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

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’

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’

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.