January is done and gone. And I’m glad about it. Glad to have “Atlanta” behind me even though it was worthy, exciting work to shop the big market for the store where I work. I am not going to try to describe the place. Just imagine your favorite interior decor/household goods/gift and furniture store on steroids times three buildings and twenty floors each. Thankfully we only needed to see a mere handful of them. Elevators, escalators, and miles of walking. I realize as I open this post that apparently Atlanta loomed large for me and has yet to slide down beyond the horizon.
Elv and I made efforts to stay on the rails with our life at home. Commitment and faith came to our rescue. It’s the month that he often gets on a woods job that phone reception is sketchy. We tried to remember to eat supper out once a week. And to faithfully tell all at the end of each day.
Meanwhile in the garden rose petals are evenly bronzed. I love the texture of them against the blue of the sky. Bronze and blue.
Elv brought roses home of three colors, velvety and firm. I ended up with two full vases that lasted for ten days. Then I hung them to dry. Now they’re piled up in bright foreverness on the piano beside the framed picture of me and my sisters standing by a blue Wyoming river on a sunny day last fall.
One day during this least week of January, Elv and I met up after work to hike the hospital trails. We walked across the ice to more trails. Someone had been ice fishing and a frozen fish skeleton lay curled and frozen in the snow. The trails are used regularly by skiers and hikers. Signs instructed us to stay off for skiers at certain places.
The winter walk was exactly what I needed during our reset work at the store. We moved mountains this week and created huge messes of our inventory. Then we spent two more days putting it all back better. We’re so glad it’s done. Thanks to the Northwood team.
Mid project, Lisl called asking me to please run over to Rian’s school to stay with him on the ambulance till she could get to the ER herself. I think she was still milking the cow at home. Rian had fallen about seven feet, landing on his back on the playground. He’s fine, but it’s no fun to watch a grandchild gasp and whimper with pain on a bumpy ride across town. So glad I was close by and could drop everything and go. That’s the thing about emergencies… They have a way of suddenly providing priority. Everything that seemed so important drops away to let you off the parade, fills in and steps on. We just go. And it’s fine.
One day this poor baby got his toes caught in a bobcat trap in the woods at work. Kjelgaard runs and roams the woods at will within the boundaries set up in his halo collar. This day the collar stayed in the pickup because he had been faithfully returning to Elv often and always at the end of the work day. He does not want to be left behind. Only this day he didn’t come in. Elv searched for two hours in the dark wishing Kjelgaard would bark more often. A few days in the porch close to the humans healed his paw good as new.
Then there was the day I helped Lisl and Amy clean at Lisl’s. Apparently this was the month for big projects. I found this deluxe Scrabble game while we were cleaning. Elv and I play a lot of Scrabble, so we enjoyed this version for a few days.
The Sunday school study about Anabaptist history has been interesting to me. Elv read history on the side accordingly and kept it more interesting for the two of us here at home. I learned that Jesus was and is still building his church all through the centuries. And that He’s doing it with ordinary humans who often get carried away with one thing and another of strange beliefs and practices. Strong minded and wrong minded leaders and traditions, both mysterious and confusing. What people were willing to go to the stake for makes me think we’ve gotten soft. I don’t want to be critical though of us either, we’re blessed right now anyway, with freedoms and riches that they had no context of, to even wish for.
This has been the month of influenza for our school children. Some of them ended up with pneumonia. But mostly fever for days on end. The main problem is how long it’s taking for everyone to cycle through it. We could be at this for another few weeks. But, spring will come.
They say we have snow coming. Cheers.
Stone House Scribblings 