Oh, the corn breeder’s wife
Leads a wonderful life
But one thing she always must yield

With a wedding in summer
It’s certainly a bummer
Anniversaries are spent in a field

But now he’s retired
The days aren’t so mired
In corn fields and silks and pollen

Our cards are romantic,
Red roses are epic
I hear the moscato wine calling!

Happy 37th anniversary to us!

I’ll probably delete this on the first morning of our 38th year of marriage.

We had a beautiful sunrise last week and once again I ran out with my camera to catch it, only to find that the camera just didn’t see the colors the way I did. No doubt there are some knobs and settings that could align my vision and the camera’s, but I haven’t found them yet.

We were on our way to an early Bible study so I gathered up some sunrise cloud photos on the way.

I’m still reading through the gigantic tome of Emily Dickinson’s poems and have come across quite a few having to do with sunrises and sunsets, clearly a favorite theme (besides death and dying, that is). I wanted to share part of a poem with you, so you could see the sunrise like Emily does, without having to do anything about knobs and settings.

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
A Ribbon at a time –
The Steeples swam in Amethyst –
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
“That must have been the Sun”!

And that, my friends, must have been my Blog Post!

When I was learning how to use my first digital SLR camera, I remember reading somewhere that children and old people make the best natural subjects for photography. It’s true. We all start out being more or less photogenic.

And then somewhere along the line, a transformation occurs and this happens:

From there we live through decades in which our photos are pretty much touch and go, unless we are naturally beautiful or handsome models, and even those people probably have their bad days, right?

I got a new iPhone recently and was trying out the portrait mode, which I haven’t had before.

The results proved to me that I am entering into the second magical photogenic phase of life. There’s something interesting about wrinkles and age spots and gray hair and the gaze of someone who’s lived through many years.

Bring it on.

This post will probably be too photogenic to delete in the morning.

Merry golds and Goldilocks
Orange and yellow fire flocks
Leaning, careening, merry golds

Goldilocks and rusty brooms
Fireballs and buttery blooms
Burning, churning, merry golds!

Bleating, deleting, blog post…

I just finished a puzzle depicting many book covers of the Nancy Drew mystery story series, prompting a continual sense of nostalgia as I worked on it. Back when my older sister was reading Nancy Drew books, I was reading Trixie Belden books, good old Trixie of the short, sandy curls, who called her mother “Moms,” (why with the ‘s’ on the end, I wondered) and whose younger brother Bobby always said he could keep a “secrud.” Trixie, and her friends Honey and Violet found mysteries all over the place and I became convinced that mysteries were waiting to be found in my world, too. It turns out they weren’t, but that’s probably good news.

I graduated to Nancy Drew in time and enjoyed reading stories of the girl sleuth with her friends, George (the tom-boy) and Bess. And of course, always lurking in the background was Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s handsome college friend. There was hint of romance there that was never really defined. I wonder if the modern Nancy Drew stories have made more of that relationship. By now, she’s probably living in sin with Ned. Nancy’s father, the lawyer Carson Drew, was amazingly tolerant of Nancy’s sleuthing activities. “Be careful,” he’d admonish as she went sailing off to tail suspicious characters. I used to think it would be comforting to have a Hannah Gruen in my corner, making apple pies and bustling around clucking disapprovingly when appropriate.

When my sister died, I inherited her collection of Nancy Drew stories, and I have a half-dozen or so of the Trixie Belden books. They’re not great literature, I’ll admit, but they provided this imaginative girl some very enjoyable moments in my reading chair.

Now for the question at hand. You must have known one was coming, right? What is the closest you’ve been to a real live mystery? Would it have made a good plot for Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew? Enquiring minds want to know! As for me, the only mysteries I’ve been near have been of my own imagination, seeing mysterious mountains where there were only plain Jane molehills. Again, probably good news.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning unless something nefarious happens to it and I have to channel Nancy Drew to find clues and track down the diabolical suspects.

Many years ago (1986, to be exact) I created a family newsletter called “The BBB” for my family: my mom and dad, my siblings and me and our spouses. The idea was to send one out every other month, but in those days there was no email. I had to send the forms out by mail and wait for family members to return them to me with information, so the timing of publication was always a bit iffy. In each issue, there were updates on each family member, called “Tidbits,” answers from everyone to a particular question, called “Personal Glimpses,” an opinion section, creative contributions (drawings, quotes, cartoons), and advice columnists. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? It was!

Looking over the first issue, I see that the Personal Glimpses question was “When was the last time you had trouble falling asleep and why?” The opinion topic was: Dimples (that’s about as controversial as our family got). The four advice columnists were: Miss Prissy (etiquette questions), Dear Guinevere (relationship problems), Dr. Jekyll (health problems) and Handyman Dan (household hints). I can now disclose that all the advice columnists were just one person: my husband. Here are some sample questions and answers from Issue #2:

Dear Dr. Jekyll, How does the body work?
Dr. Jekyll says: Fine, if you feed it daily and give it plenty of sleep.

Dear Guinevere, How can you guarantee anonymity?
Dear Leslie, Not to worry, just trust me. Guinevere.

Dear Dr. Jekyll, My bones are wearing out! What should I do?
Dr. Jekyll says: Sticks and stones may break your bones but milk will never hurt you.

Dear Handyman Dan, What is a sure fire way to get a mouse to enter a trap?
Handyman Dan says: If you are having trouble with an unwanted “mouse guest” consider this: today’s house mouse is more sophisticated than those of yesteryear. No self-respecting YUMM-ie (Young Upwardly Mobile Mouse) would touch a chunk of American cheese. Try instead a chunk of bleu cheese or quiche Lorraine to whet its appetite.

After all these years, those answers still crack me up. I think he missed his calling by working as a corn breeder for so many years.

The BBB ran from August 1986 to December 1993 with only 13 issues in those seven years. It was a good run.

So now I want to give all of you, my faithful subscribers, the chance to be an advice columnist. I think my question should be addressed to Dr. Jekyll, so here it is:

Dear Dr. Jekyll: The other day my husband was looking for the brown sugar. I had used it that morning but it wasn’t in the cupboard where it belonged. We looked in all the cupboards and it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Finally, my husband found it in the microwave. I had used it on some rice that I had microwaved and then absentmindedly stuck the brown sugar in there when I took the rice out. Is this normal behavior for a 63-year-old? How can I prevent this from happening again?

If I don’t misplace this post somewhere overnight, I’ll probably delete it in the morning.

Dungeons and Dragons – A Timeline of D&D in My Life.

1983-1984. My older sister Leslie starts playing D&D. I know nothing about it except that it’s some sort of role-playing game that she really enjoys. Her character is an elf that she named Druella, and typical of Leslie, she keeps a journal written on Druella’s behalf in the first person. She sends me copies of this journal periodically as she writes more pages. I put them all together and stick them in a file cabinet, too busy to read them and frankly, too uninterested.

1985. D&D starts to get some bad PR. There were some kids that were getting too immersed and were becoming mentally unhinged. My husband and I are engaged to be married and I am living in a house with several apartments, one of which is occupied by a young man who is very deep into D&D. I chat with him a bit about it and am alarmed at what now seems like a rather dark game. He is quiet, socially awkward, and seems to fit the stereotype blooming in my mind of the kind of person who should not be into D&D. I offer up some cautions to him, but don’t really know him well enough to go further.

1987. Leslie passes away. I still haven’t read or responded to the Druella Journals. I forget about them.

2013 or so. Our older sons started getting interested in D&D. Definitely had mixed feelings about it and not sure if it’s a good idea.

2014-2018 By now, our four older boys are all out at the same college out West. They are starting to become part of D&D groups, some of them even taking turns at being Dungeon Masters. I tell my oldest son about the bad PR from 1985 and he pooh-poohs it, telling me that he was aware of it and that D&D didn’t create the mental problems that anyone might have had. He tells me more about the game. It’s kind of intriguing. Plus, it’s a game that requires actual people doing creative things together, face to face. As opposed to video games. And it’s been a great bonding experience for the boys. I give it a tentative thumbs up in my mind.

2018. Suddenly, I remember my sister’s Druella journals. Why didn’t I ever read them? I had this wonderful part of her life just sitting there and I never bothered to read it. Leslie was a very creative person and a great writer – it will be like unearthing new treasure from her life. I race down to the file cabinet to get the journals out. They aren’t there. I look in other files. Nope. Did I give them to her son, my nephew? That seems vaguely possible. I call him. He thinks I gave them to him many years ago and will look for them. Phew! But he calls back. He can’t find them and wonders if they got lost when he moved. I asked him to look again, but he lives in a small apartment and it seems unlikely that they’ll turn up. They don’t. Every so often I look again in my files, but it’s all been in vain. This brings a surprising amount of grief.

2021. One of my sons offers to set up a short D&D game for me to try it when our family gets together in the summer. I forget to reply to the text and he assumes I’m not interested, so the opportunity passes. I’m wishing I had tried it.

2022. I find a set of 100 postcards depicting D&D art from over the years and decide to buy it to send one per week to my two oldest sons – it’s actually two identical sets of 50 postcards. The artwork is interesting and often fantastical. As I send them out, I still think I’d like to try playing the game at some point. Maybe it will happen in 2022!

Thus concludes my D&D Timeline, which was no doubt very tedious to those of you who care nothing about Dungeons and Dragons. Thank you for hanging in there.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning after looking for the Druella Journals one more time. Maybe there’s a place I haven’t checked yet!

It was my first day at the University of Minnesota. In elementary school, we had only one classroom to go to for the whole year, and had just one teacher. Then came junior high and high school, where each subject was taught in a different room with a different teacher, but we were all still in just one building with a relatively small student population. There was probably some form of registration for classes in high school, but I don’t remember it, so it must have been painless and uncomplicated. By comparison, the University of Minnesota was a huge, sprawling campus with probably around 50,000 students the year I was a freshman there. The registration process had to be done ahead of time and was fraught with confusion and frustration. But somehow I had made it through this gauntlet and the great day had come. I had entered into the great halls of learning and had even found the building for my first class, English Composition. I sank into my chair with a sigh of relief.

The teacher asked for our registration cards, which we dutifully handed in. She looked them over and remarked that one of them didn’t have a name on it, so she asked us which one of us had turned in a card without a name. Silence. She sighed and said, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to read out the name on each card to find out which one of your names is missing.” She began reading out the names and the guy sitting next to me looked at me, rolled his eyes and said with scorn, “Freshmen!” I laughed, as if in agreement, but was acutely aware that I was one of those reviled beings. The parade of names continued and I began to wonder if it was possible that mine was the card in question. Weren’t our names already printed on the card? I hadn’t looked at mine very carefully. The names went on and mine still wasn’t called. I was filled with a sudden dread. It was mine, it had to be mine. She finished. I raised my hand to claim the card. All eyes were on me, particularly that guy next to me, who rolled his eyes again and smirked. That was how I found out that we were expected to put our names on our registration cards. That was how my college career began with a moment of public mortification.

Me: I think I’m supposed to delete this in the morning.
Readers: *eye roll* *smirk*

I think photographs can be as eloquent as words, capturing a moment that causes us to pause and think. These are some of my latest, all taken within a 5 minute period. Here’s a thought experiment: if each of these photos graced the cover of a book, what would the book title be? What would the story be about? In case some of you are inspired to reply in the comments section with your suggestions, I’ll number these so you can refer to them that way. I’d love to see what you come up with!

For photo number 4, I choose the book title: I’ll Probably Delete This In The Morning. Now it’s your turn!

If you’ve followed my blog for at least a year, you’ve seen me post about the Michael and Betty planters that I “inherited” when my mom moved into a small apartment. Betty was my mother’s sister and Michael was Betty’s husband. When Mom got those planters she named them right away, so they’ve always been Michael and Betty to me. I enjoy giving them different “hair” every year.

Allow me to introduce you to the real Michael and Betty:

Michael’s given name was Robert/Bob, but he took the name Michael when he entered the Screen Actor’s Guild. He did some acting (he played a guest role on Kojak one time!), but eventually made his mark in NYC by starting his own acting studio. Betty, meanwhile, taught voice lessons.

My sister and I went to NYC in 1982 to visit them and our cousins – a story that could be entitled “Country Mice Visit Their City Mice Relatives.” They lived in a brownstone filled with all sorts of eclectic stuff they’d accumulated over the years, a fascinating place. We went to a restaurant one night and one of Michael’s students joined us – an actress we knew from a soap opera that we were watching. Her character was going to get killed off, so we got the scoop ahead of time. Very heady stuff!

They’ve both passed on now, but I think of them often…especially in the summer. 😉

This post will probably exit Stage Left in the morning.

My True Story – Part 4.

It’s been so long since I wrote Part 3, that I need to remind you where I was at the end of it. I was in college, starting to divest myself of any sort of faith and coming to an enlightened sense of who God is: namely, whoever I wanted Him or Her to be. This was quite a comfortable place to be, but in God’s mercy, He didn’t leave me there.

In the summer after my second year of college, I met a man, not much older than I was. He was worldly where I was still innocent. He was married and in the process of getting a divorce, while my experience with the opposite sex was limited and fairly chaste. He was a recovering alcoholic – 9 months sober; I didn’t drink much and certainly had never even been drunk. I think it was my innocence and lack of experience that attracted him. He got my number and called me at 10 p.m. and we talked until 5 a.m. After that, we were never far apart. My involvement with him was instrumental in bringing about estrangement with some of my best friends, who thought he was not right for me. They didn’t know him like I did – they didn’t understand!

I learned a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous while dating this man, whom I’ll call “SD.” The more SD talked about his addictive relationship with alcohol, the more I began to see it mirrored in my addictive relationship with food. I’d always been rather compulsive with food and obsessed about my weight and had a distorted body image. It’s only by God’s grace that I didn’t become bulemic. I tried once, but just couldn’t do it. SD encouraged me to check out Overeater’s Anonymous, so I did. I even read the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, written by Bill W. I was a little irritated by his references to faith in Christ (references that I believe were taken out of future editions), but in general, it made some sense to me. I joined an OA group and started working through the steps, one of which entailed acknowledging that we have no control over ourselves and must look to a Higher Power for help, however we define that Higher Power.

Now this may not seem like much of an improvement on my Desiderata god (see Part 3). I was still in the position of being able to define God however I wanted to. However, this time, I was going to a Higher Power from a position of great need. I was truly anguished over my compulsive overeating, even though I was really not overweight. It seemed that it should be very simple to resist the temptation to overeat, but in fact, the more I tried, the worse it got. I began binging food in a way that I had never done before. I started writing prayers of a sort in my journal, beseeching this Higher Power to help me. I learned the Serenity Prayer and turned to it often. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

And yet, the AA model is to label these behaviors as manifestations of a “disease,” rather than as sin. You could no more stop being an alcoholic than you could stop being a diabetic. Accordingly, I looked upon my own eating issues as a disease and sought to live clean and sober, which for us in OA meant getting a sponsor, submitting eating plans to her, and cutting out most foods with white flour and white sugar. Meetings were just like the AA model – you went around the room and introduced yourselves each time: “Hi, I’m Lynn, and I’m a compulsive overeater.” I didn’t like having a sponsor, I didn’t like submitting eating plans to someone, and I didn’t like going to the meetings. But I tried for awhile, thinking it was my only hope.

Meanwhile, my relationship with SD was experiencing its own stresses and strains. A man who’s been married isn’t going to be content with not being involved sexually. I convinced myself that this was a good thing, that I loved him, that I was ready. But I wasn’t ready, and I got pregnant. I gave SD no choice in the matter – I was not going to have a baby. He came with me to the abortion and although we tried to move on like nothing had happened, things were never the same. I wish this weren’t part of my story, but facts are stubborn things. Truth can’t be erased to ease our consciences. I sacrificed a life without a shred of guilt on my conscience at the time, but I was guilty, nonetheless.

We limped along for another year, but while I was fully committed despite our problems, SD was becoming relationally distant and I was in denial. To be fair, we were both in denial – he wanted to believe things would get better, too. He made plans to move to another city to go to college and we decided that if we were serious about trying to make things work between us, I should move there with him. I quit school, quit my job, said my goodbyes, packed up my belongings, and on January 1 of that year left the only home I’d ever known to start this new life. Eight days later, SD broke up with me and my world came crashing down.

I’ll probably delete this cliffhanger of a post in the morning…or not. Stay tuned!

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 10