“Come help me,” he said. So I did. We had an old rider lawn mower next to our shed that we needed to move, so we could pull something else into that space. The lawn mower doesn’t actually function. (We’re going to get it to the dump any year now.) “All you have to do…
Our dear friends stopped in for an unexpected visit a few days ago. As my friend left, she sighed, “Your place is so tidy. I just want to stay and sit down.” This is the friend who has known me for more than two decades. We’ve raised our kids together. We’ve had open pantries for…
He did the best he could with the words he had, but he never could have imagined life in an airplane. How the flight attendant would announce that laptops would have to be shut down before coming down to 10,000 feet. How I would look out my window and see clouds underneath me. And the…
Word association: September. Go. Dramatic (traumatic?) re-entry into routine. Soccer games. Programs at church starting back up again. Winterizing (a Montana thing.) Loud sighing. Increased desire for coffee. Are we tired, people? At school, I have a metal ring hanging on my bulletin board, with bright cardstock pages attached to it. In case of a…
There was not enough ibuprofen in the world to make my arm stop aching on Sunday night. Matt had left for work that morning, and I had put on my old shorts and t-shirt, for a serious work day of my own. By the time Matt got home at 3:00, I had tweaked all of…
“Hey,” he said, when I picked up the phone. “I forgot to unhook the water hose, now that the temperatures are dipping down low at night. Would you mind going outside and doing that while I’m thinking about it?” “No problem,” I said. “I’ll do it right now.” (I added that part, because he knows…
In a grand show of irony, it was the teachers at my school who took the first test this year. A hard one. Thursday was the first day of school. On Friday the computer server went down. But let me take you back to the week before our computer trauma. Teachers gathered, and the superintendent…
Prepare yourselves, my friends. School starts tomorrow, and there are every so many spiritual lessons God teaches me from my one room at the school house. Walk into my space right now and see how tidy everything is. Shelves are dusted, and #2 Ticonderoga pencils are sharp soldiers lined uniformly in their plastic drawer. At…
“How has your day been?” he asked her, while she stuck a price on his fried chicken box at the deli counter. “Oh, you know. Just another day,” she answered. A sad answer, don’t you think? Just another day. Later that night, we were on the way home from a friend’s house. I was staring…
Sorry honey, but when you said “King Sennacherib” in your sermon, Jayme was so hungry that she only heard “snackrib”, and I heard “saccharine”, which made me want an ice-cold soda made with real sugar. For the suggestion box: Serve snacks and beverages before church. But when you started to describe how Sennacherib talked trash…
At 1:00 yesterday, Matt and I stepped off of an airplane and back into Life. We had enjoyed a lovely visit with friends, in central Oregon, but visits end, and responsibilities jump on you like hungry boys on hot pizza. Pretty soon I was opening a bottle of ibuprofen and shaking pills into my hand….
Do you know what week this is? Apple week. Not pie, sorry. I will go to our storage building and pull out my box of apple décor, because “an apple for the teacher,” you know? My kids have always known that when the apples go up, summer is officially over and school is soon to…
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