Elsie's Notes from New England - THEMission edition

We took a bike ride tonight. It's been a very long time.  We put on our helmets and jackets and took the backroads to the outlet malls on the coast to look for some new running shoes.  It was a warm summer's day today, and I didn't think I'd like wearing the jacket, but it was fine. Not our photo, but GoogleImage found John's bike! My helmet is an interesting piece of equipment.  I'm grateful that it protects me from splatting bugs and tossed up bits of gravel.  We won't talk about the other things that it's designed to protect me from.  We don't talk about those at all; just about being safe, and wearing the right gear.  However, wearing the helmet makes scratching your nose a little tricky.  Let's just say I smacked my hand into the visor more than once tonight and leave it at that.  Itchy noses and stray bugs that make their way inside the helmet are no fun.  At.all. These are the shoes I bought. We found shoes -- two pair....

It's the story of my life:  I have the best intentions, and I start things pretty well.  Follow through is where I trip up.  I wrote this two weeks ago, and thought I had posted it, but never did.  Today I discovered it in my blog drafts.  It is late, but no less heart-felt. Today (April 27th) is my daughter-in-law's birthday, and I thought I'd take a minute to publicly sing a few bars of praise for this amazing young woman, and thank her for the things she's brought into my life.  We loved Sheena from the moment we met her.  We kind of wanted to knock some sense into John while he was trying to figure out what it meant to love someone enough to ask them to spend forever with him.  We're grateful that he set the bar so high, and she certainly cleared that bar with room to spare!  One of the first things John ever told me about the new girl he was seeing was, "She's the smartest girl I've ever met."  When we met her, we were also im...

Yesterday I reached for my purse, hanging on its peg in the kitchen.  I was looking for my "list book."  I make lists.  All the time.  It's the only way I can keep track of the things I need to do, the things I need to buy, the things I want to write about, the things I want to remember.  The official measure of a nanosecond is the length of time between when I think of something I need to write down and when that thought vanishes from my brain.  Sometimes, even having a list is not enough to save me from my own distractedness.  If I don't write it down this instant, it's often gone for good. So I reached for my purse as it hung there and began to rummage through it, hunting for the little spiral book I'm currently using until I've filled every blue-lined page with grocery items and projects and snippets of inspiration.  It's a kind of big purse, so I ended up sticking my face inside just a little bit to find the book where it lay in the very bo...

To Rite Aid, to Rite Aid To buy some new specs I left all my readers at home. What the heck? How many of these have I bought? And to spare! Every memory slip Means I've got a new pair! I wear them on leashes Slung over my head. I should give up And implant them instead! Yes, I've thought about contacts But just can't decide If up close is more crucial, Or seeing outside When I was a wee lass And spectacle free I wondered and puzzled On how it would be For things to look fuzzy Or shadowy, blurred It seemed so peculiar to me, And absurd Because everything then Was so vividly clear And I couldn't see there How it looked to be here. Would that vision and wisdom Were somehow connected To sharpen together As age interjected Oh, the follies and foibles I could've avoided If sight and acumen Could be co-exploited Instead, my reality Grows ever grimmer For wisdom glows brighter As vision wanes dimmer And now as I pay for them...

Sometimes I'm a little slow to the punch.  Let me tell you a little story and see if you get there before I did.  I use the word "little" in the figurative sense.  This post is longer than normal.  You've been warned. Last Sunday, I received an invitation to speak in church.  I like to speak in church.  I like to prepare my talks, write them up and have them ready to go ahead of time.  I always tweak them and leave stuff out at the last minute, and sometimes I'll add an impromptu story that feels appropriate in the spirit of the moment.  My assignment was to talk about 1 Nephi 3:7.  This is a single verse that is pretty much iconic to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It is the statement of a 16 year old Israelite named Nephi who tells the prophet (also his father), upon being asked to do something pretty big and dramatic, "Yes, I'll go and do this thing, because I know that whenever God asks us to do someth...

Whining aside, would it seem out of place If my nose and my eyes should secede from my face? I’m not really ailing; no chills and no fevers But these turncoat vestiges won’t be believers They won’t stop their dripping and stinging and running And now they’re pursuing recruits with their cunning Both Ears and good Throat, at the top of their list, Have been stronger than Lungs in their will to resist I’ve tried to assuage them; I’ve got Puffs with aloe I don’t know what’s made them so surly and callow My cheekbones assert, and I’m not one to doubt them, That maybe we’d be better off here without them. If I don’t do something, their mutinous lies Will infect every corner, till somebody dies! So, would it be nuts?   I’d look funny, I know But maybe I ought to just let the three go.

It's that awful sort of weather When my nostrils stick together When my fingers lose sensation; Tingling, numb for the duration Twenty minutes just to dress me Winter's wonders so depress me