Rambling Thoughts on a Monday

Again in the midst of a busy news week the news that Carolyn Appleby died fell off the news teleprompter.. Her death was overshadowed by the loss of Nora Ephron, the storms in the the northeast, Katy and Tom's divorce announcement and all the other busy breaking news of the day. You might be asking who is Carolyn Appleby? If you are a devotee of I Love Lucy, you'll remember her as Lucy's wildly competive and manupulative friend and bridge partner. She was first known as Lillian but somewhere along the line her name was changed to Carolyn. One of my all time favorite episdoes is when Ricky, Fred and Ethyl bet Lucy she can't tell the truth for 24 hours. Unfortunaltly in that 24 hour perod is the weekly bridge game and it is at Carolyns. And to add more pressure to tell the truth, Carolyn has just redecorated the apartment in Chinese Modern. Forced by Ethyl telling the girls about the bet Lucy has to answer all the questions asked like what do you think of Carolyn's new furniture, how old are you, how much to you weight and what color would your hair be if you didn't color it? After answering all the questions Lucy says, I feel good telling the truth! It is so refreshing. You should try it and I think we would all get along better as friends if we tried this. Ethyl responds, somehow I doubt it. Carolyn Appleby, well the actresss who played her passed, without too much of a news wimper but she left a lasting impression on me. No one wants a friend like Carolyn Appleby and no one wants to be that kind of friend like Carolyn Appleby. She knew that Lucy had to be nice to her because Carolyn's husband managed a television station and Lucy was always trying to get into show business. Carolyn was nosy and had to have all the latest scoop and gossip and sometimes Lucy had to bribe her to be her friend, like the time she bribed Carolyn to nominate Lucy as President of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts Club. I've read a couple of articles about the actress Doris Singleton since she passed away. By all accounts she wasn't a fink in real life like the character she played on the show.

Last weekend Roy and I cleaned out the pantry on a Saturday night. No, not by eating everything but going through everything and tossing out of date food and rearranging everything back into catagories. This weekend, on Friday night we rearranged and reorganized the garage. Yea, we are so fun like that. On Saturday night we went to a goodbye party for our friends who are returning to France. I don't believe I have ever experienced such a warm and genuine party before. It was like they are rock stars, well they are in my book, but the flashes from the camera were very papparotzi and red carpet like. We all wanted our pictures taken with them, we all wanted to be talking with them and we all don't really want them to leave. They are a family who have left their mark on our lives. I loved hearing Claude's words to the group, one I love the accent, two, I don't think I have ever heard him talk that long and three, his words were full of truth and love and so genuine.

Seriously, Siri on my iphone is a joke. She never understands me, responds with the strangest answers and yes, this morning on my way to meet Marcia L for breakfast, I yelled at Siri. Of course she didn't understand me. How frustrating. Maybe Siri is my Carolyn Appleby?

Saturday, Roy went to Tractor Supply to get another waterhose storage thingy. He brought me home a surprise, a magazine on sheep. I love it! No, I am not getting a flock for the backyard but I did try to read the article on herding to Buddy since she scatters my stuffed sheep all over the house in the middle of the night. Most mornings there are stuffed sheep grazing by her food dish, in the hallway and one at the foot of the bed. Oh, the rest are scattered throughout but you can almost bank of sheep being in the three places I named above. Loved that there is an article on how to train a guard donkey, since that image and knowledge is so fresh from the last Biltmore visit. There was even a side note on what to look for if you collect lamb/sheep figurines and such. Even without the article, I am doing everything right. One point was to ask if you can just buy the sheep from a nativity set. Believe me I tried that many a time at The Garden Bookstore. OEG, was firm...no sheep purchase without Mary, Joeseph and Baby Jesus. Finally, my friend Kelly needed the major players for her nativity set, so we split the cost of it. I got the shepherd and the sheep, and she got everyone else.

Yesterday, after church Roy and I met Dena for lunch at The Nord. I used the opportunity....what an opportunity to scout out places for our group to do the Galleria Project. The Bistro will be great for that early lunch and since there is a grand piano on the first floor, I think that would be a great place for one of our concerts. Our mode of transportation just might be a RV to get there and we can take the train all around the mall as another mode of transportation. Maybe we should make a stop at the water wall for our "boating experience." Everything is in the planning stage but it will be a wonderful and fulfilling experience. Sadly there really won't be any stretching out of our comfort zone, well that is, unless we all try on clothes a size too small. Some stretching might be involved there.

I have been trying something here at home and so far it hasn't worked. My trying is based on the experiecnce almost every Sunday at church. So, this is so amazing, yet not amazing, amazing...every time we pray before the sermon, some how that empty stage has the pulpit or talking table...I don't know the biblicaly, relevant term for it, a bar stool, maybe that should be renamed to a Bible stool, Bible, notes and laptop magically appears and is in place by the time we hear amen. Can prayer really make that stuff appear? So you know, at dinner time, I pray and I am so hoping that dinner will be on the plates and ready to go by the time I say amen. So far, my faith must be weak, no food, no plate, no nothing appears during the prayer. There are bar stools, but those are there in the kitchen all the time. Faith can move mountains, but prayer in the kitchen hasn't really had any earth shaking or table setting reaction. I'll keep you informed.

Yesterday afternoon Peggy called and said, put on your shoes, Jaime and I are coming to get you and go for snow cones. My first Bahama Mama of the summer season. It was delicious!

Last week I sent in my deposit money for the Israel trip in December. I am so excited and have been paying special attention to the land of the Bible in my daily and I will be Lucy honest, my sometimes every other day Bible reading. I want my heart to be so prepared to take it all in. I went to Israel in 1988 and have to be honest, didn't really have a spiritual experience. It was nothing special almost like a trip that is like every other trip. The blame for that is on me. So, this time my approach, my heart, my prayers and study are totally differnet.

Well, I am going to pray right after I get this post up. My prayer, that the dishwasher will be empty and everything put up in the proper place. Somehow I think I know I have some manual labor in the kitchen coming up this afternoon.