Catching Up

Hey.

I'm tired. You can tell from my lack of posting in the past month.

I've also been working on church things too. It seems like no matter how much one might try to put it off Sunday always happens and being a preacher I’ve had to be attentive to those days on the calendar....

Spring is finally happening in Mid-Missouri. Easter was so early this year it seemed a bit premature. I mean, really the dogwoods finally exploded just this past weekend! The blessing: the trees are heavy with their blossoms.

Another joy: it is morel mushroom season! Edible ‘shrooms. And guess what: FRANK WILL EAT THEM! He even cooked them up himself. He likes to experiment in the kitchen. We have a patch in our yard—no I will not tell you where. (For the uninitiated, any patch is a well guarded secret.) There are members of my church who have three and four places they hunt yearly and bring back pounds and pounds to freeze and enjoy all year round. Our little surprise patch yielded about 2 dozen. We have also spotted one or two in other parts of the yard!

Another consequence of spring is that we should be expecting terrible, horrible thunder and wind storms at any moment. It is the price we pay for to balance out the beautiful days. Some might say that our weather resembles the attitude of a teen, but I digress. Yesterday afternoon was one such beautiful day. (Church attendance was down, it was a beautiful morning too: there are two kinds of weather that keep people from coming to church: ice/snow and 75/sunny).

We spent it at the airport. While Frank can't be a PIC (pilot in command) while having cancer, he remains a member of the Daniel Boone Flying Club and they had a cookout in the hangar. After eating they (the members of the club) geeked out over the GPS device from the plane while I curled up in a lawn chair and read Anne Lamott's latest book of essays: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. It is good; I finished it last night. Thanks to P who sent it to me for my "birthday". ;-) It is full of truth and life and hope.

To continue the warm fuzzy it gave me into today, I've sustained the feeling in my soul by listening to all my Indigo Girls music that I've copied to my I-Tunes while working in the office today. I hear that Amy Ray has a new solo CD out, I need to check that out.

I'm catching you up on pictures.

Round 4 Day 1 was the day after Easter, march 28, 2005:

Don't mess with the bunny. Really he is quite scary if he is not smiling....

Here's Vinny in the "pimp" hat. It is fuzzy and has a leopard skin pattern. This was Day 2 of round 4.

Know that except for days 1 & 2 of round 4 Frank had the folks at the cancer box vote on their favorites and he wore those on days 3, 4, 5, and 8. And because minutiae is important, though I have no pictures:

Round 4 Day 3 was the flower pot—I’m surprised the paper hat made it!

Round 4 Day 4 was Daisyhead

Round 4 Day 5 way Osama bin Vinny

Round 4 Day 8 was King Tut

On day 15 (the last chemo day) he wore the very special custom designed hat you see here:

It was a bit top heavy

Julie pushes the very last Bleo!

The hat for the summer is a cowboy like 50SPF that we got at a local garden center run by folks at church. It’s it doing its job and he looks pretty cute it in. I’ll take a picture.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the CT we will know if and if so when surgery will take place. Knowing will be a relief to me b/c it will help me focus my worry.

Now I must wrap my head around my monthly column for the church newsletter.

I leave you with this parting observation / question. Saturday I went clothes shopping with my mom. I will acknowledge that was channeling my inner 13 year old. It wasn’t pretty, but at least I was aware that I was coping a ‘tude. My question is this: Why is it when you loose weight and go to buy clothes it is the clothes manufacturers’ fault that you can’t find anything that fits, BUT when you have gained weight and can’t find anything that seems to fit the fault seems to lie with you? How’s that for screwed up?

Later,

The Rev.