Doing Life Together

Getting Ready for Christmas . . . by Andrea R. Huelsenbeck

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

My mother-in-law had a Thanksgiving Day tradition of stacking all her Christmas records on the record player spindle and playing them non-stop until New Years. That’s how we knew it was time to get ready for Christmas.

Even though retail establishments have been ready for Christmas for months, Black Friday is the day I start to get ready. (But I won’t go out shopping today. That would be crazy.)

I’ve probably already bought some Christmas presents. I hope I can remember what I bought and where I put them . . .

This is my process of holiday preparation:

Now is when I make a list of all the people we want to give presents to, notated with gift ideas. My husband Greg and I divide the list and shop for our assigned people.
Also, around this time people start asking me what I want for Christmas. So I have to think of something to tell them. One of the benefits of growing old is I either have everything I want, or I’ve lived without it for so long that I’ve learned to be content without it. I really don’t need anything. But loved ones appreciate a suggestion.
Time to get out my Christmas jewelry: the jingle bell necklace, the snowflake earrings, the Nativity scene pin, and the wreath pin. I will be wearing these often in the next month.
The next task is to send Christmas cards. When I was teaching elementary general music, there were years I didn’t send cards, because I was so tapped out with many concerts to prepare in addition to my teaching duties. I got home from work late every day and had no energy for correspondence. Happily, I no longer have that hardship.

Photo by Drew Saunders

I keep a Christmas card database with names and addresses. I print off mailing labels, so I can just sign the cards and put them in the mail (or hand-deliver to people I know I’m going to see). I usually buy Christmas cards on clearance. My favorites are the art cards from The Metropolitan Museum of Art store. You might want to request their catalog.

Photo by Cornischong at Lb.Wikipedia

Go to Trader Joe’s and see if they still have any German Advent Calendars with a piece of chocolate for each day. (I may have already done this. Several times. I may or may not know what happened to said chocolate.) While I’m there, I’ll look for two other traditional German Christmas foods from my childhood: Stollen (a yeast bread with dried fruit and nuts baked in it) and Pfeffernüsse (round spice cookies covered with powdered sugar). These are mandatory. It is not Christmas if we don’t eat these.
Then there’s the Christmas tree debate. My husband likes a cut tree—and he likes to put it up as close to Christmas as possible. (When Greg was a child, Santa put up the tree at his house when he delivered his presents.) I, on the other hand, think it’s wasteful to buy a tree that was cut down merely to decorate someone’s living room for a week or two. I’d be happy with an artificial tree that we could reuse year after year. When I was a mom-at-home, the tree was my domain. When I went to work full-time, Greg took over that chore with my blessing. Since I didn’t want the job of putting the tree up and decorating it (and taking it down and putting away all the ornaments), I acquiesced to Greg’s will.

Last year, the day we went out to the Christmas tree lot to buy our tree, the lot was closed, with no sign or anything to indicate what time it would be open for business. Not willing to wait around or come back later, I said, “They’re selling potted Norfolk pines at the grocery store.” Intrigued, Greg said, “Let’s take a look at them.”

Now, I have to confess—the previous year we bought a different potted tree with every intention of planting it in the yard after the holidays. Do you think I could have kept it alive until we got around to planting it? Maybe you’ve never seen my black thumb.

Norfolk pines have a high humidity requirement. They can’t be planted outside in the Arizona desert. But we bought a 3-foot tree, planning to try to keep it alive, this time inside. Greg named it Maurice. It drops lots of little branchlets (I don’t know if that’s a characteristic of the tree or if Zoe and Cloud, our cats, break them off when we’re not looking), but it’s four feet tall now, and it will be our Christmas tree this year.

One more mandatory food item: homemade sticky buns for Christmas breakfast. I set them up the night before (they rise overnight), and the first thing I do when I get up Christmas morning is pre-heat the oven.

Marsha’s Easy Cinnamon Rolls

1 stick of butter, melted

¾ C. brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ C. chopped nuts

1 package frozen dinner rolls

¾ package butterscotch pudding (the kind you cook, not instant)

Mix together: melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Use a well-greased angel-food or Bundt cake pan. Place nuts in the bottom of the pan and distribute frozen rolls around the pan. Sprinkle the pudding mix over the rolls. Pour the butter/brown sugar/cinnamon mixture over the rolls and cover the pan with a clean dishtowel. Let the pan sit on the counter overnight. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and carefully turn over onto a large plate.

Disclaimer: my children will always remember 1999 as the Christmas Mommy almost burned the house down. I made these buns for the first time in an angel-food pan and didn’t think to put the pan on a cookie sheet. As it baked, the brown sugar coating leaked out of the bottom of the pan and dripped onto the oven floor. Reasoning that it would be bad to cook the Christmas turkey in a sugary oven, I started the self-cleaning feature of the oven. Within minutes, the sugar ignited, the house filled with smoke, and flames shot out of the oven! My husband saved the day by turning off the cleaning cycle, and scraping the burnt sugar out when the oven cooled. The moral of the story: Put the pan on a cookie sheet!

The most important thing I do to prepare for Christmas is meditate on the mystery of God incarnate. I think about what it must have been like for His young mother to endure questions concerning her pregnancy; how His parents became refugees in Egypt, fleeing the threat of His murder; about the pain and suffering He willingly endured for me, so that I might spend eternity in His presence. The peace of Christ be with you this season and always.
Photo by Jeff Weese

Posted in Christmas, Faith, Holiday | Tagged Christmas, faith | 3 Comments

A Thankful Heart of a Heart of Praise by Donna Clark Goodrich

Posted on November 24, 2015 by dgood648

A Thankful Heart—or a Heart of Praise

“…always giving thanks to God the Father for everything” (Ephesians 5:20 niv).

“Develop an attitude of praise,” our pastor told us in his Sunday message. “It will change your life.”

I decided to take him up on it, much to my family’s irritation. No matter what or who they complained about, I reminded them of something to be thankful for.

This went on all week. If it rained, I thanked God it didn’t flood. If it was too hot, I was thankful for our air conditioner. If our children complained about getting up in the morning, I told them to be thankful they could walk, reminding them of my friend’s two boys who had to be carried everywhere. When two ladies talked out loud during the church service, I told our family to be thankful they could be there, with both their husbands in wheelchairs.

One day I received a letter from our denominational publishing house. “See,” I said, “holding it up. “I sold an article.” I opened the envelope and found…a bill for our church magazine subscription.

This didn’t stop me, however. I continued to drive my family crazy finding a reason to be thankful for everything.

Soon, though, things changed. In the space of a few months my mother died of cancer, and my husband had a serious car accident, then a heart attack which led to a retirement at the age of 48. The needs and drama of three teen-agers in a span of seven years increased the stress.

How can I be thankful in everything? I often asked myself. Then one day while listening to the words of a song, the answer came to me: Being thankful is for things God gives to us, but giving praise is for who He is!

Even now, 30 years later— with my husband’s death this year, our daughter and me both having torn rotator cuffs and pneumonia, another daughter and family moving out of state, our son off work for six weeks with heart problems, plus myriad home repairs—realizing who God is–my strength, my comfort, my healer–makes it easier for me to have a thankful heart and a heart of praise.

What are you especially thankful for this Thanksgiving season?

Posted in Family Life, Life Transitions, Thanksgiving | Tagged thankfulness | Leave a comment

A Memorial of Thanks

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Linda Carlblom

Last year at Thanksgiving time I blogged about Our Linen Thanksgiving Journal, a tradition that my family has kept for over a decade. There’s another thing we’ve done, not quite as regularly as writing on the tablecloth, but some family members like it just as well.

First, I’ll give you some background. In the Bible, when someone had an encounter with God or wished to express his thanks, he often built an altar or memorial to God out of stones. When he or a future generation saw the memorial, they would recall the goodness of God in that situation. Some examples of this are found in Joshua 4:1-10, Genesis 28:10-22, Genesis 35:6-7, Exodus 17:8-16, Exodus 24:3-4.

Thanksgiving rocks

Several years ago, I thought it might be nice for our family to start our own memorials to remember God’s goodness to us. So I bought some smooth river rocks and placed them in a basket on Thanksgiving. I asked each person at our Thanksgiving meal to choose a permanent marker, then write the year on the rock. They were then to write one thing they were thankful for or something God had done for them that year. They could either take the rock home and start individual rock memorials or compile them to make a family memorial. The memorials could be placed anywhere—on a desk, in a corner of the yard, in a prominent place in the living room—wherever they would see it and be reminded of God’s goodness. When people who came to their house asked what the pile of rocks was, well, there was an opportunity to share what God had done in their lives.

The beginning of a rock memorial.

I still provide rocks every year for those who want to continue adding to their memorials. They are constant reminders of God’s unfailing love to us.

What traditions do you do on Thanksgiving? Or what’s one you’d like to start? Share them in the comments.

Linda

Posted in Faith, Faithfulness, Family Life, Holiday, Legacy, Life, Remembering, Thanksgiving, traditions | Tagged altars, biblical altars, biblical memorials, family altar, God's goodness, memorials, remembering, rock memorials, Thanksgiving, traditions | 2 Comments

Can Your Story Change the World? . . . by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

This article previously appeared on ARHtistic License.

“We have no problems.” That’s what my husband, Greg, and I say to each other while watching the news on TV. The turmoil and suffering we see around the world make our own challenges and frustrations miniscule in comparison.

As my selection from Asia for the Around the World Reading Challenge, I chose I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban. Malala Yousafzai is Pakistani, though her co-author, journalist Christina Lamb, is British. Malala is, of course, the 2014 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism on behalf of education.

This book humbled me. The descriptions of the hardships that the people of Pakistan face on a daily basis brought me to tears, as did the efforts of this young girl and her father to provide solutions through education.

In a culture where women are of little consequence, Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, is atypical in that he unabashedly loves and respects his wife and daughter, so much so that he solicits and reflects on their opinions and advice. A teacher with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English, he advocated for education, especially of girls, before his own daughter was even born. He built the school Malala attended and served as its administrator.

Pakistan has had more than its share of natural disasters, such as a massive earthquake in 2005 that killed more than 73,000 people. In 2010, floods killed 2,000 people, affecting 14,000,000 people and destroying homes and 7,000 schools. The Pakistani government did little to help its people after these catastrophes; most aid came from Islamic organizations including TSNM, the Taliban of Swat, the region where Malala’s family lived. When the Taliban began moving into the area and expanding their influence, people remembered their assistance and felt obliged to support them. (There is a lesson here for the entire world.)

Mr. Yousafazai’s outspoken resistance to the Taliban’s restrictions against girls’ education earned threats of retaliation; but when he suggested to his daughter that they temporarily abandon their public outrcry, Malala objected:

“How can we do that?” I replied. “You were the one who said if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply even if we are dead. We can’t disown our campaign!”

So their work continued, but with a tragic setback. After Malala and two classmates were shot by a Taliban gunman on their school bus, Malala was ultimately airlifted to Birmingham, England, where she was more likely to receive the level of care she needed for her recovery.

Though around the world she is recognized for her valor, in her native country there are those (sympathetic to extremist views, perhaps) who accuse her of using her circumstances to catapult herself into a life of luxury. Malala ignores the criticism, and instead focuses on her goal: universal access to education. Her father shares this objective in his work as the education attaché for the Pakistan consulate in England and as the advisor to the UN for global education.

I Am Malala is a must read. It goes beyond being a nice story about a courageous girl; it challenges the reader to support what is right, even if it leads to one’s own death.

Can your life story change the world?

This is my second installment in the Around the World Reading Challenge sponsored by the blog Booking It. For my first installment, please see What is My Calling?

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Posted in Book reviews, Books | Tagged Around the World Reading Challenge, Christina Lamb, Malala Yousafzai | 3 Comments

A Bored Game

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Carol Boley

I know it sounds impossible, with all the cries of how busy everyone is and all the Facebook posts of how overwhelmed by life they are, but sometimes I hear someone say they are bored.

I get it.

It’s not that there’s nothing to do, or nothing that needs to be done. Sometimes it’s just not in us to get up and do it…whatever “it” is. Nothing sounds fun or interesting at the moment.

It’s like looking in a jam-packed closet and finding nothing to wear. Obviously clothes fill the racks and drawers, so the issue isn’t lack. Nothing looks appealing and we don’t like any of our options. Nothing calls to us, “Wear me! You know I’m what you want today.”

I’ve heard some say only boring people are bored. I disagree. Unless it’s a common occurrence. Then, perhaps,we need to dig a bit deeper. But the occasional ennui strikes most of us. It’s in those times when we contemplate how dull we feel that we need to beware filling the void with hurtful things: excessive eating, drinking, spending, video game playing.

Feeling a bit bored? Down in the dumps? Tempted to dawdle away the part of your life that is today?

Consider the following activities:

Exercise
Look over your calendar. Too much to do? This can leave you feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed. See what you can cut out of your schedule. Too little to do? Can you volunteer at church, your local elementary school, or favorite charity? Serving others can add to your fulfillment and energize you.
Memorize a favorite poem or passage of scripture. Your brain will thank you. And it’s nice to carry your favorite words with you.
Like to cook? Prepare and freeze healthy meals so you are never caught empty-handed and thus tempted to over indulge.
Read that book you’ve been meaning to get to.
Clean out your kitchen junk drawer.
Jot down a list of your blessings.
Write your autobiography.
Run those bags of give-aways down to Salvation Army.
Call a friend.
Write a note of appreciation.
Send a card to a shut-in.
Take a nap with cream on your face and feet.
Spend extended time with God by reading the scripture, sharing your deepest thoughts with Him.
Check out that new museum you’ve been wanting to visit.
Is this a good time to clean the garage? (Probably not, but, you know…)
Rest without feeling guilty.
Enjoy the peace and quiet.
Focus on and receive God’s great love for you.
Make up a story in your head. Take a normal situation and ask, “What if thus and so were to happen?”

Are you ever bored? If so, what do you do in those times?

Posted in Bible, Books, Brain research, Church, Creativity, Decluttering, Friendship, Learning New Skills, rest, Service, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged Boredom, Ennui | 5 Comments

In the Meme Time: Things to Do with Fruit

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

In case you need a last-minute Halloween costume idea.

Posted in Creativity, Halloween, Parenting | Tagged children, Halloween costume ideas | Leave a comment

Folk Dance Friday

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

This article previously appeared on ARHtisticLicense.

I dance with the Phoenix International Folk Dancers. As our name suggests, we do dances from all over, but we favor folk dances from the Balkan nations of southeastern Europe: especially Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, and Greece.

Kids love to dance. And that’s a good thing, because purposeful movement, especially the kind that involves changing direction and crossing the midline (that imaginary line bisecting your body into left and right), is necessary for optimum development of the brain. Kids should be involved in structured movement every day. Sports provide it. So does dance. So does active play. But when schools are forced to make cuts to P.E. and recess (and music) to make more time for “important skills” like reading and math, standardized test scores ultimately decline because students’ brains aren’t getting all the different kinds of stimulation they need.

Photo by Donald Judge

Elementary school teachers understand that students need to move. They incorporate movement into their classrooms, even if it’s just allowing students to get up and walk around the room periodically. Movement helps students refocus.

When I taught elementary general music, I included folk dancing in my instruction. I justified it with the music standard concept Understanding music in relation to history and culture. I instituted Folk Dance Friday, which involved folk dancing for 30 minutes whenever your music class happened to fall on Friday. In a district where kids had music once every three days, Folk Dance Friday happened roughly once a month for each class. (Since many weeks are not full weeks, sometimes that pattern was thrown off; I might have Folk Dance Friday on a Thursday or occasionally have a different activity on a Friday so that all my students would have a similar frequency of dance exposure.) Below is a video clip of Alunelul, a favorite dance of elementary general music teachers. Can you see how fun and satisfying it is to folk dance? And doing 30 minutes of dance is an excellent cardio workout.

Some of the boys lost their enthusiasm for dance around fifth grade, but they perked up when another boy mentioned that the grapevine step is very similar to a common football drill. Nevertheless, I coaxed and cajoled them into participating for their own good and athletic prowess if not for the fun.

If your state, like Arizona, tries to scale back education funding to balance the budget or to force schools into being more effective (our state representatives claim that education doesn’t improve by throwing money at it), fight. Quality education involves richness of experience, not bare bones existence. That includes exposure to physical education, art, dance, wood and metal shop, home economics, and music in addition to social studies, science, reading, writing, math, penmanship, grammar and spelling, and foreign languages. Demand it. Your children deserve it.

Posted in Brain research, Dancing, Doing Life Together, Family Life, Folk dance, Learning New Skills, Parenting, Practicing, School, Teaching | Tagged children, Education | 1 Comment

“What Do We Do with That?” by Donna Clark Goodrich

Posted on October 27, 2015 by dgood648

“What Do We Do With That?”

I have a friend who is a hoarder. Her bed is covered to the point she barely has room to crawl in at night. She told me recently that she has been throwing away motel receipts from the 80s (“in case they come back and say we didn’t pay”), store receipts (“I might want to take something back”)—35 years ago? She refuses to throw things away because “I’m going to use it someday.” (She’s 84 and legally blind.)

My friend shared that one day her daughter looked around their house and asked, “Mom, when you and Dad die, what happens to all this stuff?” My friend replied, “Honey, one day all this will be yours.” She said the look on her daughter’s face was not one of joy.

I determined I wasn’t going to put a burden like that on our children so after my husband passed away seven months ago, I’ve begun a thorough cleansing of every room including:

Cookbooks. For someone who doesn’t cook much (do TV dinners count as cooking?), I had an enormous stack of cookbooks. I went through them, photocopied those recipes I knew I would (or could) make, and put them into a notebook separated by categories, then I gave the rest away to friends who were more culinary minded.

Plastic containers. I had myriad plastic containers of every shape and size and every time I opened the cupboard door, out they fell. I donated all of them to our church kitchen and bought a set of seven stackable ones with the lids fitted neatly inside. I’ve kept a few store containers to send food home with our kids, containers they knew they didn’t have to return.

Silverware. I had a whole drawer full of silverware, plus a good set in the closet. I donated the everyday ones to a woman’s shelter and I’m using the good ones every day.

Towels. The same with towels. I had three sets I used just for company. Now I’m using them every day. If company comes, I’ll still put them out. Why not? They’re clean!

Bibles. Since I do a lot of proofreading and editing, I had just about every version of the Bible ever printed. I gave most of these to my pastor son-in-law and kept only the three I use most often. The others I can find on Bible Gateway.

Songbooks. I had two shelves full of songbooks, many containing the same songs. I went through a bunch of them, photocopied favorite songs, and put them in alphabetical order in a notebook. I then sent a box full of the others to my songwriting nephew.

Novels. I had several shelves of unread novels. In the past few months of grieving, when I didn’t have the energy to do much else, I began reading these books, then gave them away as I seldom read a novel more than once. However, I have kept sets written by favorite authors.

Slides. At one time I had 57 trays of slides; now I’m down to 10! I threw away literally hundreds of nothing but scenery (I had never seen a mountain until our trip to Arizona, and how many pictures of heather in Scotland can you keep?). I also had photos of dozens of birthday parties with children that I babysat over 40 years ago. I kept one of each child and disposed of the rest. Then I typed up two index sheets for the remaining 10 trays and put one sheet in the tray and the other in a notebook.

Magazines. To help dispel my Matterhorn of piled magazines, I canceled my subscriptions to several (never mind that they had a great offer of only $8 for two). When they come in the mail, the first thing I do is tear out all the ads (about 1/3 of the magazine). If I can’t read them within a few days, I put them in a bag and take them to the doctor’s office or other places where I have to wait. When I finish, I leave them there for others to enjoy.

Newspapers. I’m a newspaper addict, but as soon as I read each day’s, it goes in a plastic bag and I take a little walk down to the corner recyclable Dumpster.

Yearbooks. I called the alumni offices of my high school and my husband’s college and found that they are glad to receive old yearbooks as they still get requests for them, so I’m tearing out the pages with all the great things people wrote about us, and will send them on. (You can see most yearbooks online now anyway.)

The three things I haven’t gotten to yet are 1) photographs (I have them in albums up to 1974; the others are in manila envelopes, divided by year); CDs and videos/DVS. (I have more than I’ll have time to listen to or watch in a lifetime.

Hopefully, after all this sorting and tossing, when my kids have said their final good-bye to me and come to clean out my house, they won’t shake their heads in despair, look at each other, and say, “What do we do with that?”

Posted in Decluttering, Doing Life Together, Family Life, Finding solutions, Life Transitions, Uncategorized, Widowhood | Tagged Organization | 6 Comments

The Beach Ball that Swam to Oma . . . by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

Even though I grew up near the Jersey shore, we didn’t often go to the beach when I was a child. My dad was busy earning a living; my stay-at-home mom didn’t drive. But I do remember one rare beach day when I was ten years old and my brother Billy was three.

My mother had picked up a couple of beach toys at an end-of-the-summer clearance: a blow-up raft and a beach ball. I was excited about the raft. My brother was thrilled with the ball. I remember my dad inflating them and handing them to us.

Unfortunately, as often happens in the afternoon, a breeze blew, and it picked up Billy’s ball, launching it seaward.

We ran after it, but couldn’t catch up. As we waded into the water, my dad passed us. “Wait here!” he said, and dove in.

We watched him swim with powerful strokes past all the other bathers, but the ball danced over the waves faster still. After what seemed like forever (but was probably more like ten minutes), he turned around and swam back to us, the beach ball now just a dot approaching the horizon.

Billy cried, “My ball!” It wasn’t fair—his brand new toy, and he’d barely had a chance to play with it.

Found on technonaturalist.net.

“Don’t worry,” Dad said to him. “The ball is swimming to Oma. She will know it’s from you, and she’ll be so happy.”

Our grandmother, who we called Oma, lived in Germany, across the ocean. Dad’s comment made sense to Billy, and he wiped away his tears, a happy little boy again.

My baby brother turned 55 this year. Dad passed away in 2013. How I long for the days when my father could make everything all right.

How often have I counted on something, only to have it fail to materialize? How many times has a long-anticipated event fallen short of my expectations? How frequently have my best efforts yielded unsatisfactory results? Disappointment is a fact of life.

But you can’t live there.

Your tragedy isn’t the end of the world. Life goes on.

In his book, You Gotta Keep Dancin’, Tim Hansel said, “Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy.”

Why would we want to avoid joy? And how can we get to it when we’re in the middle of misfortune?

While Don Piper recuperated from the horrific car crash that almost cost his life (chronicled in his book 90 Minutes in Heaven), unbearable pain launched him into a deep depression which didn’t relent for months, until he listened to a favorite song, Praise the Lord by the Imperials. As implausible as it sounds, that song was cathartic for him. “When we’re up against a struggle and we think we can’t keep going, we can change that by praising God,” he says.

What changed was his attitude. He went from hopelessness to persistence in a moment. (Actually, he cried for an hour, and then he found the will to go on.)

By JFXie.

Have you ever been despondent after a disaster? How did you find the courage to face life again? Please share in the comments below.

Posted in Doing Life Together, Family Stories, Fathers, Finding solutions, Memoir, Perserverance | Tagged depression, despair, Disappointment, Doing Life Together, faith, family stories | 3 Comments

Cats Behaving Badly by Betty Mason Arthurs

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Betty Mason Arthurs

My friend, Kitty Chappell, a cat lover like myself, wrote a sweet poem, “Cats.”

God knew there’d be times
When we’d need a friend—
A soft, gentle creature
Who’d love to the end.
A friend who has grace,
And patience and class.
So, He searched heaven
And then sent us cats.

I’m no longer sure about the sentiments of this poem because I’ve decided our two cats are rescued reprobates. Somehow Clifford and Henry have morphed into heathen cats that enjoy tormenting my husband, John, and me. Or perhaps they’ve gotten in touch with the DNA of their wild ancestors, jungle cats, saved from the flood by Mr. and Mrs. Noah.

Clifford is a Maine Coon mix rescued by a technician at our vet’s office, adopted by us 13 years ago, and loves being a pampered feline. He is 15 pounds of a furry love ball and worships food, sleep, food, and my lap. Attacking the fax machine used to be his favorite pastime.

Henry, abandoned by a neighbor, was hiding in our locked shed for two weeks when we found him four years ago. He became our lovable outdoor cat until someone shot a BB into his neck, shown on an x-ray, and slashed him with a knife. He adjusted to our home but it took a long time before he trusted a human again. The color of ebony with yellow eyes, he is our “little man.”

For 50 years of our marriage we’ve bestowed Christian mercy on our numerous cats when they’ve used our furniture as scratching posts, spread their cat hair over freshly folded laundry, kicked mounds of gravel out of their litterbox (which is painful to our bare feet.), spit out their medicine even though I wrap it in their favorite food, indulge in minor hissy-fights with one another…all normal cat behavior. But now I have to explain why we’re calling our last two reprobates.

Two years ago Clifford and Henry decided they didn’t appreciate my husband’s sister and her husband taking over our extra bed room for a visit. The bed had always been their cushy napping place and under it they could hide among the boxes of Christmas paper and bows.

One night the rascal reprobates coughed up numerous hairballs on the hallway rug and Clifford used an area outside the guest room door for a litterbox. The disgusting noises and smell of sick cats woke us and we knew we’d be tiptoeing through their messes while we dug out the disinfectant spray and wipes, garbage bags, paper towels and face masks. They were sure we got up out of bed to feed them. ”Meow, meow, feed us our paté!” Our embarrassment over their nasty mess hangs over us to this day and we were only in the second week of Kay and Bob’s visit. I don’t think they’ll come again.

That night we abandoned the idea of throwing them over the fence and feeding them to our neighbor’s dogs. However, a plan to ship them off to Anaheim, California to hang out with the Disneyland cats for the nightly rodent population control was a good possibility.

Just when we thought we had converted Henry from a rowdy alley cat to a sweet Christian we discovered he’s a tiger in a black disguise. John had laid his open Bible on the floor. Henry peed on it. Beelzebub is Henry’s new name.

Our daughter and her family also have two cats. Bindi catches field mice that invade their home, bites their heads off and proudly places their bloody remains where they can be stepped on. Leeland demands people food at the dinner table.

A friend lost her cat for two weeks. She was devastated over the loss of her “baby,” King. He had squeezed through a hole around the bathroom plumbing in their manufactured home, living beneath them until they finally heard his frantic meows.

What is it that possesses so many Americans to grace their homes with pets? I admit, over the years, I’m discombobulated when it comes to loving and caring for our cats and dogs. The statistics show that 1000 homes have 2000 pets. Yes, I made that up, but shop at any pet store and the variety of food, equipment and toys you must have for your precious gerbils or dogs or fish or cats or birds equals enough money to pay for a new car every year. The vet bills alone could send you on a cruise. However, for me, the entertainment of animal antics in your home will keep you laughing for years. They are experts at combating loneliness and sadness, getting your mind off the troubled world we live in.

Henry just scampered across my keyboard. I don’t know how he manages to always hit F7, but he’s telling me his food bowl is empty. If he ever tromps on the delete key, I’m sunk. Gotta go and check on the reckless rescued reprobates. I’m sure somewhere in the house they are behaving badly.