Milk, Bread and Snow Babies

As I emerged out from under my rock today, limping from three weeks of illness and my Mama's hospital stay, I couldn't help but think on our beautiful, terrible, bi-polar Georgia weather. This would have to be the most miserable winter on record, with so much rain and leaden skies it could make you hightail it to Tijuana. I don't even know what it's like there, but it's got to be better than this craziness. We have the strangest dirt in our yard that I have ever seen -- it's black as soot, silky, soft as butter and will grow anything. Where did that come from? It's like Yankee dirt, not the Georgia red clay I grew up on. Trucks and cars like to leave deep ruts on all the edges of our yard. Ken jogs out there with his rake and shovel and fixes it back. 

It was warm in the sunshine, so I sat and basked in it for a piece today with my animals, when I began to get cancellations for my appointments tomorrow. Apparently there's a snowstorm coming (an inch or two) and the schools are already cancelled too. Today: sunbathing. Tomorrow: snowblindness. Next week: heck, we're jumpin in the pond. My dear Yankee friends do not understand us. They get cranked up with the snowplows in October or November while we're still harvesting collards. Then they have an event called winter, which lasts on out til March or April. You wear your coats every day, you warm up your cars, you stay inside reading or knitting or whatever it is those foreigners do. Our weather is so wonky, we spend all winter sick and sure we're going to die. Their freezing temperatures kill their bad bugs...ours just breeds extra ones. By early spring the mosquitoes are dive-bombing us before we can navigate the screen door. 

Either way, I'll take it. We had the chance, years ago, to consider jobs in such far-flung places as Colorado and Pennsylvania. I'm sure those are wonderful, interesting regions to explore. They have actual seasons, places where you can ski on real snow, not ice. They have plows and salt trucks to fix the roads up. Our grand winter adventures here include at least one or two disaster days filled with dread, ice-covered everything and mad dashes to the store. I apparently have a couple of extra grandchildren to show for some of those snow days. I'll take them too. 
We're gearing up for tomorrow and I haven't got a lick of bread or milk in the house. Maybe we won't starve, and hey, I think we're overdue for another grandbaby.

Epiphany, A Little Late

This Christmas was a blur of blurs...I was thickly involved with the Villa Rica tour of homes, there was a whole lot of planning and scurrying to make that happen...in addition to decorating my house over the top and trying to get it together for my own family (we ended up having like 3-4 "Christmases" - who does that?!) -- Christmas day, after all the hoopla was basically over, we were sitting in our living room and I said, "What about Jesus?" I wasn't kidding. I had been hoofing it since the end of October to get everything done (I slept for four days straight after the Tour, not even joking)... and at the end of it, the very One whom we were celebrating was relegated to the back of my mind. Sure, I breathe Jesus...He is ever on my heart and mind and I am in constant communication with Him. BUT I neglected the Word, neglected time in the mornings to reflect and pray, neglected the serenity that should be Christmas time. I managed to make my house look like a Southern Living Christmas magazine, get the appropriate gifts bought, the turkey made, the candles lit, but did I worship at the feet of my Savior? "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..." I am covered with His redemption, but I missed the heart of it and that only hurts me. Today is the "Epiphany" -- the last day of Christmas and the traditional "revealing" of the Christ child as He was visited by the wise men (though we really don't know exactly when that happened). As I sit here early on this chilly morning, contemplating His coming to earth, the King of the universe, who took on the humility of flesh to become one of us and to suffer and die...I finally see Him. I have prayed in the recent days since my precious Daddy died, for more faith. I wrestle so much with trusting God. My default is to worry, worry, worry and run about trying to fix everything. We talk all of our Christian lives about faith, about trusting God, about heaven. Those things can be spoken about in reams without actually believing them, without walking in them down here in the muddy trenches. Trite phrases float about like a thin oil on the surface of our lives, never reaching down into our hearts. This early morning, where sleep escapes me, I re-open my skittery heart to you, Lord. I know that it is Your work, when You pull me in and increase my faith. The sea parts, as it were, and I get a glimpse of Your love for me. Unfathomable, undeserved and unlimited. Merry Christmas.  

Driving, Not Crying

"Mom, you have to buy it!" said my eldest child, Jon. It was a cherry-candy-colored 2011 Ford Explorer, mint condition and with only 32,000 miles on it. My poor old Honda Odyssey mini van had 245,000 beat-dead-doggie ticks on its odometer and was limping towards eternity. I did all manner of polishing it, touching up its flaking paint and giving it wax treatments to help kid myself that it was still professional looking. It had carried kids, scaffolding, paint supplies, sheetrock and plywood all over Atlanta for my decorative painting business, and now I was hauling real estate clients everywhere, hoping they didn't care when I had to run around and give the right side door a big hip bump to make it shut. When it occurred to me that I spent close to as much time in my car as I spent on my bed, I succumbed to the notion of buying that second home on wheels. It didn't hurt that it was so darn cute. My guilt meter went off the charts. This one was just for me, myself and I. 

Today, as I made a circuit of the city of Atlanta, weaving deftly through thousands of cars to make it all the way around and back home, I thought about all the cars I have loved and lost. My dear husband takes very good care of the guts of our vehicles. Add to that the fact we've always lived hand-to-mouth and have to make everything last way longer than anyone designed it to, and we've had some pretty amazing longevity. 

I learned to drive in a little red and black Pinto (stick shift of course), with herringbone and wood trim on the inside. Daddy taught me at 13 years of age to drive on dirt roads around our house, "in case of an emergency." I bought my first car after I was working full time and going to college -- a tiny gold Honda Civic. It purred like a kitten until Ken plowed it into a stopped vehicle (remember, Ken does not drive -- he qualifies...and they don't stop vehicles in NASCAR). A succession of non-remarkable vehicles followed, until we bought our first conversion van. We are a Ford family. I don't care what jokes are said about them -- we've had the cream of the crop. The mileage we've been able to attain on these "Found On The Road Deads" should shut up any naysayer. It went down this way for the Norton family: our 1st conversion van had amassed 290,000 miles when we sold it to a Latino paint crew. Our 2nd conversion van had 390,000 miles on it when we sold it to a Hispanic paint crew. My first Ford Explorer had 217,000 miles when some feckless fellow turned in front of us and managed to wreck it. Then Ken's Ford Fiesta was nearing 200K when he gave it away to a friend. There's all kinds of excuses for me to buy another Ford Explorer.

One of my former bosses was commenting that it was time to buy his wife a new car, because hers had 100,000 on it. I told him that's when we buy ours. They're good and broke in and worth at least a couple hundred thousand more. Ken's dream would be to retire and buy another one of them Ford conversion vans, take to the road and make the NASCAR circuit. I think we might could do it in under 400,000, whatcha think?