This morning I feel so full up of things to say that it’s hard for me to focus on one, but I’ll try. What with the looming crisis with North Korea, the Charlottesville tragedy, and my own media intake via audiobook and film, there’s just a lot of ground to cover. All, really, have to do with how we humans get along with each other–or don’t. Those pesky relationships!
I’ll start with the audiobook, because it focuses on the “Jerusalem” of human experience: those who are closest to us. (If you’re not familiar with the reference, it comes from the book of Acts in the Christian New Testament, in which the disciples are told to be witnesses of the Gospel “in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” So it’s a set of concentric circles, starting with where they are and moving out. I’ve heard many a sermon emphasizing that we need to build relationships and witness with our nearest and dearest first. If we haven’t done that, we have no business saying that we’re going out to the “uttermost parts.”)
We continue to make our way through the chaos at our new home. Last night Jim started putting up the beautiful new sliding panel blinds on the patio door. I couldn’t begin to tell you how much time we spent agonizing over how we wanted to have those done.
Ain’t that just the way it always is? You finally solve a problem after weeks or even longer of delay, but one little thing is still wrong. So what do you focus on? That one little thing, of course.
If you read my personal Facebook page you’ll know that I’m not exactly happy with the current resident-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But you know what? I’m happy to be an American just the same. I get to voice my opposition freely, and loudly, and frequently. No one as yet has come pounding on my door.
We’ve decided, with our in-laws’ input and final say, that the only way to deal with our carpet problem downstairs is to get all of the old flooring removed and start with a bare concrete floor to which the tack strips can be firmly attached, with no issues of whether or not they’ll hold or the old flooring is too high to permit the new carpet to attach, etc., etc. Because of the permits involved, we are looking at several more weeks of chaos and disruption in our main living space and our bedroom, and we will have to remove all of the furniture, including the bedroom, once again. Because of our limited storage space, we will probably have to get another pod from U-Haul. All of this is taking place within the context of a time frame stretching until about July 18, which is the day we would like to be free to leave on our driving trip to the east coast. So three weeks from Monday is the deadline for getting this done. Otherwise we’ll have to finish it up after we return from our trip on July 31.
To give everyone a break from the nonstop house-remodeling issues and and a much-needed perspective from someone who’s handling real problems with grace, style, and gratitude, here’s a post from my dear, dear friend Cecelia Weer who’s been battling cancer. Honestly, you have to read the article even if you’re not a big fan of illness stories, because she and her husband are so funny. I can just hear her voice, especially in the parts where she’s making up amusing names for various things. 
. . . is one less day you have left.
Jim and I have now been married for 25 years! Is that even possible? We had sort of planned to do something fun last evening—maybe go downtown to the Denver Art Museum and then go out to eat at our favorite restaurant on the 16th Street Mall (we’ve been there once), the Paramount Cafe. But Jim had a meeting that went long, and he’d been working all day on the kitchen . . . so we’ll do it this weekend. But we ended up doing something we really enjoyed, even though it may sound pretty boring: we figured out what we want to do with the dining nook in our new kitchen. 
One item you will never find in my kitchen is a sponge. I lhate them! They have all these crevices and crannies to trap debris and germs. You can tell how awful they are by the many helpful hints out there about how to sanitize them: boil them, put them through the dishwasher, microwave them. All of which is very well and good, but while the gunk may be sterilized and the germs killed, the sponge itself is still FILTHY. (One of our family sayings is “filthy, just filthy,” from a neighbor’s description of the old Magruder’s grocery store back in Virginia.)
Periodically I’ll get into a discussion about the question above. My dear friend Cecelia and I used to argue (sort of–she’s too nice of a person to really get into it) about this issue. She’d say, “I think you need to accept people the way they are” and I’d say, “But Cecelia, then how will they ever change?” We would have this discussion in particular about a mutual friend who . . . well, I won’t give any details. Suffice it to say that what Cecelia thought of as harmless eccentricities I thought of as remediable faults. (Not that I was being judgy or anything.)