2008-11-29

It was a cloudy and rather forbidding day, chilly and lowering, which matched my sentiments at having to trek cross-country to spend money and time in Nebraska when my idea of holidays includes things like sunshine and the ocean! Or mountains and a lake! Anything but time in a small, unhappy town which smells of the meat-packing plant that dominates the economy and brings in the Hispanic people. Unfortunately the city fathers and mothers have no intention of welcoming diversity, so the Hispanic population has formed its own community and the atmosphere is uneasy.

Of course there is the honor/duty of spending time with McMom, Mick’s mother, whose 91st birthday we will celebrate with her. We are blessed to be able to pamper her. She is the last of our parents, my parents having died in 1988 and 1991, and Jim’s dad having died seven years ago now. So we will soldier on!

And the trip itself will be a delight! It’s a true treat to spend all day with Mick instead of just the evening hours. And we’ll have two days of driving to get there; two days of companionship and that sense of euphoria we always have when we are together.

After Morning Offering, I came upstairs to finish the last transcript of recent channeling sessions which was in my Inbox, wishing to close out my more urgent duties before leaving. It was an interesting special session requested by a guy who is working with technology to create machines that help people achieve a good state of meditation.

I had lunch at the Cheddar Box Restaurant, a sandwich shop in Middletown, with a friend from St. Luke's, Laurinda S. This kind and generous lady found out that I was stuck with a knitting project. In the middle of knitting a baby blanket for Kori D's infant last year, my shoulders gave out. Laurinda finished the knitting for me! Fortunately the blanket came out large enough to cover a toddler!

I wanted to do something nice to thank her, and her favorite restaurant is the Cheddar Box. Voila! We enjoyed each other thoroughly and had a good meal. Their tomato-artichoke soup and pimiento cheese sandwich were gourmet quality, with warm, soft, toasted bread and home-made mayonnaise for the sandwich and lots of lovely herbs in the soup. I have not eaten there before, but I will do so again!

Then I went to Absolutely Salon for a manicure, wanting to be groomed for the trip. The nail color, of course, was lavender - with sparkles! I have difficulty with ingrown fingernails and Bethany was a wonder at relieving the soreness and getting me all shipshape.

I think I shall have to start getting manicures every two weeks instead of every four weeks, as this problem has gotten a lot worse as I get older. They talk of older people as being ‘long in the tooth’, but in my case it’s ‘round in the fingernails’!

The bulk of my time today was spent packing. I did watch some football with Mick, especially the Oklahoma – Oklahoma State game, which was a terrific and sometimes even elegant game, in between periods of clothes gathering, putting together my bath kit and so forth.

I can only work for a short time before having to rest, so the progress was slow, but by bedtime I was all packed except for my office things –the computer and its accessories, my letter box and other work I am taking with me, and the printer. I will pack these things after I write my journal entries tomorrow early. We should have an easy time of it, getting away on time tomorrow in late morning.

I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation.