Back in black!

I am NOT celebrating Black Friday! (Actually, most people, excluding retailers, should call this "Red Friday." Or, everyone could call it "Green Friday.") Oh, I may go to the little gift store in Pleasant View & sample some of their hot apple cider. I may run through the little antique store there in town & see what they have. But at 4 AM I was snoozing in my warm, cozy bed! I liked what Pamela said about the things she didn't know she wanted...or needed...or just had to have. It's 5:30 AM where she is. I wonder if she's up yet?

After reading "Affluenza" I am just so annoyed with the whole commercial Christmas scene anyway. The crowds of people knocking each other down, the long lines & packed aisles, the shelves stripped bare of the very items I came to get (because I didn't beat people out of my way to get there first) - that stuff is straight from Satan. WWJD? Would Jesus knock somebody down to get an Island Barbie playset? We do all this to celebrate His birthday...?????!!!!!

Now, please don't get me confused with some radical who will protest by not spending a dime on anyone because that is so not true. I will probably spend in the neighborhood of $1200 for gifts for people. I have actually already spent around $400 of that. I will probably receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 for gifts for myself. Of course, Randy & my kids will get a lot too, so it's probably a pretty fair trade. It just seems like a lot out of my pocket.

If I had it my way, I'd cut my Christmas spending by a good two-thirds. Randy & I don't really get each other much, usually around $20 worth or something. We do spend a lot on the kids, but, we are very open with them now that they're older. I find it a lot easier to give them money & let them decide how to spend it. I like giving small thoughtful gifts too. For our parents, we usually try to be very generous too.

In general, we spend a lot less on his family than mine, simply because there are more people in mine. Now, this is not REALLY true because he has a lot more relatives than I do. We just don't exchange gifts with his three aunts, two uncles, all the associated aunts & uncles by marriage, or his eleven cousins & their spouses, or their children (I think there are 8 of them). We play Bingo on Thanksgiving for prizes we bring to exchange. That's just his mother's side - I really, truly have no idea how many cousins he has on his dad's side. His dad was one of ten kids.

Randy has a mom & a sister with a husband & two kids, one with a fiancee & soon-to-be stepson. I have a mom, a dad, a stepmother, two brothers, a sister-in-law, a niece, a nephew, a brother's girlfriend, & a grandfather. (Last year, I had a grandmother too.) I am not counting my stepmother's daughter, son, two granddaughters, parents, grandmother, brother, sister, in-laws, aunt, uncles, & nieces & nephews, the number of whom I have long since lost count. I don't exchange gifts with them. I used to give gifts to my stepbrother & stepsister, but now I just give to my step-nieces, because they are just little kids. And, we have - I have - several additional relatives who evidently have a lot of money, & for them to give all their great-nieces & nephews & cousins & the like gifts ranging from $10 to $40 is no big deal. For me, 7 cousins once removed plus their 6 parents plus their 2 grandparents plus all the others mentioned before - well, that adds up when you can barely hold your head above water. I tried not giving one year, thinking they would quit. No. So, we buy, they buy.

I feel compelled to share the fact that we see them once a year. Maybe twice, if someone gets sick or dies. I have other aunts, uncles & cousins who I do see & talk to more often (or at least I did while Granny was alive) but we haven't exchanged gifts in years.

For the record, I spent more on the distant relatives this year than I usually do. I didn't spend a lot per kid, but for the grownups, I bought things that meant something to me & I think will mean something to them as well.

I feel like complaining about this makes me sound really greedy. I really don't mind giving to all these people (though it seems a bit ridiculous to continue trading with the ones we only see once a year) but I wonder just how much of my debt that I struggle with year round for what seems like forever came from gifts I HAD to buy to keep the Santa myth going...& gifts I HAD to buy for people because I knew they were buying something for me.

Next year will hopefully be different & by that I mean, better. I restarted my Christmas Club account recently, so I shouldn't have that "OH MY GOSH!!! WHERE AM I GOING TO GET THE MONEY FOR THAT???" moment next year. I hope not, anyway. I am working so much more, surely we will manage to do better.

I may put up the tree today. Rachel got up early & made us some "Butter Braid." The choir sold them a month or so ago, so I bought two. Rachel fixed the first one a day or two after we got them. Today she fixed blueberry cream cheese. Yummmmm!!! I have another one ordered from a co-worker.

We went to Dover yesterday for Thanksgiving (where we played Bingo). We had a lot to eat there too! I didn't eat breakfast, which is unusual for me. Well, on the way down there I had a "Payday" candy bar, so that I wouldn't make a pig of myself. I didn't eat a huge dinner either, just a little cottage cheese & then some hot chocolate later. It's too bad I don't often have time for a nice lunch (& siesta to follow) during the workweek. That's usually the way I eat on Sundays. Late suppers don't go well with early mornings. They probably contribute to larger waistlines too.

Well, it's past nine now so I need to get busy. Can't sit here all day snoozing & goofing off.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Never mind that I don't know how I'm gonna pay for it all. . .never mind that it'll be the first Christmas without Granny, or that there's a dark cloud looming, though we blow at it really hard. . .it's still a joy to hear the music. I don't even mind seeing the decorations already out, a week before this early Thanksgiving.



I haven't written much lately, but all that's about to change. I've been reading "Affluenza" & I've made up my mind about a couple of things:



1. I'm not going to keep feeling bad about working part-time all those years. I made a conscious decision to work around my life, instead of fitting my life around my work. Though my life has changed recently, with a big increase in work & commuting hours, I can say I tried to make the most of those years. Now I'm in a new season of life. I am making the most of it.



2. This book has me thinking, sort of like that looming cloud. I think everyone in the world has heard the Tim McGraw song "Live Like You Were Dying." (If you haven't, you really ought to hear it just once.) If I knew I was about to die, what would I want to do? Not skydiving or 2.7 seconds with a bull named Fu Manchu, like the guy in the song. If I died today, my biggest regret would be the fact that I haven't written all my stories. So, why haven't I? I don't know, but I do know I need to get to work, because you just never know.



With that in mind, I have work to do!

There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover

Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

I want that song played at my funeral.

You see, I married a man whose family is from Dover. That's Dover, Tennessee, not Delaware or England. I usually go to Dover once or twice a year. Thanksgiving is usually one of those days. I may go this year - I'm not sure. This year's been weird so far. I really don't know what I'll be doing.

When I was in elementary school, my parents used to take us camping down at Land Between the Lakes (LBL), just outside of Dover, but I didn't go there at all from about 1980 until 1986. During my first year of college, my best friend (at the time) & I rode through Dover on our way to visit her parents, who were staying near Paris Landing. Around that time, my grandparents bought land near there too. In high school (& the first year or so I was in college) I had a special friend whose dad grew up in that area too - in fact, he went to school with Randy's aunt.

I guess Dover was just meant to be a special place for me.

When I was crazy about the "special friend" I mentioned a minute ago, I liked listening to the Righteous Brothers, & that's when I discovered the song "White Cliffs of Dover."

I knew Randy was the one when, a few days after our first date, he played HIS Righteous Brothers album for me.

So, that song, my funeral. And now, if you're there, you'll know why. Hopefully that won't be anytime soon. I am not sick. I HAVE thought a lot about death today, though. We lost a member of our church today. He was there taking communion with us, right next to me, this past Sunday. He had a heart attack yesterday & died this morning.

Mom's former pastor died this week. I think he was buried today.

I wrote about Porter Wagoner the other day. A lady who works down the hall from me is the daughter of a country singer who died in the 1970's. (For now, we'll keep her identity private.) I have a VHS tape of the Opry Christmas special from 1967, & her dad is in this video. I told her about it the other day, & she wants to see it, so I dug it out & watched it myself. Of course, this was one of the videos I brought back from Granny's house a few weeks ago. I imagine this lady will cry when she watches it. I thought I would. One of the songs performed was "Christmas at the Opry," where the late Archie Campbell mentions many Opry stars who had passed. Now, almost all the stars on that tape are deceased, with the exception of Dolly Parton & 3 of Porter's Wagonmasters.

A young lady at church lost a good friend in a car accident Sunday morning. She came tonight to the Youth Sunday rehearsal, & she talked to Robbie & me about how hard it is to lose a friend so young. We looked at each other. We knew. I told her I would look for the poem that meant so much to me when one of my friends died during my senior year. I couldn't find my old green copy that I kept under plastic for years & years, but I found the poem on the Internet. It has obviously given a lot of people the comfort it gave me. It goes like this:

My Father’s way may twist and turn
My heart may throb and ache.
But in my soul I’m glad I know,
He maketh no mistake.

My cherished plans may go astray,
My hopes may fade away,
But still I’ll trust my Lord to lead,
For He doth know the way.

Tho’ night be dark and it may seem
That day will never break;
I’ll pin my faith, my all in Him,
He maketh no mistake.

There’s so much now I cannot see,
My eyesight’s far too dim;
But come what may, I’ll simply trust
And leave it all to Him.

For by and by the mist will lift
And plain it all He’ll make.
Through all the way, tho’dark to me,
He made not one mistake.

The poem was written in 1932 by A. M. Overton, a retired minister, upon the death of his wife. It meant a lot to me that week in 1984 when nothing made sense. It means a lot to me now.

And I will always love you

I started to give today's post the title "I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day." I just have the song "Mother & Child Reunion" by Paul Simon on my mind. It's kind of a weird song. It sounds like it's about a missing kid or something. But, according to Snopes (which is a good site for debunking urban legends), the title came from a menu item, a chicken-and-egg dish. Pretty clever name, huh?

But instead, I thought I would pay tribute to someone who died this week, Porter Wagoner. Living in the "NewsChannel 5 Viewing Area" as Middle Tennessee (as well as south central Kentucky) is known, the "Thin Man from West Plains" has been on local TV every time we turned it on since his death Sunday night. I'm sure, however, that his fans mourn his passing all over the world.

Today's song was NOT written by him, but FOR him by Dolly Parton. Knowing that does kind of change the way you look at that song, but that's not part of today's post.

Most people reading this blog know that my grandmother died about six weeks ago. She was a BIG country music fan, and certainly a fan of Porter's. I have mentioned before that I have spent many Saturday mornings here at the house putting shows from RFD-TV onto VHS & DVD for Granny. Many of those hours are of "The Porter Wagoner Show." I found it fitting that when I was a kid, I spent many Saturday afternoons in her living room watching those shows, & in her final years I took those shows back to that same living room for her to watch again.

Porter was the kind of man you could laugh at - he definitely was willing to laugh at himself a little - but there was no doubt about it, the man was an entertainer. He was a pretty good songwriter, and a fairly good singer, and a fine musician, but when you really look at his career, it's obvious that he was, first and foremost, a showman beyond compare. It is truly no wonder that his TV show lasted 20 years. And maybe it was just because I lived in Tennessee, where country music was just part of the scenery, but when I was a kid, on Saturday afternoons (before Hee Haw came on at 6 pm), no matter whose house you were in, when Porter walked down that hall in his red boots, everybody was watching.

Of course, I always figured most of us - male and female alike - were watching Dolly to see those outfits stretched oh-so-tightly over certain, uh, shall we say, points of her figure. ("And that tiny little waist!" a little old lady once told me, as we discussed the subject.) But just as Porter was more than gravity-defying peroxide hair & flashy Nudie suits, Dolly was more than her eye-catching figure and her own gravity-defying hairstyles. Porter may not have MADE Dolly a star (she probably would've done that on her own) but he certainly sped up the process by introducing her to his many fans.

To be quite honest, I wouldn't have been the country music historian I became if it hadn't been for Granny (and the country stars of the 70's & before, whose music she loved so dearly), & I plan to make a tribute page to her on my webpages. I actually have plans for these pages, but I have been so wrapped up in the other parts of my life lately (& if you don't know why, go back & read what's been happening since, oh, about August or so) that I really haven't had time for writing about country music or fiction or anything else. But, it is really just around the corner, folks, I promise. Stuff is happening, wheels are turning...give me a month or so & I should be on my way.

So this post is to say thanks to Granny, & to Porter, & to all the other country icons out there whose music & style inspired someone like me. Thanks for the memories!

there is sunshine in my soul today

Last night I sat at the piano & played hymns. Now, I use the word "played" rather loosely. If you consider playing what untrained children do when they bang on the piano, you are pretty close to having an accurate mental picture of what I do on the piano. I am no real musician there. I can sort of read music, & I can sort of put my fingers on the right keys to play based on what I see & know. However, I do most of my playing with my right hand only because if I played with both hands, a four-minute hymn would take about 45 minutes. I am just really slow at figuring out every note & then getting them all right.

Despite the fact that I am nowhere near church pianist quality, I find playing hymns very relaxing. I could - and sometimes do - sit there for hours flipping through my collection of hymnals, picking out songs that we sing frequently (like "It is Well") or songs I haven't heard since I was a kid at Bethel Baptist (like "Brethren, We Have Met to Worship").

When I first started playing last night, the kids were out with the youth director for an evening of fun. There for awhile, I had my doubts about how the changes in our church youth program were going to work out for good. I can't say exactly why - it's much too complicated a subject for a blog entry & not something I'd want to publish on the Internet anyway. I feel a little better about the subject now. I think my decision to not act in haste was probably a good one. Fortunately, God gave me the sense to realize that my perception of reality wasn't extremely accurate last month. I mean, when you look at all the stuff that happened in September, that's not hard to comprehend.

Last night I thought about all this, & I thought of how we often turn our eyes from Jesus & onto the issues that divide us. Most of us Christians let too much divide us. I know we can't all agree on everything. Can we agree to disagree? Can we be united in sharing God's love? In spreading His Word? The question "What would Jesus do?" comes to mind. I wonder. I think people's ideas of what Jesus would do are vastly different based on what they've been taught in churches & in homes. I had a friend whose image of God was that of a strict, almost unforgiving taskmaster. As a child, this lady lived near my husband, who remembers the lady's father as a harsh & rigid man. (He also tells stories of the man's mental breakdown, probably the result of PTSD.)

Maybe this principle explains why I think God has a great, but also sometimes sarcastic, sense of humor. That's my Dad! I wouldn't say God's quite as sarcastic...but then Dad's not that bad either.

We humans are all flawed. Could we possibly therefore have flawed images of what God wants us to do? I think so. Obviously, people twist the words of the Bible to mean what they want them to mean. But when we look at the big picture, we should all see something close to the same thing - a loving God who gave His Son for the eternal salvation of us flawed humans.

Well, I could sit here all day & talk philosophy & theology. In the last few days, I've really thought a lot about it. But, I have things to do. I want to cook a good dinner tonight, to work on painting more of the kitchen (there's an idea for a future blog entry) & to clean the garage a little more. It was such a huge job, I couldn't do it in one day. So, those subjects will have to wait until later.