Last Weekend in Standard Time

Jinx didn’t let us sleep in too late today, which was a pity because I was still exhausted from yesterday’s little stroll. But spotted dogs with small brains and enormous personalities cannot be denied, and we laughed together as he bounded around the room, growling and moaning. Yes, moaning. Jinx has a peculiar noise he makes when he’s trying to provoke us into playing with him, a noise that sounds quite a bit like the timbers in the HMS Indefatigable with HH on the bridge during a storm. A deep, creaky, groany glissando up and down three octaves. Moaning will have to do as the noun here. The moaning. Oh, how I hate to get up in the Moaning.

Anyway, we got up and had a nice breakfast courtesy of Madame O, and then we set out to run errands. Since I broke one of the handles on my battered wheelbarrow, the first stop was at a hardware store to buy a new pair.

“Uh, wheelbarrow handles? Just the handles?” said the teenaged clerk.

“Mm hmm.” I said.

The kid started picking up boxes on the shelves above the wheelbarrows. Boxes about the size in which a birthday cake might be packed. I could read confusion and stress in his body language, so I let him off the hook. “Never mind. Thanks for your help.”

We bought two new squirrel-proof bird feeders and a few other things and headed over to a feed store, where we found the wheelbarrow handles right away. They were not in a box the size of a laptop computer, surprisingly.

***

Ever since we’ve lived in this area, my wife and I have gone to the local library’s annual used book sale. This year, we had heard nothing about the sale, even though we’d attempted to reach them by phone and also visited their website. Since we were in town, we decided to gamble and drive past the civic auditorium where the sale has always been held. And lo, the two aged people looked and beheld, and the parking lot was like unto a shopping center on Christmas Eve, and they were sore enthused, and they checked their purse and found coinage sufficient to purchase a few books, and they ventured forth unto the book sale.

The selection wasn’t nearly as good as in years past, which was disappointing, nor was the crowd as large, which was good. We each got eight books. The cost of mine was $2.75, and Mrs. Orr’s cost a bit more, since she reads tomes and I read slender volumes. My treasure was:

Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (a quirky but usually enjoyable and insightful weirdo;
A London Childhood by poet and critic John Holloway, a memoir that looks lively and well-written;
My Father’s House by Philp B. Kunhardt, Jr. which is a memoir of the author’s relationship with his father;
A Christian Classics volume on The Early Church Fathers, an area of Christian history in which my knowledge is thin, thin, thin;
Joy To the World: How Christ’s Coming Changed Everything (And Still Does) by Scott Hahn. I usually enjoy Hahn’s succinct, easy-to-grasp books about basic Catholicism;
The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Father Ronald Rolheiser. I know nothing of the author, but the contents look interesting and the book as a good “eye feel;”
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. I used to own a copy of this book back in my Protestant years but never read it. This one caught my eye because it has an introduction written by Dorothy Day, an intriguing figure from the 20th century Catholic world (incidentally, if they ever make another movie about Dorothy Day, they should cast Jennifer Carpenter, the girl who played Emily Rose in the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, because she looks exactly like Miss Day). And finally
The Saint Book, written and illustrated by Mary Reed Newman. Before I put it in my bag, I made sure the book had a chapter on my patron saint, Saint Joan of Arc. It did indeed. I liked the brooding illustration of the Maid by Ms. Newman, and I sent along a photo of it and the text of that particular chapter to my friend William James Tychonievich , who shares my affection for and interest in the Maid.

Books in our home are what some people might call an embarrassment of riches. Not us. We simply revel in them.

***

On the way home, we stopped and ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant. The place is spic-and-span clean (no emails, please), decorated in a tasteful and restrained fashion, staffed by courteous, diligent folks, and oh, so reasonable in price. We each had enough food to qualify as a feast, but our check was fourteen bucks before tip. That’s cheaper than what we would have paid at most wretched fast food joints. God bless and prosper this little restaurant.

***

I checked the Our Lady of Gethsemani monastery’s website (see the link to the left) and was dismayed to learn that the monks, most of whom are elderly like my beloved advisor Father James, received the first of two Covid “vaccines.” The place has been on lockdown, no one in or out, for a year now. So why do the monks need these dubious shots? This distresses me greatly. I am praying that the monks are protected from, well, from a lot of things.

***

When we arrived home, I set to working on replacing the wheelbarrow handles and putting out the new bird feeders. I also spent time with Jinx in the clear but chilly sunshine. The spotted menace had a good time charging up to the fence to bark at the cows on the other side; they were less than impressed. One of the cows seemed to talk to me after Jinx went back to the front yard. She stood with her head held high, looking right into my face, and uttering these soft little moos in short bursts. “Mruh. Mruh. Mruuuuuuh. Mruh.” I went to the fence and talked back to her, and we spent a few minutes watching each other before she ambled off to visit the stock tank. I noticed her ear tag; she was number 99.

When I returned to the house, I had the old Toto song “Ninety-Nine” going through my head, so I thought I would share it with you here in closing. Steve Lukather has always been a fine guitarist, and back before the fancification of guitars and guitar gear, he could coax very rich tones from a usually thin-sounding Telecaster.

May the Lord bless each of you and keep you close to Him tonight as winter ebbs away into the clear sky.

~ S.K. Orr