Identify the Object

Know what this is?  It's a comb designed especially for cleaning lice and their nits out of a person's hair. It's a stainless steel one that will last a long time, and it has grips on the handles for when your hands get slippery and wet.  It is one of many small items that are needed and hard to get in Cambodia where I'm traveling in a couple weeks.  Who would ever have thought I would be so excited to get these and take them with me? 

I don't want you to think that everyone over there has lice or that average conditions are unsanitary - not so.  In Asia's Hope children's homes there are new children being added frequently and some of them have been living in pretty bad circumstances.  It can be difficult to keep little epidemics, like head lice, in check with so many people living together and sharing things like brushes, combs and hats. That's why there sometimes are shampoo parties when a group of us comes over. Having extra hands to get everyone done and lice free at once makes the job a lot easier for the house parents.

Another thing I took with me last year was children's vitamins.  They don't formulate them especially for children for some reason, and many times the kids arrive at Asia's Hope undernourished and needing supplements.  Most of the children at the two homes I help with look very healthy and happy and I think they eat pretty well compared to many in Cambodia (but I have to notice that NO ONE is overweight!) This year I have heard that my friend Sulang, who cooks for the kids in PE5, has a beautiful garden in the back yard of their house and has grown much produce for them to eat.

I'm getting excited about the trip and thinking about what I will take with me.  Can't wait to see all the changes that have been made this year and how the kids have grown. I have to say that this trip is certainly one of the highlights of my year.

Attitudes about Mondays

I don't always have the best attitude about going to work, especially on Mondays.  The weekend is just long enough for me to taste freedom but really too short in all other ways.  But it is important to be happy doing what I know I have to do. So, I end up asking God for what is really a miracle - that I would find a reason for enjoying my work, and that my attitude would change. I'm audacious enough to ask that there be some small but interesting evidence of the miracle that I can notice and get excited about.  I know that my attitude has changed when I start feeling thankful, not just in my head (my head knows that this job provides for me - a good thing) but also in my heart (I sincerely feel loved because of that provision). 

I still dream of what it would be like to be retired, to have enough time and money to go about doing good things and helping other people realize their potentials (I envy "Undercover Boss" his unique position).  But meanwhile I'll proceed to work this week and see how God wants to answer my request.  I figure He will.  He's given me a pretty unusual job in the first place and he's kept me at it for over three years, which is a minor miracle in itself. I have learned so much about patience, about boundaries,  about negotiation and compassion.  And even in the worst of times I have always felt useful and needed.  Those things are important to me and God knows me so well... this job he's given me never leaves me wondering whether I'm needed.

Off to bed now, wondering what interesting thing will happen tomorrow.

Eyes

Well, it seems that another part of me is giving up the fight.  And it's the part that the rest of my body had voted the most influential and likeable - my eyes.  I'm not going blind, but I am developing cataracts, and at a younger age than most people do. My doctor and I tried to figure out why this might be and couldn't come up with any real reason.  Back "in the old days" no one was warning about sun damage to skin or eyes like they do today. I thought sunglasses were more for decoration than necessity. I don't remember having any except one time when I got pink eye and needed to hide the scariness of it. I suppose I could have gotten more exposure than was good for me.

So I heard it mentioned that a cataract was starting a year or so ago but I couldn't tell. There was nothing I was told to do about it.  And then just lately, in the last couple of months, I have noticed that I was squinting to focus when reading. Every word would have a shadow of itself which made it look fuzzy. My eyes would get tired quickly and it wasn't fun to read.  But the interesting thing was that the problem was only when I was wearing my contacts, not when wearing my glasses. And this is why - the cataract that is worst is in my right eye, the one that is designated as my reading eye.  I have monovision contacts with the left contact correcting my far vision and the right eye correcting my near vision.  When I look at things through my contacts, my brain decides to see only the clearest image from whichever eye sees it and ignores the other.  So with contacts the only eye capable of seeing close things was starting to be affected by the cataract.  With glasses both eyes see far and near.

Now I have switched from monovision contacts to ones that do the same corrections that my glasses do. They transition from far to near in each eye. And the good news is that even though I'll probably need cataract surgery in the next three years, after I have it,  I won't need glasses at all.  That is truly amazing.  I've always hated wearing glasses.  I can hardly wait.

The Visit

Last night as I was falling asleep I had some really good thoughts to put on my next post and I went over them several times in my mind rather than getting up and writing them down.  It didn't work so well. I can't remember them.  I was thinking on the subject of Esther and Jonathan's visit over the holiday.  We don't really get to see each other very often and don't know whether we are going to feel like strangers or kin when we do get together.  It's a very natural phenonmenon that after ten years of marriage and living on their own away from either of their childhood homes, they would have developed their own family culture (aaaaagh - they/ve become coffee snobs!). In some ways Esther is still the person I remember and in other ways she is someone else that I need to get to know.  All this to say that I think we both had a degree of anxiety and wanted our time together to be everything good that it could be. 

And it was good for me.  I would say that the only regret  I have is that the time was short - and that couldn't be helped. There are people on both sides of their family in this area and Jonathan had not seen his sister for years and needed to spend time with her as well.  My good memories of the visit are: watching Jonathan work on the quilt while watching Moonshiners (not his choice of show), Esther with pumpkin pie in front of her almost constantly, sitting around the front door at night talking, hugs in various places, walking the beach and the River Walk, reading Amichai poems and old journal entries, listening to car talk about jobs and life in Seattle, the sacrificial 6:30 am goodby time,  and the hugs. Did I mention I loved the hugs?

I love you Jonathan and Esther. Thanks so much for coming.

Time Off

I remember last week looking at the date of my last post and thinking that it had been a whole week since I'd written.  I didn't feel any guilt at that time because the purpose of my having a blog is not to produce guilt. I have to watch out for that because guilt is not a good thing and most of the time it's completely unnecessary.  Now it's been about two weeks since I've written and I have double the reason to feel guilty of neglect, but I still don't.  I'm going over all of this hoping to encourage anyone who is feeling burdened by the demands of communicating.  It's a good thing to never give up on communication but get back to it whenever you can.  Having not done it for two weeks I should have plenty of things to write about. It will be fun to think about the events of the Thanksgiving season as I record them.



Family cojes to visit



This was not the first thing we did but since I have pictures of it I will write about our horse time up at the Gainesville farm.  We picked up Esther and Jonathan at the Tampa airport and went up to Julie's house Thursday night.  Julie had their tent set up for them in the yard and they were determined to sleep out there even though it was pretty chilly by Florida standards. They probably didn't sleep too well until morning when it warmed up a bit. So it was about noon when we finally started petting horses and watching them eat in the yard.  The five horses wandered around,  looking for grass and didn't mind us being in their midst at all.  It's a unique experience to be surrounded by such big animals and all that munching noise. 



It's not hard to catch them all in the same pose





Did you ever get the urge to kiss a horse? (Me neither)

But it is even more fun to ride them and our afternoon ride through the preserve was absolutely perfect. There was no stampeding, no unruliness, no bad attitudes, and the horses were really good too. Juie was the ultimate trail guide and even had supper ready in the crock pot when we returned.  We totally enjoyed our time there and it was DIFFICULT to leave Saturday morning.



Tess, the vigilant farm dog



Julie and Sheepie demonstrating proper sheep holding technique.

The Well-travelled Pie

I am in the process of using things from my freezer so I can restock with newer, fresher things. I was looking in there last week and taking out some food I thought might be used for the week and for Thanksgiving dinner.  I found a box of frozen pie crusts and a loaf of bread and some English muffins. Actually while searching for the bread I spent some time organizing all my bread products and needed to set the pie crusts down while doing that. The freezer is in the garage and my Aztek is parked about a yard from the freezer door so I just reached up and set them on top of the car - the floor is too dirty.
Yes, several hours later in church, the husband who had driven separately from a different location said to me "I parked next to you. Why do you have pie crusts on top of your car?"
"Well," I said, "I'm going to make pies and I'm thawing the crusts. They were frozen."
"Okay," he said, "I put them in my truck so no one would take them."

That was my first Thanksgiving faux pas. The second one, and again it's that freezer that's getting me in trouble, is that I find out at 11 pm the night before that I have no butter.  The freezer is usually full of butter! I love butter and I never want to run out. Since the freezer is getting rather empty it was easy to search every shelf and there was no butter. Now I will have to be one of those terrible people who goes looking for a grocery store that's open on Thanksgiving. Aaaaaaaagghhhg!

But there is no chance that the turkey will not get done tomorrow, because it has been cooked tonight. I was taking no chances. All of my guests tomorrow were also present two years ago when we waited on dinner for over an hour because the turkey wouldn't cook. It never did get done. We had lots of other food and no one went hungry, but no turkey?!  It was surreal and supremely embarrassing, and evidently very memorable because they all have fun reminding me of it.

So this year I want to be known for something else and we'll see what it will be. Maybe the well-travelled, church going pie.

Officially Thankful

As of 12 noon today I am on Thanksgiving vacation!! I am already mentally enjoying it even though there is work to do. I feel excited and relaxed at the same time, how can that be? The morning was rigorous and ended with me packing hundreds of bags and suitcases into my employer's van (slight exaggeration) and sending her and her helpers to Myrtle Beach for their own Thanksgiving vacation. I am off work until next Wednesday and already the time is going way too fast. 

Tonight I go fetch the kayaks. Tomorrow I get to bake and smell wonderful stuff in the kitchen. These things are fun and fun is good. #so#thankful.


Okra and sunflowers for the table