The Problem Is: She Doesn't Look Her Age

The problem Is: She doesn't look her age ... or act it.

Aileen is 95 years old.  Her hair's not much more gray than mine is.  She is only about as wrinkly as some 65-year-olds I know.

And she is STUBBORN! OMG! Stubborn as a two-year-old.

BUT: Her body knows that it is 95, even though her mind and appearance do not.

This woman REALLY needs to walk with a cane -- or she is going to knock me over when I escort her into Plainfield Church (where I work), and we are both going to be in sorry shape!

I wish I would have taken her photo today so that I could show you.  She comes to Plainfield Church almost every Friday for Jolly 60s.  LOL!  They started that group when they all WERE in their 60s.  They're way past that decade now!

They meet at Plainfield Church (where I am the Church Secretary) every Friday from 9:30 until 2:30.  They eat sweets.  A lot of sweets.  They used to offer them to me.  I mostly decline, but sometimes I succumb.  (Old ladies LOVE sweets!)

They play some sort of dice game, and they still think they ought to hide it from the Pastor, when the Pastor is in the building ... because Methodists used to be SO against "games of chance," whether one was betting cold hard cash or not ... back in the day.

They eat their sack lunches.  They always offer me coffee - which I more often than not, accept.

And they chat about their aches and pains and what their children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren are doing.

Aileen does not look like she is 95 years old.  And that is the problem.  Because her body - at least her Joints and Balance - knows that it is 95 years old.

Gosh, I hope I am as stubborn as she is, if by God's grace I should attain to such an age!

Mmmm!

Grilled steaks, fries, salad and milk.




Sent from my iPhone

Steaks for the noon meal

And hot dogs to reheat in the microwave later in the week.




Sent from my iPhone

Oldest son came to church today!

Sent from my iPhone

Left Behind

This has been a stressful week.  I can't even remember the days before Saturday.  We didn't get raptured that day ... not that any of us REALLY thought that was going to happen that day ... but every one of us gave it a thought or two.  You see, the guy who came up with the Judgment Day predictions was originally from Grand Rapids.

So Saturday, six o'clock came and went.  The Christians are still here, to struggle right along with the rest of humanity.

Sunday morning Mike and I went to church.  We have a new church since last August, and we like it very much, and never want to miss the chance to "hang with the saints."

We drove out I196 to Lake Michigan Drive and I took a glance to my left as we passed the downtown area, because I knew the Rob Bliss Grand Rapids LipDub was going on that morning.  You needed to gather by 9 AM to be part of the crowd.  We were at church already by 9 AM.  It was "Dispensationalism 101" Sunday.  We had a grill-out/potluck afterwards.  I brought my bff Kathy's recipe "Barbecue Beans" ... they were a big hit.  I wished the LipDub would have been not on a Sunday morning because I'd have loved to be downtown.  I really love Grand Rapids; I really love Rob Bliss's energetic community events; I really love how my little town has gotten so cultural in my adult lifetime.

Sunday afternoon there was a bad tornado in Minnesota; and we were under "watches" for tornadoes here.  There was a deadly tornado in G.R. when I was a little girl.  I've had bad dreams about tornadoes.  Before I went to bed Sunday night, I took a bunch of stuff down to the basement.  I always do that during tornado season.  I took my scrapbooks, my strong box, my jewelry box, my purse, my laptop ... this time I even took some canned goods down there, and a box of raisins, box of crackers, some silverware. There's bottled water down there left-over from my original fear-stash in the days after 9/11.

Woke up Monday morning to the images of the Missouri E-5 tornado.  And by tonight I have realized that tornadoes chew up everything and spit it on top of your head ... if you even survive ... so I brought the crackers and the raisins back upstairs.  The treasures are still in a plastic tub in the basement.  Tornado season doesn't really start in Michigan until June -- when the air here gets hotter.

Well, Tuesday night, I got a text from my almost-daughter-in-law, Amy.  (Josh and Amy are getting married on 6/25. That's my son Scott, who died 2 years ago on 6/18/09's birthday. Josh & Amy chose that date on purpose.  Amy's shower is 6/18/11.  Why? Just sayin' ... but not to them, of course.)

Anyway, the text from Amy was asking me to pray for her friend, David, whom I've never met. Amy's parents are church-building missionaries, so Amy grew up living all sorts of places, and she has friends all over the U.S.  David had been "swept away" in a river in Arkansas.  So I prayed.  And prayed.  And this 21-year-old has been in my heart and on my mind all week.

Over on Facebook, David's brother's future-mother-in-law had, by Wednesday night, created a special "page" for prayers for David and updates on the search effort.  So I've been praying, and visiting that page, multiple times each day.

Hundreds of people are praying for David.  Many of us, like myself, have never met him, but are friends or relatives of David's friends.

From Tuesday night until tonight ... constantly in our unanswered prayers, is a young man swept away in a river.  Sonar has determined, the Arkansas authorities claim, that there is no body in the river, so the family should not give up hope.  Cadaver dogs have also determined that there is no body in the river.  So last night they started searching the forest with volunteers and bloodhounds.  Everybody has been praying.  I am not used to prayers this heart-felt, humble, and fervent going unanswered!  How in the world can a person simply vanish when his whole community is searching for him day and night?

The bright spot in the week, for me, has been the YouTube release yesterday of our Grand Rapids LipDub video.  I really want to share that with everybody!

On YouTube the response has been very favorable. It was featured on several network newscasts tonight, to my surprise.  A very few YouTube comments were criticizing the "under-representation of minorities."  Well, in Grand Rapids, a LOT of people go to church on Sunday morning.  I had personally wished that the Bethel Pentecostal Choir would have been in the LipDub -- they are really cool, and mostly African-American.  Would have liked to see the Three Fires tribes in it, too. PaWaTing MeGedWin senior citizens meet twice a week at the church where I work (not the same church that I attend on Sundays).  The Three Fires Annual Pow Wow will be at Riverside Park in June ... The church I work at is quite multi-cultural; and the church I go to is, too. The happy, clean-cut faces of several races that you'll see in this video are mostly people who either don't go to church at all, or who played hooky for the Rob Bliss event.  Grand Rapids is a cool city.  I love living here.  I love going downtown. I hope you will enjoy the video I post in the comments (because I can't post it in the body of this blog).

Hey! I actually wrote a BLOG!

Wow!

I posted a video a little while ago.  And I was disappointed that I couldn't post it in the body of my blog.  So it's just a link.  Then I embedded it in the comments; but of course, one would need to have looked at the posted link in order to see the embedded comment.

 

 

So, then I was just reading blogs on my friends pages, with the TV running in the background.

And lo, "Inside Edition" just did a feature on the very video I had wanted to share with my friends!

So, what it is, is MY little town.  Newsweek magazine called us a dying city a few months ago.  The Grand Rapids Lip Dub video was filmed this past Sunday morning in response.  And I am going to post the embedded video as a comment.   Grand Rapids is a COOL city!

December, 1955

I have a Debbie doll, and I have a sister, Debbie, and I got them both at about the same time.

The "bathinette" is yellow.  It is a table -- tall.  It has a rubber hammock and a length of rubber tube for Mommy to fill the hammock with warm water to give Debbie baths.  The bar of Ivory soap is smaller than the bars we use in our bathtub.  I think that Mommy got it at the Hospital.  It makes the water scummy -- just like it does in my bathtub.  But Debbie's skin smells sweet, when washed -- just like my skin smells when I get washed.  And Debbie's little bald head smells like Johnson's baby shampoo -- just like mine does.

Debbie has a black scab where her belly button should be.  She is so little.

The bathinette has a lid to cover it, which makes it into a "changing table" that Mommy uses to change Debbie's diapers.  The diapers are cotton -- white.  Over them go rubber pants. When they are wet, Mommy swishes them in the toilet while it's flushing, and then puts them in the diaper pail.  After the diaper pail is full, you do the wash.  Then you tumble them in the clothes dryer.  If you hang them on the line, they get too stiff, and give the baby a rash.

Debbie sleeps in my old crib.  I sleep in Mommy's old bed!  I saw her in this bed when I was a baby myself.  My crib was in the same room as Mommy's bed.  My earliest memory, probably 1953, was looking out the crib at Mommy laying on her bed (now my bed).  We lived with Grandpa and Grandma on Rathbone Street.  Daddy was in the Navy, and I didn't know him yet, back then.

My bed is gray.  It has a bookcase headboard.

(This will always be my bed until I marry Mark VanZyl in 1972.)

Mommy puts a "receiving blanket" on my lap, and lets me hold my baby sister.

I am three years old.