Years ago when Jesse was small, we had a series of books about Christopher Churchmouse, a mischievous little rodent who lived, I believe, in the church basement with his family and learned about right and wrong and spiritual truths.

We enjoyed those books, but those mice were evidently better behaved than the usual run of the mill mice.

I walked into our missions closet the other day to assess what was needed to stock up for our missions conference and discovered one set of shelves had been visited by mice. They left their little calling cards all over the place. I had just been in there two days before, and there had been no sign of them.

I thought at first a squirrel had been in there as we’d been having problems with them in other parts of the church (scurrying above the ceiling, peeking a head out the AC vent during choir practice, choosing some hidden corner as a final resting place and smelling up the whole facility). Some of the men have been diligent to climb around up there and remove the dead one (after a lot of work trying to find it), repairing holes, setting humane traps, etc. But a couple of the men said they felt like the missions closet visitors were mice rather than squirrels. So they set a trap and my husband and I went about cleaning things up.

I have to say, it was very disheartening! Thankfully the droppings were primarily on one set of bookcase-type shelves rather than all four. There were four bars of homemade soap that one of our ladies makes, and the mice really liked that stuff. They gnawed corners off all four bars. They also gnawed across several towels (looking for nesting material, maybe? I don’t know).

We vacuumed up all the droppings, took the towels home and washed them in hot water and disinfectant, and cleaned everything else off with disinfecting wipes. The towels above actually look better there after having been washed than when we first brought them home — here they just look like a few threads have been pulled, but before it did look like actual gnaw marks on them.

And we found out some of the towels weren’t very good quality: they burst into little fuzz balls after washing. It’s not unusual for new towels to give off more lint at first, but this was ridiculous. So I am glad some missionary family didn’t get those.

What’s funny is that the mice passed up boxed macaroni and cheese and jello for soap and towels. We don’t usually keep food in there for just such reasons, but one class gathered up some mostly canned and a few boxed goods for the closet without checking with me first. I decided to go ahead and put them in for a few months to see if anyone wanted them, but no one even looked at them, and some of the expiration dates have already passed. So between that and the critters, I am making it official policy: no food in the missions closet!

The trap did catch one mouse, I waited a couple of weeks before restocking the closet just to make sure we didn’t have any more unwanted “visitors.” I think they caught a couple more in other places, but so far the closet has been clear. Our missions conference started last night, so I restocked on Saturday. I put the new towels in big Ziploc bags so hopefully this won’t happen again. I hope as we take the various missionaries through there we don’t face any “surprises!!”

I’d like to hear if your church has a missions closet and how they organize it. I can always use new ideas. We don’t do a “points” system as I have heard that some do — the different families have different needs, different numbers of supporting churches and kids, etc., so we leave it open. Most lean more toward being reluctant to take too much than overdoing it — we sometimes have to encourage them to feel free to take whatever they might need. Most are on the road and can’t take a whole lot.

I was surprised that the most often chosen thing was queen sized sheet sets. Next would be towels and dish towels. We have some small tools and tools sets that are popular with the men, and sport balls of any kind are taken often as well. We have a bin of boys’ toys and girls’ toys, and most families will let their children pick one of two items out of there. Christian books and CDs are also popular as are travel irons. We have several toiletries, regular and sample sized, that I thought would be taken often, but I was surprised that they’re not.

It’s a fun ministry. It’s almost like playing Santa’s helper. 🙂 And every now and then there will be an unusual item someone donated (most of the items I purchase from our mission’s budget, but we’re open to new donated items as well) that turns out to be just what a particular missionary needed. It’s neat to participate in a ministry where you get to be a conduit for the Lord to work.

I decided to skip prayer meeting tonight to go to the ER. 🙄

I would much rather have been at prayer meeting!

Just as I was getting ready to go, putting my shoes on, I had another attack of SVT. I was discouraged that it happened again so soon — the last incident was a little over a month ago,  but before that it had happened less than once a year. I hope this was just a fluke and not a new trend.

And this time the adenosine didn’t work. It usually works immediately, but they tried it twice to no avail. They then tried another medication that they said worked similarly to the metoprolol I am already one, and it finally worked. But the fact that the adenosine didn’t work was discouraging. I am hoping that that’s just a fluke, too, and doesn’t mean that this is getting harder to get under control.

I’m back at home now and fine after being under observation at the hospital for a couple of hours. But I do admit that I am a little discouraged about it all.

This is shaping up to be a busy week.

Every year around this time our church has a “missionary Christmas” endeavor. We e-mail the missionaries our church supports in late July or August to ask for “wish list” ideas and then have folks at church sign up for items they’d like to buy to contribute. Then at our October meeting we wrap them. Then I get to package and address them and fill out the customs forms.

I’m working on getting as many of these out as soon as possible. It will be interesting this year as the post office has done away with what used to be called “surface rate” (as I once heard it, that which ships by boat, train, or llama). So the packages should arrive more quickly, but will also be more expensive. I consulted with our pastor about whether we should do anything differently in light of that, but he said just to do everything like we have always done it, and we’ll see how it goes, then we’ll reevaluate for next year. This is a joy to do, and is such a blessing for them, so we’d love to keep doing it. It’s hard sometime to balance being generous with the expensive reality of shipping, but so far the Lord has blessed.

I’d love to hear how your church ministers to your missionaries. Besides their regular support, of course, we also have a missions closet that we take them through when they are in the States for furlough. We have a mission’s display with their pictures and copies of their most recent prayer letter. New prayer letters are usually at least mentioned and often quoted from during Wed. night prayer meetings, and we glean some of the prayer requests and put them into our ladies’ ministry newsletter. I like trying to keep them before the folks so that they are familiar with them and so that they’re not just encountering them once every four years when they are home on furlough. We have a missions conference every fall, and usually at least one of our missionaries that we support speaks at that as well as some others.

I also have another dental appointment tomorrow. The same tooth on the opposite side of the one I just had extracted and a bridge made for is having the same trouble, but I am hoping this one can get by with just a crown. If I can persuade anyone, please don’t do what I did and let the dread of going to the dentist keep you away. It causes so many more problems (and is much more expensive! Yikes!!) than getting those regular cleanings and small fillings taken care of.

When someone called me to help with a meal for an expectant mom on bedrest this week, I agreed, thinking my dental appointment was on Wednesday — but I just checked this morning, and the appointment is on Tuesday, the same day I am supposed to make the meal. Though I’d rather have those things occur on different days, I think the timing will work out ok. I know what a blessing it is to receive meals when Mom is out of commission – -we’ve been on the receiving end many times — but I always struggle with what to make. I have a couple of cookie recipes that regularly turn out fine, but my main meal skills are a little iffy, at least for the kind of meals you want to take in a situation like that. The other lady helping wants to make macaroni and cheese as a side dish because that’s her best thing, so I am thinking of roasting a ham. Can’t go too wrong with that…let’s hope, anyway. The other lady is also doing some kind of bread or rolls, and I’ll get a little bagged salad and make cookies. I’m sorely tempted to get some ready made sugar cookie dough and use those little autumn mini cookie cutters I mentioned earlier and sprinkling them with fall-colored sugars. There are two little children in the house who might like those. I also thought about a peanut butter and Hershey’s kiss cookie my son’s girlfriend made this week with just peanut butter, sugar, and an egg — so simple but so good! I don’t often make peanut butter stuff for a meal for others since so many kids have peanut allergies, but that wasn’t on the list of things they couldn’t eat, so it might be ok.

Somewhere along the way I got the idea (not from my mom, I know) that any food you do for company or a church potluck or a meal for others should be totally from scratch with nothing store bought and ready-made. That’s still my ideal, and I do think it shows a level of care put into it. But sometimes it’s a matter of pride.

Then, my step-father and two sisters are coming to visit from Texas at the end of this week, and my other two sisters who live about 30-45 minutes away will be over some as well. It’s awful that I don’t see the two nearby sisters much at all except when the rest of the family comes — our schedules and days off just don’t mesh. But I’m saving most of the cleaning til later this week in preparation for their coming. Normally when company’s coming I’m inspired to get a lot of house projects done, but they’ve seen my house “as is” before and I just don’t have the time and energy, so I think I’ll stick with basic cleaning and just enjoy the visit. I did finally get the fabric for curtains I need to make for the family room and got it all dry-cleaned and ready to sew:

Where I am “stuck” with that project is trying to decide what kind of trim to use on the valance or whether to make them without it. I’ve checked in all the places nearby for trim and just haven’t had made the time to look in the next towns. I could go ahead and maybe get the main curtains up, though — they shouldn’t take too long to whip up. We’ll see.

But I guess I should push away from the computer now and get busy, huh?

Bits and pieces. Randomness. Hodgepodge. Stray Thoughts (that sounds familiar….). Or as Susanne charmingly puts it, Mishmash. That’s what this post is. 🙂

• I inadvertently had a mini author event (or an author mini-event — the authors are life-sized, I’m sure) in the comment section of this post about feeling too awkward to speak to an author at a book-signing or author event. Several authors somehow found their way to that posted and commented, including one of my favorites, Terri Blackstock, as well as several who were new to me. The general consensus was yes, please do go ahead and approach them, even if you can’t think of anything else to say but, “I really liked your book.” They feel as awkward as we do but they don’t want to sit there twiddling their thumbs with no one to talk to. And affirmation can help spur us on in the work of the Lord. It reminded me of this post with a quote from Elisabeth Elliot to the effect that it is not wrong to want approval. I don’t know how many times in church I have heard someone say, “Since so-and-so isn’t here, I want to take this opportunity to tell something special he did,” and I’ve wondered if it would have really encouraged so-and-so to know that the Lord has used him in some way.

• About a month ago I wrote about some dental woes and how the Lord was helping me deal with it. I am happy to report that as of this morning I have my new permanent bridge in and I am so happy to be done with that! I do have a similar problem on the other side that I am hoping can be solved with just a crown rather than a bridge — I have an appointment to deal with that next week. The digestive issues I was concerned about with the antibiotic I had to be on (that has big warning signs of possible colitis as a side effect) were minor, thankfully. I did eat some yogurt every day I was on it and a few days afterward, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked it, especially Yoplait’s orange dreamsicle flavor.

• Friday afternoon and evening our school had its annual fall festival, and it was a perfect, beautiful fall day for it. It’s a fund raiser for the senior trip, but the whole school gets in on it. Each class mans a booth or activity of some type. It’s kind of like a mini-carnival. Jesse’s class’s booth sold funnel cakes (very good! But I don’t even want to think about the calories!) and fried Snickers bars (didn’t try that — almost raises my blood sugar just to think about it). There’s one lady who has the set-up and know-how to do it, so all the other parents had to contribute was a little money for supplies, which was fine by me. One of the other classes sponsored a dunking booth. Usually they have pastors and teachers (Carol, aren’t you glad you only had to sell tickets? 😀 ) and staff in the booth to be dunked, along with maybe a Bic Mac (big man around campus 🙂 ) or two, like some of the athletes. But this year they had the youth pastor and the school principle, then they opened it up for students to volunteer. They did send permission slips home for it ahead of time, and Jesse wanted to sign up to do it. Participants who wanted to be in the dunking booth had to pay six tickets ($3) for the privilege for 20 minutes, and others could pay two tickets to get 3 throws to try to dunk whoever was in there. Jesse had the time of his life. He thoroughly enjoyed it. And yes, I dunked him. 🙂 It was funny, though — when we got there and saw the schedule of students who had signed up, they were all 7th and 8th-graders. I guess they were young enough to think it would be great fun.

• Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer is hosting another give-away extravaganza like the Dog Days of Summer event that I am sure many of you remember, only this time it will be held at her Bloggy Giveaways site (which, by the way, you should subscribe to or check regularly. There has been some neat stuff given away there!) This event is called the Fall, Y’all Bloggy Give-Away and will be held the week of October 29. Anyone with a blog can give away anything (within Shannon’s guidelines) that week and link to it there. Details are here. It was a lot of fun last time — people gave away books, CDs, crafts, jewelry, and all kinds of stuff. I didn’t win anything, but I had fun hosting a give-away and meeting some new bloggers.

• My new copy of the revived Victoria magazine just arrived this afternoon! I can hardly wait to sit down and pore over it.

Some very nice people have passed on some awards to me.

New and fun blog friend Carolyn at Talk…to…Grams awarded me the You Lift Me Up blog award, saying, “Barbara H. at Stray Thoughts: I am new to reading her blog but I have read her comments for a while on other blogs and I liked what she had to say so much that I went over to her blog to see what she was about!! And I loved her post!! Very uplifting!”

Jen at My 3 boys and I passed on the Totally Fabulous award to me.

And Alice at Hello, My Name Is Alice passed on the I Love Your Blog Award to me.

Thanks you ladies all so much! It warms my heart that you would each think of me in such a way.

I passed the I Love Your Blog award on to others a few weeks back. The You Life Me Up award and Totally Fabulous award I’d like to pass on to all who read and comment here because you are fabulous and you do lift me up!

 …amidst the deserted downtown streets, alone with my husband…

A romantic tête-à-tête? Returning from a date?

No — a trip to the ER. What fun!

Sometime in the last few years I’ve started having what they call SVTs — supraventricular tachycardia. My heart will suddenly start beating around 200 times a minute. When trying to describe it to my sister she asked if it wasn’t just a panic attack. No, it’s different — it presents distinctly on the EKG.

They say it is an electrical problem of the heart with signals going awry. In many cases, mine thankfully one of them, it’s not associated with any worse heart conditions (though they do check enzymes to make sure I haven’t had a heart attack when it happens). It’s happened enough to require an ER trip I think maybe 6 or so times in the last 8 years. The last time it happened was a year ago last April.

I’ve had to go off all caffeine and can’t take decongestants. I take a beta-blocker which is supposed to help, and does, I think. There are measures I can take at home if it starts up, like inhaling and then acting as if I am going to blow air back out, but not letting any escape. That has warded it off a few times.

But last night after I put Jesse to bed around 10:30 and came back downstairs to get something to drink, it started up as I was getting ice out of the tray. I tried the blowing thing, I laid down with my feet above my heart (another recommendation), I went into the bathroom (bearing down as if having a BM can help). After about an hour of taking turns trying these measures, I gave up and we went in to the ER. It was 11:30 by this time, and my husband usually has to get up at 5 a.m. to get to where he needs to be at work. I hated that he was going to have to be up the next few hours. The first few times this happened I felt more panicky. Now it is mainly an annoyance.

One thing about it, though — when you get to the ER with a heart rate of 187, they take you right back with no waiting. I asked if I could use the restroom before they hooked me up to everything (I always have to go at the most inconvenient times!), but they said they’d rather I didn’t — they’d rather take care of the heart thing first. So even though I’d been walking around my own home using the bathroom at my own discretion and under my own power for the last hour, I acquiesced (sigh!) I know they have to be concerned about a patient passing out with a lack of oxygen to the brain when this kind of thing is going on.

One of the nurses was a guy who looked to be about 16 who held up the little hospital gown for me to get into. Nuh-uh, fella, I’m not changing right in front of you! I didn’t say that, but I stepped over to the corner where a chair was and I guess he got the message, because he laid it down and left the room. The my husband helped me change.

So they got me all hooked up to the EKG, an iv, and oxygen and asked a ton of questions and then injected the iv with adenosine, and I felt really, really, really miserable for about 10 seconds or so. The adenosine causes the heart to “pause,” as the doctor put it, long enough to get the signals straight and “reset” the electrical rhythm back right. Then they had to monitor me for a while and make sure everything was stable. Then they sent me home.

It’s almost become routine now.

There is a type of surgery they can do where they go up through a blood vessel in your groin through to your heart (like they do with a heart catheterization) and somehow “zap” the little area that’s causing problems. The first time this happened, I was sent for follow-up to a heart doctor who specializes in electrical problems of the heart, had an echo done, etc., and he told about that surgery. But he said if this wasn’t happening very often, I could just wait. So that’s we’ve opted to do. Really the zapping part of the heart thing doesn’t bother me as much as having to lie flat on my back for hours afterward, which would be extremely uncomfortable for me, and not being able to get to a restroom. I have this almost phobia about being able to get to a restroom, and my body just doesn’t cooperate with bedpans. But since I have these SVTs less than once a year and don’t have any corresponding problems, they say it fine to wait.

I do have a follow-up visit with my doctor this week.

One thing about going in the direction of the hospital, though, is that a Krispy Kreme is on the route. Only once that I can remember have I ever gone out of my way specifically to get a donut there. And since we go up to the hospital or the doctors in the area fairly infrequently, it’s kind of a treat to get a donut there on the way back. Well, we discovered on our way back that they were open 24 hours. And this one has a drive-through! My husband said it seemed kind of ironic to be getting donuts after coming from the cardiac unit of the ER, with my hospital bracelet still on. But I guess you could say we made a date of it after all. 🙂

I got to sleep about 2:30, got up at 5 as usual, but went back to bed after Jesse got off to school until lunchtime.

I was wrestling with the whys of it. It just seems so inconvenient and such a waste of time when this happens. It’s not like there was an immediate spiritual benefit like witnessing to someone at the hospital. But then I reminded myself that inconvenient is better than traumatic, and a problem that can be taken care of in a few hours is better than a week of the flu or a longer term worse illness. I really don’t have anything to complain about.

I was glad that it happened when my husband was here. It has happened a couple of times before when he was away, which had been one of my fears. The Lord worked everything out each time with a friend taking me in and the kids being old enough by them to be home alone. But my husband is an excellent caretaker. 🙂

So, life is back to “normal” (whatever that is), hopefully for a very long time to come.

After my rambling post below, I felt I should come back and say that I really did do more today than nap and play computer Scrabble. 🙂

I vacuumed four rooms and a hallway and stairs and dusted three rooms (usually the kids’ jobs on Saturdays, but we’ve had things going on the last couple of weekends), did laundry, washed some hand-washables, mended my husband’s pants, clipped and filed recipes I had marked in 6 or 7 magazines, dealt with a stack of clutter, made meatloaf and potatoes, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, clipped coupons, and sorted through a stack of newspapers for the recycling bin.

And I feel better for having gotten several things accomplished.

Funny thing, though: for all that, there’s still a list of things to do tomorrow…..

• It’s finally beginning to feel like fall here. No leaves turning yet, but the temperature outside when I took Jesse to school this morning was 58. Hurray!
• I decided I needed a nap this morning. At 9:40. I had been nodding off at the computer, then when I went to get some Tums for a touch of indigestion, I accidentally opened a packet of Lact-aid instead. I realized I had the wrong thing, then got the bottle of ibuprofen. Realized I had the wrong thing again and finally reached for the Tums. Then took a nap.

• I came back to the computer, still feeling a little brain foggy. So I played a game of Scrabble against the computer to waste time for intellectual stimulation. The computer usually lets me win (maybe because I have my online opponent set as an amateur). I feel like I am cheating when I use the hint feature. But then I tell myself that it is a way to learn. I learned today, for instance, that an ai is a three-toed sloth and that peridia (which uses all seven letters! And earns bonus points for doing so! And flashes “BINGO” in fireworks across the top of the screen! And which my spell-checker doesn’t recognize.) is the plural of peridium, ” the covering of the spore-bearing organ in many fungi.” And I got my highest total score ever! So, see, I had a profitable morning after all.

• Even though we are several weeks into the school year, I still don’t feel like I am in school year mode. I tend to stay up too late, partly because that comes naturally, and partly because after my youngest goes to bed I like to stay up a while and unwind. But as he gets older he stays up later. So I stay up later, but I am getting up earlier to get him off to school. And I don’t feel like I am really awake until late in the morning. Or after lunch. I probably should do something about that. Either go to bed earlier. Or continue taking morning naps.

• I have been musing about memes. Not the occasional ones that go around — love most of those. But the regular weekly ones. There is one out there for every day of the week — there are 2 or 3 for some days. I enjoy them, but I don’t want my blog to be all or mostly memes. Even though you can get to know others through those, I kind of feel like my voice is lost when I am just doing memes. But it is nice to get the feedback…when I am just writing my own thoughts and no one responds, I feel all alone. 🙂 Each one has its own “crowd” that I enjoy visiting with on the given day. Some, like the Thursday Thirteen and Wordless Wednesday, have gotten way too big to visit a great deal of the participants. I do those if I have something to share but I don’t ponder and search for something for those like I used to. I like the Time Travel Tuesday and Friday’s Feast, but whether I participate depends on the questions for the day and whether I think I have an interesting answer ad how much time I have. I’m a avid reader and love the questions of Booking Through Thursday, but my tastes are different from most of the others there and it doesn’t seem as interactive as some of the others. I love the motivation of Tackle It Tuesday and the satisfaction of seeing a completed task. But though I am always tackling something I don’t always post to that — I don’t always have the time to visit around to the other participants, and these things are supposed to encourage some degree of that. Love Works for Me Wednesday and like to look through the list of tip topics even if I don’t have any for the day. The two that I make a point of doing each week when I can are the Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt — I just love the creativity and seeing what different people come up with for the theme — and Kelli’s Show and Tell Friday — I’ve enjoyed the ladies I’ve met there and really seem to mesh well with them. So — these weekly memes are fun in themselves and a way to get out there in the blogosphere and meet others and find other blogs you like — and yes, to maybe attract other readers to your blog — but, like everything else, they have to be balanced in the context of the time and responsibilities.

• Speaking of time and responsibilities…I do need to employ the former to fulfill the latter. At some point this morning some items for a to-do list were floating around in my mind. Laundry was one. I’d better go have lunch and see what the others were and try to salvage the rest of this day. 🙂

(Originally posted 9/11/06)

I used to volunteer at my sons’ school every Tuesday. On that particular Tuesday morning in September, a little after 9 a.m., I turned on the car radio to catch a bit of news on my way to the school. I was confused at first — I could tell something serious had happened, but couldn’t make out what. Finally the newscaster explained that an airplane had hit the World Trade Tower. I was stunned. Continue reading →