I just returned from Colorado where I met up with my dear friend of 48 years, Denel. She flew in from SoCal and I flew in from NoMin.

We had a wonderful time in our little cabin (at 9000 feet elevation) and made some fantastic memories. I took over 200 photos and will share some of them in the next few days as I have the time to start on the lengthy post that will tell of our adventures in the Rockies.

We had some laughs, some surprises, some goofiness, some rest, some food, some sharing, some reminiscing and some prayers.

We are already looking forward to The Second Annual Lupi-Soo Reunion. We’re thinking about the Pacific Northwest or the beaches of North Carolina, but only time will tell.

Have a blessed week!

“Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.”

–Unknown

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Sometimes I read something in the Scriptures that seems to shimmer on the page, and I’m drawn to read it again and again, and then set my Bible down on my lap and look out over Lake Superior, and ponder. Sometimes what I read seems to beckon me deeper into the verses, to meditate on them, to pray over them, to say them slowly aloud or silently again and again in my mind, because I know there’s treasure there to be mined.

These are the verses I’ve been meditating on lately, from the seventeenth chapter of Acts:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’

And here’s the same passage from The Message:

The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. We live and move in him, can’t get away from him!

I love this passage.

And sometimes a word or two from the portion I’m reading seems to lift (not literally) off the page and lodge itself in my heart and mind so that I want to think on them for a long time, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal something to me in them that may not be noticed at first read. Or even second, third or tenth read.

The words in this passage from Acts that I can’t get out of my mind are…

“…so that…”

Maybe soon I’ll write about some of the richness being unearthed from these words.

What is your favorite verse or passage from the Bible?

Do you ever meditate on one portion of Scripture for long periods of time? If so, what have you found or experienced from doing this? I would love to read your answers.

God bless you all today….

My middle daughter Carolyn and and her husband Jeremy have four children, and Audrey Elizabeth is their youngest. She is 4 1/2 and I always say she’s a little sparkler, because life and cheer and energy and joy beam out of her almost at all times. She is a force to be reckoned with. She also shows her love very demonstratively with excited squeals, long, strong hugs and huge smiles.

A couple of days ago Carolyn texted me about Audrey, and here’s the conversation:

I hope you’re chuckling, because I certainly was, and am. Audrey is a happy little girl who makes me happy. Just being with her cheers me up.

Now I ask you.

Do your grandchildren like your bottom?

I could have titled this post Wallpaper Woes or Wallpaper Wows, and I’m so glad it’s the latter. Yesterday my office was wallpapered in a deep red and cream toile. I love it. I say “aahhhh” in here when I come in and sit down now. As a matter of fact, I’m in here right now, typing on my computer to prepare a little blog post so you can see some pictures, and I’m sitting down, and I’m saying, “aaahhhh.”  🙂

You can click here to see what the polka-dotted room looked like when we moved into this house on May 31st, and also an inspiration photo of what a small office wallpapered with red and cream toile can look like.

We had to put two coats of primer on those dark, polka-dotted walls in preparation for the wallpaper. Apparently the dots would have shown through the light background of the wallpaper and that would not have been the look I was going for.

Here’s a photo taken yesterday morning of my little office. It’s about nine feet by eight feet. The sliding glass door looks out onto the “back yard,” which is a very generous term for the strip of land behind our house. We pulled all the office furniture away from the walls to make the hanging process a little simpler. (You can click to enlarge these if you like.)

And here’s a photo taken a few hours later:

This view below was taken near the sliding glass window, looking toward the French doors that lead to the hallway:

And below, looking toward the back yard again. You can see one of two small closets I have in this room, which are filled with wonderfully built shelves and cubby holes for all my office supplies and foster care notebooks.

Soon I will hang curtains over the sliding glass doors, for some privacy, and hopefully for a little bit of style. I’ve chosen a velvet fabric and it’s a very unexpected color that I love. All three daughters helped me decide on it and they love it too. Maybe I toss around the word love a little too much. All three daughters helped me decide on it and they admire it too. Is that better?

Believe it or not, when the desk is against the wall as it should be, this cozy room easily fits a queen-sized inflatable mattress we just purchased, along with a nightstand. And one of the two closets is almost empty. So it can double as a guest room. And if people feel strange about coming to visit us and sleeping in our office, they can sleep in our closet. It’s bigger than the office.

What? You don’t want to come for a visit and sleep in our closet? Picky, picky.

I’ve put the desk back against the wall, and today I have some clean-up to do. I need to hang my calendar, put things away in their places, and get back to work. I have a couple of hours’ worth of paperwork to tend to today, but I get to toil under the toile! Yay!

Thank you for stopping by today. I have a serious blog post in the works that is requiring a lot of thinking and even some tears….I’ll try to publish that soon.

May God bless your day, dear friends and family….

In the not-too-distant future, my oldest friend Denel and I will be having our First Annual Lupi-Soo Reunion. (You can see photos and read more about Denel and our 48 year-long friendship here.)

She and I have decided that as long as we’re able, we will meet each other once a year, flying from almost opposite ends of the country, for a long weekend together…to talk, catch up, rest, read, hike, talk, sleep, laugh, reminisce, pray, eat, and talk some more.

I chose the first place we’re meeting, and I picked a remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains. Yay! Denel will pick our destination next year, and I’m wondering if the words beach or ocean might play in her mind as she chooses where The Second Annual Lupi-Soo Reunion will be. My dear friend loves the beach.

The photos of the cabin below are the actual place we’ll be staying. The other pictures are just representative of things we hope to do during our long and restful weekend together.

For some very appropriate music, click here (the ad can be skipped in a few seconds).

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When you’re down and troubled, and you need some loving care
And nothing, nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night.

You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am
I’ll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah,
You’ve got a friend.

If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind begins to blow
Keep your head together and call my name out loud
Soon, you’ll hear me knocking at your door.

You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am
I’ll come running, running, yeah, yeah, to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yes I will.

Now ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend
when people can be so cold
They’ll hurt you
Yes, and desert you
And take your soul if you let them
Ah, but don’t you let them.

You just call out my name and you know wherever I am
I’ll come running, running, yeah, yeah
To see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yes I will

You’ve got a friend.
You’ve got a friend.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend?
Ain’t it good to know, ain’t it good to know, ain’t it good to know
You’ve got a friend

Oh yeah now, you’ve got a friend.
Yeah baby, you’ve got a friend.
Oh yeah, you’ve got a friend.

(words and music by Carole King)

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See you soon Denel! xxoo

You know how no one likes to listen to an old woman recite her long list of maladies? Well, now would be your opportunity to click over to the next blog you plan to visit today, because this is going to be one of those posts.

It just hit me the other day that there is something wrong with the right side of my body. The first inkling was when I was born, and it took a day or two for doctors to reassure my mother that the eighteen red and multi-shaped spots on my right hand and arm were just birthmarks, and nothing life-threatening. Even today I get asked if there are burns on my right arm.

Then when I was seven years old it was discovered that I had very poor vision in my right eye. Adorable glasses with those delightful glittery cat-eye frames were prescribed, and my parents never had a whit of trouble getting me to wear them because I thought they were so pretty and made me look just great. Ha. My vision has deteriorated over the years and I’m now considered legally blind in my right eye.

The next occurrence of something amiss on the right side of my body was when I was in my late forties, when I stepped normally down a couple of steps from the garage into the back yard, heard and felt a lightning-fast zink in my right knee, and then had to crawl into the back door of the house because my knee would not tolerate more than eleven ounces of weight-bearing pressure on it.

It turns out my meniscus was impinged and torn, and we had to wait to see if it would heal. Sometimes there’s enough blood supply in the cushiony meniscus and sometimes there isn’t. If not, apparently it doesn’t matter how long you wait for healing. Of course my blood supply was lacking, so surgery was scheduled, to trim that little bit of impinged meniscus, so I could walk. It was that bad. The orthopedic surgeon showed me the tear in the CT scan results and said, “I’ll trim as little as possible, but this of course predisposes you to early arthritis in your right knee.” I wasn’t happy about this news, but my choices were: 1) impinged, torn meniscus, no walking; and 2) surgery to trim meniscus and have knee pain in the future. What would you have chosen? I chose the surgery because I like to be able to walk. After the surgery that horrible pain was gone and I was so relieved. Recovery time was only a few days.

A couple of years later, I was coming down the stairs and missed a step. In 24 years at that house, I had never done that. As I fell headlong the rest of the way down, I landed with my left foot bent under me, and I howled from the pain. I was certain my ankle was broken because the pain was a 17 on a scale of 0-10, and in less than three minutes the swelling on the outside of my ankle and foot was the size of half a grapefruit. Off to the Emergency Room we went, with me wondering how I was going to tend to all my duties with a cast on my foot. Well, my ankle was not broken, but my foot was. It was called a Jones Fracture, which is ortho-speak for a break in the fifth metatarsal bone.

Here’s an x-ray of another person’s Jones Fracture. See the little arrow pointing at the break? My break was higher on the bone than this person’s. Thankfully I didn’t need surgery or a cast. They said if I promised to stay off my foot for four weeks I could get by with one of those spaceman boots with several inflatable portions that stabilize the foot and keep swelling down. And in order to get up to bathe and use the bathroom, I had to use crutches. At the end of four weeks I was to have another x-ray to see if the bone was knitting, because they said Jones fractures are notorious for not healing, often due to a lack of blood supply to this part of the foot. I met one woman who told me her Jones fracture took nine months to heal and I almost fell to the floor crying when she told me that.

I was a good patient and Michael was a good caregiver, and friends and family so generous with their help. My bone healed in six weeks. Even though the break was in my left foot, I think it was the right knee with the partial meniscus that helped me fall down the stairs.

Next, I have some hearing loss in my right ear. No problems with my left ear at all.

Are you still awake? Hello?

A few years ago I noticed a bunion forming in my right foot. It’s a slight bunion and doesn’t give me much discomfort, but again, this is all happening on the right side of my body. And once this bunion started to form, I began to get calluses on my right toe that I’d never had before and actually had to start seeing a podiatrist a few times a year. A podiatrist! A place where old people go. My mother went to a podiatrist to have her calluses trimmed and I used to think it was such an elderly thing to do.

Then, over the years after having one side of my meniscus trimmed, I started experiencing knee pain, just as the nice orthopedic surgeon predicted. It was minor at first, but has gradually become fairly significant knee pain and stiffness that hisses one phrase with every single step, “You have no meniscus, you have no meniscus, hahahahaha.”  The knee pain I’ve had these past few months has made me actually think ahead to the possibility of having my knee replaced, and at age 54 I can hardly believe I’m typing those words. I just know that if I’m to walk for another 20 years, something is going to have to change.

When we moved into this house three months ago, I noticed something else that made me cringe. I was developing a plantar wart on the bottom of my right foot. Gah. I hate plantar warts. My daughters had them when they were little and we did things for years to get rid of them. In the end the only thing that worked was that we prayed and prayed and prayed that Jesus would heal them. Carolyn had about ten of them on the bottoms of her feet and one day we noticed they were finally all gone, thank God.

I know what the appearance of this wart means. Plantar warts are caused by a virus, and it means I was exposed to the virus (possibly years ago from my daughters who got their warts after swimming lessons), but that my immune system has let its guard down and let the virus come forth. I guess it’s no surprise that after the events of these past few years my immune system would be compromised, but I am not happy about this wart. It’s on the arch part of the sole of my right foot, near the heel, and it has grown in these three months. And. It. Hurts. With every step it hurts. I might sound like I’m a baby when it comes to pain, but I don’t think so. I gave birth to my three daughters without any analgesics at all, and have always had a fairly high pain tolerance.

I have done many things to get rid of this wart. And even though I know it’s a virus, sometimes when warts are dealt with topically they do go away — it’s like the body kicks in and helps do the job. I tried some of remedies I found online that made sense to me, like soaking my foot in apple cider vinegar and putting a vinegar-soaked cotton ball on the wart under a bandage each night before going to bed. Vinegar works wonders for many things, and if you google wart and vinegar you will see how many people had amazing results. That did nothing. I tried the duct tape method. No success. Then I did a very elderly thing. I went to the podiatrist. She suggested salicylic acid and said she thought if I was diligent it would take care of it. Well I did, and I was, and it didn’t. Twice a day for months, and I could tell the acid was doing the job, getting right down to the ugly roots of the wart, but it was so painful I couldn’t dig it out, which is what all the brave people who posted on online message boards evidently did. To gently touch it hurts. To dig it out is out of the question, at least while I’m conscious.

So now we bring in the subject of Walt Disney World, in Florida. Our Fosters have been wanting to visit Walt Disney World for years, and have been saving toward that end. Since it takes a lot of money for flights, WDW tickets, hotels and food, we were able to put the trip on the back burners of our minds because it seemed so far into the future, and other things like moving house and Michael’s health were on the front burners. Well, our two Fosters have now saved enough money for this big trip. And we had to make a decision about it recently. We couldn’t keep telling them, “Yes, someday we’ll go when we’ve all saved enough money,” because they knew that day had finally come. Michael and I decided that with his Parkinson’s as part of the picture, if we’re going to take our gals on this vacation, sooner is better than later. Undertaking such a daunting working vacation is not going to be easier next year, or the year after that. So we booked the trip. When the snow flies in northeastern Minnesota this winter, we will fly to Orlando and spend five days wandering The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and The Animal Kingdom.

I think I need to go take a nap after merely typing those words.

Needless to say our gals are so thrilled, and our dinner conversations have gone up a notch on the excitement scale. The Tower of Terror and Expedition Everest and Country Bear Jamboree are ever on their minds.

But guess what I keep thinking about? My knee. My wart. Warts and Walt don’t mix, I know that already.

So I’ve made an appointment to have foot surgery. I need to be as wartless as possible when we wing our way off to Walt’s. Unfortunately, they don’t do general anesthesia when surgically excising warts (is this called a wartectomy?). Instead they inject the anesthetic into the area around the wart, and then into the wart itself. With needles. Can any of you imagine what it might feel like to have injections on the sole of your foot, near the arch? I am trying not to worry about this. I don’t want to be a worry wart over a wart. But I need to have healed from the surgery when we go on our trip, so I can walk the several miles it takes to see each park.

One week from today I’ll be going under the knife, and I would so appreciate your prayers. I truly do ask the Lord that not only would I be able to bear the injections calmly, but that the removal of this wart would be the end of it, and that there would be no further outbreaks.

If I were into Chinese medicine I would say that something is wrong with the chi energy on the right side of my body, and that it has been this way for a long, long time. Perhaps a chi blockage of some sort.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my right.  🙂

Okay. I got that out of my system. I promise to try not to do any more old lady posts documenting all my maladies.

But I do need your prayers.

Thank you so much for always stopping by. I wish you a peaceful and wartless Wednesday….

I don’t know why, but I love toile (pronounced twall) things. Michael and I had black and white toile wallpaper in the first home we owned together. Then when we moved to a bigger house 25 years later I mourned the loss of the toile, and had the same wallpaper hung in our new bedroom. I know. People either love toile or they hate it, and when our house was for sale last year, I learned from potential buyers’ comments that most did not care for it.

Now we are in a different house that is more modern than our other two homes, and I didn’t think I’d ever have toile anywhere again.

But I succumbed to the pressure of the persistant, whispering Toile Elves, and very soon we will have a bit of toile in our home again. I decided not to go with black and white again.

Here’s what’s going up on the walls of my little office, in just a few days.

I spend a fair amount of time in my office — have I mentioned that there’s a lot of paperwork with foster care? I think I have. So I’ll be toiling under the toile.

And I’m shocked at myself that I’m considering some curtains that don’t really match with the wallpaper. We have a large double sliding glass door in the room and some curtains would provide some privacy.

Pretend right now that you like toile wallpaper. What color curtain panels would you choose to complement this dark red and cream toile wallpaper you see above?

I was thinking cream, I was thinking taupe, I was thinking cardinal red velvet panels, I was thinking brown.

Then all of a sudden I was thinking something completely outside my regularly matchy-matchy box.

Very light aqua, also known sometimes as robin’s egg blue.

No! That wouldn’t go at all!

I’m going to try it anyway.

Yesterday was a low-key day, the kind I like best. No appointments, no place or person desperately needing our presence. I don’t think Michael enjoys these kinds of days as much as I do, and I feel badly for him. He has always been a high-energy man, accustomed to building and remodeling and then planning out his next building and remodeling project. That’s not the way it is anymore, and if you’ve been around my blog for a while you know why. And since he doesn’t drive now, he’s dependent on me to take him places, which I am happy to do 99% of the time.

I cleaned the kitchen yesterday morning and straightened up the house, and then sat down to go through the workbook of the James Bible study I did with a group of dear friends this summer. We all agreed to re-read what we’d completed, to seal in our memories and hearts what we learned. After a while I could tell Michael was slightly restless, and by 1:00 I asked if he wanted to take a drive up the north shore of Lake Superior. He did.

We drove to Two Harbors and had an exceedingly high-fat and delicious lunch at Culver’s. They don’t call them ButterBurgers for no reason at all. A big lunch like that is enough to last me until past dinner time, and then ideally I would eat a piece of fruit before going to bed. But I have to make sure good food is available three times a day, seven days a week, so as soon as we got home I started on something to put in the oven.

As we drove home along the beautiful shore of Lake Superior, we listened to some music that always makes me yearn and causes my eyes to fill with tears I can’t explain. This song, in particular, seems to plunge a knife in my heart each time I hear it. You can click on the link and it should open in a different window, start the video (which is just so you can listen to the music) and then you can read the rest of this post while having a knife plunged through your heart too!

Michael likes it when I sit down at night to watch something on television with him. Netflix has been our answer to the dilemma of “husband likes TV, wife not so much,” and we have watched some fantastic series (mostly British) over the last couple of years. “Monarch of the Glen,” “Bleak House,” “Doc Martin,” “Wives and Daughters,” “Garrow’s Law,” “Foyle’s War,” “Cranford,” and many others have come to our house in little red envelopes.

The night before last we watched a movie I chose, not knowing anything about it except that it was labeled a thriller and was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I like a good thriller once in a while. They can be a little murderous, a little monsterish, just not too much. I don’t want buckets-of-blood-murderous or demon-like monsters. I just want a little blood and/or a killable monster.

The movie we watched was “The Village.” Have you seen it? It had a couple of actors in it that interested me — I like Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix — but the longer the movie went on, the more I wanted to start playing Words With Friends on my iPad. (Do you play Words With Friends? Send me your user name and we can set up a game so you can whomp me.)

Basically, the story was about a group of people living in a (supposedly) 19th century village, completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people were very colonial seeming with colonial houses and furnishings, and they were governed by a group of elders. They led happy and quiet lives, except for when the beasts in the woods would start acting up. The beasts were called “those we don’t speak of,” and were attracted by the color red, so red was completely forbidden, and all red flowers had to be plucked up and buried. The beasts were apparently repelled by the color yellow. All around the village were hung lanterns and yellow flags to deter the beasts from coming out of the woods and making horrible sounds and causing all the people to flee for their cellars while the beasts pounded on their doors in a deafening manner and left swathes of red paint across their houses. When the beasts were really upset they would skin small pigs and leave them in various places all over the village, to remind the poor people that they were still being observed, and they needed to watch their Ps and Qs.

It would take too long to go into all the details of course, but at the end of the movie, one of the elders sends his blind daughter through the woods toward “the towns” to seek medicines for a dying young man who has been attacked by the beast (or so some of them think). He believes sending her would be the best choice instead of going for the antibiotics himself. Before she heads out, the elder has to confide in his blind daughter that the beasts are really a farce, thought up by the well-meaning elders to keep the people in the village living innocent, quiet lives. After she gets over her shock, the blind young woman is able to feel with her hands the hidden beast costume which was worn by one of the elders when a Beast Attack was warranted. I’m sure she was stunned to learn that her father and all the other elders had deceived them all for so long, but she was in a hurry to wander blindly through the woods by herself so she could get to “the towns” beyond and get some meds, so she didn’t have time to process all this fully right then.

Here comes a twist in the movie that’s not important enough for me to go into depth on, but while the elder’s blind daughter was feeling her way through the cold and terrifying woods alone, falling into muddy pits and being scraped by branches left and right, a young man from the village who had some mental problems had found the beast costume, put it on, and followed the blind girl.

Up until this point all we had seen of the beast was a skeletal hand that reached ominously from the red sleeve of a robe now and then, and even then it was just a glimpse. These woods scenes were dark and flashed quickly with terrifying loud and sudden sound effects to make the viewer startle and scream.

And finally we got a view of what the beast costume really looked like.

I’m not sure how to do it justice, but to me it looks like a giant porcupine who put on his red bathrobe too carelessly.

This was the beast costume the wise and loving elders of the village created, wore, and intermittently terrorized their people with, to keep them within the boundaries of the village, to keep them obedient and in line. And to keep them from wanting to go out into the world to explore.

At the end of the movie we learn that the village elders were modern men with their wives, who had moved to a modern day wildlife preserve after each of them had suffered trauma and tragedy in real 21st century living. They had decided to go back to a simpler, more peaceful way of life, and thought an enormous porcupine in a red hooded cape would help them achieve their ideals.

If I had known that donning a getup like the one pictured above would have assisted me in raising my children, in motivating them to be scrupulously obedient and to stay within all the parameters I had set for them, and would keep them out of the scary world, I think I might have worn it myself.

Anyway, if you have “The Village” in your Netflix queue, you might want to hit the button at the right of your queue that says, “remove.”  🙂

Tonight Michael and I might watch something else together. We have this and this sitting near the TV in their little red envelopes. I’m thinking about making Chicken Piccata with a fresh romaine and red onion salad for dinner.

Have you ever seen a movie you intensely disliked? Or one that was so silly and unbelievable you just rolled your eyes and wanted to play Words With Friends instead?

Which movie/s fell into this category for you?

I like blessings, especially Irish and Scottish blessings. You have probably read this old Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

I think there is great power in blessing too. Our words are more powerful than we think, and certainly God’s words are alive with such power we have nothing to compare them with. Volcanoes, hurricanes and supernovas are weak and puny things compared with God’s power.

We’ve sort of lost the practice and art of blessing in our culture, don’t you think? When was the last time someone pronounced a very intentional blessing over you? When was the last time we pronounced a very intentional blessing over our children?

I received a blessing not long ago that I love, and will keep in my nightstand always. It starts out like a familiar blessing, then ends with a tiny wry twist of humor, which made me smile hugely.

This is an English blessing, from a very lovely English woman:

May your days be contented and life send you happiness,
treats, security and peace…
As well as all the usual things like personal holiness,
absolute truth, flawless integrity, perfect charity
and a Really Good Bra.

~Penelope Wilcock

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She hit the nail on the head for me, she really did. I need all of these things in the worst way.