On Wednesday, January 5th, Melissa and I did something we had never done before:  we took down all our Christmas decorations in one evening.  It was not festive.  It was not even pleasant.  It made us fight.  But when it was all over and done, Melissa and I agreed on several Christmas decorations to get rid of.  We have a whole box of ornaments and such to take to Goodwill.  We even threw away some of the various crafty decorations the kids have made in past years.  Not the really cute stuff – we’re not completely heartless.  The following day I put this gem on Facebook and offered it to any takers:

I found a Wabash College yearbook for 1989 (my Junior year) among the junk Russ gave me from the old house.  I hope I didn’t pay money for that trash.  It was the junkiest yearbook I’ve ever seen – all black-and-white, no individual head shots and random picture spreads which included three guys urinating on certain Wabash property and a close-up of a condom package!  Besides, I wasn’t even on campus my Junior year – I was at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, that year. I also tossed out quite a bit of the papers and information from my year in Scotland and similar stuff from a summer (1987) I spent at a Goodwill Camp in Massachusetts called Camp Morgan.  I will have to tell you about that summer another time. I did, however, decide to keep the Wabash yearbook from my Senior year – at least for now.  It was of much better quality than the other.  And I kept it even though it has this picture of me:

Laugh at my hair if you must, but at least it didn’t look like …

This guy’s, or …

This guy’s, or… God forbid …

THIS guy’s!! (Who once got me into trouble with administration for some writing he published under the name of the Wabash Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship while I was the presiding officer of that group!) I like to think that I have grown better and wiser with age.  Besides, Melissa no longer allows me to grow my hair out beyond an inch and a half…

Apparently I was a bigger fan of Garfield as a kid than I remember.  My younger brother, Russ, who is currently living in the house in which we all grew up, gathered together a box of items which he believes belong to me.  I think he found them in the attic.  Just what I needed – more stuff!  Considering I had not known of this stuff’s existence until the other day, I probably would have been safe to chuck the whole box into the garbage, but I’m curious, so I can’t just do that sight unseen. This Garfield was on top, though, and he’s a good candidate for a chuck – his ear is chipped. He did remind me, though, of times when I was a teenage boy, spending one evening a week with my Aunt Lossie Marie and a bunch of other middle aged women in Gladys Brandenburger’s basement.  Gladys was a sweet old lady who operated a ceramics shop out of her home.  We’d all sit around a big old table and “clean the greenware” (which involved taking the rough edges off of the unfired clay with a sharp tool) or painting a piece that had already been cleaned and fired, or staining a piece that had already been painted.  All the while we’d sit and talk about all sorts of things that interest middle aged women.  And they would “oooh” and “ahhhh” over my work and generally boost my self confidence.  On nights when I would finish a piece, I would proudly bring it home from Gladys’ house … to be mocked by my brothers.  But my Mom loved every single piece.  She had to – she was president of my middle aged ladies fan club.

Keeping it short tonight because I’m already a day or two behind and I don’t want to get any further behind but I am exhausted and ready for bed.  The last 24 hours have been out of the ordinary.  After school yesterday, Melissa and I farmed out the kids to the two Grandmas in order to get some work done around the house.  Storly, Karen and Keri then came over to help get some doors and trim painted.  In the five years we have lived in this house, we have painted every wall and, in the process, have replaced nearly all of the existing trim.  I seriously dislike painting in general and painting trim is the worst of all, so that’s my only excuse for never getting around to finishing the trim … ALL OVER THE HOUSE.  Last night, with the help of these friends from church, we pretty much got all of the upstairs finished up and it looks so much better. 

I even got some primer on the downstairs banister that I installed roughly two years ago!  It’s really weird to finish up these projects, because on the one hand, of course, it feels great to see it done.  But on the other hand it’s just a bit … I don’t know … depressing in some way – I guess because any of of these little jobs could have been done A LONG TIME AGO.  If I didn’t have the habit of leaving projects Almost Finished, we wouldn’t have had to live with the ugliness for so long and we wouldn’t be in this crunch right now.  (Our realtor friend says we want to get the house on the market as by mid-January because several local companies are hiring a combined four or five hundred more employees by mid-March.)  Anyway, we all worked hard all evening.  I think it was after 10:00 PM before Keri left for home!  Then Melissa and I stayed up a bit longer finishing up odds and ends and headed to bed by midnight. Three hours later I was awakened with an odd sensation in my lower guts – that’s all the more graphic I need to get here!  There was no way to go back to sleep so I showered and even headed to the local 24 hour grocery to get some cranberry juice (I thought I might have a urinary tract infection).  By 7:00 AM I was in line at our doctor’s office and by 7:30 she was ruling out UTI and suggesting the possibility of a kidney stone.  I headed to school to make plans for a sub – with only three hours of sleep and feeling the need to be close to a restroom, there was no way I was going to be able to spend the day in the classroom.  I slept a bit off and on through the day and just minutes before Melissa got home, it hit me hard.  She found me literally curled on the bathroom floor around 4 PM.  Within the half hour, we were sitting in the emergency room.  A CT scan soon confirmed the kidney stone – according to the doctor it measured 3 mm, so not a record-breaker by any means.  They sent me home with a prescription for pain killers and wished me luck.  As I write it is 10:00 PM and I am actually feeling rather … normal.  Praise God.  I really think it’s over.  I guess I’ll find out soon enough. Well, so much for keeping it short.  I am hoping for a normal night of sleep, so I will wrap this up and post a few pictures of our progress around the house. By the way, the other day Melissa found another piece of crystal which matched the two she gave to (Steve and) Keri, so she sent it home with Steve tonight when he dropped off our kids (even in the midst of leading the small group meeting tonight, Steve and Keri had come to our aid in taking care of our four little ones while Melissa and I were at the hospital.  Tonight I am thankful for good friends and good health!

I found a lapel pin a few weeks ago as I cleaned out yet another box from the shed and decided it would be a good thing to give to a student. But I see over 100 students each day in class – and many more in the hallways, so it’s difficult sometimes to determine who to give something to. So I decided I needed to find a true fan of “Pinky and The Brain.”  In my 7th grade class, I drew a picture of “The Brain” on my whiteboard and the first kid to spontaneously start singing the theme song (“Pinky and The Brain.  Pinky and The Brain.  One is a genius; the other’s insane.”) got my Brain lapel pin. I once referenced Pinky and the Brain in a sermon I gave.  The writers of the cartoon had a running gag involving a bit of dialogue at some point in each episode which began with Brain asking, “Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”  Now, Brain was looking to Pinky for confirmation and help in some new plot to “take over the world”.  Pinky, however, tended to be a bit distracted by … other things, and so he was not on the same page as Brain.  Some examples:  Brain:  Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering? Pinky: I think so, Brain, but this time, you put the trousers on the chimp. Brain:  Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering? Pinky: I think so, Brain, but if they called them “sad meals” no one would buy them. Brain:  Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering? Pinky: I think so, Brain, but why would anyone want a depressed tongue? In my sermon, I drew a comparison between Brain’s goals and God’s (trying to take over the world!) and between Pinky and the church … which doesn’t too often seem to be on the same page with the One who is calling the shots. In my imagination, the dialogue runs something like this: God:  Are you pondering what I’m pondering? Us:  I think so, God, but wouldn’t green carpet clash with the stained glass windows? God:  Are you pondering what I’m pondering? Us:  I think so, God, but is Facebook the only way to recruit people for the church bowling league? I wonder how frustrated … and angry … God must get with us.  But He is patient, thankfully. In his book, “The Hole in Our Gospel”, Rich Stearns reminds believers that the key question of our lives is “What does God expect of us?”  Stearns points out that Jesus had a “mission statement”, which he revealed when he got up in his hometown synagogue early in his ministry and cited this Old Testament passage:  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,    because he has anointed me    to proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners    and recovery of sight for the blind,to set the oppressed free,     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4: 18-19 And if this was Jesus’ mission statement, isn’t it supposed to be ours too?  If not, what does it mean to “follow” Jesus?We as Christ’s church would do well to humbly remember Isaiah 55: 8 and 9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,    neither are your ways my ways,”             declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth,    so are my ways higher than your ways    and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

As stressed as I feel over starting school again tomorrow (with last minute grading of final exams and planning lessons while trying to get the house ready to sell) at least I’m not Scott, the guy who teaches next to me.  He and his wife went to visit family out of state for Christmas and she decided to go into labor about five weeks early!  The baby was born the day after Christmas, the day they had marked on their calendar to make the drive back to indiana.  Scott left his grading work (a stack of final exam essays) at home since he knew he wouldn’t do them during his visit with family.  With the baby altering travel plans, he just got back to town yesterday … and grades were due today.  He came in around 5:00 PM to work on sub plans for the next week or two and then headed home to finish his grading.  I bet it will be a late night for him.

He’s a great guy and I wish him all the best.  I came back to school to finish up some planning for the week and left a gift for him on his desk – a collection of children’s stories by Eric Carle.  Melissa had picked it up a long time ago, knowing that it would make a good gift at some point.  Scott has an older daughter who might enjoy the books until the new one is old enough to start being read to.

Christmas Break ends tonight.  Melissa and I go back to the classroom tomorrow.  We managed to get one big item off our To Do List of things needing to be done before we can put our house up for sale. When we first moved in, the upstairs was all carpeted with nasty gray carpet – except for the dining area, which had a beautiful hardwood floor.  Imagine our surprise when we pulled up a corner of the carpet and discovered the hardwood continued throughout the upstairs.  We sanded and polyurethaned the dining area, the living room, the hallway, the boys’ room and what was the “office” at the time (later the Princess’ nursery).  For some reason … maybe I just pooped out at the time … I never got around to doing the Drama Queen’s floor.  We ripped up the carpet, but left the wood dingy and dull.  The Drama Queen’s floor is now shiny and smooth.  The sanding and the polyurethane weren’t actually the hard parts of the job.  The biggest hassle was just getting started on cleaning everything out of the room.  She is a pack rat and EVERYTHING she holds onto is “special” for one reason or another.

Melissa spent the day sorting through DQ’s possessions, deciding what can go back into the room (and where) and what needs to be thrown away or given away.  Some of the objects going into the Give pile make me a bit sad – things that have been in her room since she was a baby.  But she’s 8 now … and a giant (she’s moving into adult women’s size 8 shoes now!) and it’s time to put some of the childish things aside.  Sad.

Melissa is on a roll with the crystal, apparently.  Today she decided to give a crystal pitcher to Kate.  Kate and Storly (our friends from Haiti who are responsible for getting this ball rolling in the first place) invited us over today.  They were having friends in throughout the day for pumpkin soup – a traditional January 1st meal in Haiti.  (It tastes so much better than it sounds – believe me!)  I say “January 1st” on purpose because the soup is not really a celebration of New Year’s Day as such – it is served in recognition of Haiti’s Independence Day.  January 1st, 1804, marked the official proclamation of the end of slavery in Haiti and the beginning of a new republic.  A slave rebellion, begun in 1791 and stretching into late 1803, had successfully overthrown the French masters and sent them scurrying back to Europe.  Slavery had been established on the island (mostly to harvest sugar cane) not long after Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ Hispaniola (as they called it then) in 1492.  (The indigenous peoples died off as a result of the diseases that were brought from Europe.)  Storly explained to us this evening that pumpkin soup had been a dish which only graced the masters’ tables throughout the years of slavery.  The slaves were “fed like dogs” and never allowed to have the soup.  So the eating of the soup on Independence Day is a way for Haitians to assert their equality and celebrate their freedom. I think that’s an awesome tradition! By the way, I’ve done some reading recently on the history of the relationship between Haiti and the U.S. and it’s not at all pretty – neither recently nor way back.  For example, speaking of celebrating Haitian Independence, guess which slave-holding nation to Haiti’s north was not at all thrilled in 1804 to see a republic in its own backyard founded through a successful and violent slave revolt??  (We didn’t even recognize Haiti as a nation until 1862.) But America did gain quite a bit indirectly from the rebellion in Haiti.  Napolean was prompted to sell “Louisiana” to Thomas Jefferson because of the loss of France’s most profitable colony.  Jefferson had originally only expressed interest in buying the city of New Orleans.

This has been hanging in our bedroom since we first got married.  After ten years and four different houses, yesterday Melissa announces out of the blue, “Pull that thing off the wall … it’s so DATED.”  So off to Goodwill it goes… where it is bound to find plenty of other dated artwork to hang with.

(Thursday, Dec 30) OK, as a guy, I have to admit that I don’t get the attraction of fancy crystal.  Isn’t it just expensive glass?  Yes, it’s beautiful, but not something I would willingly spend a bunch of money on.  (I feel the same way about a bouquet of roses and, for that matter, diamonds…)  But women seem to appreciate the beauty of crystal. So it surprised me that Melissa was willing to part with a couple of pieces of crystal that we have had on display in the cabinets that overlook our dining table. We had breakfast this morning with Steve and Keri and their kids and afterwards exchanged Christmas gifts.  Over the last couple of days, Melissa had been looking at some of these crystal pieces and considering to whom she might give them.  She explained to Keri later that she had picked two matching pieces, found a smallish gift box, and had prayed to God saying, “I’ll be willing to part with these if they both fit into this particular box.”  It was snug, but they fit.  So she gave them to Steve and Keri.  (Well … right… just Keri, really.) I’m proud of her.  I know it’s tough for a woman to part with a thing of beauty. 

One last thing.  I would be remiss if I didn’t compliment and thank Steve and Keri for their choice of gift for us.  We have not been the easiest to shop for this year – with all the talk of downsizing and packing and moving.  It pretty much rules out anything that is too bulky or purely decorative.  So I thought Steve and Keri’s gift was very clever:  a coffee press.  It is not much bigger than an oversized coffee mug and it makes it possible to make coffee without a coffee machine and without filters.  There’s plenty of coffee in Haiti, but finding and, later, disposing of filters would be a hassle.  There’s no garbage pick-up, even in the compound where we’d be staying.  (They have their own little landfill pit where the garbage is burned on a regular basis.)  So now we can still enjoy coffee in the future without feeling guilty about adding to Haiti’s pollution problems!  Well done.  Must have been Keri’s idea!