Some of you may have been wondering where I disappeared to on the blog world . . .
Actually, I didn't disappear that far, there just wasn't that much to tell.
However, now, I can tell you that my mum and my other two brothers, Peter and Joel, are now safely in Ashland, Ohio. I rang up Mum this morning and she sounds a lot more relaxed than I've heard her in the last few months, let me tell you . . .
For the last couple of months, she was madly trying to pack up everything, sell things from the house, shut down a music school, etc. etc. You get the idea.
Not sure how Pete and Joel are going, both leaving behind girlfriends . . . (I only found out that Joel's "special friend", Vanessa, was official the night before he left.)
It came about because I was telling him about Matt Davis and his $40 girlfriend. Joel was saying, "What? 40 bucks? Man, I just had a quick word to Ness's Dad and that was it."
My mind then flashed back to January 2nd. Rachel and I, rather than sit in traffic for an hour and a half on the drive back from Brisbane, called in at the King's place in Nabiac where Joel was visiting. Now, all of a sudden, the behaviour of the family made sense . . .
Joel strutting around in a singlet top, armpit hair clearly visible . . .
Vanessa, smiling shyly . . .
Little brother teasing the daylights out of Joel and thinking the whole thing was slightly embarrassing and slightly funny.
Older sister wondering how her younger sister had pulled it off.
After I'd hung up from Joel, further questions haunted me: the chief one being: Surely, he hadn't worn that singlet top when he asked the old man for permission?
I just had visions of the conversation:
JOEL: Hey, Mr King. You know, me and Ness?
MR KING: Oh, yes. So you and her are a bit . . .
JOEL: Yeah.
MR KING: Well, I suppose it's okay, if . . . umm . . . I mean, you know about . . . well, there are a couple of things that . . .
JOEL: Yeah, it'll be cool. No hanging around her room, that sort of stuff.
MR KING: Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. Your parents would have . . . umm . . . probably taught you . . .
JOEL: Yeah, it's cool. I'll treat her right.
MR KING: That's good. That's good. Well, I guess . . . umm . . . well, I guess you can . . . . yes, I think it'll be good. God bless you, son.
JOEL: Cool.
(Yells to Ness, eavesdropping in next room.)Hey babe, we're on!
Actually, I must give apologies to both Joel and Mr King for that one, but I can't help wondering . . .
Oh yeah, and Joel, if you're reading this . . . happy 18th, little brother!
Okay, guys, this one's for you. Imagine you're young and single, you go off to a Christian camp or something like that. (That's usually where these things happen...) And there you see a girl . . . she kind of catches your eye.
You get to know her a bit better and you're thinking to yourself. Hmm...I might ask her out.
Let's pause for a moment. Let's say that you have to pay money for the privilege of taking her out.
Yes, that's right. Money.
Now go back to this girl . . . is she worth forking out the money for?
I think this is a very good question, and one that was prompted in my mind when I found out today that my brother-in-law Matt, who was over in Zambia for the last year, has decided to court a young lady the traditional Zambian way. (She is Zambian herself.) He has paid her father about $40 Australian for the privilege of getting to know the girl better. (I don't have her name yet at the moment.)
Now tell me . . . how amazingly cool is that???
Rach, if we have daughters, can I put a price tag on them if guys want to go out with them??
It gets better. Apparently, if after a while he decides he would like to marry this girl, he has to hand over four cows. So, how much would you pay for the girl of your dreams?
This week I decided to be a little bit more disciplined with myself, because I noticed that life was kind of falling apart around my ears.
So I've started getting in bed at 10.30 on the dot and waking myself up at 5.45 a.m. I've managed to get out for a walk most mornings at about six in the morning. It's starting to get dark in the mornings as well, which is pretty cool.
Already, I can notice that the enthusiastic morning walkers of summer have disappeared . . . This is the way I like it. Empty streets, not too many people. Not many cars. It's the best time just to listen to music and think.
I've only been doing it for four days, but already, this early to bed, early to rise thing is starting to make me feel more energetic at work . . . I wonder if I can keep it up.
Also, on other fronts, I've learned a fair bit about sermon writing this week. Most specifically, it's that elusive 20-minute mark . . . trying to say what you're trying to say, but also not killing your audience with a talk that goes on forever . . . well, we'll soon see how it all works, won't we?
I post for your reference a recipe for a Fire-Brigade visit to YOUR HOUSE!
Ingredients:
Two raw eggs
One saucepan
Water
Stove top
Hotplate ON (High)
A phone call from DH to come pick him up from the train station
Getting side-tracked and doing a few jobs on the way home from the station...
Method?
Place eggs in saucepan, cover with cold water, place on stove-top and turn hotplate onto high.
Chop up all other vegetables needed for chicken caesar salad.
DH phones to say he needs to get picked up.
You walk out the door without turning off the stove.
Leave the front door unlocked but closed.
Run errands that take 30 minutes to complete
Come home (remembering 5 minutes before you get home that you still have eggs boiling on the stove!)
Find fellow tenants from the unit block outdoors scanning the road nervously.
Hear sirens in the distance
Have said tenants ask you if you live in Number 5 and then proceed to tell you after you nod that your house has a LOT of smoke in it...
The TWO firetrucks pull up and the men charge inside. Inspect the damage which is minimal as only the pot, eggs and plastic container beside the stove have suffered any long term damage.
They give you a bit of a talking to about leaving the stove on when out, leaving cookbooks on top of hotplates and help you put on a fan to blow the smoke out of the unit.
**********
There you go. The perfect 'recipe' to get 6 hunky men in uniform to visit your home. :)
All right, let's be honest . . . who out there likes having blood tests? Well, okay, probably nobody thinks it's a fun thing to do.
But which of you out there are the happy-go-lucky, sit down in the chair, talk about nothing while they're sticking the syringe in and taking blood and then waltz straight out the door again type? Oh, it's you? That's you? You don't mind it?
RIGHT . . . WELL, YOU CAN GET OFF MY BLOG RIGHT NOW!!!!! YOU MISERABLE FREAKS!!
For the rest of you . . .
Went to have a blood test this morning. It was one of those tests where you've got to fast for 12 hours beforehand. That may have had something to do with it. Anyway, trotted down to the big medical centre at Kogarah. It was about three blocks from the train station, and Rach had the car, so I took public transport. It was a bus, because the trains weren't walking.
Anyway, got there okay, feeling fine. But secretly inside, I knew the fear would lurk back up again. I just do no like blood tests. Maybe it was because of the first one I ever had, where I curiously watched the whole thing before going woozy. Maybe it was the time in Brisbane when I was sitting in the chair (not watching this time) with the needle in my arm, saw black spots, and then woke up a few seconds later, drenched with sweat, and being told by the nurse that I'd passed out and they were moving me to a bed.
From then on, I've always asked to lie down.
Anyway, horror of horrors, the girl led me into this tiny little room that had no bed and a big high stool. I mean, my feet couldn't touch the ground on this chair. I asked if I could lie down.
She said, that's okay, and took me down to another room with pictures of Harry Potter, Teletubbies and The Wiggles on the wall. After booting out a pregnant woman who was loitering aimlessly in the room, she made me lie down . . . and it all began.
I just looked at the wall. I was actually okay, until I started to hear that clicking sound where they start to take multiple syringes worth of blood. (I reckon they did about four.)
By the time she'd finished less than a minute later, I just had that nauseous, woozy feeling. Anyway, she was very nice, got me a drink of water, etc. Apparently, she always has to lie down as well, even though she can quite happily do the vampire thing with no worries at all. Strange, isn't it?
Anyway, I felt better after a couple of minutes, so I headed back to the train station. Maybe that was my mistake.
I trotted the three blocks back to the station with no worries, but I had to cross a couple of roads to get to the bus stop. I started to feel the woozy feeling again, but the light went green and I wanted to make the bus. Got to the bus stop (missed the bus anyway), and I was feeling decidedly bleugh . . . So I sat down and tried to take deep breaths. I contemplated lying down, but my bus arrived. Fighting off all woozy feelings, I jumped on the bus and sat down.
The trip from Kogarah to Carlton, while one of the shortest I've ever had, was one of the worst. I just felt myself getting that nauseous, clammy, sweaty feeling . . . it wasn't good. I leaned forward and hung on to the seat, because I felt like I was on the way out.
Then the bus stopped at Carlton. I somehow managed to stagger off the bus outside the Mexican Restaurant at Carlton. I sat down in a doorway for a bit before another wave of wooziness hit met and I decided to lie down. Now, lying down in front of the Mexican restaurant in Carlton, is nobody's idea of fun. First of all, half the smokers of Carlton use this as their butt dumping ground (You should all quit, you know . . .). Second of all, it's a main road and heaps of people are driving past.
Anyway, a bum lying on the streets is nothing unusual in Carlton, so nobody said anything. After a couple of minutes, I managed to get up, walk over the railway bridge to home and ate a HUGE breakfast, I can tell you.
I'm feeling better now, but I hope they don't send me back for rerun. And they're going to send me a bill for this thing! They should pay ME for this kind of stuff!
All right. Enough rant. I'll get back to the sermon.
Apparently, I talk in my sleep. I never used to. Or if I did, I never knew about it. But my wife informs me that, not only do I talk in my sleep, I'm bossy in my sleep. A couple of nights ago (when it was kind windy and rainy), apparently, she came to bed, I sat up and said, "Shut the big grandpa window! I'm going to drown!" And then threw the sheets over my head.
I can neither confirm nor deny this particular story, but it creeps me out a bit . . .
Now, onto the subject of Poirot. I've been collecting a series of Agatha Christie novels via mail order for the past two years. They were supposed to be only 45 of them, but they've just kept going, so I think they're going to do her entire series.
Anyway, I've now read over 50 of them. And it just hit me this morning that I've got an issue with Poirot novels. If you've never read one, at the end of every novel of his, he always has a party or gathering of some sort where he sits everyone down and proceeds to recap the case.
This will go on for several pages, and will involve Poirot implying that at least one person is guilty (who he will then prove to be innocent on the next page), and then, finally, right in the last few paragraphs of the chapter, he will suddenly announce out the blue that someone in the room (usually the person you least expect) is the murderer.
Said murderer will then jump up, say something racist about foreigners, and be led away by the police. (And remember, when these novels were written, murderers would be hanged.)
Now, while I'm willing to concede that this technique might have caught out the first few murderers who came his way, surely, after a while, you've got to wise up to this? I mean, you're a murdered, you've bumped off about three people by the end of the book, the police don't suspect you at all . . . in fact, nobody suspects you (you bumped off all the people who did) and then Poirot says, "Hey, would you like to come around for coffee?"
I mean, for crying out loud! You'd usually have a good 24-48 hours to skip town, get a new identity and hit the French Riviera. Sure, people would realise that you'd done it, but at least you wouldn't have to get hanged for it . . .
I know, I know . . . it's fiction. But still . . .
