25 Trivial Facts

The latest rage on Facebook is to list 25 random facts about yourself. Here's my offering:


I feel like a sheep doing this 25-things business, BUT I was tagged, so therefore I have to do it, because 1. I have the same curse as Ella Enchanted. If someone tells me to do something, no matter how stupid, I am compelled to obey. (Not that this is so stupid, you understand)
2. I am a bit ADD. Which is why you'll find 25 half-finished projects around my house at any given time. And I can't sit still in church.
3. I remember bad times more than good times.
4. I love going to other countries and have been to Poland, Yemen, Kenya, and Mexico. And I lived in Canada for 8 years.
5. If I had another life to live I would be a travel writer.
6. I am addicted to tea...black tea...especially Kericho Gold black tea from Kenya, although PGTips from England is good also. Nothing starts off my day like black tea.
7. I am also addicted to fabric. I like to fold it and feel it and look at it, even if I don't get around to using it. I have too much fabric but I can't get rid of it because it makes me happy just to have it. Oh, and pens too. Cool pens that are pretty and smooth and just the right heft make me very happy. If I don't have a pen with me I feel panicky and frightened.
8. If I had a third life to live, I would own a fabric store. Actually, I might be able to fit this into my current life if I live long enough.
9. According to this one test I took, my spiritual gifts are knowledge, teaching, and mercy.
10. I teach Sunday school and take in newborn lambs, otherwise I don't think I use my spiritual gifts much.
11. I love public speaking.
12. But I sometimes panic when I have to talk to people one on one, especially chitchat, like with the checkout lady.
13. I have a very soft voice. People cannot hear me, so often when I get up my nerve and say something to the checkout lady, she can't hear me. At least 25% of P.A. systems are worthless, especially if the audience is over 70 years old. Ordering at a drive-through is a trial for me. I have to lean out the window and holler for all I'm worth.
14. My sisters and daughters are my best girlfriends and I feel very sorry for women who have neither.
15. I have a lot of regrets and I don't do very well at forgiving myself.
16. I'm always surprised when people actually read what I write and I can't figure out why anyone would bother, but then when someone unsubscribes from my blog feed, I'm offended.
17. I am good at memorizing. The children say that I can pull out a Bible verse for every occasion, and that their dad can be reading scripture aloud and I will catch his mistakes from memory. I also know everyone's phone number. But I cannot remember where I parked the car at Costco.
18. I notice people's teeth first.
19. I like pictures and knicknacks of chickens and cats.
20. Sometimes I am oblivious to what's going on around me, and sometimes I sense so precisely what's going on, unseen, that it's almost creepy.
21. People always think I had an idyllic childhood because I was Amish. I don't get the connection. I actually had a sad childhood.
22. I like to be around people who make me laugh. I don't care how different they are from me otherwise--just make me laugh and I'm your friend.
23. I hate shopping at malls. I like shopping at garage sales.
24. I think my husband is the best--guy, preacher, husband, dad, teacher, the works.
25. I want to live to be 103 like my grandma.

Mrs. Smucker Sets the Trend

I take a perverse pride in not following the current decorating fashions. If I tried, I would find it endlessly frustrating, so I might as well take pride in being behind the times. I never had geese with blue bows around their necks; I wanted blue in my living room long after everyone else had moved on to taupe and black, and I still love my mauve and hunter green quilt.

And I don't have any vinyl cut-out words on my walls.

However, I recently discovered that in one small area I am way ahead of the curve. It all began several years ago when I found out that Paul's brother John and his wife Laura, who live in Poland, like to collect old hardcover books, so I pulled some off our shelves and gave them to John and Laura.

They were very grateful and wanted to pay me. I said no. However, they had told me about an area of Poland where the people make interesting pottery, so I told them they can get me an equivalent-value piece of pottery sometime, something to hold my wooden spoons and such in.

So the next time a nephew went to visit, they sent me this:

I have loved that pitcher ever since.

Now, fast forward a few years, and I was at Costco before Christmas and something caught my eye: a large display of Polish pottery! A young man stood there explaining how it comes from this one area of Poland, it's such high quality, it's hand painted, it's the Next Big Thing in kitchenware, etc etc.

Then I was at the Dayton Farmers Market in Virginia and again a display of Polish pottery caught my eye, this time in a little shop full of all manner of the kinds of cute and funky things that I buy ten years later at garage sales.

And of course on both occasions I smiled smugly at the thought of my lovely Polish pitcher at home and how, for once, I had been at the very cutting edge of home fashions.

Next thing you know, silver egg salt and pepper shakers from Yemen will be all the rage.

Quote of the Day:
"I don't know if they're engaged in the broad sense of the word or the narrow sense of the word."
--a friend of mine, about some modern young people

To Amy and Emily

Your little sister Eowyn misses you.

Sergers

As I mentioned not long ago, Emily is moving, she likes to sew, and she needs a serger, an obvious sign from God that I should give her my old serger and upgrade.

So I went shopping on Craigslist and today I bought a White Speedylock 1600 from a woman who had bought it, used it once, and put it away because she was afraid of it, it was so complicated. Oh how I love people like this, and Craigslist.

I set up the serger on the kitchen table. It purrs like a kitten and has lots of lovely features, such as a differential feed and free-arm option. It's easy to thread, and the tension is easy to adjust.

Then after supper I went to my sewing room to pack up my old serger for Emily. And suddenly I was awash in nostalgia and guilt, like I was sending a faithful old horse off to the dog-food factory.

I got that serger, a Toyota, in Minneapolis at a JoAnn Fabrics, back when I was pregnant with Emily. I had saved up my pennies for a long time, and then one slushy March Paul and I left Matt and Amy with my folks at Grove City and drove to the big city and bought this lovely new machine.

It went to Weagamow Lake with us that fall, then back to Dryden three years later, then to Oregon. In the last 18 years it has sewed bazillions of little dresses and t-shirts and pants and pajamas and jackets and aprons and bags and blankets. I've had my moments with it, especially with threading that bottom looper, but overall it has been a faithful and true servant.

And now I'm upgrading to something much better, so I shouldn't really be this sad, should I? But I am. Take good care of it, Emily. Give it an extra scoop of oats for me now and then.

On Facebook

I enjoyed this literary look at Facebook.

" Facebook is now officially open to oldsters."

and

"The poet (and Friend) Troy Jollimore compares the Status Update to an epitaph, and notes that “we might think of one’s epitaph as the very last status update.”"

Meanwhile, my young friend qwertle says:

"my xanga is getting abandoned in favor of facebook."

I think this is happening a lot, and that makes me sad.

A Recipe

Double J on the trail

Ingredients:
1. Cinnamon Shredded Wheat cearel
2. M and M's
3. Petzels
4. Peanuts
5. Rasins

Mix in large bowl
Eat and Enjoy

--Jenny and Janane

I Kid You Not

Today I read this caption under a photo illustrating a USA Today article:

Beverly Mills, right, and her husband Michael are shown at their home in Sherrills Ford, N.C., on Thursday. Michael Mills greeted his wife at the airport in Charlotte, N.C. the day after she survived US Airways Flight 1549's crash into the icy Hudson River with red roses.

All right, class, can anyone find the misplaced prepositional phrase in this example?
Yes, thank you, it would be those red roses, wouldn't it?
But don't worry, because even if you fail 8th grade English, you can still write for USA Today when you grow up.

If you think I made this up, check it out here.

A Sad Story

Subdued and quiet, we glance at each other—“Is he. . .? “ A quick shake of the head, “I don’t think so. It won’t be long.” I gently ask the red-eyed child the necessary questions. “If it dies, do you want to have a funeral or shall we just take it outside and take care of it?” “Just take care of it,” she says bravely. The child goes upstairs and cries, then comes down. “Can you go see. . .?” she squeaks. Yes, it's time. I pull on plastic gloves and go to the back hallway. I palpitate the black bundle. It is stiff and unyielding. “He’s gone,” I tell the child. She runs out for a last brave glance and then dashes upstairs, blinking tears, needing to be alone. Later she says, with a deep breath, “Knowing it might die was the worst. Not knowing if it would or wouldn’t. That was the worst.”

*****************************************

First of all, Homer is fine, he of the boisterous baaing and hungry bottle-sucking and happy galloping out into the chickens’ yard.

So since he has worked out so well, maybe we should get some more bummer lambs, reasoned He Who Likes to Take On Ambitious Projects.

He purused Craigslist. Hey, an ad for bummer lambs! He called. $15 each, or two for 20. “How many shall we get,” he asked, “Seven?”

“We. Are. Not. Getting. Seven. More. Lambs,” announced She Who Dumps Cold Water on His Ambitious Ideas.

How about five? Two total per child? Ok, fine I guess. We’ll get them after school

I brought Jenny, She Who Feels Everything Deeply, home from school today. But first we had to stop at Ketchams, where I had to talk to Elona, a long and delightful conversation filled with mutual empathy, and oh, the torture for the poor impatient child, who had to wait through laborious paragraphs about chronic illness and all the challenges thereof, while she yearned to go home and get those lambs.

Oh, but we were not finished. Then we had to stop at the post office and have a conversation with Hope, whom I never see, again filled with empathy and understanding, about mold allergies and having one’s big daughters out of the house and far away, tsk tsk, it is hard. Oh, the torture of waiting, surely far worse than anything these talkative moms suffer.

Finally, finally, we got home, and gathered the supplies and Paul and Jenny and Steven, He Who Loves All Animals But Gets Lazy About Feeding Them, went off to fetch the lambs.

It turned out that the lamb people were the same ones who have sheep out here by our house, and from whom we got Homer, and who have flocks and herds like Abraham must have had. Well! They offered the lambs for free since they use our water all summer. How generous of them. But only four lambs, because Sarah didn’t think the fifth one would last the night. "The others should be ok," she said. "We have never lost a lamb," said Paul. "You’re very lucky," said Sarah.

So soon I had four lambs in my kitchen in plastic totes. Three white and one black. Four lambs who were the most pathetic-looking specimens I had ever seen in all our years of raising lambs. Limp, sad, quiet; two of them runny with diarrhea. No baaing, no scrambling to get out of the totes, no nosing around for milk.

Jenny, oblivious to their state, decided the black one was hers and fell in love with it as only Jenny can fall instantly in love. [She is not going to EBI until she's 25] She went around in a happy daze, making a list of possible names when she was supposed to be setting the table. “Pierre, Elli, Nibbles, Mistrey, Midnight, Frosty…”

We moved the lambs to the bathroom, turned on a heater, and began to give each other looks like What Have We Gotten Ourselves Into? Jenny decided her lamb was Nibbles.

After supper Jenny went to give her lamb some love and attention, and wept horrified tears when it didn’t respond.

They ate only a few sips of milk at 7:00.

We moved them close to the back door. It all got worse and worse. The stillness, the smells, the hopeless despair, the daughter’s tears, the dark thoughts about the people who gave them to us.

And then I checked Nibbles, and he was gone.

Another one is unlikely to make it till morning.

But the other two ate a little bit and are commencing a weak baaing, just enough to keep us awake half the night.

Poem by Jenny

Caring and loving
Tender and soft
I love my mother
Even though she just coughed

(Actually, my cough is getting much better and I am feeling much improved. Thanks for all the prayers and sympathy and good wishes.)

QOTD About Facebook

"There's a direct correlation between understanding what goes on here on facebook and the amount of time you have to actually spend online, so it's probably better not to admit you know very much about it. If you want to seem like you have a life."
--Hillary, my niece, after I told her I don't understand 75% of what goes on on FB