The leaves are brilliant, this morning, both the ones still in the trees, and the ones covering the ground. The sun is spectacular, throwing light upon the leaves as if each leaf was an actor, and the sun was the light from a spotlight being aimed at them by talented lighting personnel.
Are the leaves being lit by God; is God the handy lighting person aiming the sun at our earth? Who is God? What is God? Does anyone really know? Is faith not but an abstraction, albeit a miraculous one for those of us in its possession?
I hated Lima beans as a kid, I used to hide them in my mouth, and spit them out in the upstairs toilet, so that my father wouldn't hit me for not cleaning my plate because he and my mother worked hard to put that food on my plate. I still hate Lima beans. My parents were Catholic, Irish-Catholic because they immigrated from Ireland, and they went to Church every Sunday that I lived with them, and dragged me along. How boring. I never understood a single thing that was going on in that church. I did understand the collection basket.
The Church gave each family that went to Church numbered envelopes for to put our donation in. I guess by numbering them, they could keep record of how much each family gave. The more you gave, the closer your relationship to God, I'm sure.
As if it wasn't enough to give one envelope to each family, each kid got an envelope, too. Were they soaking the families for every penny that they could, or brainwashing the kids into proper envelope usage at a young age? I don't know. I do know that, one day, as I was sitting in the back seat of my father's car(and note that I said my father's car, and not the family car. My father made it clear to me that it was his house, his car, his couch etc.)I dropped my envelope, complete with my donation down behind the seat, and could not get it out.
I freaked out. Certainly I was going to Hell, and if not the real Hell that I was being taught about in The Catholic School that I attended, then I was going to wind up in a Hell created by my father, and or a Priest, for losing my envelope.
I found a piece of paper in the car, and folded it into the size of my missing envelope. When the basket came around, I palmed that paper, and tried to act like I was dropping it in the basket. The guy passing the basket, took the paper from my hands, looked at me funny, and then went on collecting envelopes from the other folks gathered,
After church, my father asked me what had happened, and I told him. For some reason, he decided not to bust my nut on this one. Relief was certainly with me then.
My turtles have clean water, this morning, because I changed their water, yesterday. I love when my turtles have clean water; everything is so fresh, and clean in their tank, and it is a even more of a wonder to watch them wander about when there is not sediment impeding my view.
I think that I may have been feeding the turtles too much food, and that is the reason that their tank has been getting dirty so fast. I am, now, counting out ten pellets for them, twice a day; ten is the number that the good man who sold me the turtles said to feed them. I have gotten in the habit of pulling out a pinch of food, and dropping it in their water. Bad habits are easy to form. I am breaking this one.
My cats are on high alert because Dude the Dog is spending the night, and Dude is not trustworthy, when it comes to cats. The cats have headed for high country, one of them has jumped up on top of the turtles' tank that sits next to my desk, having just hissed at the dog from my desk. There is a chain reaction to all this; the turtles have gotten quiet, and have quit moving around; all their attention is focused on the cat who is sitting on top of their home for the first time ever.
I'm having oatmeal for dinner, at 10:15 pm. The cats just had a snack, they both came to the floor for that. Dude thought that that was his opportunity to commune with them, but he was wrong: Jaggar hissed at him, and I told him to back off. Poor Dude, just wants to have a cat for a snack!
--Mikel K |
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