Archive for the 'Bekah’s Spouting Off Again' Category

Something you forgot to be thankful for

Seriously.

Are you drinking this in?

I, for one, have no words.

I’ll bet that, in this recent season of thankfulness, you forgot to mention your gratitude that this outfit  is not in style. I can’t even wrap my mind around it to be honest. Cast your eye over it again. Did you forget to notice the dressy gloves paired tastefully with a sweatsuit? I’ll bet you did. No one expects gloves. And honestly, I’m still stalled out back at the SWEATSUIT!  With tastefully appliqued floral motifs upon the sweatshirt, no less.

Another thing you may have missed on first glance, taken aback as you so rightfully were by the sweatsuit, is that this poor girl is sporting a tam, perched precariously on the side of her perm. I think that’s why she has to hold her head that way -  bobby pins are only so sturdy after all, and the whole thing may slide down onto her shoulder in a minute.

Take a quick gander at the foot gear.  Yes – your eyes have not mislead you – dress shoes with socks.

Now that she’s decked out in this sumptuous ensemble, what does she do? She loiters coyly by a lacy tea table,  holding a lily. Possibly to indicate the variety of lifelike instances in which this outfit would be appropriate.

Where did I get this photo you ask? No – it’s not my senior picture . . . thank heavens. Continue reading ‘Something you forgot to be thankful for’

Read ‘em and Weep

Is anyone going to mind if I get a tidge preachy for a moment? Lovely. Here goes.

I mind it, yes I really do, when Christians run around loving songs and singing along with them when they have never bothered to discover what those lyrics are actually saying. Are you with me here? I’m sure this must have happened to you before . . . it’s definitely happened to me a time or two, and I hate it. There’s some great song, you hear a snatch of it on the radio, it’s really catchy, you like the tune, and the next time it comes on you sing along with the chorus. And then you file it away under the mental category “songs I like.” But have you ever then discovered, after singing along with it about eighteen times without thinking, that it’s actually quite a despicable song when you read the lyrics? That’s really the worst.

No. I take that back. The worst is when Christians never actually DO reach the moment of discovering that it’s a despicable song . . . either because they just don’t bother, or because the cool hipness of the song has them around the Continue reading ‘Read ‘em and Weep’

My Career as a Journalist

I would like to commence by saying a quick, “Preach it, Mother!” Her advice on journaling was spot on . . . and I’d like to just throw out a casual thought that perhaps a pastor’s wife of 35 years who has counseled many a woman through all manner of tragedies may perchance have a perspective on things that is worth listening to. Her list of “things that might get people into trouble” has a lot of years of experience behind it. Quite honestly, sometimes I feel like a pastor and his wife are a bit like the doctors in the ER. They’ve seen the car crashes that come through the door every single Saturday night because people WILL persist in thinking that nothing will go wrong if they try to drive themselves home from the bar. The doctors who have to clean up the mess are a bit more cynical.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there. I frankly felt that I should share, for everyone’s edification, my career in journaling.

It all started when someone, I don’t remember who, gave me a birthday present. I imagine I was probably eight or nine, but I don’t know for sure. The gift was a tiny, green Garfield the Cat diary – probably two inches tall, with a little strap that snapped it shut. I never wrote anything in it – except perhaps my name. It sat in my room for months, untouched. It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed to write in it – I just never did.

Then, one day, some people came over to visit. I don’t remember exactly why, but midway through the afternoon I got cranky at life and began to stew quietly to myself about how I was being unduly harassed by everyone and everything. You know how it is when you’re cranky – everyone in the world is to blame but yourself. Suddenly, in the midst of my mood, I had a flash of inspiration. This here was exactly what that diary had been waiting for all this time. I went and shut myself in my room, opened up my little Garfield the Cat book, and scribbled out a terse little entry that went something like this: Continue reading ‘My Career as a Journalist’

The Queue Jumper

I had a truly uplifting experience last week that I’d like to share with everyone.

Ben and I were in Oxford last week. And when we arrived at Heathrow, (lots of memories wrapped up in that place!) it turned out that the line at immigration was hideously long. We were both bordering on deliriously tired, and we were clearly going to be standing in line with all of our luggage for an hour. Basically, you could sum up the situation as tedious in the extreme. I was standing there with a glazed look on my face, shuffling several steps forward every so often and thinking of nothing in particular except occasionally noticing what bad outfits people wear on planes.

And then suddenly, into this gray, drab, dull, flourescently lit tedium, there came something that can only be described as a blessing. A little human drama began to unfold directly behind us in line, and it raised my spirits immeasurably.

It began when I felt someone breathing on my elbow. That was a bit disconcerting. I whipped around, and there was an exceptionally short Indian woman standing behind me. Right behind me. As in, very much involved with my personal space. She was probably 65, and her height was such that when she breathed, it hit me on the elbow. She had a wicked scowl on her face, and also a mustache. She was leading a little girl by the hand, and towing a suitcase. I turned back around and tried to ignore the breathing on my elbow. I was beginning to settle back into my stupor Continue reading ‘The Queue Jumper’

Vindication.

So . . . who wants to hear about my plumbing??!?! You’re all so excited, I can tell. Ain’t nothin’ like a good tale of plumbing drama.

Not to keep you in suspense any longer, let me begin by saying that ever since the great tree incident, our plumbing hasn’t been quite right. When the toilet flushed there was a mysterious “bang” coming from somewhere. Somewhere not in the bathroom. I told everyone that needed to know . . . the engineer who is in charge of the repairs, as well as miscellaneous extra people. Many people patronized me about the bang. Not badly, but you could tell they were mentally patting me on the head and saying, “There, there.”

Then we left town. And the snow came. The snow came in a big way. When we arrived back in town on Friday night, our house had new fresh cracks in the walls, and then on Saturday the furnace went out. It got fixed though, and that isn’t the point. The point is that (also on Saturday) the plumbing was very distinctly wrong. The bang was no longer ambiguous. Weird noises were coming out of all the drains, and when I turned on the washing machine, the toilet came to a rolling boil, which is something you never really want to see.

On Sunday morning, the drains gave up altogether. No water would leave our house. It was as if the water had all unanimously decided that it was cozier inside than out. Nothing would go down the toilet, the sinks, or the tub.

Fast forward to when the plumbers excavated the sewer line on Monday. What do you think they pulled out of the sewer line under the house? No, not a Lego spaceship. It was a long board. And when I say long, I mean a good twenty-eight inches. And I would like to take this moment to go on the record and state that we did not flush that. Had it been the Lego spaceship, I wouldn’t have been so sure, but the board I can be confident about.

Now let’s refer back to that photo of the tree on our house.

Do you see that white pipe that’s all akimbo there in the upper foliage? That’s the toilet vent. Apparently, the tree ripped a board off the house, and in a tricky exhibition of dexterity, it fired the board straight down that pipe. For the next ten days the board worked its way down the pipe, through the wall, and down under the house before it finally stuck fast and clogged everything up.

I’m feeling very smug now. I said there was a “bang” and everyone looked at me as if I had said that a cow was barking. “Pipes don’t bang,” you could see them saying to themselves, “they gurgle.” However, I think we can all confidently agree now that I was right. A large board, working its way through the walls with every flush definitely makes a “Bang.”

Thank you. That’s all I need to say.

Two More of My Cents

Now that I’ve officially sailed out and gotten involved in a discussion about taking the Lord’s name in vain, I feel that I am rather obligated to say something else . . . lest anyone infer things about what I meant. As I cruised through the comment section I began to be a bit afraid that perhaps I had misjudged my audience.

Quite honestly, I read the comments all in a lump so I hope I’m not being too pointed about any one particular person. I don’t actually have any one person in mind. But the vibe I was getting was that actually this is a crowd comprised of a lot of people who perhaps need to loosen up a smidgeon. Yes, as I said before, I know for a fact that there are people out there who need to tighten it up. But then again . . . as my father is so fond of saying . . . there’s a ditch on both sides of the road. And at the risk of now appearing to be obnoxiously contrarian, I am now about to turn and say a word to the other ditch.

There’s a very real danger of getting downright pharisaical about this. The impulse to fence the law is as old as dirt – and Christ was always rather pointed in His rebukes of this practice. God gave us the law, and that was good enough. We don’t need to embellish it, add to it, fancy it up, or make it too complicated. Continue reading ‘Two More of My Cents’