Tag Archives: Mac

A Fate Worse Than Death

21 Apr

I am becoming my mother.

There. I said it out loud. I am becoming my mother.  Every year, my Lenten discipline is to try to be less judgmental, but I’m not only not making any progress, but I’m steadily losing ground.

We all have things that drive us nuts, but most people can bite their tongue and keep on going. Not I. Our parish is buying about twenty new prayer books – at $15 a pop – to replace those with pages that are falling out. Several years ago, one of our morning groups – the purpose changes, but the membership seems to remain steady – made bookmarks for every hymnal and prayer book in the racks. They are probably more important for the prayer books, as you must flip back and forth between the service, the psalm, the collect, and the Prayers of the People. Three of these change every week, and there are four ribbons, so you can find your place again quickly. Half of the time, people jam the open book into the rack, just about guaranteeing that the pages will fall out.  When I’m ushering with The Squire I will reach into the pew, close the offending books and put them on the seat. Shape up, folks!

We used to have one member who always pulled the bookmarks and tossed them aside. When I asked him why he did it, he replied they were never in the right place. “Herb, do you honestly think we have a team of pixies that come in every Saturday to mark the books?”

During Lent we have soup suppers every Wednesday night, with two kinds of soup, great chunks of Italian bread, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert. Every blessed week, there are about twice as many PBJ sandwiches as needed, and they get tossed in the trash. I dig them out and throw them into the yard for the wild life, but it is still a monumental waste of food. How about fixing only half as much?

This morning – Easter Sunday, mind you! – Mac was wearing a huge fuzzy top hat, complete with white ears. While the rest of us were waiting in silence for the service to start, he pushed some button, and the ears began to waggle back and forth in time to “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”. In church. I gave him my best Audrey Parker glare and he turned it off. That or the death rays broke to fool thing!

I’ve turned into my mother! Pray for me!

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Lost in Translation

2 Apr

I am fairly well-known for being OCD – or, in my case, CDO as the letters must be in order.  I’m a nut about making sure the hymnals and prayer books are neatly place in the racks (I’ve been known to “tidy up” the pews when I visit another church.)  Light switches must all be facing one direction – all up, or all down.  My spices are in alphabetical order, and all of the girls names begin with the same letter and the oldest has four letters in her name, the middle girl was five letters, and the youngest has six. However, that was entirely accidental.

Our friend Mac speaks English as if it was a second language (it isn’t) and his wife is not much better.

This evening as we were leaving the parish hall after our knitting group, I walked out of the hall in the dark, so I could get all of the light switches in order. Mrs. Mac laughed at me, and remarked that I was “just too, too AC/DC.”

I should hope not!

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Showboat!

22 Jan

Our friend Mac called late Friday to say he and his wife had two extra tickets to a dinner theatre for Saturday evening, and would we like to go along?

Loverly!

We had a marvelous time. The show was very well done and the food was excellent. They even had enough for the Resident Vegetarian to eat. The actor who played Joe had a voice that would have given Paul Robeson a run for his money.

There was also a group of young people from St. Steven’s Episcopal church, who sang an á Capella song – a Christmas spiritual about Mary having a baby “in a weary world”. They were outstanding!

We got home at 11:45, and The Squire went straight to bed. I took my medicine and followed him upstairs but the Restless Leg Syndrome kicked in way before the anticonvulsant, so I had to get up and play computer games until 1:30.

Eight o’clock came awfully early this morning.

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I Gots To Get Organzized!

14 Aug

When my sister was about four years old, she looked at the wall-to-wall chaos that was our play room, put her hands on her hips and uttered the above sentence, which has gone down in family history.

And this past week was one of those times.

I worked all last week, and have decided, once and for all, that I am too bloody old for this nonsense. Getting up at 6AM and staying up all day without a nap gets really old, really fast.  It’s not just the physical exhaustion, it’s the mental strain of trying to keep all of the pieces together. Within the space of five days, I managed to miss the turn into Loveton Circle twice, once turning too early (No big deal; it IS a circle, after all.), and once going past the light and having to drive a half mile to the next place to turn. I also forgot my teeth one morning. Mind you, I’ve had dentures since I was twenty-two, so there was no excuse for this particular trick. Thank Heaven, The Squire was home and willing to bring them to me. Willing, and more than a little concerned.

The Squire has been wanting to see the meteor shower for decades, but every August, it has been rainy or cloudy. Thursday night promised to be clear and cloudless, if a tad on the warm side. Friday morning, he came staggering downstairs just as I was getting ready to leave the house. “How was the ‘show’ last night?” “Dunno”, he grumped. He’d been reading a “really good book” and had finished it up at 2AM. Rather than disturb my rest, he’d slept in the guest room, but now he had to get pulled together to run to Panera and collect the “Dough-nation” for the food pantry at St. George’s. Normally, this is done around 9:30 on Thursday night, but he’d been in outer space and hadn’t gotten back in time to make the pickup.

Yesterday morning, The Squire  crawled out of bed at 7AM and went over to the shopping center to sell raffle tickets with Mac for a church fund raiser, beginning at 8AM. He called here at 8:30 to ask if I’d heard from Mac – I had not – as he had called both the cell and the landline, and couldn’t get hold of him. “I’m going to run by his house to see if the place burned down overnight or something, and then I’ll swing by the church.”

I don’t know where they finally got together, but Mac had been looking for the vendor’s license, without which they could not legally sell the tickets. At that point, “it was to hell with it, and either go home or to the movies.” They both went home. (The license, BTW, was in the treasurer’s top desk drawer.)

In the afternoon, I went to a baby shower for our grandson and his wife, and had a marvelous time. Matthew is a clown and loves being the center of attraction. He struck “model” poses with the diaper bag, swinging this way and that. Somebody gave the baby a tiny camo suit, with the last name on the hat. (It’s a long one, and I doubt it would have fit on the shirt pocket.) M sat the hat on top of his head and insisted upon “wearing” it for quite a while, in spite of his wife’s playful attempts to remove it.

One of the games they played was to try to guess, on smell and taste, five different types of baby food. The string beans were easy, but carrots, squash, and peaches all seem to taste exactly the same. Of course, M had to be the final taste-tester, and really did “gag it up”. “We are not feeding our son this slop!” was how he put it.

And then the fun started. I was not – still am not – recovered from my week at work, and it was almost 100F, with a heat index even higher. When I went out to my car, I couldn’t find my keys. I don’t normally put my keys in my purse, but the dress I was wearing didn’t have any pockets, so they had to be in my purse, but I just couldn’t locate the fool things. I went back inside to see if they had fallen into the chair, but no luck. By this time, I was so tired and hot I was ready to sit on the floor and cry. Eldest Daughter went out to check my purse again (yes, I’d left it in the car!) and not only found the keys, but started the car and the a/c.

And locked the car behind her.

Fortunately, there is a “secret” way to get into the car, because I think being rescued by The Squire twice in one week would not have gone well.

I came home and went to bed.

Next week, I gots to get organzized.

 

 

 

 

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Saturday Night Fling

7 May

The Squire and Mac did go to the movies this morning – Captain America: Civil War – which he said was quite good, in spite of the reviews. I think he just disregards the critics and listens to his friends. He joked when he got home that he and Mac are both in their 70s, and still enjoy comic books. He could have worse habits, Heaven knows.

He called from the theater to say he was on his way home, and I was just getting dressed when he got in.  There seemed to be quite a few people in the restaurant with the same idea – take Mum out a day early and beat the rush.  We had a really nice dinner and then wandered around the corner and topped off the tank with some frozen yogurt.

I was sitting at the computer about 3:00 when the raccoon wandered into view. We are fairly certain it’s a nursing female, as the animal is quite brazen about coming looking for food, but she does get out of the way post haste when either of us goes out to feed her cheap dog food, as opposed to letting her vacuum out the birdfeeders. The Squire took food out to the barn before we left, and I put extra food on the carport for her.

If she’s not nursing or pregnant, she’s just plain fat!

 

 

 

 

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