I had this funny idea that I knew how to make cookies, having made probably thousands of them over the years. Apparently, you’re never too old to fall flat on your face, your grandiose illusions of competence whisked away like a dream.

We were going to be having a large family over after church and I found a recipe for cookie dough that you make ahead, freeze in a cylinder, and then simply cut slices off and bake fresh when you need them. C’est parfait! (One needs to have some French phrases handy for moments like this.)

I was a little vague in my mind about this process of freezing the dough in a cylindrical shape and hoped by the time I got to that part, the solution would present itself. I don’t actually own the plastic cylinders used for this, but how hard can it be to roll cookie dough up that way? Very hard, as it turned out. The dough was soft and sloppy. I put several large blobs on some waxed paper and did my best to roll it up. It was not a pretty sight. However, I was still largely optimistic when I put it in the freezer thinking that the freezing process would cover a multitude of sins. I went to bed conjuring up pleasant thoughts about how fun it would be make these cookies with two little girls in the family, just the right age for cookie making. It’s funny how we can delude ourselves.

By the time I woke up, the scales had fallen from my eyes. It had occurred to me sometime in the night that the waxed paper would be hard to get off and would have frozen itself into little crevices of dough. It then occurred to me that this might not be the delightfully fun experience that I had pictured with the girls. I decided to make the cookies right away in the morning.

Ugh. I had to slice the paper off where it wouldn’t peel off. It was inextricably bound to the dough at both ends, so I had to cut those parts off and throw them away.

The dough was sticking to everything by this time and was surprisingly hard to cut. Instead of being circles of frozen dough, they were odd and misshapen lumps.

Bake for 14-15 minutes, the recipe said. I had cut them fairly thick and decided to go for 15 minutes. Just one more mistake in a long series of misjudgments.

Voila! Even at this point, I was trying to convince myself that they weren’t really burnt – just kind of “dark,” thus once again proving that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick – who can understand it?”

So there you have it. In a surprisingly display of hubris, I ignored three basic rules of cooking:
1. Don’t try out new recipes on guests.
2. Don’t change anything in the recipe the first time you make it.
3. Use the shorter cooking time – you can always put it back in if it’s not done.

Still, this grim fairy tale has a happy ending. The night before, my daughter-in-law had brought over homemade snickerdoodle cupcakes with caramel and sea salt frosting, and left a whole bunch of extra ones with us. We cut them in half and served them with vanilla ice cream after our meal.

And here’s the best part: I couldn’t resist telling our guests about the cookies, so we tried them and decided they were rather edible after all. I ended up foisting two bags of them on their family as they were leaving.

THE END.

I’d better delete this all in the morning when the scales have fallen from my eyes about this post.

I was scanning back through my photos to find something that I could use in tonight’s post. It’s getting late in the evening and I’m tired. All this points to a short poem on the way. So here’s tonight’s inspiration – a neighbor’s Halloween decoration from a few weeks ago.

Is Mickey a ghost,
Or dressed in angelic garb?
Halloween is weird.

Ain’t it the truth!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

I’ll probably delete this…
a. In the morning
b. Never.
c. When the cow jumps over the moon.
d. One of more of the above.

It’s my birthday today and I can’t think of a much better gift for me than getting to spend some time with my Mom, bringing her to a doctor appointment. I haven’t been in her apartment since the lockdown started in March, so I’ll take what I can get.

She’s 93 and often forgets birthdays now, so I was prepared to remind her when I saw her (something on the order of “Guess what you were doing 62 years ago today?). I should have known better – she came prepared with a sweet card written out in her shaky hand. What a treasure!

Some of you who are older know how poignant it is when your parents get old and start to lean on you for strength. When I look at my mom, I still see her as the woman who gave birth to me, who raised me, who took care of me when I was sick, who taught me how to play the piano, who shared her love of reading and music with me…

Her eye doctor was running behind, so while we waited in his office, I played videos from the past 5 years or so on my phone for her. I played the lullaby for her that I had just recorded for our granddaughter and tears sprang to her eyes. I found old videos of her playing a duet with my sister (Mom on the piano, sister on the flute), a video of my two sisters and me singing a trio for Christmas a few years ago, some videos of my mom playing the piano beautifully at a memorial for her sister. I even brought the photo album of my growing up years that she had made and we looked through that together, too. When the doctor finally came in, he was exceedingly apologetic for keeping us waiting for so long, but he needn’t have been. We were soaking up the time together – time that we’re not allowed to have in her apartment anymore.

It was snowing heavily when we left the doctor’s office and I was privately a little nervous about driving in it, but didn’t want to make Mom nervous with those kinds of thoughts. She may have guessed it, because she said, “I always know I’m safe when I’m with you, Lynn.”

You never stop needing your mother and that’s the truth.

We listened to the National Lutheran Choir singing beautiful hymns on the way back to her place. I could tell that she was feeling lonely and somehow unsafe, so when we got back I prayed for her before we got out of the car.

As we made our way up to the front door, we heard the distinctive call of a blue jay almost right overhead.

“Mom, do you hear that blue jay?”

“Oh, is that what that is? I can hear it but I didn’t know what it was.”

“Yes, it’s a blue jay and it must be right near us. I wish we could see it!”

She lifted up her eyes toward the sound with a smile and said good-naturedly to the bird, “Thank you!”

I snuck in a hug and we said goodbye. And now I lift up my eyes to the Maker of the Blue Jay and say, “Thank you!”

It was a good day.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning…

Things are getting icy around here. This morning I took a photo of a perky little brown sparrow sitting atop the shepherd’s crook that holds our bird feeders:

He was too quick for me, but now that you know he was there just milliseconds before I took this photo, you can put him there in your mind. To make up for that photo fail, I offer proof that the squirrels have not been able to vandalize our suet feeder this year (yet):

Frankly, I haven’t even seen them trying to get at it, which makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with either them or the feeder. Is it possible that they’ve conceded the victory to me without so much as an attempt or two? Perversely, I think I would have been happier to see them trying desperately to get at the suet and being stymied by my ingenious wire workings. Silly me.

At the other end of the day (which is coming way too early for me) the sunset was peeking enticingly through the frosted glass pattern on our front door.

In a strange and surreal way, this photo makes me think of Psalm 19, which says:

In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
Like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
Nothing is deprived of its warmth.

If you look at it just right, you could imagine that the sun is returning to its tent for the night, having finished its daily work of warming the world and hearing the voice of the Lord saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

There really is a reason why I named this blog “Lynniebeemuseoday.” Sometimes that’s all you get – musings from the meandering mind of Lynniebee. Thanks for meandering with me today.

I’ll probably delete this tomorrow when the sun comes out of its tent rejoicing like a champion to run its course.

It’s time for another inside post, which is to say that I didn’t feel like going out today to take photos due to my aversion to freezing rain.

When I was around 15-16 years old, one of the neighborhood boys, Brian, took up the guitar and within an absurdly short amount of time learned how to play the song “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. When he played it for us, I had an epiphany in three parts: 1. This was pure magic. 2. If Brian could do this, couldn’t I? and 3. I NEED A GUITAR.

This was before the days of Facebook Marketplace and Craig’s List. I couldn’t afford a new one, so I looked in the want ads in the newspaper and found a guy who was selling his Yamaha FG180 in St. Paul. What did I know about guitars? And how on earth was I supposed to get to St. Paul?

I talked my older brother, David, into biking out there with me from where we lived in south Minneapolis – quite a trek. David came as my resident expert, meaning he knew more about guitars than I did. We came, we saw, we conquered. And then we rode home in triumph – I’m pretty sure David had to carry the guitar on his back while biking. What a nice guy. In the photo below, he’s on the left, I’m in the middle, our dad is on the right.

Oh, how I loved that guitar! I learned some chords on my own and found out that pain was involved in developing calluses. No matter – I was committed. I played and sang every free moment I had. By golly, I even learned how to play “Stairway to Heaven!” The summer after I graduated from high school, a friend of mine and I decided to take a guitar class to bump us up to the next level of mastery.

Our teacher was a young college student named Bart – cute as all get-out and really skilled on the guitar. Unfortunately, he was also prone to drinking and would sometimes come drunk, late or not at all. I still remember him teaching us how to correctly play a G chord so we could hammer on extra notes – a really cool trick. He also taught us a charming little song called “The Last Thing On My Mind” and we learned a specific way to pick the strings that I still use. So in spite of the fact that he was a bit of a flake, it was worth it.

All through college, married life and raising kids, I played that old guitar. I never got more than passably skilled at it, but since I played it just to accompany my singing, it didn’t really matter. Eventually, my husband bought me a nicer guitar and I retired the Yamaha.

I don’t play much anymore. I got a bad case of tendinitis back in 2010 that made guitar playing difficult. And once you lose your calluses, it’s hard to get them back unless you can play consistently. More than once, I’ve thought about selling or giving away my guitar, but I just haven’t been able to make myself get rid of it.

I got it out tonight to record a Michael Card lullaby for my granddaughter and had an epiphany in three parts: 1. It’s still pure magic. 2. It’s like riding a bike, and 3. My fingertips really hurt.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue playing enough to develop those calluses, but now that I’ve gotten my old companion out of the case and dusted it off, I might try to keep it up. I’ve long since forgotten how to play “Stairway to Heaven,” though, and don’t anticipate adding that one back into my repertoire, just in case you were thinking of requesting it.

Thanks for listening!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

I had to get way down low to get these photographs. Sometimes it’s nice to get a different perspective on the world and to see things from a different angle. I’m a fairly self-conscious person and this was along a somewhat busy road, so I kept waiting for there to be no cars coming either way before I laid down on the ground to get these shots. Self-conscious people always think that everyone is looking at them, when in reality, nobody really cares that someone is lying on their stomach on the grass with a camera taking photos of feathers and old dandelions. Actually, I think that might get my attention if I were driving by.

My favorite is the top one. You could almost imagine that the background is a wide expanse of gray sea and yellowish sky. It was the road, which is considerably less interesting, not to mention less romantic.

Here are a couple more photos from the same day, ones that I was able to take while standing up and not drawing undue attention to myself.

“…and I think to myself
what a wonderful world.”

Yes, indeedy!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, or at the very least, wish I’d come up with more to say. Still, if I’ve left you singing a song, that’s not bad for a day’s work.

I tell a tale this morning
of a Sunday morning bird,
a Sunday morning sunrise
and a Sunday morning Word

The day starts with a glimmer
of sunlight o’er the trees,
The smell of morning coffee
The taste of morning tea

There’s a sweet anticipation
of hearts by worship stirred,
and our Sunday morning drive
past the Sunday morning bird

It waits there nonchalantly,
Wearing a gown of white
Prepared for Sunday morning
And a Sunday morning flight.

As we drive past the river
Toward our Sunday morning pew
I hear the weekly quip,
“Egrets, I’ve had a few.”

And onward our car takes us
To sing a song of ascent
At the Sunday morning feast
of Word and sacrament.

Amen.
Amen.
Amen.

This bit of Sunday morning whimsy is brought to you by Lynniebeemuseoday, who forgot to post on Friday. You’re welcome.

I’ll probably delete this..

Summer’s at an end
Fields are shorn; all is stubble
Tractors sit empty.

I’ll probably…you know.

These photos were taken at the much-vaunted “golden hour” of photography – when the sun is low and casts a warm glow over everything. How many times have I walked by these gems without noticing them, hidden in plain sight because of their ordinariness? We live in a culture that extols the extraordinary and reveres the radical. And all the while we live right in the midst of the most exquisite simplicities exuding a quiet radiance.

It’s true about people, too. What would we see in others if we could put a golden-hour filter over our eyes? Those quiet ones, hidden in plain sight, ordinary… Perhaps we would find beauty where we least expect it, but where it has always been. The image of God.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning when the sun is creeping over the horizon, casting a lovely glow o’er the world.

Election days come and go. Earthly rulers come and go. Here’s some truth that’ll stick to your ribs, though – read it out loud and let it resound in the place of your habitation. Sing it, if you dare. And smile. This is the right stuff.

Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD! –
Psalms 146

It’s best to keep things in perspective.

Can I get an “Amen?”

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.