Heat, Heat, Heat

Well, I’m here. I am in Texas. And I’m glad the trip is over with. Not because anything happened – I had no trouble at all – but because two days in a car is exhausting. And boring. And leaves lots of time to think about how you could be spending those hours doing something profitable.

I left home Thursday morning around 7:30. It was hard to leave. I couldn’t help wondering what in the world I think I am doing. The drive from Indiana to Illinois was uneventful. Flat fields, soy, corn – nothing to look at. Illinois wasn’t much better, except it’s just fields and not much corn.

Then I came to Missouri. First is St. Louis, which I drove almost all the way around and so saw the Arch at every possible angle. They don’t make it easy to drive and look in the city, though. The lanes were narrow and bordered with concrete on both sides. But I managed to look some.

Missouri is a bit more scenic. It has hills. It has trees. It also has dead armadillos on the sides of the road. (I hadn’t realized they lived that far north.) I stopped in Joplin that night, just east of the Oklahoma border. I arrived about 4 in the afternoon, now in Central time. I was glad, for I changed into my swim suit, went down to the indoor pool and swam laps. No one else was there except a few kids that came in for a short time but whose mother took them to the outside pool because it was warmer. I liked the cold, and it felt so good to work out all my stiff limbs. Afterwards I grabbed a bite to eat and flipped through channels. There wasn’t much to watch, but I did get the remote to myself so I could flip as slow or as fast as I wanted to.

The hotel was quite large with a convention center and everything, and the convention of the day had something to do with corvettes. I think it was just starting because I saw only a dozen the day I arrived. More arrived that morning, and I met some on the interstate heading in that direction. Nice cars. And in all colors: white, orange, yellow, silver, blue, purple with yellow streaks, and every shade of red imaginable.

I left the hotel a little after ten and was in Oklahoma within a half hour. Oklahoma is one of those places where it’s really hard not to stereotype a race of people. They practically ask for it with their license plates picturing Indians. I thought about counting casinos today, but I refrained. I probably saw a dozen, but I saw billboards for fifty more. You drive through that state and you see signs reading, “You are now entering Kickapoo Nation” as if we should expect cowboys and Indians dashing about with bows and arrows and guns. I didn’t see any of that, but I did get a new concept of the “Trail of Tears”. Who wouldn’t cry if they left their homes of beautiful mountains and tall trees to plain rolling hills where trees refuse to grow very high or very dense?

A very small part of Oklahoma as you enter Texas – called the Arbuckle Mountains – is somewhat scenic. It looks like the movies you see of the old west, except its more scenic heading north than heading south as I was today. Then you hit Texas: flat, treeless, hot and full of concrete and people the closer you get to Dallas. Yet these people love their state (or should I say country?). You can feel their pride the moment you cross the border and see the state (or country) flag waving everywhere – sometimes on equal standing with the American flag. (Which, by the way, is legal in Texas. It’s allowed because Texas was once – or still is? – a nation itself.) Texas. I felt like I did thirteen years ago when I crossed that border and it was 100 degrees – I wanted to turn around and head to someplace cooler.

But I am here. And I am here to stay for a time…although I haven’t unpacked yet. I’ll get to rest a little bit this weekend, and then I start work on Monday. It’s a little overwhelming. But that’s good. It reminds me of how much I need to trust my God. He has seen me thus far…I know He isn’t leaving me now.

Unofficial Holidays, Part 4 of 6

Everyone grab a long stick, a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and a package of chocolate. Oh, and someone needs to build a camp fire. Why? Because today is national S’mores Day!

Ever since the Girl Scouts included the first s’mores recipe in their 1927 handbook, this popular campfire treat has been the delight of millions. And it has a million different varieties.

At our house, it is most popular to set a square graham cracker with a couple a rectangles of a Hershey chocolate bar (dark or regular – the creator’s preference) near the fire to soften the chocolate while the marshmallows are toasted. (Of course, on a hot day the chocolate will melt itself.) Everyone in the family has a different degree of toasty-ness, but when the one or two marshmallows are ready, we slide them onto another graham crackers, sandwich the two together and ENJOY!

Now, if William is at our house, he gives us a ten-minute lecture on the correct way to make s’mores and how one day he is going to write a book on the subject. Then some people have tried a s’more with chocolate chip cookies instead of graham crackers. And when some of us were real young, we’d do it in the microwave!

Believe it or not, there are already books written about s’mores. At our library there is one called “Gourmet S’mores”. Think s’mores with apples and caramel, turtle s’mores, coffee s’mores, and s’mores with Snickers, Crunch Bars or your favorite candy bar. The possibilities are endless.

So, today on S’mores Day, see what varieties you can come up. Or just enjoy the “old-fashioned” way – for some things just don’t need to be improved upon.

Scenes from my Week

˜ I’ve heard praise and chorus songs in church spoken of as many things, but a friend calling them “7-11” songs was a new one. What does that mean? You know: songs when the same 7 lines sang 11 times over and over again.

˜ This week when Mom told us we would leave the house around ten to go to the used bookstore, Caleb responded, “Why so early?” He’s slept in until eleven or twelve almost every day this week.

˜ Jenny finished Algebra 2 this week – and Mom went out and bought an ice cream cake to celebrate. Not for Jenny. For Mom.

˜ I’ve been meticulously cleaning my room and packing, for I leave on Thursday. I’m taking maybe a tenth of what I own, and yet I already wonder from the piles in my room if I’m taking too much. It’s only when you pack that you realize how much you truly own!

˜ I became a one-handed basketball player this week. It is possible, but catching and shooting are encumbered a bit. I jammed my left ring-finger pretty well when I went up for rebound. This morning it is still swollen, stiff and a bit bruised around the middle.

˜ I think I got most of the “important” things done this week in preparation for my move, but I still have a list of odd things to do and purchase before I leave. And the list is getting longer before it gets shorter…

˜ Keep me in your prayers. I’m not really nervous or anxious about this. I asked the Lord for peace when I made the decision, and He has answered that prayer. But I know there are many things ahead I have no idea about. (Innocence is bliss!) Mostly that I adjust to a full time job and the heat. I find a good church where I can grow, serve and make friends. And my grandfather and I learn to live with one another quickly. And any number of other things that flitter across my mind, but just pray that the Lord goes before me and makes my way straight.

Today we went to our first used bookstore in Indiana. We had seen a sign for it once and I heard about it at my writer’s group. Being a family of avid books shoppers, we couldn’t pass such a thing up, now could we? So, off we went.

We weren’t sure what time it opened, and we arrived a half hour before it did but the man very kindly opened for us anyhow. He asked each of us if he could help us find something, but as we’re all browsers we said no thanks.

It wasn’t a huge store. Long, but just one floor. It had a fair share of books. I think the most interesting part about it was the bookseller.

The man was probably in his fifties. I don’t know how long he’s been in the business, but when we all came up with lots of purchases off the dollars shelf (or six for five dollars and so I added Abby’s to my pile – I got five really old books out of the deal, one even signed by the author for less than a dollar a piece!) he told us that when he was a kid he loved the dollar shelves in bookstores because that was all he could afford. So, he determined he would always have a dollar shelf (or half a wall of them as the case may be). He asked if we were from the area. We told him we had moved here in November. He asked from where. We told him New Hampshire. Then he went on and on about the wonderful used bookstores that are found in New England. He followed this up with a history lesson:

When the Puritans came to New England, all of them were literate. And, as they took education very seriously, they taught the following generations to read. Descendents of those men and women followed the Great Lakes west, settling around them. Up there, you can find some really nice used bookstores. However, those who settled middle Indiana and south were from a little of everywhere. Most came to hunt, farm and fight Indians. They were not literate. What need had they to read? Because of that, used books in the middle and southern parts of Indiana are very rare.

I had never thought much about the literacy of the American people, for America has always had a very high literacy rate and I take the ability to read for granted. But isn’t it interesting that even reading and books have left a mark on our history?

Dog Days of Summer

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette and the 50th anniversary of the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine, these two establishments and many other sponsors from around the city of Lafayette have created the “Dog Days of Summer”. Forty-one artists gathered to create forty-one statues of dogs which were then scattered about Lafayette and West Lafayette. Today, my family split up into two teams and went on a scavenger hunt.

Thanks to vandals, about six of the dogs have been completely removed from the streets. The others have been moved into shop windows, lobbies, and the Art Museum itself. This made the hunt a bit difficult (not to mention taking pictures of the ones in store windows). But altogether, we achieved in finding thirty-one of the dogs. And we had a couple hours of one-way streets, circling blocks half-a-dozen times, impatience and fun. We ended it all at Culvers for frozen custard.

All of the dogs are creative and artistic. They’re unique, too, and many of them have very cute names. It’s quite hard to choose which ones to post here on my blog, but I limited myself to five. (And, no, I did not choose the one supporting Obama – too bad a vandal did get a hold of that one!)

“It’s a Dog Eat Dog World”

"Rosie T. Mayor"

(hint: the mayor of Lafayette is named Tony Roswarski)

"Pluto"

(my personal favorite)

“News Hound”

“Noah”