What is it about cell phones that has us hypnotized/mesmerized/stupefied into becoming social buffoons? If I were asked to describe to my dear grandfather (He passed away before I was born) what it’s like to live in an age of instant wireless communication, I’m not sure where I would begin. With the wonderful freedom we experience at . . . having the world in our pocket, or the grotesque dependence we have from . . . having the world in our pocket? How could he have envisioned a group of 5 people in an elevator, all of whom are engaged in loud conversation with people that aren’t there, just a discrete sliver of a Bluetooth earpiece. They all step in and say to their imaginary friends something like “I’m getting in the elevator, so if I lose you, call me back”. Bluetooth. I’m sure his take on it would be comical, that in his day people talked until they were blue in the face. Our generation talks a little more . . . we’re blue in the tooth. Aptly named.

I imagine he would wonder how we feel like human beings if we don’t interact with the person we’re on an elevator with. Saying at the very least “I sure am glad to see that rain, aren’t you?”, or “I hope the Braves have a better season than last year”. Instead, we are in constant contact with SOMEBODY we know on a phone or hand held computer! I had a psychology professor teach that if you are a person that cannot sit still, quiet or alone and be content, then you were likely, a deeply troubled person who constantly seeks company or activity just so they don’t have to be alone with themselves! I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I bet my granddaddy would have believed that. He liked himself enough that he liked being alone or with a cherished friend without interruption. Now, even people who are engaged in face to face conversation with a good friend will pause to check the caller ID to see if a ‘bigger name’ is calling.

A mirror, (like a cell phone) is a fabulous tool, but put a parakeet in front of that mirror, and it becomes less like a tool, and more like a cruel joke. When I lived in Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time in the airport there. SHEESH! Anyone who has spent any time at all at LAX knows that it is the nerve center for crackpots. A veritable aviary of parakeets if you will, all with their own mirrors, but still jealous of everyone else’s mirror. At any rate, it never failed, a plane/flight would be cancelled, late, whatever, and rather than go to the hassle of leaving the airport (trust me, it’s a hassle) until the replacement came about, we would sit and just watch how strangers behave around each other and what their manners are like. My business partner and I would observe different situations, sometimes going so far as to ‘speak out loud’ what it looked like people were thinking to themselves. It’s one of those things that you just had to be there, but it passed the time & we had a lot of laughs.

This friend and I got really bored one time and decided to pretend we didn’t know each other from boarding call to landing just to have a little fun with people around us. Sort of an improvisational experiment. We boarded separately, and I was the LAST person to board. I pretended to be a little afraid of flying, and asked her to please talk to me to help keep my mind off being afraid. The character I had become was an outspoken southerner, chatting away just loudly enough so that the seats around us could hear me be so intrusive and obnoxious to the stranger (really my best friend) who had the misfortune of being seated next to me. I spilled my purse on her head, leaned all the way over in her lap so I could see out the window, ate from her leftovers on her food tray, etc. It became a game of how far could I go before I could make my friend break character and laugh, so I spun the most bizarre gossipy tales of my (made up) family members and friends, complete with a giant pig giving birth to 11 piglets in the foyer of my Aunts house trailer.

It was just in fun, but surprisingly revealing to see how many people were keenly aware of how rude “I” was to this ‘patience of Job’ stranger. We could never do that now. No one would notice. We are desensitized to bad manners, I’m afraid. We are accustomed to seeing others bent over their cell texting away, oblivious to the world around them, or people shouting conversations into their phone at decibels that are outlawed in some states. I have even personally experienced this one: A guest in our home, seated at our dinner table, in the middle of dinner with all our children and us staring in disbelief, answered his cell phone and spoke “Hey , what’s up? . . . Nah . . . nuthin . . . what are y’all doin?”. . . . It was years ago, but I’ll never forget it.

How will we ever be able to hear God’s still small voice guiding, loving us if we keep filling up the silence with so much noise? At the risk of sounding like the proverbial “I had to walk 3 miles to school every day & it was up hill both ways”, we never had cell phones. Didn’t need them then, and they aren’t life sustaining, now. How did (Saul) Paul travel the road to Damascus without a cell phone? What if something really important had happened to him, and he needed to call someone?

I know I march to the beat of a different drummer, and that my drummer is really more of a bongo player . . . but amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me

Can someone please help me understand the signs I keep seeing in my neighborhood? Every time I see one of these I cringe just a little bit, but it may be unwarranted, so please help me. We are living in severe drought conditions here in Alabama. We get just enough rain to keep things a little green from time to time, but overall, we are anywhere from 17-25 inches below our ‘norm’. Anyway, I keep seeing these signs around town that say “Well water irrigation”, or something like that. We have a well at our farm, but we are on city water at our home. I’m not sure the purpose of these signs. My guess is, it’s a read between the lines thing. It’s a very polite way of saying:

‘All you weirdo’s stay off my back. I am not wasting your water. I am wasting my water to keep my lawn fabulously luscious. So, don’t put notes in my mailbox or knock on my door to tell me about a drought that I already know about. I just planned better than you did, so don’t waste my time. I can and will water whatever, whenever I choose to, and NOT get a ticket or citation or fine. Just watch me.’
. . . . or . . .
‘Ha ha ha ha HA ha . . . I don’t have to pay out the wazoo for my water like you poor saps! I only have to pay the tiny sliver of electricity it takes to run the pump.’

I just don’t get it. Even though it’s a private well, isn’t it all coming from the same overall water table? Just because you don’t pay the city to pipe it into your kitchen sink, isn’t it still a drought in your yard? Our farm well is used to water our animals, and we have a very small pond that is about dried up. It’s down by at least 3 feet, making the few fish we have in there lie on the bottom to conserve energy as well as oxygen. I would love to leave the hose running into that pond over night to give it a boost, but don’t. We still conserve as though it’s piped in by the city. We feel like we’re just being polite, good sports, neighborly if you will, being very cautious about our water usage there. Are we just a special kind of stupid that we don’t get it? One of my friends actually pointed something out to me. That there are some people (with deep pockets, I guess) that put those silly signs in their yard and water the lawn every other day, but don’t have a well at all. They just don’t mind the super size me water bills they get and don’t want the wackos on their back. What am I missing? Am I really sitting on a gold mine at our farm? Should I be watering the fields as much as I choose, even though my neighbors are not allowed to wash their cars? Wow, talk about self centered. All I need to do is put that dang sign up and do as I please? No, I can’t do that. It would just feel wrong, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. It would feel as though people around me are hungry, and because I have my own garden, I put up a sign that says, ‘I grew this myself and it’s mine. I’m so sorry that the grocery store is expensive, but this food is mine, and I am composting all the leftovers to fertilize next years crop. Sorry. Have a nice day.’

Oh well. . . . pun intended. Even though we are in a drought, there’s some rain coming our way. I am glad that I quench my thirst at God’s fountain. . . He can quench yours too, in such a way that you never thirst again. Then, like me you can say . . . amidst the drought, chaos & my own stupidity . . . God loves me

Please let me start by saying I should be sentenced to watching an endless collection of desert vacation slides of a family I don’t know for having not posted in this many weeks. I am sorry. I pray my apology is accepted, and I hope to behave more appropriately in the future. I feel like one of my Catholic friends. . . “It’s been six months since my last confession. . .” It’s just that every time I sit down to ‘post’, I get caught up in reading the other two posts, then I realize I forgot to fill my coffee cup before I started, so head for the kitchen. On the way there think I may as well change the clothes from the washer to the dryer so they can be drying while I sip coffee and type, and hey, there’s that blouse I hung to dry instead of tumbled, so I’d better put it in my closet right now before I forget. But when I get there, I pull the string and the light bulb in my closet burns out. So, I head back down the hall to get a new bulb and one of the kids chairs so I can reach it, but step on a Lego in the process (in my bare feet), which sends me hopping on one foot, screaming at a child that’s not even home for deliberately ignoring me when I asked him to put them away before I threw them away. Now my foot is throbbing, and when I start back into the kitchen for some ice I notice that the coffee pot has timed out and turned itself off, leaving me with old, room temperature coffee . . . thank heaven for microwave technology. But as I open that little door, I am reminded that last nights left over spaghetti exploded all over the inside and I can’t risk a piece of ragu soaked crud falling into my cup while it heats, so I open the under the sink cabinet looking for some Clorox wipes only to find that when my little boy borrowed the liquid dish soap to wash his new scooter, was so frustrated from being told that he couldn’t ‘wash’ his already clean scooter because we’re in a drought, in his frustration left the little snap lid on the bottle locked in the up and open position, and it was lying on it’s side allowing it to ooze all night under that sink, running all the way back to the baseboards, soaking everything in it’s path with new and improved chamomile scented grease cutter. So, I’m trying to get that mess under control, following and mopping up that chamomile (I no longer find that fragrance relaxing by the way) trail of sludge. That stuff can travel. Following that trail, I boldly go where no man has gone before, opening cabinets I had really forgotten we had. Anyway, I find everything we’ve lost since 1975 except Jimmy Hoffa. Now I have to go up to the attic to put the mustache from the Halloween Zorro costume with the rest of the outfit, now that it’s been located. Silly me, as I went into the attic to find the costume box, Charlie, our alternative lifestyle cat has followed me in there, except that I don’t realize it until after he sees the open expanse of blown insulation that really does resemble cat litter. Unfortunately, the overwhelming odor of chamomile still wafting through my nostrils probably slowed the response time to this new scent, even in this sweltering heat. I saw him just as he was pawing the last layer of insulation down to the wood, to wrap his little prize. I understand now why and how the group PETA came to exist. In Charlie’s defense, it did look like an out of the way ‘rest area’ complete with very soft litter, sort of a pet version of Charmin. But in my defense, at that moment, Charlie really looked like a smelly little troll when I decided to pick him up and throw him at the door. Not very ethical treatment of an animal, but my plea is temporary insanity. OK, temporary is debatable. That stupid, smelly little troll cat better sleep with one eye open. I know what he did, and will not forget. . . . Now where was I? Oh yes, putting away Zorro’s mustache so I can get back downstairs and put all that stuff back under the sink now that it’s nice and clean. Really clean. And relaxed. Then to get that light bulb. Oh shoot. I hope it’s OK that I only have a 200 watter left over from my fathers estate. A little overkill, but I can’t see anything in that closet without a light. Who cares if it’s Lighthouse strength? Wow, look at the time! It’s almost ten o’clock! I’ve got to get to the farm and get my work done before carpool! OK, I’ll just check the weather radar on the computer before I head out. . . . Oh look! The All Talk For Women website is up, and what do you know, Karen and Karla have posted again! And I have not . . . . oh well, when I get back from the farm, maybe just before carpool I can squeeze in a short one. Theirs are so good though. They must spend forever on them. I know, I’ll get to it tomorrow morning bright and early as I have my coffee! That’s a perfect time! . . . . . God loves me . . . .