I watched every moment of the service this morning for Queen Elizabeth at St. Pauls Cathedral.  The Church of England once again assured us that a dignified quiet worship of a holy God can still occur.  Everyone quietly listened, waited, reflected, and  spent an hour of quiet and somber recognition of things that are holy, unchanging, and eternal.  

We Americans can no longer wait.  We need immediacy.  Now.  Do something.  Don’t waste time doing nothing but sitting in a pew to meditate.

Hymns...traditional...gave a sense of peace and comfort.  In most of our churches today, we have a new ditty every week or two.  Those of us who gain comfort in the words of the ancient hymns...words that ring true through the ages...are disturbed by the yah, yah, yah of the repetitive current songs that are sung, forgotten in a few weeks and replaced by the latest hit.

I couldn’t do it every Sunday, but I would like a worship service from time to time that includes reflection and silence.  There is a place in our churches for continuity and ritual.  Sometimes it brings peace in a clanging world.  And we desperately need peace in our lives.

I never understood why people let their property run down and drop through the cracks.  As I have grown older, I understand.  Something needs to be fixed...constantly.  Something needs to be attended to. 

And finding someone to do what needs to be done is difficult.  My friend Carolyn finally gave up and decided she couldn’t pull the weeds in her flower beds any more and found someone to do it.  At a hefty price.  But when they left, she pulled a number of sack fulls of weeds they missed. 

They came back after she complained, and still did a poor job.  That’s the frustration of hiring people.  I have a lawn service that has been raising crab grass in my back yard.  I call and tell them about it, they look at it, spread something on it and the crab grass grows greener.  I called another service, but who knows if they will do better.  I just want the crab grass gone.

My front yard is fescue and it’s so hot that everything there is brown.  I think the thing to do is just let it all go---as I said, I understand now why things get run down.  When Ken was here he took care of all of that.  And when Carolyn’s husband Wayne was here, he did too.

The Bible says to take care of the widows.  You can’t even find anyone to pay to do it.   Thank God I have Tony.  Even if it’s just a light bulb, he comes.  And Carolyn has Nathan.  But what about all of the other older people.  Who do they call.  Who can they call.  It’s really hard to find handymen to fix things.  They aren’t raised to do it anymore. 

Every night when I go to bed I think of dozens of things to write about.  I just can’t remember what they are the next morning.  I should write them down, but I would lose the list.

I’ve been editing a book I am writing, so I called Joe Mike--Becky Bacon’s husband--to ask the difference between an F-40 and and F-9 and the two of them were in New Orleans eating oysters and shrimp.  They were taking a little vacation from hot Oklahoma.

I am jealous.  Living in Pensacola for a year, and eating fresh seafood, ruined me for imported seafood here.  I ordered tilapia last Sunday when I was out with the girls in my class and I couldn’t eat it.  Something about freezing and thawing leaves it “fishy.”  I usually like it.

The only kind of seafood that I haven’t been able to acquire a taste for is salmon.  Everyone likes it except me.  Naturally my favorites are halibut and lobster.  Expensive stuff.  But oysters, crab, calamari, etc.  I do love.  Oklahoma is not a good place to find seafood.  Crawdads are okay but too hard to peel. 

I think you can tell that today....I’ve run out of anything interesting to say.

I’ll try again tomorrow.  

I buy 12 packs of Dr. Pepper in cans, and keep them really cold for the guys who mow and weed the lawn.  But the last time I went to the store there was so much to bring in that I left them in the car--a week ago.  I bet it was 115 in the car when I went to get them.

As I tore the container open and took the first can out, I dropped it on the tile floor in my kitchen--and it exploded.  A tiny hole acted like a water hose with a finger pressed on it and spewed Dr. Pepper all over the cabinets, along with everything on them, and ran down all over the floor. I started to pick the can up and remembered....

I had a similar incident when Becky was almost a year old.  We were in California staying with Ken’s folks--Ken was overseas in the Orient somewhere for 13 months (a regular event in the life of a Marine).  She found a glass pack of Coca-cola, shook one of them up and when it fell on the concrete floor it exploded, driving a huge piece of glass into her arm.  I pulled it out, blood everywhere, spurting like the Dr. Pepper can did.

I knew to put pressure on it, but even that couldn’t contain it.  We raced to the hospital, but they refused to see us.  I didn’t realize I had military insurance because I had never had to use it.  There was another hospital close or she would have bled to death.  How much blood does a one year old have?  How could they have refused to help?

So I am standing in my kitchen wondering--how in the world would I have gotten myself to the hospital if I had a piece of that Dr. Pepper can in my arm.   Thank God I didn’t.  All I had was Dr. Pepper sprayed over my entire kitchen. What a mess.  I’ve been cleaning it up ever since and keep finding sticky places.  I’ll never find all of it.  But, I could have ended up bleeding.

My spider lilies have popped up.  Bright red.  They put leaves up in the spring and then the leaves die.  Come September,  a thin green shoot starts growing up out of the ground.  Slender.  And then a multi-faceted bloom appears on top.  The shoots grow three inches every day until they are about eighteen inches high.  

They don’t last, but are so pretty while they are here.  I would divide them, but when the time comes to do that, I can’t find them. They are bulbs, doing their thing under ground, dividing into more bulbs.

One scripture from the first chapter of James that I taught Sunday is a verse we all memorized when we were young.  “Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness--neither shadow of turning.”  

We get a zillion gifts from God that we forget to thank him for.  Spider lilies are one of his gifts.  We were in Beaufort S.C. in ‘66 and there were hundreds of them in our yard.  I dug a bunch of them up, put them in a paper sack and set them on the porch to bring with me to Pryor when Ken left for Vietnam.  In the hustle and bustle, I forgot to put them in the trunk of the car.  So...Pat ordered me a dozen of them a few years ago and every time they bloom, I think about the ones I left on the porch in Beaufort and hope someone is enjoying them. 

 Pat and Tom took me to Texas Road House last night.  I cold do that restaurant if they didn’t bring out the basket of rolls first.  It gets me every time.  Of course, I ate too many, was miserable and couldn’t go to sleep.  I was up walking around all evening till midnight popping those antacid pills. 

Why do we do things like that to ourselves?  I think it is the Texans.  And their Road House.  The place was packed with people waiting to make themselves miserable.  And waiting over thirty minutes to get a table to eat the rolls.  By the time they bring your steak, you can’t eat it all.

I repent.  Next time, I will tell the waitress to bring the bread when she brings the steak.  Not during the time you are waiting on your meal.

By the time we got seated it was after six-thirty and seven before the meal...and I can’t eat that late and go to sleep. The problem is...next time...I will have forgotten all of this.

Ann picked me up this morning and brought me three helpings of chicken enchiladas and a two servings of eggplant Parmesan.  I love both of those things.  Eating is going to kill me I am afraid.  Everyone is trying to help me.  I really do appreciate it...God and his children are keeping me fed.

Once again, my bank account password is blocked.  It drives me nuts.  I grew up back in the days where you wrote a check.  No password.  And every time I try to change the password  myself, I block the entire system.  Which means I have to get someone to help me.

Not being able to do things myself is frustrating.  Someone will show me how to do it, but it doesn’t stick.  I forget it.  And when I write it down, I forget where I put it.   My suggestion:  don’t get old.

Craig is going to order the passenger side mirror today.  Lincoln said they would put it on.  I hope so.  Squig said he didn’t need the mirror.  Actually he said it blocks his vision out the window.

Connie (Pryor friend) mailed me a new Suducco book, with Ken-Ken, and other strange puzzles.  I’m learning new stuff.  My friends are the best. 

I changed lawn care people.  Why?  The one I had was raising crab grass in my back yard.  No matter how often I called them, I had crab grass everywhere.  And those little flat weeds that look like clover leaves and spread sideways until they have invaded every inch of grass.  We’ll see what another company wants to raise in my yard.  I would like to have burmuda or fescue.