Weekend Hodgepodge

Take a variety of items, put them together and that is a hodgepodge. As a child we called it goulash or one dish meal for dinner. Officially, goulash is a Hungarian stew, but you get the idea. You took what you had and put in a pot and voila! dinner. It wasn't a special meal or a gourmet dish or even something you would serve to your regular guests. It was what it was and it filled the empty spot. This is my hodgepodge, goulash, one dish weekend post.

Saturday morning I got up early had coffee and read. This is one of my all time favorite things to do. When the house is still cool from the evening, it's still dark & not yet dawn, still quiet with my family sleeping, I make my coffee and grab a book...sometimes my bible, sometimes not. But it's just me and the sweetness of the words and the wonderful flavor of good coffee. This morning however it was not a book or the bible I was reading. For my legalistic readers, the Word was read later on, and it was very good. I sat at my desk searched the web, catching up on blogs and finding new ones. Found a new favorite called "You Grow Girl". In my recent not so successful trials to grow fresh vegetables and herbs I've found myself reading more and more about diy home gardening. After reading her blog I had the overwhelming urge to go out and grow something, anything! My mother loved to garden. We had so many different plants and vegetables and herbs growing in the yard. We would even have all vegetable dinners which I hated as a kid, but now I know it was the way a single mother in the 70's provided for her child when she couldn't afford anything else. I remember her coming home from work and every day she would go straight outside to the garden. She loved it out there and I hated it! It was hot, there were bugs and I was bored. I remember I asked her once what in the world she liked about it. She told me that there was pleasure in being a part of things coming to life and helping them grow. I rolled my 13 year old eyes and walked away mumbling something about her being crazy. But moms wasn't crazy, she was cool. Took till now for me to see it of course. I think that her reasoning is exactly what draws me to attempt to garden now. I want to have a hand in helping things grow, seeing the fruit of my labor and enjoying the goodness of the Lord's provision. And so it is with my children, whether in their walk with Christ or their journey towards adulthood, I take pleasure in being a part of it.

Later that day we piled in the car and took care of odds and ends. Paid some bills, shopped for plants :), stuff like that. We even test drove a truck that Jesse has been lusting after and I'm glad we did. This proved to him that the good ol' reliable Camry we have isn't that bad. Then we went and ate at my favorite Chinese place. Yummy Sesame Chicken and Lo Mien. Had some great conversation and laughs with my family. I also enjoyed some people watching while we ate...2 people particularly stuck out as memorable. One of the persons was with a friend and before they sat down, he took a call on his cell. He continued to talk through the ordering, through the won ton soup and on through until almost the end of the entree. I could tell the other person was annoyed and I don't blame them. That has to be one of the top ten of cell phone etiquette no-no's. The other would be talking on the cell in a public bathroom. I HATE that. I was at one place where the lady answered her cell in the stall next to me and she kept right on talking and well, you know. She laughed really loud and said "Yes I am in the bathroom! Isn't that funny?" I said rather loudly back over the stall, "So am I and no, it's not!" she didn't get the subtle hint, but oh well. Back to the Chinese food place...the other person was a post-person or a mail lady (pc?) and when she walked in the gentleman went to her to seat her and rather than follow him she took the lead and began to go to each table checking them out. After a few confused moments he made a futile attempt to herd her back to where he wanted her...the whole time she was on her cell completely ignoring him wandering around the restaraunt as if she were shopping. The scene was quite amusing. I am actually thinking about trying that next time I go out to eat. Sitting at each of the empty tables and trying them on for size and view and comfort of the chair and so on. After she made her seating selection she sat down, continued to talk on her cell and ignored him. We were done and it was time for us to go. We gathered our check and fortunes and started walking to the front to pay when the waiter noticed my purse on the chair. I told my daughter "Hey, you were supposed to remind me!" And the postal-table-shopping lady looked straight at me and said, "not me honey, call the pastor!" I stared at her confused and tried to understand what a pastor could do to help me remember my purse. Perhaps I need to call Reverend Nancy? She winked at me, grinned, turned her head and kept talking. Oh. I realized she was still on her phone. Geesh. I don't really have a spiritual application or analogy for this, I'm sure if I thought for a while I could come up with one. Hey, I know, YOU come up with one. Tell me the spiritual lesson that this teaches in your comment...if you comment...if you even read all this rambling on...okay.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much a blur. We went to Hobby Lobby which had great sale. Not to be compared to the Nord, but still I saved 50 to 90% on everything I bought. Later on we did yard work and watched movies and grilled and I made a muy good pasta salad. All in all, I would say the weekend was good. We had no special plans for it, random moments were just thrown together, but it filled the empty spot...just like this post.