2007-03-10

Saturdays are always welcomed for their weekendish nature. There’s no news and weather to greet me in the morning, so already I am adrift compared to Monday through Friday. It’s the weekend! God’s time.

After a late Morning Offering, Jim cooked for next week while I came upstairs to finish the revision of the long “in case of our death” (ICOOD) document for our Board, responding to initial comments from them on the rough draft of that document. I spent most of the morning just finding the work I had already done. I must have hit the wrong key at some point the last time I worked on it, because the considerable work previously done on this had disappeared from my computer. I did searches on “board”, which yielded two dozen results but no joy. Searching on “death” was eventually efficacious! The work had been consigned, for some reason, to the recycle Bin. Argh.

I was thrilled to lay my cyberhands on it and pounced, renaming it and saving it, by golly, by gum! I got the ICOOD document all snugged up, but was unable to finish the accompanying letter, which lays out some of Jim’s and my plans for enlarging and further structuring the Board for smooth transition and good working, ICOOD before lunch time.

Jim had, as is his wont, spent a most fruitful morning not only finishing up the cooking Gary had started yesterday but also clearing away a host of errands, including getting my new choir robe from the tailor’s. The tailor, Sergei, had put pockets in the robe – you KNOW how handy pockets are for the portable singer – and replaced some unwieldy buttons with snaps so my weak hands could work them.

Jim also came home with some fast food, which we enjoyed. I discovered that if you get a Big Mac and then remove all three pieces of bread, the sandwich breaks down into a tasty and rather small serving to eat with a fork. Jim and I stretched afterwards, and then we headed for the KY State Fairgrounds and Exposition Center. Our passive solar architect, Gary Watrous, a man of some renown in his field, had invited us to the Home and Garden Show, which was occupying the South Wing of that enormous edifice.

It was fun to remember the time I sang there, back in 1972, as a back-up singer in the rock band, Wayne Young and Company. We performed at the Toys for Tots concert at Christmastime and the audience was 20,000 strong. What a great experience! Of course, the humongous speakers probably were the culprits in taking down my upper range hearing later in life, but feeling the love come back from all the people while we sang was worth it! I danced and sang my heart out, ducked a pass from a fellow singer by explaining that I was in it for the money, and had a great time. Of course there was a fly in the ointment – the venerable and witless Colonel Sanders, then alive, asked to meet me and in the process pinched my bottom. Yick! Talk about a dirty old man! We don’t eat at KFC, ever!

The home show was endless. Jim rented a wheelchair for me, as my little scooter is acting up and needs repair. It is like one of those bad grocery carts that keeps getting locked into going around in small circles. The wheelchair was a life-saver for me and Mick and I viewed seemingly endless displays of flooring, garden supplies, home insurance, furniture, kitchen designs, appliances, furnaces, generators, clothes and food and more. We collected a bagful of brochures, which was fine because one of the vendors was giving away plastic bags with his ad info printed on them. Two hours later we had seen it all and Jim rolled me to our car.

Well, eventually, we found the car! Those enormous parking lots for big venues like the Fairgrounds are notorious for eating cars and it took us a while, wandering back and forth in the hinterlands of blacktop, to find Stanley Outback. Fortunately we had a magic key and finally we heard Stanley’s answering chirp.

Traffic was atrocious and getting home was a project taking up the early evening, we’ll probably see news about an enormous pile-up on the expressway today. But the weather was fine and spring was in the air, so we put the windows down, turned on some music and grooved quite happily, getting off the expressway and into the maelstrom of heavy surface traffic, having a good conversation and outlasting the tangle of cars and tempers and endless red lights around us.

The evening was most pleasant and very quiet. We offered the Gaia Meditation and had a late supper while we watched a movie, The Guardian, with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. The movie was a “Top Gun” wannabee about the Coast Guard Rescue teams that attempt to retrieve hapless boaters from the briny deeps when their boats sink. It was a feel-good movie with excellent ensemble and production and a heartstrings-aweigh kind of story – an odd combination of almost mawkish sentiment and good, stout action.

And so to bed, after a sweet snuggle with the kitties.