Friday Stuff

With Dennis so ill in Seattle and it being so HOT here in TX, I have not felt like blogging lately. And this is despite my responsibility at RevGalBlogPals to write today's Friday Five, which has had a healthy 29 responses (without mine). I am glad RevGals wrote about games, which will give me ideas for our family vacation as I am not a "game-y" person.

I want to write something, so I guess it'll be bullet-style, for my own benefit.

• TX heat--this is the hottest year in TX history since 1925. The only thing it is good for is hanging clothes out on the clothesline to dry, which I do almost everyday. Our two dogs prefer the house air-conditioned atmosphere, but a full laundry basket is a signal for both of them to come outside with me. Our beloved BLACK Lab, who died a few years ago, hated the heat so much that she could not be fooled by an empty laundry basket, when I sometimes tried to get her to go outside.

• Husband CB and I are flying to Seattle on Wednesday to visit Terry and Dennis. Dennis is having surgery to remove the tumor in his liver on Friday, July 24. We will stay one week. Then we'll come back to TX for six days before returning to Seattle with our family for a vacation, which is hard to predict with Dennis' future uncertain.
  

• Before my friend Joe died last year, I ordered a book with the subtitle "A guide to the emotional and spiritual care of the dying." I never read it, and it was shoved into a book shelf for the past year. When it was decided that we would go to be with Dennis, I found the book and started reading it. Facing Death and Finding Hope by Christine Longaker is just what I needed before this trip. The author is a Tibetan Buddhist who keeps emphasizing that we learn to die as we live: "Thus all the things that happen--especially the 'deaths within life' that we necessarily experience--are markers, along our path, pointing the way toward learning how to live, and in so doing, how to die." (15)

• This week has been a beginning in de-cluttering. Each day I am getting rid of TEN items (even one piece of paper is one object) in each room of the house. I vaguely remember this idea from FlyLady, which I tried a few years ago but quit when I was inundated by emails. (She suggests the 27 fling boogie.) I usually put away or throw out more stuff than just ten, but the small minimum helps me get started.

• I am excited that the General Conference of the Episcopal Church passed Resolution C056 (http://gc2009.org/ViewLegislation/view_leg_detail.aspx?id=898&type=Current). "This resolution allows for a ‘generous pastoral response’ to the needs of same gender couples. What that actually means will vary from diocese to diocese, depending on how the Bishop discerns the needs of the people and the movement of the Spirit. In some places it’ll mean church weddings, in others something very private and discreet, and in some places there will be nothing at all." (from here) However, I fear the south TX Bishops did not vote in favor of this resolution and so effects may not be seen in this area of the country.

• Susan Russell is the current president of Integrity USA. Her blog is An Inch at a Time, which will tell you much more about the 2009 General Conference in Anaheim.