My plans as a ghost....

I was out on the back porch smoking a cigarette when I looked inside and watched Bern come into the kitchen and take a fish oil pill and get a Klondike ice cream sandwich out of the freezer. As she left the kitchen, she saw me and gave that little side-ways wave we both know how to give because we grew up in southern West Virginia where people wave like they're gently swatting away a gnat--which they probably were--West Virginia having invented multi-tasking....

But before she waved, I watched her unawares for a minute or so.

(Before I go further, I should address the cigarette I was smoking with the porch light off while I watched Bern. I get so much grief and abuse from non-smokers about my smoking, you wouldn't believe it....Though you probably would if you are a judgmental and arrogant non-smoker who gives grief and abuse to smokers you know.

I was getting my teeth cleaned Tuesday afternoon and the dental hygienist asked me if I smoked. That was a rhetorical question, I imagine, since she could surely tell from the stains of my front teeth that I did smoke. God bless her, she didn't abuse me and give me grief. We had established already that she was a member of St. John's Episcopal Church in North Haven and I was an Episcopal priest so we had a modicum of politeness and mutual respect established. However, some of the most vicious grief-givers and abusers of me are Episcopalians who don't smoke. Perhaps it gives them some degree of self-righteousness to talk trash to a priest...I don't know.

After a lot of probing and rinsing, the dental hygienist asked me, politely and with respect, if I'd ever stopped smoking. I told her yes and that there have been long years, a decade once, when I didn't smoke.

"Oh," she said, "but you always went back."

"I always went back several times," I told her, "but the last time I went back was a conscious decision."

She was interested in this conversation and didn't stick anything in my mouth.

"A conscious decision?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her. "I'm a priest and I must, by my call, stand with 'the oppressed' and smokers are the most oppressed people in our society...."

She took that in. "You're kidding....." she said.

"I'm kidding...." I said.

"But not completely...." she added.

"You got it" I said. "Smokers are, in general, a lot less judgmental of  choices than non-smokers and especially 'ex-smokers'.

All those time I was an ex-smoker, I was abusive and grief-giving to the lower species around me who smoked.

I stand...and smoke...with the Oppressed....)

All of which was a smoker's rant of an aside. What I started writing about was watching Bern take a fish oil pill and get an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer before you noticed me smoking and watching her from the dark back porch.

My plans as a ghost lie in that direction--being able to watch the people that I love, unawares that they are being watched, do ordinary things.

I've never been enamored by the traditional views of heaven. Being in a place with streets of gold, being weighed down by wings, singing the "Santus" for all eternity. I want to be a ghost and visit those I love and watch them go about their lives--my daughter and my son and my granddaughters, but most of all, most, most of all, to watch Bern once I am dead--watch her take a drink of water and swallow a pill...watch her look in the freezer for something to eat, watch her reading a book, watch her dressing for a trip to the grocery store, watching her shopping, watching her with my daughter and son and granddaughters do ordinary thing, watching her laugh and be joyful and weep and be sad--perhaps because I am gone--and then remember what she has to do and going to do it. That would be heaven to me: standing on a darkened porch, watching the ordinary moments of life of those I love. I can't imagine an 'after life' better than that... Unless it would include a cigarette or five while I was watching...and a glass or six of wine as well....

squirrels can swim

I was walking the dog down the Canal, swollen by last night's rain, and heard a splash like a rock had gone into the water.

I looked over and watched a drenched squirrel swim to the bank and, with what was probably my projection, climb up in the branch he had obviously fallen from with a great deal of embarrassment.

Well, of course I don't know for sure that squirrels can be embarrassed. (I said that was a projection....) But then, I didn't know squirrels could swim and obviously this one could. So who am I (who didn't know squirrels could swim, to say if they can be embarrassed? And how much other stuff don't I know about squirrels?

Can they add or subtract? Feel empathy, like for a member of their species that slips and falls in a canal? Do they remember which of the other squirrels is their mother or second-cousin? I know they can find the nuts they hide in the fall when winter is fierce. I also know that they've been able, on numerous occasions, to get into our attic and scuttle around over our heads. But what is poetry to a squirrel? What is passion? What is hope about?

I actually think of them as the rodent equivelant of pigeons. I tried to pay off a golden tail hawk we see out back from time to time to leave the bunnies be and come rid us of squirrels. He wouldn't accept my offer, being a hawk, which, whatever else I don't know about those birds, I know they don't use money. (Neither do squirrels, so far as I know....)

I really abhor squirrels and have often thought of getting an air-rifle to b-b them when they're digging up bulbs in our back yard or dropping their poo on our sidewalk or trying to get into our attic.

But, finally, my non-violent instinct overcame by irrational hatred of squirrels and I simply throw sea shells, which we have buckets of since Bern picks them up every September on Oak Island, at them.

But I must admit, seeing that one swim out of the canal and be embarrassed (if, indeed, he was capable of that emotion) made me rethink my relationship with sciuridae, which I found on Wickapedia is the scientific name for squirrels. Having to run around with 'sciuridae' as your scientific name is enough to make even a committed squirrel hater like me have some sympathy for them.

Specially when they fall into a canal....How embarrassing is that for a climbing rodent?

What I F-ing Hate!!!

So, I sign out to my blog this evening and--WHAT THE HELL?--someone, who knows who, decided to change the way it looks when I sign on to my blog.

I can't even explain how distressed and upset I am about it all! My screen looks nothing like it did the last time I signed on. I have more frigging options about what to do that I want! What I want is to 'publish' or not. That's all. Don't give me 'save' and 'preview' and 'link' and 'compose' and 'insert image' and 'insert a video' and 'insert a jump break' (what the hell is a "jump break" and why would I ever, even if I lived forever, want to 'insert' one when all I want to do is type and then 'publish'.

Bern and I often discuss that we might have to, someday, have a smart phone. Her theory is that checks and cash will cease to exist and the only way to pay someone for anything is with a smart phone. I scoff and laugh, but then they changed--without asking--my blog page and I wrote a thing about my glasses just to see if I COULD publish it without screwing up. And though I think I did, I still feel violated and abused that my blog page got all complicated without my permission, no one ever asked me.

I stay with AOL though everyone hates it, because it seems not to change as much or as fast as everything else on line. But even that is not safe. I am constantly asked whether I want to change my 'background' even though I don't give a fig about the background in any way, shape or form. All I care about is the 'foreground' where I surf the web and send and receive emails. Could I find an web service that would stay forever the same because that's all I want--what I know and am familiar with and trust....

Which brings me to our kitchen. Bern wants to 'redo' our kitchen. Now, granted, the dishwasher doesn't really work and several of the cabinet doors are held shut with rubber bands since the magnets have somehow stopped working and the water drips from the faucet all the time no matter what we do (short of calling a plumber!). I'm fine with the kitchen. It what I know and understand and am familiar with and trust and know how to work around.

Of course I'm the one who told our daughter Mimi years ago to stand on the rubber mat I put in the basement in front of the clothes dryer so she wouldn't be shocked when touching it.

She said to me, "Baba, get a new dryer!" (She calls me 'Baba' from time to time and I love that and it made me realize how right she was.

Bern wanted to talk about her ideas about the kitchen. I told her the absolute truth: "Darlin'," I said, "I'll be happy when you are happy." So, we're going to do it though it gives me the hebbie-jebbies to think things are going to change....

Besides, we've had the roof replaced and the house painted this year and, along with that, I'll be able to deduct the cost of the kitchen 'redo' from our income taxes next year because, as an Episcopal priest, I don't pay taxes on any 'housing expenses'. I deduct toilet paper and paper towels, which most people can't.

I'll get used to the new kitchen and used to the new form of my blog. I can adjust and move on, after all--even though I don't want to.

And if Romney/Ryan get elected they'll go after my housing allowance deduction since only clergy have it and no clergy are rich. No longer can I deduct garbage bags and dishwashing soap as God intended me to.

But that would be a 'change' I'm not sure I could endure--Romney as president.

However, I don't want to get into politics. I just want my blog to look the way it did a few days ago.

I'm going to try to send you this now, if I can manage it.....

The glasses that work

About 8 months ago, I got new glasses.

Let me tell you right now that I never felt confident about my choice when the doctor said, "This one...or this one?" Not once. Not ever.

So, I got these new glasses (did I tell you this before? I'm feeling like I did. If I did, well....I'm getting old and forget all sorts of stuff....) and after a few weeks, misplaced them. They were these cool clear frames, which was probably why I didn't find them, they were clear and I couldn't see them....who knows?

So I got my old glasses out, which are black frames with clear semi-circles under the lenses. Very Retro. Lots of people several decades younger than me told me they liked them or thought they were either "cool' or 'boss', neither of which terms I trust to mean what they meant to me decades ago.

So the truth is, I see better for 6 months now out of my 'old glasses' than my new ones. I just tried again, looking at the screen with my new glasses for a line and then my old ones--which are much 'cooler' and much more 'boss' anyway.

Which goes to show you, when you make a choice that is so close it doesn't deserved to be made, more often than not, you'll choose wrongly.

Ponder that, just as a rule of life, for a while.

Well......

Happy, happy birthday babies...

Today Morgan and Emma turned 6.

We were there in NY University hospital when they were born. Mrs. Chen, their maternal grandmother was there too. Cathy, Morgan and Emma's mother, had been on the 'multiple birth floor' of the hospital for a couple of weeks because the doctors knew the twins would be early and they wanted them to be 'later' early.

Some wonderful nurse called us and let us know that she'd stop on our floor and we could see them for a moment before they went to the post natal care floor. She pulled two baby carts out of the elevator and Mrs. Chen and Bern and I saw them, all wrapped up and with little hats on. They were so tiny--Emma 4 pounds 12 ounces and Morgan 4/8. Little bundles of miracles. We were with Josh and Cathy the next day in the hospital room and got to hold the little beings. Since both our children were born roughly twice as big and Morgan and Emma, it was like holding a fragile porcelain figurine of a baby when we held them.

But they went home 'on time' and today they turned 6.

Emma is several inches taller than Morgan. Both are skinny and lithe. Emma has her mom's black hair and Morgan has Bradley brown hair. Emma has Caucasian features and Morgan looks a slight more Asian. They are both brilliant and wondrous and beyond amazing.

We love them so.

I hope and pray I'll see them graduate from High School. That would mean a great deal to me.

I love them so. Flesh of my Flesh, once removed.

Happy, Happy birthday Morgan and Emma. Be well and stay well.

I adore you....

cat food thief

OK, for several months I have often found the little plate we give Luke, our cat, his wet food on, on the floor of the kitchen. I just assumed he knocked it off. But then I started finding it in the living room and on the rug beside the fireplace in our kitchen--much to far to 'knock' it.

Then on Monday, I came downstairs to see Bela, our dog, carrying the little plate in his teeth.

I was so stunned I just watched as he dropped it on the floor and licked it.

Since then he's been carrying the plate further and further from the little table where Lukie eats.

Seems he likes to clean up what Luke leaves on his plate.

I should be severe with him, but it was so cute to see him carrying the little square plate in his teeth I haven't yet disciplined him...