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

Fat Again

I was not going to write about my weight anymore, but here goes.

We just returned from a two week vacation to Arizona. I am sick and tired. No wonder. We traveled an average of six hours a day by car. We ate junk at weird hours. I haven't eaten a minnie mart hot dog in years. I ate four of them during our various trips. Along with canned chips and gelato in a nifty clear plastic container. I gained ten pounds in ten days. And now I can't quit eating this fake food. I am craving it. Ersatz protein bars, i.e. candy bars have become my breakfast fare as we had a bunch of them left over and I am too cheap to throw then out. Ditto microwave bacon. Bacon. I can't believe I am eating bacon let alone nuked bacon. And hamburgers, and onion rings, and peanut butter shakes, oh my. This is madness.

I feel like I am a thousand years old. I look like a million. No pun. I am so swollen up my shoes don't fit and I am beginning to worry about my socks. It is the salt. I mean it is the salt I am craving. I have given way to sugar and fat in my sojourn off the wagon but have maintained the low salt intake pretty well. Not anymore. I dreamed about jerky the other night. Maybe if I get sick enough I will return to healthy eating. I ate a hand full of lettuce this morning straight out of the bag. It was marvelous. I think I have turned a corner. Hope so.

Take care, Bea

Off Brand Beauty

I hate spending money on beauty potions. They never work, and then I have this full bottle of stuff I spent a fortune on and am too frugal to throw out. I try to pawn the mirace cures off on friends but they have their own drawers full of failures and are reluctant to take on mine. What to do? I have recently started using the unliked products "off brand".

The lemon lightener face cream that broke me out is wonderful as hand lotion before bed. Smells great and I am telling myself it is lightening the brown spots on my hands. The body wash that made me itch is doing double duty as hand soap at the kitchen sink. The progesterone cream that didn't do a darn thing hormone wise is a nice light face cream. I am shaving my legs with the conditioner that weighed down my fine hair. Our shoes are fresh scented as a result of an asthma producing spray body powder. (I go outside to spray the shoes). I still haven't found a use for the numerous unopened lip glosses a friend sends me every Christmas. Ditto the numerous vitamins and supplements that give me heartburn. I did get a friend to leave the house with the high potency Biotin that gave me diarrhea. Biotin in high doses is supposed to keep your hair from thinning. The blackhead remover strips also work dandy as hair remover stips if glued to the upper lip. The peroxide toothpaste the dentist forbade me to use seems to work as blemish cream. I dab it on the pimple before bedtime and next morning, no pimple. And yes hemorrhoid cream smeared under the eyes does relieve puffiness. These are just a few of my off brand uses. My most major faux pas was prescription exfoliation cream. Cost me a hundred bucks for one little tube. It peeled my sensitive skin down to the bone. Was awful. That tortuous pricey cream sat in my medicine chest taunting me for five years before I found a use for it. I use it on my dry cracked heels. Works like a charm. I have the feet of a thirty year old.

If anyone has any other ideas for off brand use I am interested.

Next time, my homemade skin care products.

As ever, Bea

P.S. I am using the tinted sunscreen that made my face oily on my legs as a concealer for spider veins.

Justice

I was listening to a show on EWTN about birth control and abortion. The whole show impressed me but the part that stood out was when the host asked the guest what he thought would be the result of the thousands of abortions performed in this country since Roe vs. Wade. The guest very simply said, "euthanasia". Baby Boomers will be systematically killed off by the few children they allowed to survive. Good grief. Very Old Testament, an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.

The guest then went on to explain his reasoning, not enough young workers willing or able to support social security when all of us retire, not enough young workers to take care of us as we become infirm, a culture (creat/ed by us) that despises the non-productive and non-beautiful and last but not least a culture (also created by us) that approves expedient routine murder of the helpless.

I believe God is loving and forgiving. What I don't know, is He also just? This is going to keep me up nights.

Take care, Bea.

Faith Full

We have two cats. Both are rescue cats. Abby was younger when we rescued her. Still had two of her baby teeth. Maybe the age of rescue makes a difference. I don't know. She is certainly different from skittish old Whomper who was pregnant and starving when we found her thirteen years ago.

This morning I was having a crisis of faith. Does God love us? If He loves us why do we have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Is it just to teach us a lesson? Seems kind of sadistic.

Back to the cats. It was freezing here this morning. I had the heat turned down so it was not only cold outside but cold inside. The cats were chilly. I opened the curtains to let in some sun. Our sofa is right smack dab if front of a big picture window. It warms up first and fast. Abby was huddled in her basket, obviously cold. I picked her up and laid her on the sofa. She stretched out, took and abbreviated bath and was soon fast asleep. Whomper was also crouched in her basket. I attempted to pick her up. She tried to get away. I caught hold of her tail. She yowled and tried to scratch me. I did get hold of her but it was a struggle. As I walked toward the warm sofa she attempted to climb over my shoulder. She scratched my chest in the process and eventually jumped off my back. I gave up at this point. She went and hid under the bed in the totally unheated bedroom. There she remained for two hours while Abby snored in the sun. Whomper did finally come out but by then the sun was gone.

What was the difference between the two cats? Faith. Abby believed I had nothing but good in store for her and reacted accordingly. Whomper could have been living the life of Riley for the past thirteen years. We have tried to give her all the good things we could think of, but she seldom gets to experience the goodness of the gifts because she is so fearful. She does not trust us. She has no faith we mean her well. Every interaction is interpreted by her as sadistic. So, she freezes.

No surprise here, I am like Whomper. I lack faith. Turns out you can and should ask for it. Not a familiar concept for me. I thought you sort of had to gin it up on your own. Like positive thinking. Not very effective.

From this day forward I am asking straight out, "Please give me greater faith."

Amen. Bea.