Biblical Proportions

Last night while I was sitting on the sofa watching television a wet mouse staggered out from behind Husband's recliner and dropped dead in the middle of the carpet.  Had it drowned?

This summer the valley has been invaded by rodents.  I am talking a plague like invasion.  I half keep expecting frogs next.  No on in recent memory has seen so many nasty furry little creatures.  We have never had voles, chipmunks or squirrels.  One or two mice in the fall maybe but that is all.  Not this year.  Good grief.  Rumor has it that a woman down the road has killed 125 voles in her yard.  One hundred and twenty five.  The mind boggles.  We live about a mile from the forest edge.  The chipmunks and squirrels stay in the woods.  Not this year.  I am currently watching a squirrel raid my bird feeder.  Nobody in our little non-incorporated hamlet has ever seen a squirrel in "town".  The chipmunks have about driven me nuts.  They have eaten all my raspberries and strawberries.  Husband finally built a cage around the strawberries.  The uppity little things then sat on top the cage and chattered at me.  The voles invaded my flower garden and ate all my tulip and lily bulbs.  They also ate the roots of my old fashioned yellow rose by the front door and have I think killed it.  They are currently chowing down on the roots of the ancient lilac bushes.  I think they have met their match there.  We have railroad ties all around the front yard. They have tunneled under them.  It is like a vole subdivision. The neighbor has it worse than me.  Her son was talking a shower when she heard blood curdling screams.  Whole family raced to the bathroom to rescue the kid.  He was standing naked, dripping and pointing to the floor of the still running shower.  He was terrified.  He is twenty-two.  There in the shower bottom was a rat looking up at them and holding on to the inside of the drain grid for dear life. It had apparently come up through the plumbing.  That is impossible, they have a septic tank.  I hate them with a deadly hate that should shrivel them.

Back to the drowned mouse.  In addition to the biblical rodent invasion we are having biblical downpours.  We have an old house.  The foundation is cement and rubble.  Over time the cement has deteriorated leaving gaps in the rubble.  I think the mice are getting in through that.  I can't stand traps so I have poison bait all over the basement.  I think the mouse boated in, found the bait, ate it and came upstairs seeking medical aid.  Phooey.

And so it goes.

Rain

Long time no blog.  No time like the present to get started again.


It is pouring rain at the minute.  I need to be washing the bathroom walls but don't want to.  Friend coming to visit and she deserves to shower unencumbered by dog hair.  Dog sleeps in tub during thunderstorms.  I feel like I am living in a kennel with a flush toilet.  Maybe two large hairy dogs and two small hairy cats are too many for this small space.  Anyhow, I am not washing walls. 


Got a new tablet and have been playing around with it.  Much easier to use than this old monster.  I can't even get this old thing to turn on half the time.  Claims its start up program is corrupted.  Probably has athlete's foot also.  Oh well, can't afford a new one.


Okay off to shower (in my shower, the one not occupied by the dog) and get the car fixed.  Its engine light is on and won't go off.  I need a million dollars to fix all this ancient stuff. 


Toodles.

Off Again On Again

I many have been absent from here for almost a year.  Few external changes many internal changes.  Dogs are fine, cats are fine HB(HoneyBunny) is fine.   Mountain valley is full of snow. 


I am maturing.  About damn time some (me) would say.  I have been pondering my mental, spiritual and emotional age against my chronological age.  Very confusing, and humbling. 


This all started when a favorite nephew commented I hadn't changed in twenty years.  I was flattered and accepted the comment as a compliment.  But...was it?  Yes Nephew loves me and intended it to be a compliment, and, it unseated me.  Am I still as dumb as I was at 38?  Or 28?  Or, God forbid 18?  Sort of. Why?????


I do not learn from my sorrows, and they are legion, so I remain in a holding pattern.  This pattern is common to many baby boomers.  We have not had to intimately face war, famine, disease and death.  So we don't grow up.  Suffering grows you up.  But to suffer you have to lean into the pain.  This I have steadfastly refused to do.  I avoid feeling pain at all costs.  I obsess it away with whatever is to hand. I don't enter into suffering and my maturity is retarded.


If we let it agony strips away all of us and leaves God.  (This is the purpose of pain).  Not the rescuer God who will protect me from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but the I AM of Job and the Passion of Christ.  So...to grow up in Grace I am learning to feel my pain.  I am trying to not eat my way out of it, to not watch my way out of it, to not work my way out of it, to not read my way out of it, to not procrastinate my way out of it.  I stop what I am doing and lean into it as it washes over me.  Very frightening.  Surprise, surprise, God gives me the grace of courage to endure.  So I do.  Pain comes in waves.  It is not constant.  I didn't know that.  Way less scary to endure if you know you will have help and it will come to and end.  Until it comes again.


Take care, love Bea