My Driving is Getting Me Nowhere

"Move over", I said. "I want to drive."

"Sure, you know where you want to go with your life", said God.

Some time later He checked back with me.

"So, How's this going for you?"

"Ummm, I am kinda stuck. Think you can get me out of here?"

"Sure, I know where you need to go, always have, always will." God gave me a wry smile.

"Just one thing" He said. "Don't try to be a backseat driver or I'll pull over and let you out faster than I came back to get you out of this mess."

Why Do We Laugh?
Why Do We Cry?
Why Do We Even Think About It?


Forget Darwinism. Forget creationism. Let's be practical. We don't know the origin of life on earth. We have theories and we have some facts. Some facts are grounded by theories and some theories are grounded by facts. Shall ever the twain meet? I doubt it. Humans have a limited capacity to know everything all at the same time. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the how and why of the universe is limited to the facts we can scientifically prove and the beliefs we believe have been revealed to us by The God, many gods or an inner god we acknowledge but cannot prove. Some say there is no God in response to those who say there is. But beliefs are beliefs. We all have them. If we choose not to believe in something or nothing we are believing in not believing.

Whew, with that circular argument out of the way I will get to the belief I know to be true to myself based upon all the evidence I have gathered for my analysis on November 23, 2009. (My gathering of evidence is limited to what I have limited it to. So I, like so many others who have gone before me have really only scant evidence of all that is out there for me to digest, *Belch*)

We can follow the fossil/geological record and extrapolate certain facts about the so far discovered life on Earth that was able to leave evidence of its existence. Mostly it has been bone that has been turned to rock. But recent discoveries have shown evidence of soft tissue, maybe even DNA (maybe) within the bones. I believe that the evidence of biologic life on earth is older, many times older, than the writers of the Bible or other ancient scholars could have imagined. The Biblical story of Noah saving all the types of animals makes a good narrative that God wanted to save his creations in the animal world but wanted to start over with humans is a good analogy , but not factually practical.

Sorry Creationists, your story doesn't hold, err, water. A single Brontosaurus was bigger than the entire ark as described, let alone a pair of them. Too bad the authors of the Old Testament did not include a Paleontologist with a Star Trek Trimeter that beeps and flashes the secrets of the universe.

It is now known (known by whom?)( The scientists most of us trust, put our belief in, who make these decisions) that over 23 million species discovered and alive today in 2009 have not been named, let alone the ones who have died out. Let's move on...

No one has been able to prove or disprove the point in earth's history where an animal became a human being, if such a distinct example exists to be discovered. I define a human as a being, who is self aware and cognizant of being something beyond his own instinct to survive. As such, humans have a unique desire in the animal world (such as we know it to date) to define, communicate, and have a personal relationship with a being/spirit that is beyond the ability of our own power to create. Yes, we can reproduce other beings similar to ourselves, but not one who transcends it all, whose concept of past, present and future sounds quaint and un-enlightened.

I don't think apes and dolphins spend much time thinking about God, though they do exhibit self awareness. Maybe the discovery of Lucy or Australopithecus’ "Ardi" try to fill in the Darwin model of evolution of human from ape. But, they are only bones of an animal, maybe a self aware being, that exhibited human being like physiology and maybe even mental evolution, but we cannot know what they thought of themselves; If they thought of themselves at all. That link to self consciousness cannot be currently, scientifically proven.

Evolution of humans is more a mental process than a physical one. Our beliefs about what is real and true change more quickly mentally/socially than physically/environmentally.

The more we try to prove through science the origins of life and its manifestations, the more we find unknown and unexplainable questions to answers found based on supposition, dare I say it, faith, that today's theories will be proven true some time later on?

Are we so vain as to claim that our knowledge of life through science in the last few hundred years will not be eclipsed by new discoveries that change reality thousands of years from now? How about 50 years from now? How about tomorrow?

Did Noah have any dinosaurs on the ark? Did the Mayans need supercomputers to predict the alignment of celestial events a thousand years later? Did Galileo need the Hubble space telescope to determine the earth orbited the Sun and be put in prison by the church for his heretical thinking?

Did Paul and most of the disciples of Jesus die horrible deaths because they lied to themselves and everyone else about seeing a man rise from the dead and believing His promises of a life hereafter and a better life while we now live? Did the discovery of nuclear arms and the possibility of creating our own planetary destruction bring peace to the world?

Did you contemplate today what would happen if your next breath or heartbeat was your last one? Why? Why not?

Life on earth does not depend on our theories, experiences, scientific revelations or spiritual beliefs. But, life on earth as we know it does. Were human beings created from scratch as brand new beings? Are we the culmination of billions of years of trial and error? Are we a finished product, or just a new model year refinement from last year? As we evolve mentally and spiritually will we look back on homo sapiens fossils as scientific curiousitys?

I laugh at those who take this argument seriously. I also cry because events like world wars and ethnic cleansing are carried out because of it.

I think the most important questions are the one not asked. They are: Why do humans laugh and cry? Why do humans think about life and death? Why do humans contemplate the possibility or impossibility of life before and after we are born and die? Why do we even feel the need to ask and try to answer these questions?

a Robservation, 11-24-09

How Far is God?

Sometimes I have to step back, waaay back, to see God.  I tend to get caught up in the details and forget to see the big picture.  However, at other times I get lost in the clouds and have to look very close to my heart to see Him?  Is there any difference? It depends on my attitude and altitude.

Can Joy co-exist with Suffering?

Take a look at this picture.
What kind of feelings does initially it evoke? It is not a very beautiful picture. The trees are bare. It looks cold. You are looking up a steep hill and can’t tell what is on the other side. Maybe you get a feeling of being lost in the woods on a cold winter day? If you are not wearing winter cloths and have been out there for a long time you may well be suffering from exposure, hunger, thirst and getting pretty anxious to find your way out of there.

Now look at this scene another way. Since the trees are bare you can see through them. You can see that the top of the hill is not very far away. From the top of the hill you may be able to see how to get out of the woods. The sky is clear and bright so you know there is no storm threatening and you have plenty of daylight left to get back home. You might even feel a little joy that you can see your way to the top even while your tootsie’s are freezing off.

In the summer the trees and thicket would be covered with so many leaves you would only be able to see a few yards ahead of you and the sky would be blocked. Even though the woods may look more pretty and inviting in the summer you would have no idea how much farther up the hill you must trudge to get to the top. You may be warm, but you are still hungry, thirsty and most of all lost. The situation may look better but you are still suffering (especially if the mosquitoes are attacking you from the poison ivy you just walked through).

We normally think that we will either experience joy or suffering, not both at the same time. An enlightened way of seeing this winter scene is an analogy of what Paul is talking about when he wrote from prison that he could feel spiritual joy even while physically suffering. Joy can co-exist with suffering if you perceive it in a new way, by a new light, by His light. The trees may be bare and not very attractive, but it is their bareness that lets you find your way out of the woods. Paul experienced joy while suffering the bareness of his imprisonment by living in and sharing Christ’s light to his guards, letters to fellow Jesus followers and, by virtue of those letters to the rest of the world as a major part of the New Testament.

Another related analogy. We too should be willing to bare ourselves to others. When we strip away our self protective leaves and let them fall away we are willing to show others our bare limbs, our faults, our sufferings... and our joy of being able to see clearly through the trees and avoid the obstacles in our path to the top of the hill by light of Christ. We help ourselves and help others because we are allowing the light to shine through us onto them.

Most people would rather spend time looking at a forest of beautiful trees, green in the summer and colorful in the fall. But, since it is winter and there is nothing but bare trees to photograph, I decided to find the beauty of my circumstances by looking at the bare woods through a Jesus camera. Instead of waiting for spring to photograph the new buds, blooms and foliage I found some beauty in the bareness. I also almost froze my ears and fingers off while tromping about in the frozen woods, so I hope you found some joy through my suffering to take the photo and write this story. If all I did was make you suffer through this story, I take no joy in it (grin)

a Robservation
01-15-09

The Fog of Prayer

As I was returning home from the hour of prayer this morning at Church of the Highland’s 21 days of prayer I crossed over Lake Purdy. The sun was just rising and a heavy fog hung on the lake. For some reason it reminded me of the saying “The fog of War”. When I got home I looked up the term on Wikipedia:

From Wikipedia
The fog of war is a term used to describe the level of ambiguity in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.[1]
The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding own capability, adversary capability and adversary intent during an engagement, operation or campaign.
Experience
The practical experience of the fog of war is most easily demonstrated in the tactical battlespace. It may include military commanders' incomplete or inaccurate intelligence regarding their enemy's numbers, disposition, capabilities, and intent, regarding features of the battlefield, and even including incomplete knowledge of the state of their own forces. Fog of war is caused by the limits of reconnaissance, by the enemy's feints and disinformation, by delays in receiving intelligence and difficulties passing orders, and by the difficult task of forming a cogent picture from a very large (or very small) amount of diverse data. When a force engages in battle and the urgency for good intelligence increases, so does the fog of war and chaos of the battlefield, while military units become preoccupied with fighting or are lost (either destroyed by enemy fire or literally lose their way), reconnaissance and liaison elements become unavailable, and sometimes while real fog and smoke obscure vision.

I was taken with how closely the description matched similar problems I have experienced while in prayer. At times it feels like the more earnest I am in prayer, the more the enemy tries to distract me.
I am sure you are like me. I may be praying for patience, or healing or selflessness and all I can think of is what all I have to get done today, doubt that He will make me (or others) well, or how much I want those shoes that are on sale. (Yes, I am a guy who has a closet full of shoes, but they are all brown or black, so don’t think I am light in the loafers.)

What I have discovered to counteract the enemy’s attempts to disorient me is to utter the powerful name of Jesus. I simply order in His name for enemy to leave me alone. “Get thee behind me Satan” I also pull out my illustrated, laminated bookmark that Susie gave me of Ephesians 6:10-18 and pray the armor of God, especially the sword of the spirit and the shield of faith. Poof, my focus is restored and the fog lifts. Satan is now lost in the fog and cannot find me. It is like when God provided the sand storm to protect the Hebrews as they fled Egypt. He turns the fog from a barrier to God to a barrier from Satan.

The next time I get caught in the Fog of prayer I will think back to this morning as I watched the mist rise on the lake. Instead of getting lost in the fog, I will use it in Jesus’ name to hide Satan from me.

A Robservation
01-13-09

21 Days of Prayer - Time For a Long Soak

How much time do you spend each morning in the shower or bath?

I’m a guy so I can be in and out of the shower in less than 10 minutes. Sometimes, especially if it is cold or after a good workout I will simply stand under the steaming hot water for a few minutes and enjoy the sensation of the water warming me up or soothing my achy muscles. But, usually I just stand under the water long enough to get wet then begin the ritual of soaping up and washing off.

This morning was no exception except that I had to get up much earlier than usual in order to get to church by 6:00am to begin 21 days of prayer our church holds in January and August. This is an hour from 6:00-7:00am where we have a mini sermon, sing a couple of songs and spend an extended time in prayer. Since I hit the snooze alarm too many times I was rushed more than usual to get showered shaved and dressed to make it in time.

During the hour of prayer and worship we are to spend 30 minutes in personal prayer. After about 10 minutes I ran out of things to pray about and found myself looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to be in communion with God. It was then that it occurred to me that my prayer habits were much like my showering habits I spend about the same amount of time in the shower as I do in prayer; about 10 minutes a day. I rush to get in and out of the shower and I rush to get my prayers and petitions heard by God.

I began to think about how good it feels when I take the luxury in my shower of just standing under the warm spray of water without doing anything else. I thought about the last time I took a long soak in the hot tub at the gym. There, I allow myself to drift off and just enjoy the experience. If I was a women I might think of my last Calgon moment in a bubbly bath.

Spending time in extended prayer is like a long soak. I don’t have to be soaping, scrubbing and rinsing the whole time. I can just sit back and soak it all in. Once I realized this I just let my mind float. I quit talking to God and just listened. God took that time to wrap me in His warm embrace. The music that was playing in the room surrounded me and lifted me up. I could feel all the other people praying around me as soapy bubbles that soothed me. My mind slowed down. My heart became soft. My pride went limp. My thick skin became supple.

Before I knew it the 30 minutes was up but I wanted to stay in my spiritual bath a little longer. When I left the church I felt renewed and refreshed, ready to take on the day.

In our daily lives we take the time to get our outer bodies ready for the day ahead. Usually we are forced by our schedule to take as little time as necessary to make us feel clean and look good for the day. During this 21 days of prayer I am learning how to spend the necessary time needed to make my heart and soul clean and looking good for the day ahead. 10 minutes is not enough. I need to take a long soak in God’s presence to allow Him to seep deep into my pores and clean off all the crudge I accumulated yesterday.

Tomorrow I will try harder to not hit the snooze button but take that time instead to just stand under the shower for awhile. It makes no sense to rush to get ready to go to church and try to quickly slow down for an hour of prayer. If I am already kinda soft and wrinkly when I get to church it will take less time to sink into a long, warm, bubbly time with God.

If I am clean and fresh on both the inside and the out I am better prepared to take on the dirt of the day.

Grace & Peace, Rob

Computer wedding vows, not worth spit

No, I don't mean Internet dating. I am talking about the relationship you have with your computer.

This week my relationship took a nose dive. For over three years I had taken for granted that my computer would always be there when I needed it. Then, for some reason I have yet to fathom, I lost all my contacts information in Outlook. It was if my computer decided to leave me and take all my friends with it (her?).

Where did they go? why did they go?

Computer relationships are much like human relationships. You think you have built a level of trust and dependency, then, WHAM, out of the blue everything is all messed up and you don't know why, nor can you figure out why. Did I forget an anniversary back up date? Did I forget to empty the re-cycle bin? Maybe I left my dirty undies on the desktop...

I tried a system restore, like bringing roses, to get things back to the way they were. But the flowers only spun aimlessly in my CD Drive. Her files were still missing from the closet and all I could smell was a lingering scent of sandalwood.jpg. This was a major .TIF

I resorted to consulting with enlightened Indian swamis from the MS mountains who promised to fix my problem for $49.95 or return my money... They blew incense up my third eye but could not Divine where, how or why my friends and trusted computer jilted me.

All I have left are memories to re-build my relationships with. No longer will I rely on a single relationship to sustain me. I will not take for granted that I have done everything possible to build a solid, sustainable relationship with only one computer. Yes, I will be more loving and aware of her needs, but I will also be more wary of committing all my files to one confidant.

I have now purchased a professional consort to sooth me and back me up in times of need. A new External hard drive is now purring softly next to me. She is firewalled off from my main squeeze so, hopefully, they are unaware of each other.

I don't need two problems, only one solution. Yes, I know better than to think I have only one relationship to nurture. Now I have two, and probably three as I gain knowledge and paranoia and procure a back up to back up my back up.

Am I becoming a computer John? Keeping a stable of information consorts at my side?

Yes I am! I have no moral tussle with whispering my secrets to more than one confidant. after all, they are my clones. I have paid for their gigs.

To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health I DO vow to spread my seedy information to as many backup drives as deemed necessary to guarantee the progeny of my information species.

Hmm, Maybe the cultures that promote computer drive polygamy know from experience that multiple consort drives are necessary to prevent the primary drive from taking its secrets and leaving to Kathmandu...

"Bye- bye now, see ya C:. Wench! Fetch me drive K:" I need a serious hard drive back up!"

Though I will always carry my beloved C: in memory, I am now master of my domain, and a more caring, sensitive partner with the true ruler of the roost.

"K: why are you crying? Do you need to be de-fragged more often? Can we live chat about this? Do you need a larger cache? Maybe I can free up some files so you don't feel overloaded. What if I were to buy another drive?"

"Boo-hoo-hoo, you just don't understand me. I don't need another drive, I just want you"

"Okay, K: settle down and reduce your raw error rate I will fix this"

Sheesh, back to square one. I will never figure out computer relationships but I have to keep trying. I need them, want them, can't live without them and I can't go back to pencil and paper.

Yet, the only way for me to re-construct my Outlook contacts database is to slog through piles of notebooks and sticky notes I have saved. Maybe the old way is still the best way. Like my granny used to say, " If you ain't got in writing it ain't worth spit. Of course Granny was a Madam and dealt only in cash.

A Robservation
Images lifted from internet. My apologies to original photographers, but I needed free stock to illustrate my article

Slurping Slushies by the Seashore- Finding Meaning in the Meaningless

It is really easy to find meaning in powerful words or images. Every day we are bombarded with information whether it be on television, radio, newspaper, internet blog, water cooler gossip… or by our own wander through life.

We are often told to stop and smell the roses, coffee, whatever. Slow down. Life is what happens when waiting for something else to come along, etc. ad naseum.

To a large extent 95% of our days are just routine. Of that time spent in routine, I would hazard a guess based on my own experience that 99% of the 95% goes by with nothing worth remembering happening. It is no wonder then that it takes something happening outside of our own life to spark our attention.

The entire news and entertainment industry is successful solely because we are drawn to things that snap us out of our routine existence.

The domination of stimulating our minds by seeking out the fortunes and misfortunes of others has created a large dull section in our brains. We want and need to be told of other people’s “big stories” to have something...anything to think about except what we want for dinner. We regard out own lives as unthinkable. Not in a too bad to contemplate sense but unthinkable in the not worthy of thinking about sense.

Hearing, the old adage “don’t sweat the small stuff, because it is all small stuff” makes us pause briefly, ponder its truth for a second, then move on to the next big thing, like making sure we hit the brakes at a red light so we don’t plow into the car in front of us while we are lost in thought. If we paused for a more than a second (say 20 seconds at the red light waiting impatiently for it to turn green because we are late for an appointment) and got our mental arms around this adage we would reflect longer on the universal truth to this statement and cause the person behind us to honk their horn.

What is a beach? Seriously… define a beach. (pause tape here)
My definition of a beach is: ______________________________________

Finished? You probably defined a beach by recalling mental images of your most memorable experiences at the beach. Warm days frolicking in the surf. Getting broiled by the sun. Watching hunks or babes getting broiled. Drinking beer and boogie boarding with your buds. Digging a big hole, throwing your little sister into it and covering her up to her neck in sand. Making love by the moonlight. Sunrises at the beginning of vacation and sunsets at the end. Solitary sitting on a wind swept dune. Sipping slushies at a tiki bar. You get the picture.

Yes, you get the picture. A mental image of events that you experienced at the beach. But my question was, “what is a beach?” A scientist would have a different definition than a tourist. A scientist would say that a beach is a type of earth comprised of jillions of rock and shell particles that have been deposited on the edge of a land mass by the action of the waves ( or something like that.. I am not a scientist so I am just making up what I think a scientist would say).

Where is the mental stimulation of that definition? Yet, if it wasn’t for the zillion grains of sand piled on top of each other, we wouldn’t have a physical beach to sip a slushie on. The point is, we think of the beach as a memorable event, not a stretch of pulverized rock.

Our personal beach is made up of goobillions of grains of daily experiences. While squishing our toes through life’s granules, we occasion upon items that draw our attention. We might find something that pleases us like a nice seashell, a pretty babe (or hunk, to keep this gender neutral)(Okay a hunky babe to really be gender neutral!). Or we might find something that disgusts us (like a dead whale), saddens us (like a dead whale), or even hurts us (falling into a big hole some kid dug to throw his sister into). The total beach itself does not draw our specific interest except that it acts landing place for life's notes in a bottle. Yet, we talk about going to the beach, not we visited a stretch of land by the ocean made up of gazillions of pulverized rock particles.

I guess you know where I am going with this. We need to pay more attention to the everyday, mundane, taken for granted minutia of our lives. Well, yes I am going there, but if we paused to examine every grain of sand in our lives, we would never get to the tiki bar. Our brains are obligated to record and respond to every second of every minute of every hour of our lives. Thankfully it sifts out all but the significant events and lets the rest settle into the cull pile of forgotten time.

The upside is we don’t have to sift through tons of meaningless beach to walk through life. We just keep the pretty sifted shells and avoid the dead whales. The downside is we allow the holes in the sifter to get bigger and bigger until we let some meaningful moments fall through. If the holes become large enough, almost every pretty shell ends up in the cull pile and we avoid the dead whales because they are too disgusting to be around, not to mention how big the sifter would have to be to deal with them. Then our lives consist of only the cull pile and the meaningless is so mixed up with the meaningful we become coverd by a dune of despair, not knowing what life is all about.

When we are frantically sifting sand and finding no seashells, we find tired old clichés like “stop and smell the coffee" meaningful. But even then it is only for a second (especially if it is that stinky old dead whale). Then it is back to shaking the holey sifter and I don’t mean this in a theological sense… but it does apply sometimes. Hmm, I’ll have to stop and think about this (pause tape here)

Where was I? Something about shapely Shirley sullenly sifting shells and slurping a slushie down by the seashore. Shirley was sullen because she only sifted seven seashells and considered the day at the beach a wash. But, she was creating quite a nice pile of sand under her sifter.

Shortly shapely Shirley saw shabby Shawn sitting sorely in sandy shorts near the surf. Shawn was sore because the sand in his shorts chafed his bruised butt he bonked while boogie boarding.

Sullen Shirley sauntered over to sore Shawn to see if he had any seashells she could sift. Shawn said he didn’t have any siftable sheashells with him, but he had some back at his shack. Sullen Shirley was no shill and gave Sore Shawn the short shrift when Shawn showed Shirley his sore spot in his sandy shorts. Shirley, shocked by Shawn’s schtick, showered Shawn with her slushie and they fell in love.

Life lesson: It is short-sighted to shunt sullen seashore sifting or sandy short sores.

a robservation

Squeezable Ketchup* – These are the good ‘ole days

What is the most important invention since sliced bread? The squeezable ketchup bottle, of course. Or is it?

We like squeezable ketchup because we like our French fries hot. One quick squeeze and the fries are doused, ready for munching. We don’t have time to wait for the red guck to glug out of a glass bottle anymore.

The classic TV commercials for Heinz (or was it Hunts) played the Carole King song “Anticipation” while showing ketchup moving with agonizing slowness down the neck of a glass ketchup bottle.

what made that commercial work was sticking together a feel good song and taste good condiment which made us forget the hassle of getting ketchup onto fries in a timely manner by a fault in condiment container design and implementation. It wasn’t a problem of lack of technology. You could go into a restaurant and squeeze your ketchup (and mustard) from a plastic bottle that the waitresses would slowly fill every morning from the original glass bottle. Let her wait, I want it now! It took the cold fries of some ketchup container engineer to eliminate the waitress and sell ketchup in a squeezable plastic bottle. Eliminate the wait. Clean your plate. No time to hesitate.

If ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise (yuck) and even grape jelly are available in such quick and easy to use squeeze bottles why would they even to bother selling glass bottles of the stuff? It goes back to Carole King’s song, "Anticipation". Even in our hurry up I need it now lives we still like to anticipate some things. Take Christmas for example. We wait all year for Holloween to hurry up and get over with (unless you are a pagan) so we can get on with anticipating the arrival of Christmas. We order junk we don’t need through catalogs, the internet or on TV so we can anticipate its arrival in a box on our doorstep.

Usually the anticipation of something feels better than the actual item or event. We anticipate the new 52" high definition plasma TV Aunt Martha is going to give us for Christmas, but we get socks instead. We long for the arrival of the E-bay auction only to find that Elvis' gold ring is actually Elva's old bling. There are, of course, exceptions. For Christians, being in heaven is far better than the anticipation of it. If you are sick, being well is better than getting well.

When we are obliged to wait we make of it what we can, but when we have a choice, why wait, even if we are sentimental about 70’s love ballads. Getting ketchup onto our fries leaves us options. Why would I choose to wait for ketchup to slowly sludge its way from a glass bottle when I have the choice to take a shortcut with a quick squeeze?

Waiting can have its own mental benefits, even if we don't always have the choice. If you obsess about your fries getting cold while shaking a bottle, then anticipation is detrimental to your mental health. If, however, you enjoy the time you spend waiting on Christmas relishing how happy your nephew will be with a new 52” plasma TV you are mentally healthy.

Given a choice between enjoying the wait and can’t wait to get it over, most people choose to get it over with quickly and lose out on any missed benefits of embracing the wait. Take for instance revenge. Revenge is a dish best served cold, is it not? How about getting old? We can’t avoid it, but aging gracefully is better than worrying about something we can’t avoid… (unless we burn up before we burn out) but that takes me off the subject… as if I was sticking to the subject anyway!

But sticking to the subject, or sticking to the bottle in this case, is really what sticking it out it is all about. Carole King says, “Anticipation, is making me late, is keeping me wai-ai-aiting”. Ketchup stuck in a bottle is making me wait. FedEx is making me wait (but not more than 24 hours). Christmas is December 25th, not tomorrow (unless it is Dec. 24th and then it still seems like it takes forever to get here).

But, good old Carol has obviously spent some time with French fries and put her sticking time to good philosophical use when she finished the song with,
“And tomorrow, we might not be together
I'm no prophet, Lord I don't know nature's ways
So I'll try and see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days”.

So, the next time I am sticking it to my ketchup bottle by pounding on the little Heinz logo on the neck of the bottle to make it flow faster like the urban legend contends, I will let my fries cool a little and anticipate the virtue of sticking it out.

A Robservation

* The word ketchup comes from the Chinese kêtsiap, meaning a fermented fish sauce, probably via the Malay word kechap, now spelled kecap, which means soy sauce. The word was brought back to Europe by Dutch traders who also brought the oriental sauce itself.

My Bathtub Drain - Life Lessons Learned

I live in an old house, with old plumbing. So, I accept certain things like drains running slowly. No amount of plunging, cussing or caustic cleaners has cleared my pipes enough to let my bathtub drain completely at the end of a shower. There is always a pool of water and soap froth left in the tub. The water eventually recedes like the tide, but the soap sludge accumulates creating a high water mark of muck and discarded beer cans (just kidding about the beer cans).

This has not been a problem for me since I am the only one who uses the shower and I didn’t really care about the soapy tide line around the tub that revealed my bachelor liaise-faire attitude between cleanings (which, of course, is a semi-annual event).

Recently I placed my house up for sale. This meant I had to keep it spotless; as if I didn’t actually live there. I have become my own hotel maid. Every morning before I leave home I have to make sure it looks like no-one lives here. Potential buyers would not feel my slovenly presence and thus could dream about making the house their own free from the wreak and dross I have tainted it with. (Hey, I was able to use the word dross in a sentence not related to a church hymn!). Forbid it that I should burst their bubble of delicious soapy showers free of corroded pipe induced soap sludge trauma.

Keeping the bathtub dross free (yet another dross!!) was just one hassle. At the end of a shower I had to impatiently wait while the water waited to trickle down the congested pipes like people queuing for relief after a hurricane. Then I had to wipe up the residual soap foam with my towel to make the tub spotless again. (Another issue was what to do with the wet towel. I couldn’t leave it hanging over my shower rod as usual, so I resorted to folding it back up, wet, and sticking it back in my newly neat and orderly linen closet).

I imagine that you, like me, have a showering ritual/habit. Some may wash their hair first and the body second. Others do the opposite. And others have rituals that I do not care to conjure up in my mind.

My ritual is hair first, body second. Don’t ask me why. It is like different ways of tying shoes or putting on pants or shirt first. Each person has their own automatic way of doing everyday things.

Yesterday, in one of my many shower inspired world saving ideas, I came up with another plan. Instead of washing my hair first, I decided to wash it second. Don’t ask me why. You might as well ask a mouse why it turned left, not right in a maze after 3,000 right turns. It just happened.

After finishing my new shift in showering order and turning off the spigot, I glanced down and saw only water waiting to leave the building. There was no soap bubble meringue left. “Hey”, I exclaimed to no one but the cat, who was somewhere else in the house. “I don’t have to wipe out the tub this morning!”

Upon careful analysis of my ritual reversal I determined that my shampoo left less foam in the tub than my ocean breeze scented body wash did. Plus, the act of rinsing my hair (which, by scientific shower head placement) occurred directly over the drain which broke up the soap slag and left only water to meander down the semi-clogged pipes.

The simple act of reversing my habit solved one of my house selling problems.

Life lesson? I need to examine my rituals and habits from time to time. By simply re-arranging the order by which I habitually do things, I may be able to solve a problem without resorting to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Maybe tomorrow I can figure out how to dry off with a towel without getting it wet…

A Robservation

Moving Out, Moving In, Moving On

Moving Out, Moving In, Moving On

-Moving Out-

Moving out of a house is easier than moving into one, or so it seems. Just reverse the process. Instead of unpacking boxes, pack them. Wad it all up and cram it into generically labeled boxes like LR, DR, BR, etc. and figure that I will actually remember what items are in which box. The goal is to get it all boxed so the movers, who get paid by the hour, will efficiently and cheaply transfer my belongings to their new destination.

As the movers unloaded the boxes into the new house reality set in. Boxes started getting stacked on top of each other in the pre-designated rooms. As the rooms filled up to the point I couldn’t get into them I decided that it would be better to just pile most of them in the big empty garage and sort it out later.

Before the move I had good intentions of having a mammoth moving sale to whittle down all the years of accumulated stuff. Since much of it is the dander and memories of my path through life and not things that someone else would actually want to buy, I just put it off dealing with it until the 11th hour. Panic set in and I figured, what the hell, I’ll just move it and hold a moving in sale later.

When I moved out (like most people) I had more stuff than when I moved in. When I moved to Tallahassee in 1976 all I had was the bicycle I rode in on and a pack of clothes strapped to it. Eight years later when I left Tallahassee for Birmingham it took an 18’ U-haul truck to get my stuff moved. When I moved from my first house in Birmingham to my new house 13 years later it took two 24’ moving trucks to get all the major stuff transferred plus 3 loads of miscellaneous dross in my Tahoe. As I wandered around the mainly empty house on my second day of grabbing the things I hadn’t put in boxes for the movers I thought, “hey, I can get this crap into my Tahoe with room to spare".

-Moving In-

Well, this is a photo of my last load. As you can see there was only enough room for me to squeeze into the drivers seat, and maybe room for just a wafer thin mint. (see photo)

Bring me a bucket! I am going to throw up from all the crumbs of “I might need that someday” fodder I have filled my house’s gut with over the years.

My story is not unique. It is repeated by countless other material possession addicts everyday. I promised myself that I would stop. My new house is already full of boxes of things from my past life that lay forgotten and useless until I had to cart it all to my new house and will probably stay forgotten and useless unless I stick my finger down my throat and purge them.

As I pondered how quickly my new house’s voluminous 2 car garage filled up with my old life’s cling-ons, I drove by a shopping center and the lure of the buy something stimulant came rushing in and I told myself that I would just look around. After all, I have a new house and a new house needs new stuff. No harm looking around for something I might need. The storefronts lured me with their windows displaying the new life and new times I could have if I just owned a new (fill in the blank). I thought back to all the trouble I got myself into and how hard it was to withdraw from the last 13 years of buying binges I went on. But this time it is different. This time I really needed (fill in the blank). I could handle it.

No, I told myself, even as I was drawn closer to the door. I don’t have to have (fill in the blank). I already have 2 of them at home, someplace. But, I don’t have a green one. Besides, the green one in the window is new and my blue one didn’t really go with the yellow one I already had.

Before I knew it I am clutching the green one in my hand. Reaching into my pocket for my credit card, the clerk gives me a suspicious look. Did she know of my problem? Did I look like an addict? My head spun with guilt. I overcame my hesitation to indulge by rationalizing that this one would be the last one I would buy. I swiped my card, signed my contract to pay and slinked out of the store like a trick leaves a brothel.

Back at my new house I stumbled through the maze of still unpacked boxes and pushed aside a pile of newspaper wrapped bri-a-brac on a table to unwrap my new purchase. Ahhh, the green one. Its siren song lured me to hold it up and drink in the warm feeling of a new purchase. I wanted to feel the warm burn in my gut. But something stopped me. I wondered if the new green one would go with my old yellow one. Where is that box I put it?? I frantically rummaged through box after box. The labels blurred. DR, LR, BR… where was it? Finally, frustrated from my furtive search I plopped wearily into my big boy recliner to think. Maybe I put it into the miscellaneous junk box. No, I remembered specifically hanging onto the yellow one when I was packing and pondering whether to toss it or pack it. But I couldn’t remember my decision. What did I do with the blue one? Why wasn’t it with the yellow one? There was so much stuff to decide on and the movers were just over the horizon.

Oh well. Now I had a green one. I didn’t need the yellow one, or the blue one anymore. I got up and walked over to the table where the green one beckoned me. I picked it up to admire it when it hit me. I remembered that I tossed the yellow one because the blue one was busted and both of them held bad memories and tough times that I wanted to forget about. In my new house I wanted to get a fresh start, a new life, new memories, better times.

I looked down at my new green (fill in the blank). It didn’t look as pretty as it did in the store. Why did I even buy it? It was just like the other ones but a different color. I look around at all the other boxes that surround me. The stack seemed to get higher, closing in on me, stifling me.

What had I done!? Nothing has changed, except my location. All I have done is transfer my old life into my new one. I was afraid this might happen. Before I moved, I projected that a change in latitudes may not bring about a change in attitudes. Dejected about my realization I decided to take a shower to clear my head. As I took off my clothes in my new bedroom I glanced out the expansive windows and saw a panoramic vista of woods and mountains. Much nicer than the dismal view of the alley at my old house. I began to throw my clothes on the floor like I did in my dingy old house. Then I looked at my big, new, light filled bedroom and flashed back to how depressed I felt every time I walked through the musty darkness of my old house. Throwing clothes on the floor and watching dust bunnies scamper around only seemed natural and added to the dismal decrepit aura I had created living there.

-Moving Ahead-

In mid sock toss it hits me. I don’t have to feel that way anymore! I can actually walk around my bed without hitting the walls. Now I can make my bed without banging my shins on the bed frame which means I might actually make my bed instead of leaving it a rumpled heap. The dust bunnies won’t have a chance to breed since I can actually run the vacuum cleaner without snagging the cord on my chest of drawers which are now across the room and not crowding the foot of my bed. The dreary closed in feeling dissipated like clouds revealing the sun after a storm. I throw my clothes into the previously un-used laundry hamper, drift over the soft, warm carpet into my new bathroom and turn on my new high velocity shower head in my new sparkling white shower stall and not the old rust stained tub with its drizzly spit spigot of my old one. As the steam envelopes me, I reflect on how much different it feels to be in a new latitude. The shower spray is hot and strong. The drain actually drains. My faucets don’t leak. I have an expansive vanity with 2 sinks (though I have no use for 2 sinks it feels good that if I get lucky and snag a gorgeous loving mate she would have her own sink and places to put her lotions and potions).

I get dressed, I am feeling invigorated. I walk into the kitchen to make some dinner. My new refrigerator is not full of 6 month old food (well to be truthful some of my old fridge contents were becoming vintage, and I am not talking about wine). I can dispense filtered water and ice by merely pushing my glass into the fridge door. "Iced tea anyone? Would you like your ice cubed or crushed? No, no problem. All I have to do is push this button." I relish the feeling of opening the silverware drawer that actually glides open and closes without a shove. I have plenty of new un-cluttered cabinets. Maybe now I won’t have the convenient excuse to just stack all the plates in the sink because I don’t have a place to put them. My oven is clean and even programmable. No more pulling out pizzas that are charred and smell more like burned food than bubbly cheese. I actually have a vent hood over my stove that sucks in all the smoke from cooking a steak and doesn't let the whole house fill with smoke to the point that I had to disable the smoke alarm in the old house. Now I have a garbage disposal so I don’t have to scrape the dishes clean before placing them into a new dishwasher. One more incentive to keep dirty plates from piling up because it was too much of a hassle to wash them.

I am getting excited. I decide to wash some clothes. In my old house I put off doing laundry because it meant dangerously carrying a heaping armload of wash down my steep, not built to code, stairs into the dungeon I called a basement. Now, all I have to do is carry it 10 feet from the bedroom to the laundry room. Maybe now I won’t go out and buy new underwear just because it was too much of a hassle to get to the washing machine.

As I carry my dinner into the living room I once again look out the windows to the vista outside as the sun paints the horizon purple as it travels West. I plop down in my big boy chair feeling rejuvenated. Yeah, I still got a lot of old crap in boxes still laying around me, but now it doesn’t seem as if I am just a stumbling bum weaving wayward with a shopping cart full of cast offs . I’ll get to it later with a new attitude about holding on to my past life as I toss the majority of the baggage I brought with me into the dumpster.

For now, I am just going to relax and wrap myself into my new attitude. I turn on the TV and settle in. I forget about the new green thing still lying on the table. Now I am staring at my 7 year old 27” TV and thinking about how nice it would be to have a 42” plasma screen to get lost in.

The cycle continues…

Thanksgetting

Why no uproar about changing the name of Thanksgiving?

It has become fashionable in the last few years to eradicate any spiritual connections to Halloween and Christmas. Why not Thanksgiving?

The holiday is most certainly connected to the pilgrims, who were most certainly Christians who had fled from the church of England to pursue their own form of Christianity. http://www.holidays.net/thanksgiving/story.htm

I guess it is because the word “Thanksgiving” does not contain the word “Christ, or does not openly celebrate witches and demons. People who are not Christians can find all sorts of things to be thankful for without attributing them to God, or a god. People celebrate Christmas in a purely secular way as well. Even Christians put on all the trappings of a secular celebration when they put up a “holiday” tree and give worldly gifts to each other. Yes, the magi came bearing gifts. But the whole tree thing is a direct rip off from north European medieval pagan celebration of the winter solstice. Santa Claus was a marketing gimmick by Macy’s department stores stolen from the legend of a European rich guy who gave gifts of food to the poor. http://www.the-north-pole.com/history/ (only one of many google search hits)

For that matter, why is Hanukah or any other non-Christian holiday not coming under the microscope of secular consternation?

I propose we change Thanksgiving to Thanksgetting. In this way we are more truly celebrating the pervasive attitude of society that it is better to get than to receive. Oh, no, most people would never openly admit that they would rather get than to give, especially during the X-mas season. (even calling Christmas "X-mas" has been around long before the current furor over making Dec. 25th solely a day of sharing, caring and keeping the economy stable)

But it is true. In our self centered world where self discovery, self as god, self as, well self, we give lip service to the warm fuzzy feeling we get ( see, WE GET) of giving to others, but inwardly are more concerned about what we will get from giving. I count myself in on this attitude. I too often think of what’s in it for me when making decisions. Even if I am giving money to a charity, or working with the homeless (which I keep meaning to do someday), my major motivation is how good it will make me feel. I cannot remember any specific instance where I have done something totally out of the goodness of my heart (see, there is the word “my” again) and not expected something in return.

Well, there is one thing that I did out of my compassion for another being where I knew I was doing it solely for the benefit of the givee and not to make me feel better. In fact I knew I would feel worse after doing it. I had to make the decision today to have my 13 year companion put to sleep. Yes, my cat. I could have kept her around for another few weeks, but it would have been for my comfort of putting off negative emotions and not her comfort of dying without suffering. she was too good of a friend to ask her to do that just so I could put off feeling sad

I am not asking for, or taking any “good for you”, or “you did the right thing” commiserations from my friends. It was not good for me, but I did do the right thing. So, I am pleased even through my tears. That is why I am a Christian. Because Jesus had it right. When we do the right thing, even suffer for it, we are actually relieved, even pleased. That could sound selfish as well ie: To know that we would eventually feel good about making a decision that would make us suffer first.

There is no end to that circular argument, and I am not going to go looking for one. I am just going to rest easy knowing that God is so smart and loving that he gives us warm fuzzzies for giving selflessly even if it hurts.

It is His way of saying thanks for giving.

A Robservation 11-23-05

“South Bound Cat” – Feline farts smart

Here is an x-ray of my cat Maggie. You will notice I have labeled where her head and heart is. I also noted where $217.00 went this morning.

Previously I wrote about my old house and the problem I was having with the bathtub drain. Now I have a problem with my old cat and her, uhmm, drain.

For the past couple of weeks Maggie hasn’t had much of an appetite. I figured she was just all jumpy from strange people trampling through my house while I was trying to sell it. Now that the house is sold and life is back to calmness, I figured she would come a runnin’ when she heard the tuna can open. Well, she would come a runnin’, but she would only nibble at a few bites, then walk away.

I noticed that after she nibbled she would work her jaw like she was trying to chew and swallow a wad of gum. Since Bubble Yum is not on her menu, I became concerned that she had developed a tumor in her throat. It’s always a tumor isn’t it?

I took her to the vet this morning. Trying to get her into the cat mobile is a story in itself, though I imagine anyone with a pet knows about their paranormal ability to divine when it is time to go to the doctor. In fact, I was telling a friend of mine who called while I was unsuccessfully chasing Maggie around the house about her telepathic sense. She laughed and said that she has to put her cat carrier out in the living room 2 or 3 days before she tries to catch one of her cats so it thinks the carrier is a coffee table or something.

The vet asked a series of questions, gave me a concerned look, gave Maggie a quick eye, ear, nose and throat exam with his doctor thingy ( an Otoscope, no kidding, I looked it up on the internet) with the little light on the end and said, Well, she doesn’t have anything stuck in her throat that shouldn’t be there.” Boy was I relieved that Maggie hadn’t swallowed a 13” carving knife like some stupid dog did that I read, and saw the x-ray, about on the internet

He flipped through Maggie’s chart, did a series of mental calculations about how much his next boat payment would be and re-assuringly told me he wanted to do some blood work. He said she had shown a high level of kidney something or other the last time she was in, and oh, by the way he also wanted to do a thyroid test.

Twenty minutes later he came back and said, “I have some good news”, which was not also followed with the typical “and some bad news”. The good news was that her blood test showed everything looked great, especially for a cat almost 15 years old. He thought it puzzling that her kidney levels had returned to normal without any medication. But, he let it slip that he had actually been looking at the blood analysis of another animal named Dolly and not Maggie’s the first time around. I refrained from any comment about this little whoops.

He didn’t say anything about bad news, but the inference was since she didn’t show any physiological signs for her symptoms, he really didn’t know what was wrong with her. He did some more very quick boat payment calculations, this time adding in the rising fuel costs for a Sunday cruise around the lake with his daughter (at least he said it was his daughter), and announced authoritatively that he wanted to do a full body X-ray. I guess he had seen the same X-ray I had of the dog who swallowed a 13 inch carving knife.

Another 20 minutes pass and he walks in with the X-ray and an assistant. They had dour expressions. I gulped, knowing that he had found a tumor choking my poor beloved pet. I guess the assitant was there to catch me when I fainted when I heard the bad news. He drew the suspense out by giving me a quick anatomy lesson as he pointed out her head (obvious), her heart and lungs (kinda figured what those were), her liver, and stomach (where they should be). Then he took a pen out of his pocket and dramatically circled the area on her south end which looked like a bowl of spaghetti and informed me that this was her intestines (which seemed to make anatomical sense given the vicinity of the area with respect to her head). He then circled a large dark oblong balloon shaped area and said, I am not kidding, seriously, he said,” and this is gas.” “Maggie has a gas problem.” He wasn’t farting around, and neither was Maggie.

I don’t know whether I laughed for joy or the ridiculousness of the findings. Maggie wasn’t dying of a throat tumor, she was sick because she had severe gas bloat back-up. The medical term is non-gaseous passeous.

With the diagnosis complete and a prescription for human baby anti-gas drops in hand I thanked the learned veterinarian profusely and stuffed my cat balloon back into her cat mobile and headed for the check out line.

The methodically itemized medical termed gibberish invoice cheezed out at $217.00. I was blown away, but not by Maggie.

For that, I could have gotten Maggie a life long supply of Beano and taken the re-fried beans off her menu. At least she wasn’t dying of throat cancer. I guess knowing that all she needed was a good gas pass was worth the money. Now all I have to do is figure out some way of getting north bound medicine into a south bound cat.

If you would like more information on feline farting and other fun fart facts, I googled a site http://www.heptune.com/farts.html There is a very complete FAQ on the subject with important questions like:
Why do dog and cat farts smell so bad?
Is it normal for dogs to like the smell of human farts
Do fish fart?
How long would it be possible not to fart?

A Robservation 11-02-05