Country Livin’ Blog

I was talking to someone the other day who had just returned home from a trip to California.  She said she went to visit a friend.  She had attended Berkley many years ago and wanted to visit the campus while she was in the area.  She said as they drove over the bridge she could see Berkley laid out in front of her and it made her feel happy just seeing it from a distance.  She asked me, “Have you ever felt that way about a place?”

I feel that way about our house.  I especially enjoy driving up to it on a spring or fall evening coming home from work.  I love the soft light of the setting sun and the glow of lights in the windows indicating my husband is already home.  Mind you, I love these long summer days when I can get home from work and still have daylight to take the dogs out to play.  But there is something heartwarming about those times when seeing my home from the road makes me happy.

Last week there was a cyclone that hit Burma (Myanmar).  The last numbers of people killed I heard were so shocking it gave me a sick feeling.  The Burmese government says 20,000, the U.S.  Government puts the death toll so much higher, it’s unimaginable.    Here in our own country we have people who are still displaced after a hurricane in New Orleans nearly three years ago.  How will a country as corrupt as Burma be able to regain any degree of normalcy after such a terrible disaster?

Unless you have been to New Orleans and seen the devastation first hand you can’t imagine what it’s really like.  Whole neighborhoods are still without power and running water.  Families are doing the best they can to stay together, but you can see how it could tear them apart.  How it could ruin lives completely.  I haven’t done any research, but I can imagine drug and alcohol abuse have skyrocketed since Katrina.

What can be done?  If you can do anything, including standing on the floor and handing up tools to people on ladders, go help.  There are denominations with disaster relief teams in the area in need of people to come help.  The need for college aged students to come train to be crew chiefs for the summer are welcomed.  If you don’t have a denomination already in place helping, contact the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.  They would love to hear from you.

Burma is a world away, New Orleans is right here.

Recently I went on a mission trip with my church. There were nine of us on this trip to New Orleans to help with disaster relief. I went last spring too. We were gutting houses last spring. This year we were working on houses that were in the process of restoration.

The first day of work we helped an elderly man and his sister. Before Katrina hit New Orleans this gentleman was a caterer. The hurricane caused severe damage to his home and took away an out building that housed his catering equipment. At his age he is unable to restart his business. As it was, their home was so severely damaged it was important to make repairs first so their living conditions could improve. His sister works, but I don’t know what she does or if I was even told. The ability to repair their home was beyond their means. So the church stepped in. The inside had been gutted, treated for mold, and sheetrocked. It was ready for painting. The first thing we did was primer. We primed the whole house, walls and ceilings, and then waited. New sheetrock soaks up primer and paint very fast. So by the time we finished the first coat of primer the areas where we had started were already dry and ready for the first coats of paint. We started painting on the actual color at about 10:00 a.m. We finished the first coat at lunch time. As a thank you gift to the volunteers working on their home the homeowners prepared lunch for us. It was so good! A tossed salad, a shrimp dish that was typical of New Orleans, rice, fried catfish, and fried chicken were placed on a makeshift table (a board between sawhorses.) After eating lots of food, they brought out two pans of chess pie. True southern hospitality!

After lunch we were back in the house applying the second coat of paint. We finished at about 3:30 that afternoon. Funny how a break and some food can make the afternoon go by so quickly! We couldn’t believe we were finished. I want to mention here that while we worked painting the inside of the house a team of volunteers from another denomination were making repairs to the outside of the house. By the end of the day, the house had a new look both inside and out. It was a very satisfying day of work.

The second day of work took us to the home of a family that fell through the cracks, so to speak. Before the storm they were renters. They didn’t have renters’ insurance so everything they owned before the storm was lost and they couldn’t replace it. What the storm did for this family was make it possible for them to buy a home. The home they purchased was damaged by flood water, but was being sold very cheap. They purchased it, but making repairs to it wasn’t going to be possible for a very long time. So to keep their family together and establish a life for themselves and their nine children they were living in a one car garage behind the house. The mom is a beautician; the dad is a security guard. Their oldest child, a twelve year old, is in charge of her younger siblings while work is in progress on the house. Again the house had been gutted and treated and now it was time for insulation and sheetrock. Here is something I learned about putting up sheetrock. It’s very hard work! I found that I was too short, even standing on a ladder to hold the sheetrock in place so someone else could put screws into the ceiling. I found myself watching an awful lot. I tried to make myself useful handing up drills and other tools to those on the ladders, but even then I didn’t feel like I did much for the effort. The team was working very hard while I watched the progress. By the end of the day about a third of the ceiling had been sheetrocked.

The hardest part about the trip is seeing the situation the families are trying to deal with. As a member of a team from Houston said, “They are suffering, but they have so much gratitude for the little work we are able to do.” The Houston team was so taken with the family with nine children they offered to “adopt” them. Their plan was to go back to Houston and raise money to purchase appliances for their home when it’s completed.

These trips are both physically and emotionally challenging, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for a weekend at the beach. That right there should speak volumes! If there is any way you can take one of these trips, I highly recommend it. You will learn something. You will probably appreciate your own home a lot more when you go back to it.

Do they still have summer?

I work.  I’ve been working my whole adult life. 

Recently someone said to me that her daughter will be getting married soon.  She said she needed to hurry up and enjoy the wedding preparations or it would be over and she will have missed it.  That’s exactly how I feel about summer.  I feel like if I don’t hurry up, summer will be over and I will have missed it.  I know it is only early May and there is lots of time before summer really gets here, but as I’ve already stated, I work.  I’m indoors all day every weekday.  I don’t have the luxury of sitting on the porch until 10:00 a.m. drinking coffee and listening to the birds sing. 

I don’t dislike my job.  In fact I like my job very much. However, my office is a room without windows.  Lots of cabinet space.  Lots of desk space.  No window.  I can’t see outside unless I get up from my desk and walk out into the garden on the other side of the building.  It’s frustrating because before the renovation of our building I had a window and a view of the garden.  Now that same window is in a vesting room and only used on Sunday mornings.  A wasted window to a beautiful view.

So I need to hurry up and enjoy summer.  Even before summer gets here, I want to start enjoying it.  The first thing I’m going to do is get my screen porch cleaned up.  I’m going to spend as much time outdoors as I possibly can this summer.  The past few summers I haven’t spent as much time outdoors as I would have liked.  This summer I’m going to enjoy it, before it’s over and I’ve missed it.

Some of you may not be aware that I work at my church. The work I did this past Saturday is not part of my paid employment at the church. It’s a true labor of love. Holy days at our church are a time to make our best offering to God.

It actually began on Good Friday when several of our parishioners went out and cut azaleas for decoration of the windows in the church. Most of them were cut from a parishioner’s mother’s home. She lives further south and her azaleas were in full bloom. They were transported by SUV to St. John’s. Several ladies spent hours prepping the stems. They are scrapped of bark and then split slightly to allow water to penetrate. Buckets of flowers were separated for the areas where they would be arranged.

Sarah, who is a florist by profession, is our resident expert. She gave us direction and then went to work on the altar arrangements. The buckets of flowers were brought in and placed where they were going to soon be arranged.

We, Mary Helen and I were tasked to flower garlands on the marble angels, the font, and the pulpit. This sounds like a simple task and to look at it you wouldn’t think it would be very difficult. The truth is it was very time consuming. We had to put each group of three flowers in a water tube. Then each tube had to be wired to the garland. If we had made arrangements in oasis we would have been done in two hours. As it turned out we started at 8:00 a.m. and didn’t finish until after 1:00 p.m. That is a long time!

While we were working in the sanctuary our rector’s wife, Mary Ward was working on bouquets for the brass angels in the chancel. Dora worked on a huge bouquet for the narthex.

When we finished the arranging our wonderful Mike cleaned up.

Here are the finished product pictures I hope you will enjoy.

And finally, our Sarah at the end of the day.

The rodeo was coming to town.  They come to Montgomery every spring.  They come in on horseback.  The high school bands meet them just outside of downtown and make a parade out of their arrival.

Amazingly they start their journey into Montgomery from our road.  There were two cowboys on horseback standing on our road right in front of our house.  Our dogs were losing their minds.  They were barking at a rate that would make you think there were monsters out front.

I was leaving for work when they were making their way down our road.  Now, you are probably wondering why there isn’t a picture to show of these modern day cowboys on our country road.  There’s a very simple answer.  Our camera is broken!  Can you believe it?  The moment when you really need your digital camera, it doesn’t work.  Everyone I’ve told this to says the same thing, “Did you put in fresh batteries?”  Well, that was our first idea.  The batteries are fresh.  The camera turns on but the picture is distorted.

Today we have a new camera.  My husband was showing it to me.  He said, “Here is how you turn it on.  Then you can take a picture.  That’s all I know so far.”  The camera is very nice.  I’m sure we will figure out how to use it, eventually.

I don’t like time changes. I wish they would pick a time and stick with it. I’ve heard all the arguments about how the days are now longer and it’s so nice to get home in the afternoon and still have lots of daylight. Well, wouldn’t there be daylight anyway?

I especially dislike the spring forward time change. My day felt so rushed. I would be working along and suddenly realize I was an hour past my lunch time. I came back from lunch to feel as though half my afternoon was already spent. I hardly got started on an afternoon project when it was time to go home.

I’ve also heard the argument that I will adjust. That’s true. I’ll get accustomed to this time. About 10 minutes before the “Fall Back” time change.

Y’all come back,

Fay

Have I mentioned that I love living in the country?  I really do.  It’s so much nicer than the city.  I don’t have the constant headlights shining on my bedroom windows, I haven’t had anyone drive their car over my mailbox, and I don’t have to listen to car alarms going off at 3 a.m.  It’s a nice quiet life.  I love it.

What do I hate?  The creepy crawly things.  The worst has been the ants.  Ants are insidious insects.  They get into everything.  If I see one ant, I call the exterminator.  He has to come out here very often.  It’s like if one ant finds its way onto my countertop within hours we will have ants galore!  They have some sort of telepathy that goes out to every ant in the county to know there were some miniscule crumbs on my kitchen counter.  The exterminator came out and laid a barrier around the inside walls of the house.  Did that stop them? NO!  They climbed the outside walls and got into the attic came down through the walls and out the electrical sockets. When I went to bed I had nice clean kitchen counters.  I woke up to an army of ants in my kitchen.  Currently, I think they are under control, but if I see one I will be on the phone to the exterminator!

The other thing I hate?  Black Widow Spiders.  I was cleaning the screen room last fall and I started to pull a chair away from the wall when I heard the sticky crackling noise of a Black Widow web breaking.  If you’ve never heard it, it’s a very creepy sound.  It has a sticky sound to it that if you hear it once, you’ll never forget it.  I quickly threw the chair down and there she was hanging to the back of the chair.  My fingers were so close to her, she could have easily bitten me.  I rewarded her for not biting me by not taking her life.  I dragged the chair out into the yard and sprayed her with the water hose until she was washed off onto the ground.  I didn’t want her on my porch, but I didn’t want to kill her either.

If you ever come to visit, I’ll get the exterminator to come out before you arrive.

Y’all come back!
Fay

We are packing to go play Flyball for the weekend. This is a task that has ups and downs. As soon as we bring the camper down to the house from it’s usual parking space, the dogs get excited. They know that it means we will be going away for a few days. However, the camper has issues. It’s an older model, but the RV mechanic tells us it really doesn’t matter. He says they all have issues. My husband tries to make sure everything works before we leave home. This morning he went out to check everything and discovered a leak. He had to go out and buy a hose to repair the leak. Now he has found the furnace won’t turn on. It’s still too cold at night to be without the heat, so he has taken the camper to the RV shop to see if they can get it to turn on.

If you have never owned an RV you can’t possibly know the frustration that goes along with owning one. It’s rare that we take it on a trip and don’t have a repair bill when we come back. The transmission went out while we were traveling to a tournament in Chattanooga. We had to find a place to spend in a small town. We were fortunate enough that weekend to have our truck with us. If we hadn’t we would have been stranded in the small town. We had to leave it there and travel back and forth to Chattanooga. A week later after the transmission was repaired we went back and brought it home. The last time we took it out the fuse box shorted out. We had to replace the whole thing and the wiring harness because they don’t make that fuse box anymore!

On the other hand, it’s so nice to have. You load everything in it and then you park it near the tournament site and live out of it for the next few days. The dogs are happy and the humans are comfortable. You can cook your own meals and sleep in a bed that you know you were the last person to sleep in it. Let’s face it folks, when you travel with 8 to 10 dogs nice motels aren’t exactly happy to see you coming. So you end up staying in a not so nice motel, which can be a little anxiety ridden. One time we stayed in a motel in Memphis. There were women standing around outside the motel. I suddenly realized they weren’t going to spend the whole night in the motel. Just an hour at a time! I think you will agree the RV with all it’s problems is so much more appealing.

“Do your dogs know they are playing a game?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that question. My answer is always a resounding, “Yes!” Of course they know they are playing a game and they know if they win or not. They may not care there are titles after their name, they may not care if they come in first place or not, but they know if they beat the dog in the other lane to the finish line. More importantly, they want to beat the dog in the other lane to the finish line!

It’s an interesting thing to watch. I’ve seen Jack Russell Terriers try to out run Border Collies. I’ve seen Border Collies look over their shoulder to make sure they have a strong lead on the dog in the other lane. Competitive nature is broader than just in humans. A friend of mine who rode horses in the show ring when she was younger tells me horses are very competitive. They know who their competition is and they try to out perform.

Here at home there is another type of thinking that is fun to see. We have a young Border Collie who we call Spike. When Spike was a younger pup he slept in a crate at night. Just before out alarm clock would go off in the morning Spike would start to “woof” in his crate. “Woof, woof, woof.” Not very loud. He only wanted someone to get up and let him out of the crate so he could go outside. It would work. Not long after he would start to “woof” my husband would get up and let him out. Spike is two years old now and it is no longer necessary for him to sleep in a locked crate. He is allowed to choose his sleeping space. On weekends when the humans want to sleep a little longer in the morning Spike has a hard time waiting for us to get up. Recently he has taken to standing inside the open crate and saying, “woof, woof, woof.” It worked a couple of times! My husband would get up and walk to the crate. I’d hear my husband say, “Get out of there!” A couple of days ago I heard Spike saying, “woof, woof, woof” and my husband sleepily said, “Stop it Spike, it’s not going to work.” My husband started to chuckle, I started to chuckle and Spike was standing next to the bed wagging. We got up anyway.

I haven’t posted to my blog for several days and I feel like I owe my faithful readers an explanation of where I have been.  I’ve been dealing with some minor health issues.  They won’t kill me, but they will make me change some things about my current lifestyle.  First of all, I joined a gym on my way home from work this afternoon.  I was under the impression that cleaning house and taking care of nine dogs was sufficient exercise for one person.  My doctor disagreed.  So I joined the gym.  Now, I don’t mind exercise.  In fact I kind of enjoy working out.  My reluctance is that I will be taking time for me when I would rather be spending it with my husband and my dogs.  It’s not as if I will be spending hours at the gym, just thirty minutes a day is all, but when the sun still sets pretty early, its thirty minutes of daylight I will burn indoors.

People have suggested that I walk or run.  I gave that some consideration for about five seconds.  Living in the country is wonderful, but people drive down our road at fifty-five miles an hour.  Walking or running on our road would be a lot more hazardous to my life than my minor health issues.  So, a nice safe gym is my choice.

I will probably be back posting as often as I can.  I don’t want my health to color my posts, so if I’m not feeling well, you won’t hear from me.  With a little exercise and a better diet it won’t take long for me to feel like my old self again.