COMMON MATTERS

Pondering Pits and Peppermint

Sometimes I have things pop in my head that I really don't want to write about.  Most writers follow their muse where it leads till it finds its destination.  When blogging, I tend to follow my muse to my own detriment.  It drives me off a cliff quite often.  After three years of reading my column here (that is, if you have read it), you already know I have this rambling style of "telling all"-- of bearing my heart, soul and mind.  When I get my copy of The County Times and read what I wrote in the wee hours of the morning, or on-the-fly before Monday's deadline, I can get a bit queasy.  I wind up eating the closest thing to me to quell the rolling and rumbling in my stomach.  This brings another thought to mind:

About a year ago, I vowed to lose 50 pounds.  I lost 3.  That's three puny, pitiful pounds.  When I write all day long, I tend to forget to eat.  I find that writing is a great diet plan; coffee is my staple.  I get distracted and before I know it, breakfast time has turned into lunchtime.  You'd think as much as I blog, write, read, and study, that I'd be a skinny-minnie.  Not the case.  Distractions only curb the appetite--they don't eliminate it.  This is true of my little granddaughter, Kinsey.  When she visits she wants to eat non-stop.  If we are watching cartoons or Nannie McPhee, she wants to nibble, snack, and munch the whole time.  If she gets bored with an activity, she wants something to eat. So I came up with a bevy of ideas to keep her busy when she and her sister are visiting.  This past week, I taught them how to do leaf-prints on canvas.  They didn't ask for anything to eat the entire two hours we explored for leaves outside, prepared the table for painting, picked their paint colors, practiced on cardboard, and then created lovely art renderings to display.  They didn't go to the pantry, or open the fridge.  Ironically, neither did I.  If only I could paint, write, and keep my fingers picking pits out of peaches, plums, and cherries, instead of spreading peanut butter and marshmallow fluff on white-bread, I'd get a handle on the handles around my waist.  So now I'm pondering peppermint. 

My husband read a tidbit in Saturday's newspaper about peppermint.  Seems someone, somewhere, did a study and discovered some folks who sniff peppermint every two hours will not be as hungry as non-sniffers.  How 'bout that?  Maybe there really is something to this aromatic therapy.  After all, they also discovered that folks who sniffed peppermint every two hours, ate 28-hundred less calories in a week.  I pondered that a bit and thought about Beth Moore's book, Get Out Of The Pit.  Her book made me realize my "pit" was comfort eating.  Kinda like Kinsey's boredom eating.  When I read Beth's book a year or so ago, I decided to climb out of my "pit" and lose 50 pounds in the process.  I failed miserably.  Now I'm pondering this peppermint study and wondering if burning peppermint candles every couple of hours will actually divert my attention from food.  You see, I love peppermint.  I make the most scrumciously delicious peppermint cake.  I also love peppermint rounds.  Makes me wonder if all this sniffing could tempt me to pop peppermint patties in my mouth, non-stop.  If that occurs, then I'll need to sniff peppermint 24/7 to lose 28-hundred calories a week.  Lord, help me.  I can't control my hunger anymore than I can my muse.

It's So Hot in Oklahoma

I heard it's so hot that chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs and ice is worth more than gold. Well, it's not quite that hot. But it sure is mighty uncomfortable. And also extremely dangerous. I'll explain.

Many folks are losing electricity because grids cannot handle the need for all the electricity to cool homes. Air-conditioners are breaking down in record numbers. To contend with heat, we seek those things which cool us down. Air-conditioned buildings, and transportation. More treats from Carnival Ice. Cooler meals which do not call for oven-cooking. To endure the constant heat, we keep a fan going along with our air-conditioning.

Was it this hot when pioneers traveled in covered wagons? Or before air-conditioning was invented? Wonder what they did to keep cool? If it was as hot as it is now, I don't see how opening a window would do much. Fans, yes. Would say that they were a necessity. I remember a time when fans were simply cardboard attached to sticks, each propelled by a human's hand to create a waft of air. That's hardly enough for me these days. I can't stand to even breathe this air. Speaking of air; I think I came close to blowing up my Prius this past week due to the hot air build-up in Oklahoma City.

It was 104 degrees out. Hubby and I went to OKC to purchase some concrete stain and sealant for our floors in the house we're building. Our plan was to meet some friends from Kentucky at the Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. We arrived an hour too early so after getting the sealant and stain, we parked outside the restaurant, put some quarters in the meter and decided to go walk along the Bricktown waterway a bit. After about twenty-minutes of that, I was not only overheated, my back was killing me from walking. So I told hubby I wanted to go back to our car and wait in the air-conditioned vehicle. When I opened the door, it smelled like a massive vat of kerosene. I choked on the fumes. We quickly rolled down all the windows and turned on the air. I told my husband as we sat waiting for the fumes to dissipate, that it's a good thing we don't smoke. Had I opened that door with a lit cigarette, it would have exploded on the spot.

As it was, we were able to air it out enough after 10 minutes, that we could run the air-conditioning with the air being drawn from outside the vehicle and cooled off as we waited for our friends. During dinner we cracked our windows to let the fumes escape. It wasn't till yesterday afternoon that my daughter told us that our sealant had a "flashpoint" of 105 degrees. In other words, we are pretty doggone blessed that our Prius didn't explode when we got back from our quick walk around Bricktown. Our car had to have been cooking up temps of over the 104 degrees it was on the streets of Oklahoma that day. Had we not returned when we did, the ATF would probably have been tracking us down to see why we put a bomb in our car. We had no idea that the three completely sealed 5-gallon buckets of sealant were that volatile.

Ignorance is not always bliss, folks. I'm am ever grateful that I was feeling too hot and too impaled by back pain to continue walking around Bricktown while we had a potential bomb in the hatch of our car. Had we lingered...well, it's just great that God works in marvelous ways, don't you think?

A Cache of Ideas and A Bit of Advice When the Dryer Won't Dry

Sometimes we have problems that could potentially cost us big bucks.  Like broken dryers, dishwashers, etc.  When my car breaks down, I have to see a mechanic.  Car-fixin' is not on my husband's resume.  Neither is decorative design.  He often says he is totally satisfied with what I do to decorate the home as long as I don't move the bed.  Basically, he's yielded the decor to me--even fru-fru.  It just doesn't matter.  Almost.

Since we've been working on downsizing, he has pooh-poohed a few of my ideas for our new living space.  He is no visionary.  It needs to be drawn out and pictures shown or mini-exhibits made to show him what I'm talking about.  If I change my mind about some tiny particular thing, he gets all frustrated because his mind has already captured the first picture and solidly nailed it into his mental membranes to give me my heart's desires.  He gets a bit freaked out when he sees the specific color of blue I want if I don't add the accessories which tame down the turquoise (yes, turquoise) that creates an ambiance of peace and tranquility.  He's an earth-tones man.  And for the most part, so am I.  He's practical.  I'm impractical.  He's staid and steady.  I'm flighty and fanciful. 

So when I decorate, I try to keep him in mind.  I pick basic colors that ground his neutrality. Then I add whimsy with my vases, paintings and flamboyant imagination.  When he is all settled into his recliner and able to find his bed at night, he's satisfied.  Especially if the television is aligned perfectly with his eyesight to observe the Boston Red Sox games, and the Nascar races.  We are totally compatible.  Example: Father's Day was my birthday.  So we celebrated by going to the Sante Fe Steakhouse for lunch on Saturday.  He got his usual--chopped steak.  I opted for fancy chicken sandwich.

We returned home where he watched his races and action shows in the living room and I watched non-stop romance movies in the bedroom.  He was happy.  I was happy.  Life was good.  But as I lay watching "Serendipity" in my monochromatic taupe/beige/sand/copper and black bedroom, I reaffirmed in my mind that it would never "do" for our new window-less bedroom.

I love Oklahoma's varying hues of aqua, turquoise, blue and salmon-red and pink that grace the skies at sunset.  I love the Texas Blue Bonnets that soften the brilliant Oklahoma orange Paintbrush, and Indian Blankets.  Those will be the colors I incorporate into our humble abode.  He's gonna love it when I'm done.

So what about the dryer that won't dry?  A lady in my Sunday School class shared how she called A & M Applicance Service in Marlow when her dryer took forever to dry clothes and still left them damp.  Mark McClung told her, instead of him coming out and charging her a bunch of money to fix her dryer, she should first see if it was just a clogged vent.  He told her to disconnect the dryer's vent tube and put a nylon stocking over it.  Then dry the clothes and see if that fixed the problem.  Sure enough.  The clothes dried.  So she snaked the line with a plumber's snake and got the offensive clog out herself.  He saved her a service call, gals.  Stacy, our publisher here, shared she did the same thing with her line, and removed a big wad of smelly lint-collection from her vent-tube.  Women.  They are a cache of advice--for dryers that won't dry and all kinds ideas.  Just ask, we're always willing to share and even plug the prince of service people who help us.

TIME FOR COMMON GROUND by Hariette Petersen

Ever wonder what you have in common with someone when you meet them? I have. Just this week I met a gal from Iraq. A member of our Bible Study group asked for volunteers to help teach her conversational English. I've been talking English for the better part of 62 years, so I figured, how hard could it be?  Well, folks; it's tougher than you think. I sat in her living room and she looked at me and we smiled at one another. It didn't take long before I realized it takes more than me mouthing words to make sense of English. I knew right then and there, I needed a much higher Power to get me through the commitment I'd made. I realized afresh that words take on many meanings when used in phrases and settings. I'm sure as we sit and stare at one another, and I show her pictures and patiently put words together in sentences, that she'll begin to catch our drift here in America. (see? explain what "catch our drift in America" means to someone who thinks catching is what you do with a ball, and drifting is what you do in a boat).

I must stick to basics--simple stuff. Commonalities. Time, relationships--how to connect them. Communicating is all common sense anyway, don't you think? And common sense starts with basics. Morning, noon, night. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I asked her what she'd like to learn first and her husband interpreted for her that she wanted to learn "time". Time is good. We all have time. Start times, end times. We all have the same amount of time in every day--in every week, month and year. So, time was a great place to start--a place of common ground.

It's going to take time to learn, to develop this relationship, to figure out ways to relate. Time has a way of being important, or unimportant. From how long you bake your cookies, to how long you leave your clothes in the dryer. Time has far more consequences that one realizes. I can see why she wanted to learn time. And it takes time to figure these things out. It takes lots of time to know what is important and what is not in life.

I think about that each time I write. Sometimes I bare my soul and give you a taste of the Spirit within me. Sometimes I rattle on about some wacko thing the big-wigs in Washington have done. I sometimes wonder if I bore you with my tales of grandkids, their endless antics during our weekly visits--the Grama stuff. I can get a bit overheated sometimes when I talk politics, so I try to keep those rants to a minimum. I do happen to care deeply about the direction of our country, though. I always have. It seems to be more pressing now that I'm a senior citizen--with less time left to waste.

When I was young, my dad did most of the worrying. As I got older, I did a lot of arguing with my dad about his worrying because we were worrying about different things. Differences in age have a way of forming gaps. When I became an adult with adult kids, I began to see some of the logic in my dad's reasoning. Today, I see the relevance of knowing what politicians and legislators are doing and how it will effect me, my daughter, and in time--my grandchildren. What they do will ultimately effect everything we do--how we spend our time, our energy, our money. It takes time to recognize this.

I hope, that in the past couple of years, some of my words have given you some food for thought, a reason to dig your heels deeper into the Oklahoma dirt to stand your ground, a chuckle, a smile. I thank Stacy for the opportunity to take up space in her paper. I thank you for allowing me time to wiggle my way into your life today and perhaps your conversations each week. It means a lot.

LEARNED ANYTHING NEW ?

Folks say that we elderly folk can keep our minds sharp, and live a more fruitful life, if we try and learn something new every day. I figure I learn a lot of new things each day since I spend a lot of time reading. I read opinion pieces. News stories. And information articles. I read blogs. And if there is one thing I've learned about reading blogs, it is that everyone has an opinion and think they have something you need to learn from their opinion.

I encountered one fella this week who commented on one of the blogsites to which I contribute articles. His exchanges were more annoying than a 3-year-old's "why"-stage of development. Every point I, or anyone else, made in regards to the topic of the post--he countered with some book to read, some paper to read, or some website to scour. To this day, after receiving over 440 comments to my post, I still don't know what he, himself, really thinks. (By the way, 440 comments on a blogpost, is comparable to about 240 or more letters-to-the-editor of a newspaper.)  The stark difference between newspapers and internet blogging is that a writer knows what his or her readers think about a given article.  In broadband-instant click speed.  Sometimes I've no sooner hit the "publish" button than I receive someone's comment telling me to go read someone else's rendering on my topic. No matter how many times I ask a commenter to tell me what they think, they defer to another's thinking. Crazy.

Reading, writing, and blogging aside, I felt I needed to expand my learning experiences. I want to learn more than how borax can eliminate bed-bugs, and why the Rev. Al Sharpton protested against Glenn Beck's rally in Washington, D.C. on August 28th. I need to learn more than how to re-organize a closet, and what recipe has the most detrimental ingredients to my health. Sooo...I started something new last week. Painting classes. I've always admired folks who could paint. I've reveled in their ability to look at an object and capture it better than I can capture it with my Kodak camera.

I took a few drawing classes in high school, so I already knew some of the basics. I wanted to learn to water color, to use oils--to be an amateur artist of sorts. So I joined a painting class in Elgin. A group of ladies meet there each week to paint whatever catches their fancy. Butterflies, bumble-bees, or Indian Paintbrush.  Not only did I learn several things about how to paint, I experienced the sheer magic of watching my fingers blast a blank white greeting-card with colors resembling a blue-bird.

Our instructor encouraged us to all paint something we could enter in the Fletcher fair coming up. Since the categories are animals, portraits, and landscapes, I chose a meadow. Now, whether someone, other than I, sees what I see when I'm finished, remains to be seen. After all, one man's art is another man's graffiti, isn't it? The art judges may find my meadow looks more like Picasso's palette than a child picking wildflowers for her grandmother's bouquet. If so, I will just chalk it up (no pun intended) to another thing I learned in order to live a bit more fruitful and a tad longer. Learning is a curveball in life.