The Fellowship of Women

About three years ago, we moved from one state to another because of a job offer my husband received. We left a community and a house where we had lived for 25 years. We also left a church community where we had been members for over 20 years.

I have yet to find a new church community.

It is interesting to be on the other side of an issue we discussed so frequently at my old church - church growth, or "How do we get more people inside the doors?" It is harder to walk over that threshold than I had imagined.

I have found that the need for a faith community, however, has not gone away, and this was brought home to me after a retreat I attended last week. This is a yearly event, and I've been going for eight years.

It is a fellowship of women with common ties through employment in the church. Some have retired but still attend the retreat because we have become like sisters. One of the attendees said this year, "I may not know all of you well, but I feel like you are all my sisters, and I feel such love and acceptance when I am here." Perhaps that is what I'm looking for in a faith community - love, acceptance.

But my logical self tells me that it is not so easy. We are all imperfect. We all have our own ideas, feelings, insecurities, etc. There's an old saying that God puts at least one member in each church who irritates almost everyone else just to make sure that we're listening to what God is telling us.

Easier said than done.

And yet, for three days, I was in a community of women who shared deep thoughts, hugs and quite conversation, laughter as well as tears.

Is it possible to find a church with that kind of atmosphere?

I hope so...I guess I'll have to keep looking.

Is My Cat a Druggie?

We own two cats who deign to live with us, named Bonnie and Clyde (in a moment of terminal cuteness). We assume they are litter mates, being almost the same size when they were unceremoniously dumped on the porch of our farmer neighbor's house.

Bonnie is a long-haired steel gray and white cat and Clyde is your typical tabby. Bonnie sleeps about 18 hours a day, becomes frisky for a half hour before dinner and then goes to sleep again. Clyde, on the other hand, can often be seen racing from one end of the house to the other or walking around crying with a questioning meow that says, "Where is everybody? I'm lonely."

This month both of the cats became senior citizens because they turned seven, the golden years for kitties. Time to start buying the senior cat chow. And one more reason to worry about their teeth.

I had been advised by the vet to brush the cats' teeth. I much prefer to keep my skin intact.

Because of the wonder of the internet, I found a product called Greenies that promised to cut the tartar on the cats' teeth. I got a sample. They loved it. Time to go to the pet store and buy more, but trying to save gas as I have been, it was my husband who actually bought the treats. (I think that Clyde actually knows what "treats" means, so I've got to be careful about saying that word out loud.)

When my husband was in the store, he was told by the salesperson that they refer to this item as "kitty crack" because cats seem to become addicted to it.

I should have been on my guard. Bonnie is, shall we say, pleasingly plump, and I try to watch what she eats.

She is also the cat that goes crazy whenever she gets a whiff of catnip. (I recently learned that only about half of cats feel the effects of catnip. As if to prove this point, Clyde smells the stuff and looks at me as though to say, "So? What's the big deal?"

The recommendation on the package of these teeth-cleaning treats is that I feed each cat 8-10 of the treats twice a day. I'm trying to keep it to once a day. They're not cheap! I think that Clyde inhales them because I cannot hear them crunch once they've made it into his mouth.

Bonnie, however, chows down and crunches on them to beat the band.

She also knows where I keep them in the pantry and will sit outside the door several times a day now and meow, begging for her next fit.

Tell me - have a created a druggie cat??

Dealing with a Loss

He was my big brother. I'd known him my entire life. And now he's gone.

My big brother died February 27 of this year from brain cancer, and there is a huge hole in my life. I cannot imagine how my sister-in-law and niece are dealing with this. I cannot imagine that my great-niece and great-nephew probably won't remember their Poppi. That all they will have are old photographs.

He was 63 years old, far too young to die. We watched as the cancer ravaged first his body and then his mind for eight months. By the time it became evident he had very little time to live, all we wanted was to get him home and let him die in his own house, unconnected to machines, surrounded by friends, family and pets.

We are all trying not to be angry at the doctors who first said he had little time to live and then, when the end seemed imminent, said he had weeks when it turned out to be only days.

I wish I had found an excellent website on this awful disease, brainhospice, more than a couple of weeks before he died. The information in this site is invaluable for anyone who is dealing with this terrible disease. It answers questions that are difficult to ask and helps with specifics that you might not think of.

If you have come to this site because you or someone you love has brain cancer, please visit the site above. It can only help.

And I'll keep you in my prayers.

But am I really saving money?

This morning, after things started falling off the shelves in the pantry, I thought it would be a good idea to do some straightening up in there. I started with the shelf that has the skin creams, soaps, toothpaste, etc.

I discovered that there is enough skin cream, soap and toothpaste in our pantry to last until 2012, supposedly the end of the world, so I really don't need to buy any more. There also are five large bottles of body wash. We rarely use body wash in this house. So why do I have five bottles?

The most evident answer is that I purchased these items because they were on sale and I had a coupon. (My husband says that the local drug store puts out a silent alert when I come through the door to let the sales staff know that "the crazy coupon lady" is in the house.)

There is something SO satisfying about thinking you're saving money. It's even more satisfying if you get something for free! So what if you don't use it? Well, if you don't use it, it's just another kind of waste. If you end up throwing it away, it's still costing something to the environment.

Therefore, even though I've been indoctrinated to believe that it will hurt the economy if I don't do my fair share of purchasing, I have decided not to buy any more soap, body wash, toothpaste or skin creams until every single one in the pantry is used up. Of course, I could circumvent that decision by donating most of the stuff to the local women's shelter...or purchase those items with that specifically in mind because giving to those in need is even more satisfying than saving money.

Just rambling

Well, I've had an email from my daughter chastising me for not having posted since last week - or longer.

Evidently, blogging does NOT have to be lengthy or deep or thought-provoking. But that is not what I'm used to. I often contributed columns to newspapers, and you didn't write unless you had something of substance to say. At least, that was the way I saw it.

But newspapers are making a fast nosedive into history from the looks of it, so I suppose I should get used to this new way of "communicating."

And I'm not accustomed to hyper-linking, either, which my husband tells me is one of the nearly essential ingredients for blogging.

Perhaps I'll just be a dinosaur blogger...

The only thing of interest, weirdness, today was checking out various sites on the Internet about 12/12/12 or 12/21/12, take your pick. Lots of strange ideas out there. What are these people going to do when we're all still here on December 13, 2012? Maybe they'll just drink a lot of eggnog on the 22nd.

But I suppose they'll turn their sites to 2029 and the arrival of Apophis. You can check it out on Wikipedia.

Musing on a Miracle

I've been feeling pretty down this week with lots of things weighing on my mind - the state of the economy, the state of my economy, tensions at work, my brother's grave illness - to the point where getting up in the morning was difficult. (Especially with this cold. It's been too nice just staying under those warm covers.)

And then I heard the story about the plane landing on the Hudson River.

My mood changed, and I found myself smiling, even happy.

I can only attribute that change of mood to this miracle on January 15. Several miracles, in fact.

• A pilot who realized that he needed to use the river as a runway.
• There were no boats in his way.
  
• People didn't panic and helped each other.
• People in boats rushed from all over to pull people from the water if they had to.
• No one died.
• I repeat - NO ONE DIED.

How nice to hear a news story where no one died!

I'm going to try to keep this feeling for a while.

At least it will keep my heart warm.