Another Eden

A seed, some as large as a coconut, others as small as a mustard seed. They grow into plants much larger than the seeds themselves. A mustard seed doesn't grow into a coconut. It all works out as planned. The most important thing in life is the world that God made us. I don't understand how he made it work, but I'm so glad he did.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Tuesday musing that turns into a rant

Well, last Saturday night we celebrated my granddaughter, Natasha's birthday. Yes, yes, we were a couple of weeks late but in my defense, it just means she gets cake and ice cream longer and more times ripping paper.
Here she is with her mother and her birthday cake. She helped decorate it, mainly because Kathy and I were running late when they got here, plus we spoil her like crazy. Luckily she got plenty of toys from everyone else, plus she is a little clothes horse. We gave her a dress and sweaters and pjs and a robe and gloves and a scarf and etc, etc, etc. She modeled all of it, unfortunately my camera battery went dead and my son-in-law, D'Artagnon only took one picture of her modeling, but here it is.Sometime I'm going to have to explain to the boy that the only job he has is to keep a camera trained on the kids at all times just in case they do something cute!For instance, here's Ethan giving his peepaw a big smile while practicing for his upcoming role in "The Omen II". I swear my camera has red-eye compensation on it, but every picture I have of this kid he looks like a demon possessed hell-hound. I was sitting at my desk the other day working on a design on the board and this picture came up on the screen saver (I have my computer screen saver set to the my pictures folder and of course since I take all my pictures on 2816x2112 just in case I need to make a poster of the bloody things, the picture filled the entire screen!)

I have to admit for a second I was in a panic! He just about scared me to death!

Anyway, even though you can't tell it from the pictures, Ethan is a little angel, well, he will be when he gets past his pinching phase, or maybe I just think he is because every time he sees me he laughs his head off. Perhaps he isn't an angel at all. Maybe he just thinks I look funny! (I can almost hear Susan now, "Everybody thinks you look funny!") Well, maybe I do look funny but I am coping with my looks, except for needing to lose weight and my hair turning grey and I've got wrinkles and .... Ok, maybe I'm not coping all that well with my looks. You know, one time my son and daughter-in-law, Jon and Audie were in a play at church and my daughter Abby was doing the makeup and Jon and Audie were playing grandparents with grown up grandchildren so Abby wanted to use me as a makeup model to figure out where all the wrinkles went! I don't get no respect! (Thanks Rodney)

Ok, for those of you that thought I was weird because I had a possum in my cellar, I can now reveal that the siren call to wildlife is genetic. Abby had a vole just sitting on a pile of dirt and sunning itself in the backyard. They caught it and put it in a bucket and then had to call me to get directions to the wildlife refuge that I took the possum to. Of course, after I told them how easy it was to find they get out there to find that someone graffiteed the sign and you couldn't read it anymore so they had to hunt for it.


When they finally found the place D'Artagnon took the bucket a little ways into the refuge and then, not thinking, kind of slung the vole out onto the ground. By the time the vole came to his senses and ran off he was looking pretty mad. So if you are out by 50th and North Council and a vole comes out of the bushes with a shiv, run away! I'm pretty sure that Abby's vole and my possum are probably out there in the bush somewhere plotting my demise. I tried to explain to the possum that it was Kathy's idea to throw it out but like most of us, he wasn't interested in assigning responsibility, just in fixing blame. He's probably working his way back here with all his little possum buddies to work me over. Hey, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world isn't out to get you.

Since I had talked about D'Art so much in this post I was going to put a picture up of him but blogger won't let me add anymore. But it did remind me of one of my pet peeves. PICTURES! For all of you ladies (and men) who hate to have your picture taken and erase them off the camera and hard disc (yes, Kathy, you know who you are) give us a break. Let us take your picture now and then. We want something to remember you by if something should happen to you. I remember when the Murrah bombing happened about a year later a husband of one of the women lost said that she hated to have her picture taken and now he couldn't remember what she looked like. I know that we are all vain and want to have pictures only when we look our best, but let's face it, ain't none of us Cindy Crawford, heck even Cindy Crawford ain't Cindy Crawford, have you seen what she looks like without makeup? One of my favorite songs is "Popsicle Toes" by Dianna Krall, there's a line in there about "Why do you always load your Pentax when I'm in the nude?" Wow, talk about stream of consciousness. Anyway, now and then we want a picture. We'll leave the camera off when you're naked but let us shoot when you're covered up.

Ok. I guess that I've covered all my life for today. Yeah, it is boring, isn't it?

Be good to yourselves,

Wayne

Friday, October 20, 2006

Just a quick post for all of you that have been praying for my daughter and her surgery today. They got out the wisdom teeth but they had a hard time getting her knocked out (apparently they never got her all the way out) and when they got down to what they thought was a tumor it ended up being a filling that had worked its way down to the bone line where the bone had gotten irritated and grown some calcium around it, this was causing swelling, pain, and suspicious shadows on the x-rays. Anyway, they got all the wisdom teeth, all the filling and all the extra calcium out, a biopsy was sent to the lab but the oral surgeon said that he didn't think it was any kind of cancer.

Now that you don't have to pray for my daughter any more (though if you want to keep it up, I'm sure she wouldn't mind, she is still having to go through seminary classes after all) my friend Susan is about to have brain surgery next Friday. The doctor seems to think that there will be something to work on once he gets in there since she isn't a blond, but she is after all a redhead, so if nothing comes of it he better watch himself!

God bless all of you.

Wayne

Monday, October 16, 2006

Loads of fun, but is he exhausting!




For all you non-believers out there, here you go, proof that there are lions at the OKC Zoo. Well, at least there is one lion there. Most of the time you can't see them because they are hiding behind the hill but when we took Maddox to the zoo on Saturday one of the lionesses finally showed herself! She was much less interested in looking at us than we were at looking at her! You wouldn't believe all the people that clustered around the glass trying to get shots of her.

We had a fun time with the little monster but boy can he wear you out! It was our own fault. Jill and Jeff dropped him off about two in the afternoon and we went to the zoo. When Kathy and I were worn out from the zoo we decided to take him to Pizza Inn for dinner (buffet night, very cheap, don't worry, we just ate the toppings and salads and left the crusts) where he scarfed down about a pound of spaghetti (well, about a pound of spaghetti was fed to him, he's still a fairly sloppy eater) and assorted veggies and jello. The jello was a big hit, believe me. Then Kathy wanted to run to Steinmart for a little while. And then we took him home and gave him a bath and got him ready for bed. Of course by then he wasn't sleepy any more, just cranky! Finally, about 10:30 he decided to give it up only to come to the conclusion that 5:50 was a great time to get up! We thought Jill and Jeff were going to come spend the night but they stayed with a friend of theirs so Kathy let him cry for a minute thinking that they would get up with him, so by the time she went in and got him he was good and worked up. He definitely wasn't happy with his papi when I decided that he needed to drink the juice I got him that morning instead of the juice he had had the night before! Who knew he would prefer warm, stale watered down juice to fresh icy juice? Well, apparently I should have!

Anyway, Jill and Jeff came over to get him about 7:30 so Kathy and I could go to church. Ha fooled them! We were so tired we cut church and went back to bed! Of course then the problem was we couldn't take an afternoon nap! I hate no Sunday afternoon nap! So the upshot is, we will go to Northwest Baptist next week and try out the Sunday School.

For all of you that have been praying for my mother, and I guess for those of you that haven't, she had the glaucoma surgery and came through well. I guess I don't understand what glaucoma is. Apparently, they use a laser and shoot a hole through the iris and enlarge it enough so it won't close up on its own. This allows the excess pressure to be released and somehow the eyeball doesn't just collapse. If anyone out there can explain it to me I'd appreciate it! SOOOO, next Monday she goes back to the opthamologist and they check the hole and if it is ok then they do the left eye. I don't know what the heck they do if it isn't ok.

And while you are praying for my mother (oh, come on, like you have anything better to do than pray) you could go ahead and mention my daughter Alison. She lives down in Ft Worth where she is going to seminary and she is going to have surgery this Friday to remove a growth from under her wisdom teeth. They don't know yet what kind of growth it is yet, but she has managed to talk to a couple of thousand people who all know someone who knows someone who knows someone who had this and lost a jaw or died or ended up having their head collapse into their neck. Needless to say, my only advice to her was to stop talking to those people! Anyway, she is a tad anxious, so if you could all just send up some prayers for calm and healing between now and Friday I would appreciate it.

Back on less stressful matters, here's a quick pick of Maddox sharing secrets with a friend.And just to prove that he does sleep sometimes, not often and not long maybe, but sometimes.

Take care of yourselves. But most of all, take care of someone else. Work this week to convince one person that they are important!

Wayne

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

OK!!!!! I had some really great pictures that I was going to put on this post, but blogger apparently hates me! Any way, if you want to see the pictures from the Chihuley exhibit go to Wayne's pictures. I don't think you have to be a member of multiply anymore to just look at them, if so it is easy and free to join and you can just lie and make up a name. So on with the blog!

Whatever you're doing, drop it and run to St Louis and go to the gardens and see the Chihuley exhibit! Ok, I understand that not all of you can go, sometimes it is a little hard to get here from Doha, but it is a really fantastic exhibit! We spent several hours wandering through the gardens and looking at the various art pieces. And with Kathy's knees you know it had to be wonderful.

Besides the exhibit, we went to the zoo on Friday and had a great time. Sometimes going to supposedly "kid" things without kids is great. Not to say there weren't plenty of kids there, but I didn't have to take care of them. The nice thing about St Louis zoo is that it is free. Free to get into, parking however is up to $9, but on the other hand, it was $9 for four of us to park and it would have been a lot more for four of us to get into OKC zoo. On the third hand, OKC zoo is also a botanic garden so all their plants are labeled which makes me seem much smarter when Janie or Kathy asks me what some plant is. The animals were all in good moods, none of them tried to eat us anyway.

Well, when you stop being a kid you stop doing silly things like pub crawls. As a thoughtful, mature adult you do winery crawls! We went out to the wineries on Saturday, visited 4 or 5 in a fairly small area, and did the tasting thing, had a picnic lunch at a beautiful place somewhere near Augusta (I don't really remember where, I did mention the tasting thing, right?) They had live music and the crowd was pleasant and congenial.


The Winery Crawlers


All in all, the weekend was a great success. Janie and James are wonderful hosts and pretty much did whatever we wanted. Next time, though, they have to come to our house! Of course, the winery crawl is going to be a lot more extended.

Please keep my mom in prayer, she goes in tomorrow to have laser surgery for glaucoma. Hopefully everything will go smoothly

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Watch out for that little red car!

Well, as I was ranting about weird drivers the other day, Susan reminded me that as a realtor she has to drive that way, it's the rules. Something about annoying people or something. Of course, for all of you that know her, you know I wasn't talking about her! After all, she has a lot of practice driving while talking on the cell, checking her PDA, looking at the multilist on her laptop, knitting four or five rows and putting on her makeup all at the same time. I'm sorry, I exaggerate, her makeup is always perfect before she leaves the house.

Last Saturday I went over to my daughter's house and helped them cut down a tree that was too close to the house. Of course I took my camera, but since my daughter-in-law, Audrey was keeping the kids inside so a tree wouldn't fall on them I didn't take a single picture. Sometimes I think I'm a little too much of a grandfather. Personally, I liked my son-in-law D'Artagnon's idea better, we should have just gone and played golf. We would have gotten just as hot and sweaty but it would have been more fun. Of course, the best thing about golf is the beer and Kathy has me on the South Beach diet and it doesn't allow beer! What a dumb diet. Personally, I think we should go back to the fifties and bring back the drinking man's diet. If I remember correctly, you weren't allowed any food but you could have all the cocktails you wanted. Probably won't come back, especially because then you'd need a designated non-dieter with you all the time. Of course, I've got Susan and my next-door-neighbor Joe and Kathy doesn't drink that much. This could really work! Probably not.

Well, I was in a panic, my MP3 player was about to go out. By last week I was charging it for 20 hours and getting about 45 minutes of music. Kathy finally got tired of hearing me whine and swapped with me so now I charge for 3 hours and listen to it for a couple of days. Apparently the only thing that bugs Kathy more than me singing tunelessly along with Frank and Ella is me whining about not being able to sing along with Frank and Ella. It isn't so bad for her, she can keep the thing plugged in at her desk and listen whenever she wants, not that she listens that much. She can still stand the radio stations. I used to complain that I couldn't stand the radio because they played the same fifteen songs over and over. After all, Jimmy Buffett never recorded any song but Marquaritaville, did he? I can't really use that excuse any more. Not since I checked the music on my computer and found out I have 16 renditions of "At Last". Of course, on the other hand I have 417 hours, 7 minutes, and 26 seconds of music, so you would think that I do have a little bit of variety. And I hardly ever listen to Kenny G's "At Last" because then I can't sing along! Whatever it works out.

Well, I'm off to make sure my mother has lunch. More at another time.

Take care of yourselves.

Wayne