The end and the beginning - it's an endless loop

I'm awake and it's four in the morning. Another storm has rolled in and another bout of restless leg syndrome along with it. Not that the two are related. My legs are just protesting that they have been at rest too long and it's time to get up and move. They pretty much control my life.

Today we are scheduled to close on the Bethany house. It's not over 'till the fat lady sings, they say. Hopefully I'll be singing at 11:30 this morning!!! Then we will be down to one household. Hallelujah!!! Amen.

Mark and I are nostalgic about the Bethany house, which I suppose is perfectly normal, even though I often caught myself cursing it. Every time I started to complain in my head about that old house, I would stop and say a prayer of thanksgiving. It was a blessing, provided at a time when we needed shelter and a place to call our own. A place where our family could heal.

The list of important life events that happened during our tenure in that house is long. I won't bore you with the details. The memories are pouring into my heart and head. Beautiful girls ready for proms and formals, volleyball games well played, new found love, romance, engagement and a wedding. Attempts to make a comfortable home with furniture bought at thrift stores or handed down by generous relatives. Endless home renovations with some awesome new skills learned. And a whole collection of power tools. I love power tools.

Today marks another milestone in our life, another testament to God's goodness. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find myself only remembering the good. There has been plenty of bad. Plenty of pain, just like anyone or group of someones who attempt to live life to the fullest would experience. But I'm choosing more often than not to remember the fun, the good, the blessed and forget the rest. Or at least learn the lessons and move on.

This is me, doing a happy dance, on my way back to bed. Maybe I can snatch another hour of sleep before the alarm goes off and the new day and era begins.

Boot Scootin' Boogie Buggie

July is almost over and it has been CRAZY. KRAY-ZEE. CU.RAE.ZIE. It has been a wild ride and it's not over yet. The old house in Bethany is sold and we close in a few weeks, but we're still doing the repair things on the buyer's list. And we haven't moved our furniture out of there, but we don't have the heart to ask for any one's help because we've already moved too much too many times.

I'm thinking that hiring a few college boys when the time comes might be a good idea. Aren't they usually hungry and willing to move heavy stuff for a pizza and some cash? Personally, I've never met such college boys. But I hear they exist. Maybe we're looking in the wrong place. Maybe I should go ask the guy who stands in front of the pizza place with the big sign, dancing to the music in his head, no matter the weather. I bet he would move some furniture for cash. Most college boys just aren't hungry enough for manual labor.

Just call me middle aged and cranky. Go ahead, do it. I probably won't hear you.

Oh, I was about to sign off when I realized the "Boot Scootin' Boogie Buggie" was still hanging out there in the blog title. Angela and I saw that stenciled on a van at the Guymon Senior Center last week. I was reminded of it this morning as Mark and my father-in-law were scooting my mother-in-law out the door on their way to get her knee replaced. I think that's what I'll call their van from now on. Maybe after her knee surgery, my mother-in-law can do some boot scootin' and boogieing of her own. Prayers are appreciated.

28 years of wedded bliss.

I have not excuse for falling off the bloggy wagon so much here lately except that life has hit me upside the head with a two-by-four, effectively knocking any creative thought right out of the overloaded brain. Survival is the goal for each day. There has been no excessive TV watching, no leisurely thumbing through a decorating magazine, no reading of summer novels. Nope. Because none of those things would work up a sweat, forcing me to change clothes three times per day, or just let the sweat-soaked panties dry on my aching body, leaving me chilled and wishing I'd brought a change of clothes. I can handle a sweaty shirt, but it's the sopping undies that make one miserable in this 105 degree heat. And unlike when I lived in Arizona, the heat here in Oklahoma is definitely not a "dry heat".

In the midst of all this sweatiness (are you still reading, or have you moved on to a less graphic representation of life in Oklahoma in June of 2009) - so, aaaannnyway, in the midst of the sweaty moving of the aforementioned in-laws, of the sweaty house renovation, of the sweaty everything involving moving off of the couch, Mark and I celebrated our 28th anniversary. In style. In Ada.

Don't be so judgy. Ada is a lovely town. I had to work there on Saturday, which was our official anniversary. And since I work for a non-profit and we have pretty much been doing the community serving thing as a family for about twenty of those years, Mark thought nothing of coming along and spending our anniversary serving the good folks of Coalgate, just down the road, forty miles or so, from Ada.

The thing I love about hotels is that you can crank the AC up (down?) to a decadent 52 degrees and lie shivering happily under several layers of blankets without worrying about next month's electric bill. I know. That's not a very tree-hugging thing to say. I should be more concerned about the environment, global warming, blah blah blah. Don't be so judgy. Sheesh. It was 105 degrees outside where I had been working all day in the service of humanity. I can't be responsible for the state of the ozone every waking moment!

We stayed in Ada an extra 24 hours just to bask in the coolness that was the Ada Holiday Inn Express, away from the naggy to-do list that awaited us back home. After 28 years you take your celebrations wherever and whenever you can get them.

I'm back home and ready to tackle the long list of things to do to get this house on the market. Anyone want to buy a much loved and renovated cottage in Bethany? Today you can take it as-is for a steal of a price. I'll leave you the to-do list under the magnet on the fridge.

Can you come out and play?

In Oklahoma I often hear the saying "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute", and it's true. I've been thinking about this concept in terms of the configuration of neighborhoods - specifically my neighborhood. I've learned that the face of the neighborhood changes from year to year. If I don't like something...just wait a year. It may resolve itself.


Our street is a short one - one block in length running east/west with about a dozen houses facing each other across a curbless river of blacktop. The street is bookended by north/south streets, but our block seems like a little community all its own.



In the five plus years we have lived there, the face of that community has changed. Two women have died of cancer, one elderly and one middle-aged. One elderly man, a respected fixture in the broader community of Bethany, died of a heart attack. At the time of his death he owned about 50% of the houses on the block and was a self-admitted lousy landlord. Since his death all of his properties have been sold off, some to home owners, a few to other landlords.


Over the five years some homes have been renovated or repaired. Some have continued to deteriorate. But what has changed the most is the faces of the people who occupy the houses. The block has become more racially diverse. When we first moved in, we were shocked by several neighbors expressing their relief that we were not, shall we say, people of color, although it was expressed in a much more inappropriate way. We had just returned from living in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. We had told ourselves America didn't behave that way. Well, apparently some parts of America do.


Besides the racial mix, the other thing that has changed is the number of children. At one time there was one lone child, a spattering of teenagers, and a bunch of grumpy adults. Recently our street seems to have exploded with children. Children running and biking and shouting. Children climbing our fence and hiding behind our cars and running through our yard.


And I LOVE it! It feels so alive. Plus it provides great entertainment.


Just yesterday evening Mark, Tessa and I were watching television and surfing the Internet on our separate laptops when we noticed a small boy, stripped down to his shorts and running gleefully through our sprinkler. When the timer dinged and Mark went to turn the water off, the boy told Mark "That was fun! I'll be back tomorrow!". That cracks me up!


Of course, I have been heard to say "Where is that child's mother?" more than once and we don't allow them to run amok on our property. But we do let them run, and hide, and apparently - enjoy the sprinkler.


The sad part - I know very few names. In a world where we long for community, we live side by side with nameless people. Oh sure, we wave, we share a moment of frustration together when the city digs a big hole and doesn't come back for a week. A few men gather on the street to analyse the clouds when the tornado sirens sound. But we don't invite one another in for a cup of coffee. We don't know the names of the children.

I'm not sure what the remedy is. But in the mean time, I'm enjoying the ungraying of our street.

It's raining big, beefy, manly men

On March 5th I uploaded a picture of the notice from the city stating that they would replace our water main on that date. In city construction speak, that means "we will at some point in the next two to three months replace your water main." I had hoped to chronicle the excitement - woohoo- but it has been like watching toenails grow. Occasionally there were signs of some action when we returned home from work. A little spray paint here, a yellow flag there, some hieroglyphics on the road itself. A pile of sand and another of dirt unloaded at the corner, providing entertainment for the delight of the neighborhood children, and something new and different to blow through my front door with our recent high winds. Not much else. Until Good Friday.

On that day the manly men and their manly machines invaded our street, digging holes, putting in new pipe, and back filling with what was left of the sand and dirt. By yesterday morning they were at my house. I didn't leave early enough, and was trapped in the house for a few hours, my only option being to drive through my soggy front yard to escape. Darn. I had to stay home. I wasn't complaining.

Today I came home a little early from work and had to play dodge-the-large-earth-moving-machines-and-beefy-dudes-wielding-shovels with my car. As I write, we do not have water, the gas line is ruptured, and it's almost quittin' time. School just let out and all the little children are running the obstacle course, most having to circle almost to my front porch, trying to reach their respective homes. The joys of progress.

Frankly, I don't mind the mess if it means the city infrastructure is being updated. Our house was built in 1937 and I'm sure the water line is of the same age. The weird thing is that I've always loved the taste of our water. I'm wondering if it will taste the same after the leaking pipe has been replaced.

And I'm also quite sure that we are not getting curbs. And I so wanted to join the ranks of true suburbia and get curbs. Sidewalks are, I know, out of our league, but a curb seems a small thing to wish for.

Blizzard 2009. Or not.

I'm in for the day, folks. It's not because of the half foot of snow piled outside my window. Because, as Mark predicted, that just didn't happen. Mark is a weather curmudgeon. If Millionaire weather man Gary England or the 4-Warn Storm Team are interrupting local programing for an important weather advisory, with their big logos and tense, attention-grabbing music, Mark is sitting on the couch mumbling "it's gonna miss us" under his breath.

Which is good I guess, when it comes to dire warnings about bowling ball sized hail or ten feet of snow in March. OK, I exaggerate; and usually some part of the state gets pounded as predicted. Just not always us. Mark pulls up the weather map and watches the radar and the direction in which the storm is moving and makes his own prediction for Bethany. Angela still calls him some mornings to ask him what the weather will be for the day so she'll know how to dress for playground duty. Guess he's shown more reliability than the television weather dudes.

Did I ever tell you about the time we were in Galveston waiting to board a cruise the next day? We were considering a sunset walk on the beach and I wondered aloud what time the sun set. Without hesitating he answered "7:12". Oh, OK then. Let's take a walk. He just knows weird things like that.

If a sport involves a ball and there are also numbers involved, his brain absorbes the stats like white on rice. I'm sure he has the entire NCAA March Madness bracket in his head, easily moving winning teams into the next slot without benefit of paper. It's a phenomenon.

But he can't remember that Monday is trash day. I just don't get that.

My love/hate relationship with this town-Part XI

Bethany is a strange place. Sometimes in the evening when Mark and I are out walking, it takes on a sweet glow, where all the houses are well painted, the yards are lovingly tended, the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Then there are other times when it scares the crap out of me because of all the absentee landlords, the hand lettered signs tacked to telephone poles advertising pit bull pups for sale, and the random furniture and appliances gracing the curbless streets. I want to run screaming to the far northwest corner of Oklahoma City, or to north Edmond, where everything is new and shiny and, well, without character.

Because if Bethany has one thing, it's character. At least that's what people say about places and things that have seen a lot of life, are weathered and beat up from the experience, but still possessed of some beauty and worth.

A few fun facts about this town where I was born and to where I have returned (stats from www.epodunk.com):

• The latitude of Bethany is 35.518N. The longitude is -97.631W.
• Elevation is 1,309 feet.
• The estimated population, in 2003, was 20,009.
• Square miles: 5.21
• During the heydays of Route 66, Bethany was known as the stretch where you couldn't buy gas or cigarettes on Sundays.

Do you feel enlightened? It was the excellent school system that led us to choose this corner of the city, and hopefully it will be that same school system that will sell our house some day when we are ready to move into a shinier, scrubbed-clean kind of neighborhood. But for now, we're loving the low-pressure, low-expectation feel of the place. There is something to be said, after all, about lowered expectations in life.

I heart big trash day

My favorite day in Bethany is BIG TRASH DAY! Yeah! It's so cleansing to take all that stuff that is filling the garage, car port, back yard or front porch and put it out and watch it disappear. And disappear it does. It's a very efficient system.

• Step One: The City sets the date and advertises


• Step Two: Residents begin to pile unwanted belongings curbside (I use the term "curbside" loosley since few streets in Bethany actually have curbs. Let's just say they put their stuff somewhere in the vicinity of where the grass ends and the street begins.)


• Step Three: The City delays pickup waiting for Step Four.


• Step Four: Hardy and frugal folks begin trolling the neighborhoods with trucks and trailers, taking what they consider salvageable or saleable.


• Step Five: The City picks up the little that is left of the BIG TRASH.

This morning I drove around on a sort of scavenger hunt. I was curious if I could furnish a whole house from the BIG TRASH. I know. I'm sure there are more important things to do. I counted four couches, 11 chairs, 2 refrigerators, 1 freezer, a desk, several mattresses, an exercise bike, a shower door, a microwave...All within a half mile radius. Yep, I could furnish at least an apartment.

Every year I think Bethany will run out of BIG TRASH. But we seem to generate it like hairs on a menopausal woman's chin. The more you pluck, the more they appear. If I sound like I'm above BIG TRASH day, I'm not. One of the mattress sets (surprise, Tessa!) and the shower doors are in front of our house. Well, they were. They are in the back of some one's pickup now. I have to be careful at this time of year though. We sold all our beautiful furniture when we left Phoenix for Johannesburg. Now most of our furniture is from the Goodwill or is a relative's cast-off, and I'm always tempted to empty the house onto the curb on BIG TRASH day. Mark has to restrain me from dragging too much out the door. If I could get that couch out the door, I'd do it right now, but it's way too big. I wonder if the neighbor has a chain saw.

Big Love

OK so my neighbor just walked past in her jammies, with wet hair, carrying a towel. Really? I'm confused about which house they all live in. There are three lined up here across the street and they seem to move between all three like rooms in a house. It's like Big Love only on my block. I'm expecting to see Barb, Margene or Nicki walk by at any time. Yesterday they were moving pianos (plural) from one house to another. I'm like, um, did you just see a piano go by? And Mark's all, yep, a baby grand. We go back to watching Project Runway. The guy carrying the detached legs and the piano bench doesn't even earn a comment. By the time the upright piano rolls by we aren't even curious. Just another day in Bethany.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Yes, it IS a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The birds are chirping, squirrels are starting to gather acorns from our oak tree, it's sunny and cool. The dogs are scratching themselves lazily in the shade of the pecan tree in the backyard and...wait, do I hear the sweet sound of police sirens? Semi-automatic weapons firing? Helicopters hovering in close proximity? Why yes I do, Mr. Rogers. It's another day in Bethany. For the third time this year, guns are drawn and shots fired in my neighborhood. OK, actually the guns were only fired on two of the three occasions that they were drawn, but seriously. We need to move. I don't feel threatened or unsafe at all, but the facts would say otherwise. Raise your hand if you've had a gun fired at a neighbor recently. Anyone turned on the TV and seen your house from a television news helicopter? Anyone? I didn't think so.

Creeping on the Neighbors

Seriously, like I don't have anything else to do. But my neighbors fascinate me. The patriarch died and now the extended family is doing various odd things to the houses (yes, plural) he owned on our block. At this moment they are moving kitchen dishes in small stacks from one house to the other. Maybe I should go over there and introduce them to a little thing I like to call a box. It's been very useful to our family in the past. I'll keep you updated.

July 4th in Bethany

I have a love/hate relationship with Bethany. Crappy houses, curb-less streets, absentee landlords. Is it really necessary to put your cast-off Lazy-Boy recliner out to rot in the yard? Big trash day isn't for another three months. Twice this year guns have been drawn on my block. The first, our own version of Miami Vice, with three armed, drugged up freaks putting a bullet through the front door of the house to the east, narrowly missing my neighbor. The second performance by Bethany Police, complete with screeching tires, pulled guns from behind the sudo-safety of an open car door, and commands to "put your %$#@ hands in the air or I'll shoot". That was on behalf of our neighbor to the west, who, a few months after his wife passed away, invited a hellion of a woman home after an apparently brain-cell killing night at the bar. The woman thereafter refused to leave and has been making his life a living hell every since. The drawn guns were the result of a restraining order. It's about time the guy got some help!

But sometimes Bethany is sweet, with a small town homeyness. Today we walked the three blocks from our house to Route 66, past the horses waiting in the shade, to watch the 4th of July parade. We got there just as the parade was starting, but still found seats on the bleachers on the manicured lawn of the Nazarene Church.

In front of us, a little boy with a summer buzz cut insisted on playing in the dirt, despite his mama's warnings to stop. I think I heard them call him Clayton. He paid for his fun with a whack on the rear end and a reprimand from mama - "If your daddy was here, he'd smack your butt!" Clayton was wearing a shirt with a picture of his daddy in military uniform on the front, and his mama had hand lettered the back with "I (heart) U Dad" and "My daddy is defending our freedom"

So I asked him where his daddy was. Clayton couldn't tell me, but his mama said Iraq. Pretty soon Clayton's mama, who has left him with his grandma for a minute, brings her cell phone over and says to Clayton -"wanna talk to daddy?" Daddy was on the phone, calling from Iraq. Then she hands the phone to grandma. Somewhere between "Hi son" and "Good-bye", we heard her say "Funny how the Fourth of July has a whole new meaning for us this year!" (OK- I didn't go to the parade with kleenex!) They are excited because the soldiers are getting to watch a fireworks show tonight, and Oklahoma's own Toby Keith is there to play a concert. Some lady further down the bleachers hears part of the conversation and yells out "where's Toby Keith playing tonight?" all excited like she's gonna go there if she can. Clayton's mama says "Iraq". Sober silence. All the air just got sucked out of Bethany.

God bless Clayton, and his daddy and mama and grandma. God bless Bethany, and God Bless America!