February 18, 2016

• A Long Ramble

  While driving to church last Sunday doing my version of carpool karaoke (me and Linda Rondstadt, wailing away at the top of our lungs), I passed a Lutheran church with a pithy sign out front. I’m not a big fan of pithy church signs, perhaps because for several years it was my job to put the pithy sayings chosen by the pastor of our former church onto the sign out by the road. It was a thankless, annoying part of my job. Anyway, this sign said, “I NEVER DOUBTED YOUR EXISTENCE – GOD” I laughed as I drove past, not because I found it humorous (which I didn’t), but because in all my 56 years and counting of life, I’ve doubted my own existence much more often than God’s. As I tried to explain to my husband, I have often experienced the conviction that life and this world are illusions. Brett interjected here, “That’s the plot of The Matrix.” Okay… I’m not really very familiar with those movies (lowers my geek flag in shame).

  God has remained very real to me, even when I’m in a “life is illusion” phase. I picture him sitting up there… wherever God sits… lost in a daydream, and we are it. And sometimes he gets pulled out of a daydream and we cease to exist (i.e. fall asleep on the couch). Sometimes he starts dreaming again from a previous point and we get déjà vu. Sometimes he skips ahead and we wonder where the past 20 minutes, or 20 miles, or 20 years went. Not an original thought, perhaps, but neither was the pithy saying on the sign that started it again last Sunday. And then I got to our church and the sermon was about identity crisis and I experienced déjà vu. I don’t really think we’re as insubstantial as an old television show that God turns on and off at His pleasure; I guess I just sometimes feel unimportant in the grand scale of the universe.

  In other news… well, not really news, just another boring life update… We had a nice Valentine’s Day. The Joyous One came over and we exchanged gifts. The card I gave Brett included a rewriting of a famous love sonnet to include our vacation and geocaching adventures of the past year. He enjoyed reading it almost as much as I enjoyed writing it. By a strange quirk, we each received a book; not just a book, a biography (or in my case, a memoir). We spent the afternoon chatting and reading and the Joyous One did her laundry. After she went home, Brett and I pulled out the cards and played cribbage with reckless abandon. The pins* were flying around the board almost as fast as the Google phone queries. (“Okay, Google – What are the rules for a flush in cribbage?”) We played again the next night and ended in a tie at one game each. Maybe we’ll graduate to gin rummy before spring. (And now I’m singing Cotton Ginny for couch karaoke. Aren’t you glad you’re not around me all the time?)

  Yesterday I went to a geocaching event. I went stag, but Brett showed up for a few minutes before heading off to do some volunteer work. This event was held at Dairy Queen. There’s another one at the end of the month at an ice cream establishment called Fire & Ice. What’s the deal with meeting at ice cream parlors in winter? Seriously, I could just set a carton of milk on the back porch and invite everyone to my house. If I’m going out on a cold day, I’d much rather go to a cozy cafe and sip hibiscus tea from a delicate china cup while nibbling a scone. After yesterday’s event, several people were going out to find some new geocaches and I was on the fence whether to go out in the snow or go home. A nice couple from Niles named Warren and Maxine offered to take me with them, so I went. They even put me in the front seat. It wasn’t a warm day, but I was wearing enough layers and it was just mild enough that I didn’t need my coat, so I handed it back to Maxine in the backseat.

  Our caching took us to a variety of places; a bush in a cemetery, a tree on a residential street, the back of a cheese puff-colored eyesore of a building, a wooded area near the river where we walked on wet sheets of melting ice covered in a soft white glitter of snow... That one was fun for the scenery and the cawing of corvids and the hawks screaming from the crowns of the towering trees. I was about as fast as an arthritic basset hound, tripping and slipping on the cracking ice and trying to look like I was just along for the cold, wet stroll. “Nothing like putting a face upon circumstances,” as Beatrix Potter so charmingly pointed out. After an hour or two, my friends returned me to my van and headed home to Niles with – you guessed it – my coat still in their backseat. I am meeting Maxine today to retrieve my coat and, if she has time, she’ll train me in the use of the WhereYouGo app which I’ve never been able to figure out on my phone. (It’s for a type of geocache called Whereigo.) Like all things technological, I put off learning how to do something new until the rest of the world has passed me by before I grab the tiger by the tail and figure it out, just in time for technology to move on to something better .

  >>>>>>LATER<<<<<<

  I met Maxine at a McDonald’s about halfway between Niles and The ‘Duh. We settled into an ochre booth and she handed me my coat. Then she showed me a weird looking round object with a Travel Bug dog tag dangling from it. It was a prop from the movie The Revenant that was sent to them as a publicity tie-in with the geocaching community. They’ve been traveling with it and displaying it at events. It’s a replica of a buffalo hide shield, round with feathers and some sort of animal tail attached, and straps on the back to hold it or hook it over your forearm. The real thing was made from the hide on the buffalo’s hump, which was tough enough to stop an arrow and stop or slow an antler or spear. It was kind of cool to hold a movie prop, even for a movie I’m not planning to see.

   

  

   

  When I was finished admiring the shield, Maxine walked me through the WhereYouGo app. It’s very complicated (at least to me) to use on an Android phone, but she patiently shared her pearls of wisdom with me until the lightbulb went off over my head; not as bright as my high beams, but even a dim bulb is usually enough to get me on the right track.  I came home and downloaded the game cartridges for 36 Whereigo caches that form the shape of a Star Wars tie fighter on the geocaching map. Murisopsis and I are planning to get together and do some geocaching soon, weather permitting. These are along a trail that we can traverse by foot or bicycle. My bike has sat in the garden shed all winter and most likely has two flat tires from all the fluctuations in temperature. My bike rack is probably somewhere in the basement. Right now it seems like it would be easiest to walk the trail, but I’m sure after three miles I’ll be wishing I’d opted to ride my bike.

   

  

   

  Well, here it is after 11 PM. I started this post not long after sunrise and now the moon is in the western night sky; a waxing gibbous moon according to the internet (because I can’t seem to stop myself from Googling stuff like that).

   

  

   

  It’s after 11 PM – time for Ma Kettle** to hit the hay. Pa’s probably been snoring for 30 minutes already. I know I’m talking gibberish.  I swear I’m not senile; it’s the Winter Scavenger Hunt. Besides, “I don’t need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.”***

  Astronaut.****

   

  *I know, they’re called pegs in cribbage, but I needed to work in the word “pin.”

  ** Ma and Pa Kettle were the main characters in a series of movies made in the 1940s and ‘50s.

   

  

   

  *** Stephen Fry, notable comedian and convicted felon (credit card fraud in his troubled youth)

  **** I couldn’t fit it in anywhere. It was a cheap and desperate move. Mea culpa.

   

   

  This post was brought to you by Winter Scavenger Hunt prompts 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 & 26

   

  • wet sheets, fire, corvids, milk
  • garden shed, moon, antlers,
  • mild, ochre, bulb, tail, scale
  • sonnet, astronaut, cheese, glitter, karaoke
  • gin, delicate, hook, basset hound, pearls, hibiscus
  • contains a line from a famous diarist
  • tea, tiger, night, train, television, tie
  • tower, kettle, hawk, charm, cotton
  • Contains a quote from a notable convicted felon.
  • stag, crown, high beams, pin, reckless

   

  • 12:26 am
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