FIVE WORD MONOLOGUE

The Wedding Reception Do you believe that I once went to a wedding reception held at a Busy Bee Carwash! It’s true….and to make matters worse; it was the wedding of a guy I once dated. I can tell you that my dad breathed a sigh of relief when that ended. His name was Charlie Brown, again, no lie. He was from West Virginia and at the time of his marriage worked at the carwash. He was one of those “great” guys that my brother-in-law hooked me up with. The wedding had been held at a nearby park with the Wedding March played over a portable tape player that squelched during the whole song as they were trying to amp it through a karaoke system. They had put up this little platform right by the pond and the ducks kept coming up thinking they were going to get fed. The Bride’s father kept trying to shoo them away. I don’t know which made the more noise, the ducks or the horrible sound system. There were about 25 of us at the wedding, standing there as they had not provided any chairs. Fortunately it was a very short ceremony. Then we all proceeded over to the carwash for the lavish reception. They had the buffet table down the middle of the carwash. They had those buttery wedding mints, pizza rolls, little crustless tuna & chicken salad sandwiches and a two tier wedding cake with a big Busy Bee on the top of it. They had no plates, just these cocktail napkins with ducks on them left over from an annual Ducks Unlimited fundraiser. The best man kept joking that he was going to hit the button to start the carwash during the dancing. The bride’s father invited us over to his house after the reception for a taste testing of the different Boones Farm wines! As the couple was departing and we were throwing the rice my brother-in-law leaned over and said, “And this could have all been yours.” Thank you, Lord, for my singleness.

(testing, fundraiser, carwash, mint, pizza)

Belinda's Wednesday Writerly Challenge

New Hope Road I now live 10,000 miles away from the New Hope Road, but I still go there often in my mind. New Hope Road is a red clay road that wanders for miles through plantation land in a rural area of South Georgia. It has long been a place of refuge for me. As I drive very slowly down the road, with all my windows down, the sights and sounds that reach me are a balm to my spirit. The land is covered with many varieties of trees; the ubiquitous tall-standing pine tree, great spreading oak trees that call for you to climb up in them or picnic beneath their low hanging limbs, dogwoods that bloom each spring little white clumps of white showing through the woods and magnolia trees with their big flowers drooping down from the branches. At one point in the road, someone long ago planted oak trees in a row along each side of the road and now they arch over and give you a canopy to drive under. One day I would like to spend the whole day traveling down this road in a buckboard, pulled along by an ole floppy-eared mule. In the spring there is the most beautiful vibrant green of new leaves set against the backdrop of that dark red clay, a sight that always give me such sweet joy! I don't know why it touches me so deeply. Sometimes when I try to explain it to people they just look at me like I'm a little off. I grew up in Miami but spent every summer at my Granny's house which is near the New Hope Road. Every summer I would take home an empty Nehi Orange bottle that I had filled with red clay from that road and keep it on my bedside table until the next summer. Even as a child the road had a special hold on me. There are literally thousands of acres of woods, plantation and crop land along this road. If you get out of the car and walk along you will hear the "bob-white" call of quail and the "rat-a-tat-tat" of huge pileated woodpeckers. You can spot a big red-tailed hawk sitting on the lone dead limb of a lightening killed pine watching vigilantly for any small movement of a critter in the high grass below. If it is a really good day, you might catch sight of a bald eagle soaring effortlessly way up in the blue, blue sky! You can watch over-sized gray fox squirrels cavorting through the trees chattering away at each other. There is a swampy area where you will see much evidence of a family of busy beavers. One fall evening years ago, right at dusk, my nephew Daniel, and I were slowly tooling down the road and suddenly spotted a group of 15-20 deer way back in one of the fields. It was an amazing sight! We got out of the car and slowly and oh so quietly tried to sneak up on them, but did not get very far. They are so aware of everything around them, their heads popping up and down constantly as they graze. They scattered, running and jumping gracefully through the woods, their white tails flying at attention. Daniel and I still talk of that evening drive and the deer we encountered. Daniel now works on one of those plantations that border New Hope Road and I like to think that our many drives together down red clay roads generated some of his love for being outside on the land. Whenever I am able to get back to South Georgia, one of the first things I do is head for "my" road. If you are a friend who has ever visited me when I am there, you have been down New Hope Road. When I retire back to South Georgia I am praying that the Lord will somehow provide me with an acre somewhere down that road that so pulls at my heart. As you can see in the picture below, as I sit at my desk way over in the Philippines, I keep my road close - it is the wallpaper on my laptop. As I look at that picture, I can, with my mind's eye, slowly traverse that wonderful road and be comforted with the beauty and splendor my Lord has put there for me to enjoy.

The Horse Sale (Five Word Monologue)

I had so much to do and the rain would just not let up! The water was pouring in sheets off the roof of the barn and even running in rivulets down the aisle between the stalls. The horses were stamping and snorting at the noise that the rain made pounding on the tin roof above them. I had six horses left to curry and also the back breaking task of trying to sand and blacken their hooves and then clip the hair in their ears. All of this to do with yearling foals who like to jump around with every noise, pretending to be scared. To make matters worse, my younger sister and some of her friends were out in the paddock chasing “Elmer,” our young steer around trying to tie one of the girl’s tennis shoes to his horns. Needless to say Elmer was not a happy camper and kicking up quite a ruckus. I’m sure they could hear him bellowing and blowing at the farm down the road. The girls were soaked through to the skin and covered with mud. My dad was in the house trying to get the horses’ pedigree papers ready while an Atlanta Braves baseball game blared from the radio in the background. Grannie was in the kitchen making my very favorite caramel cake. My two sisters and I had once devoured a whole caramel cake at the wake of one of my great aunts! We were sitting by the dessert table and just kept slicing on that cake, “making it even” until we had evened it down to crumbs. My mom was sitting, as usual, at the big desk trying to figure out how we are going to pay this month’s training fees for the horses we had at the track. Tomorrow will tell us much of how the rest of our year is going to go financially! We have a group of 11 foals going into the yearling sale at the “OBS,” the Ocala Breeders Sale. The sales are great fun to go to as a spectator, but a lot of hard work and nail biting if you are counting on the sale of these foals to fund your breeding farm for the next year! Sure, you have grooms and walkers working for you, but when there is so much money at stake, there is lots of hands on supervision from the family! We are really a very small thoroughbred farm, surrounded by huge, palatial farms, but we have had good results so far with several different multiple stakes winners to come from our mares. My father is great with the animals and does the training work with them from the time they are foaled till they go for their last training before the track. Some people would say it is as much of a gamble to make a living off a breeding farm as it is to make that same money betting on horses at the track. And most people you see trying to do that are usually in the food stamp line! My father, who has been known to win a nice sum every now and then, says that he would give back ALL his winnings for 10% of what he has bet over the years! There is a lot of hard won wisdom in that statement! All in all, I’ll take the bumps and the bruises, the highs and the lows, the wins and the losses of horse breeding any day over the endless grind of trying to make a living sitting in an office forty hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 30 years of my life!

Five Words: Rain, curry, baseball, caramel, horns

Belinda's challenge

The huge orange orb of a moon spoke to me as it rose over the horizon, telling me of the Father's glory. I had hurried down the road, catching glimpses of it through the sparse spaces in the woods. I was finally able to pull into my sister's driveway and take out my camera to try and get a picture of it as it rose through the trees that were devoid of leaves in the cold winter air. I took picture after picture, balancing my camera on the top of the car to try to keep it from moving as the shutter speed had to be so slow to catch it without a flash. Why is it our pictures can never convey the specialness of God's creation; inadequate glimpses of the awesomeness of what He created with just a word!

FALL HIKING (a short story)

We have been backpacking in the North Carolina mountains for the last 12 days. My friend Toni and I have been doing this every October for the last several years. There is no more beautiful place on earth than the North Carolina mountains in October! The air is crisp, the smell rich with the loamy earth, the leaves beautiful hues of red, gold and yellow! We keep our hikes near the creeks as we love to hear the sounds of the rushing water. We often stop at different waterfalls to eat our lunch and revel in the sights and sounds of water cascading down the mountain wall. Sometimes we even get the courage to jump into the water, gasping as we come up, laughing at each others expressions because it is so shockingly cold! I can’t imagine doing this with anyone but Toni. She is super creative and a joy to be with. She gets up early in the mornings and heads out for a little private time with the Lord. She has brought her wooden recorder with her and I can hear the strains of “This Is My Father’s World” wafting through the trees. Toni has always been the one to take care of our backpacking menu. She has figured out how to take backpacking meals way beyond the usual freeze dried concoctions and beany-weanys!! In fact, last night for dinner we had chicken with artichoke hearts over egg noodles and strawberry Jello with fruit for dessert! She takes the Jello and puts it in a water bottle and submerges it in the creek for awhile and there you have it! She does the same with instant pudding. It is always fun to see what she is going to pull out of her backpack for the next meal. Last night we made our camp by an old homestead that had nothing left standing except an old brick chimney. You see many of those lonely sentinels scattered throughout the southern landscapes. As we sat around after dinner we invented stories of who lived here and of their loves and losses. Times change, seasons come and go, and yet, our hopes and our dreams are in most ways the same as the family that lived here on this mountain those many years ago: The desire to be loved and appreciated, to have a home where harmony rules and is a safe haven from the discord of the world. Unfortunately, this morning we left the mountains to head back to civilization, jobs and the every day world. As we came down into Brevard we had to stop by the mall to pick up some supplies for our long drive back home. In the midst of the cacaphony of too loud music, too many people and too many lights I felt that sense of peace that had come to me from two weeks of reveling in God’s beautiful creation start to sunder under the gaucheness of the world we live in. (Five Word Monologue: waterfall, mall, strawberry, sunder, brick)

Exercise???

Okay, Okay, I am really trying to do something about exercise. Two weeks ago I had one hike that gave me my hours for two weeks, but that isn't going to last forever! Today I downloaded two different exercise videos! One for "fat burning" and one for stretching. I got so tired just watching the fat burning one that I had to pause it in the middle and go eat some m&ms!!! I've gotten to the point where if I painted the front part of my wet suit white you would take me for an Orca! Well, actually, it would be more like keep it all black and you would think I was a walrus! It is pitiful. But, summer has hit here with a bang and it is HOT and HUMID outside, with the humid part there all the time! So, hopefully with these videos I can exercise in my air-conditioned bedroom. Here in the Philippines, I don't cool my whole house as it would cost me an arm and a leg - well, that would take care of some of the weight loss! Just kidding! So, please pray for me this next week as I try to rotate the videos doing one every day. The stretching one is just 10 minutes so will be my "off" day video, but still need your prayers that I will be disciplined!