd be yours, too, if she called you "infallible." Posted by Katy on 10/19/04 Permalink All In A Day’s Housework (#274) For about two years, I paid to have my house cleaned. The first two girls came recommended. Their names were Jennifer and Heather, from a little podunk town even littler and podunker than the town I live in on the edge of Kansas City. Jennifer was in charge, and I liked her too much to believe she'd last long. I was right. One day, Heather showed up with Chelsea and starting that day Heather--clearly not as accomplished a domestic diva as Jennifer--was giving orders. Chelsea decided to become a nurse tech so she only showed up three times, if I remember right. But Heather seemed to have no lack of friends, and Rhonda took over where Chelsea left off. Rhonda was OK, but by the time she came on board it was hot outside and her shorts were short enough and her cleavage deep enough that I kind of wished my husband didn't work at home anymore. Of course, if he rented office space we couldn't afford house cleaners, so it was kind of a draw... But then again, Rhonda didn't last. The last time I saw her she was leaning over some expiring flowers near my front porch, explaining to Doug that she was going to start her own landscaping business and that she'd love to have him for her first client. Like I said, we never saw her again. The first time Heather showed up with Skye, I knew I'd soon be cleaning my own house again. For one thing--and I apologize in advance if your name happens to be Skye--the new girl was one of those chicks who doesn't have a last name. I never even asked, although I'd known Heather's last name from day one. Skye is like Madonna without maternal instincts, or a mono-syllabic version of The Artist Formerly Known As. You don't ask for her full name, because you know in your heart the answer will be, "It's just Skye..." Sure, it is. Heather and Skye haven't been around for several months. They were supposed to come a couple days before Scott and Brooke got married, and they'd been penned in on all of our calendars for two months. That day, I waited and waited and finally reached them on the incoming-calls-can-only-leave-messages and-we'll-call-you-back strange prepaid cell phone the two of them shared. "We've been trying to call you," Skye said. (We'd been sitting by all the phones, waiting for any one of them to ring.) "Our car broke down. Can we come tomorrow instead?" "No," I said. That was all I said. There was no time for idle chit-chat. I had a huge house to clean, an out-of-town guest on her way, a rehearsal dinner to throw, and a son to marry off. We haven't heard from them since, until today. Skye called on her funky outgoing-calls only phone and Doug answered. Tears fell from the Skye as she told her sad story so loudly that I could hear her three rooms away and I'm half deaf. Doug kept saying in that kind and sympathetic way of his, "You're kidding..." and I kept yelling loudly enough for her to hear me, "That's right, she is!" Call me a fair judge of character, but I was not surprised to find out from my brother-in-law the cop that while there are several warrants out for Heather's arrest, she is not now nor has she been in jail. I've heard of financial planning, but attempting to raise bail money before you even get busted is over the top. My house was never too clean when they worked for me. So now it's dusty, and they're not getting my $1200.00 That's right. They tried to extort $1200.00 bail money from my good-hearted hubby, and nobody's even in jail. I'll tell you, with some people, the Skye's the limit. Posted by Katy on 10/16/04 Permalink Page 52 of 84 pages « First < 50 51 52 53 54 > Last »


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Personal blog of christianwriter & fallible momKaty McKenna Raymondin Kansas City, Missouri

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