cheap and scared

Posted on by November 16, 2013

eat-a-banker

I’ve been good and scared some over the course of my life so far.

That’s happened to me before.

I’m good…for the most part, I’m pretty good, or at least I try to be…and I’ve had my moments where I’ve been pretty scared.

Not really “BOO SCARED” much of the time.

I don’t run around shaking in my boots very often.  I don’t quake with fear.

It’s mostly a slow burn kind of fear…the kind where I lay awake and wonder what I’m going to do now.

Last night, I realized that on occasion I’ve been kind of “cheap and scared”, too.

I remember eating somewhere in Auburn with some friends.  They were eating these Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches…the air was crisp outside…it was warm inside.  The windows were steamed with condensation and everything smelled so good. It was a good time to eat a sandwich.  I was hungry.

“How much was that?“, I asked.

My friend said, “Just what are you saving for?  A Space Shuttle?”

I don’t know what I replied.  I know that I didn’t eat a sandwich.

I think that I made myself some pancakes when I got back to the old house we were renting.

Now why would I do that?  In retrospect, I think it was because I was cheap and scared.

I was too cheap and a little too scared to step up and lay my money down.

But this time, it wasn’t a gamble…I was going to get a delicious sandwich in return for my six dollars.

I wasn’t spending the money on a lottery ticket or picking the fastest horse.

My bet at the sandwich shop was a proven and sure thing.

I could have been a WINNER.

But I didn’t take that risk.

What  I was saving for was a good question.  A Space Shuttle would be pretty cool.  It would be good to be able to get up high in the sky and come back to tell the kids what it was like.  That would be pretty cool, indeed.

It wasn’t what I was saving for, though.  I guess that when you’re cheap and scared, you’re saving for a “safe hedge” against the bad things to come in the future.

“Saving for a rainy day”.

Now the “law of attraction” might say that I was attracting the very thing I was saving to protect myself against.  That’s probably right.  It’s hard to steer straight when all I can think about are the ditches on either side of the road. You miss the pretty view when all you can see is the drop off the cliff.

It’s harder to drive around the lake and not be conscious of potential disaster since they drained it for maintenance this past Winter…and I realized that it’s a drop off of around a hundred feet instead of the gradual slope I imagined before.

Maybe I was trying to save enough to “bribe God” or something.

I know God doesn’t care about money.  He probably likes when we use it to help people…but he doesn’t have a dime in this world.  Lots of love but no dimes…so I know he can’t really be bribed. So that couldn’t have been the reason.

I don’t really know what I was saving for.  I remember the good times I passed up…I can’t remember bank statements.

Having some money is power.  People sometimes say that the Rich are powerful.

Having a full belly is powerful, too.

I should have eaten a sandwich.

the rooster’s off the porch

Posted on by November 15, 2013

rocky-the-flying-rooster

It’s strange to have a marker for the beginning of my day like throwing a crowing rooster off the porch.

Growing up in a suburb of Atlanta, I never even entertained the idea that someday my life might include a detail like that.

Back then, I never thought I’d touch a rooster.

Things do change.

I was going to write a post about the Nigerian Pentecostal movement this morning after hearing a public radio report on it yesterday, but I couldn’t find the information I wanted so I’ll write about something else for now.

But I will mention that on this report I heard, they talked about the scale of the worship meetings…multiple football field size areas, all covered or enclosed.

They talked about a proposed “prayer center” that was going to be the size of Central Park.

Good grief, that’s impressive.

I can’t imagine something of that size.

I’ll find some information about what’s going on there and write about it later.

We go to Saluda tomorrow to begin delivering the mail out of a different office.

It’s a cost saving measure by the USPS.

Time will tell if that holds true.

It’s interesting to shake things up like that right before the holiday season.  We drive down to Saluda, and then do the same thing that we currently do up in Zirconia.

We unload the truck, sort the mail, case it to get everything ready to take to the street, and then drive around and open mailboxes all day.

That part of the routine won’t change….we’ll just do it from an office that’s in another town and on another truck line.

The logistical issues of this arrangement should be interesting.  It should be interesting when we get late packages…or get called back for some mis-cased letters…or have to return to the Saluda PO for any other issue that we can’t handle over the phone.

I think this move will save the Post Office some money somewhere…but it’s not going to be on the “driver side”.  It’s going to be expensive for us to handle these inconveniences.

It’s going to be a lot of driving.

So tonight’s the night we report to Saluda.

And then tomorrow, we have our first full day of delivering out of another office.

Wheeeeee.

But I’m a trooper…so I’ll go where they send me.

I heard some news out of the Philippines yesterday, too.

Stories about aid workers who went in carrying all their supplies on their backs, workers given the cell phone numbers of former Special Forces members who were there to get them out of a jam if the situation turned bad for them.

I heard stories about the logistical nightmare of serving the needs of a devastated group of people who are separated by ocean.

I hadn’t realized how many islands comprise the Philippines…it’s a good number.

( I just looked it up…it’s over 7,000.  I guess about 2,000 of the islands are inhabited.)

So…how do you get help to all these people?

I go to Saluda tonight to start delivering the mail out of a different office.

I get paid to do it.

When I finish, I come home to a family who loves me and to a house that’s usually dry and safe.

In the morning, I’ll throw the rooster off the porch if an owl hasn’t gotten to him first.

Poor me.

There’s always a new perspective that someplace like the Philippines provides.

“I have to need”

Posted on by November 14, 2013

in-greed-we-trust

In the hierarchy of reasons to “get”, my youngest son has quickly learned that “need” trumps “want’.

It’s funny to watch him try to chase down the word “want” when it escapes from his lips and replace it with the word “need” before we notice what he’s said.

I think he’s figuring out that the word “need” still doesn’t get him everything he “wants”, but at least it gets him a little bit closer to “getting”.

The other day, he said “I have to need.”

“I HAVE TO NEED.”

I thought that was a pretty honest and insightful statement for a four-year-old to make.

The more I thought about what he said, the more I thought that was pretty accurate for me, too.

“I have to need”, too.

I can’t stop it.  I can’t turn off “needing”.

Of course, I still want almost everything I see.

I’ll tone it down, say, “Oh, nooooooo…I’m good..right, I’ve got enough…don’t need a thing….but, thanks anyway! Maybe later, though….”

Inside, I’m thinking I should tell the man to make it three scoops when he asks if there will be anything else.

Instead, I’ll tell him that I’d like a small cup.

My cheapness dictates restraint a lot of the time.

“I want, I’d like, I’ll take one of those”…those phrases don’t often escape my lips.  I’m good at self-denial.  On the outside, I can play at being sort of an ascetic. I can play at being a “worldly ascetic”.

But inside, I’m all about the “GIMME”.

So when Nate says, “I have to NEED”…I have to acknowledge that the apple must not fall from the tree.

Me, too, buddy…I couldn’t turn it off if I tried.

With any addiction, it seems like the first step towards recovery is acknowledging that you have a problem.

So, I’ll say it here first.

“Hello, my name is Peter.  I have to need.”

“I need to get rid of my addiction to needing.”

Dang…I can’t escape it.  I need to figure out a way to get out of this cycle.

Dang.  Did I need to say that? I need to watch what I say.

Nobody needs more of that in the world.

Like Nate has learned to cloak his avarice in more politically correct terms, I can mask what I’m really driving at by changing the way I express myself.

I’d appreciate it if you’d humor me for a moment.

I’d appreciate it if you’d do that.

See what I just did?  I never said “need” once.  I changed it to “appreciate”.

I’d “appreciate” a bigger hamburger.

I’d “appreciate” three scoops of ice cream.

It masks my greed a little bit.  No one can tell that I’m in full on “GIMME MODE” when I say, “Why yes, I do believe I’d appreciate some more of that…”.

I don’t know, really.

Greed is ever-present.  At least it’s ever-present in my heart.  I can’t get away from it.

I can learn to mask it with humility….sometimes real, a lot of times learned and faked…but I’ve usually got a pretty extreme case of the “gimmes” churning up the blackest regions of my soul.

I love and appreciate a simple life.  A simple life can be a lot less complicated.  Simple can be easy.

But…on the other hand…”I have to need”.

What can I say?  I HAVE TO NEED.

Clooney and the Philippines

Posted on by November 13, 2013

Lady-Gagas-Meat-Dress

We watch a lot of age-appropriate television in our house.

I don’t mean that we watch more than our share of television in general.

What I mean is that if the TV is on, we’re probably watching RescueBots or Dora or something like it.

We don’t watch a lot of grownup TV.

Unless it’s late at night when our four-year-old is asleep.

Then I can watch as much as I want until I fall asleep on the couch.

That usually takes about an hour.

So when Jenny heard the report about the typhoon in the Philippines, it was one of the rare times when we over ruled the “kid’s show directive” and decided to watch some real news.

( If I make it sound like Nate rules the roost, I’m really just being dramatic. I know who really wears the pants in our family…and it’s not Nate.)

Isaac called down the stairs when news about the Philippines came on.

By the time Jenny was able to come back upstairs, the typhoon news was off and they were talking about some rift between George Clooney and Russell Crowe.

They talked about the celebrity argument for five minutes.

10,000 people were probably dead in one area alone of the Philippines and here they were taking up valuable space on the broadcast with the tale of how some actors weren’t getting along.

But this was American television.

PBS Newshour is good…it’s accurate…it’s real news…but good grief, it’s boring.  It is boring as heck.

I couldn’t watch it.  I couldn’t stand it.

Where would I learn about George Clooney or why we shouldn’t bully anyone…or who bought a really expensive, fast car? Or even better, who’s dating who and doing it (dating) “celebrity style”.

It’s got to be the real news for me.

It’s got to be American news if I’m going to hear any of the good stuff.

I guess that when I get down to it, I’m one of the worst of the bunch.  I love the tabloid weirdness.  I can make fun of it like it’s not something that I lap up like fresh cream, but I watch it.

I watch the heck out of it if it comes on my television.

If Lady Gaga has a new meat dress, I want to be first in line to see it.

I wonder why that is?

Now, if something bad happens in the world, like a giant typhoon or a bomb or an act of terrorism, I’m on that, too.

In between episodes of the RescueBots, I’m on the case.

I watch to learn about the disasters as much out of compassion and concern as a sense of duty.

It’s the mature thing to do, to be watchful of what is going on in the world. I’m an adult.  I’m old enough to be an adult.

I should watch the “bad news”, too.

But I tend to take the low road sometimes.  I watch the crap with the thought “why is this news?” percolating in the back of my consciousness.

I know it’s wrong to watch it…but I’m a moth, and the world is burning….and I can’t stay away from the flame.

Somewhere in some far back portion of my mind, I know that I shouldn’t give myself over to the inconsequential and salacious. I should not do that.

Some folks in a country far away are coping with Hell.

Now where’s that new meat dress?!

choose to love

Posted on by November 12, 2013

love3

The rooster woke up shortly after I did again this morning.

I listened to him when he started crowing, and it almost sounded like he was saying, “HE’S UP!! HE’S UP!!! HE’S UP!!!!!”

Maybe it’s my fault that he gets noisy in the morning.

Maybe it’s all me after all.

Maybe it’s not anything to do with me.  Maybe he just likes to let the world know that he’s alive.

I have a buddy who I used to talk with about what it would take to find LOVE.

His take on the situation was that it would come when he was worthy of it.

I guess it was kind of like the Holy Grail would show itself rising out of the mists when his heart was pure enough.

Or maybe he’d be the one who could pull the sword out of the stone when the situation and the man were both ready.

When he was ready, he’d meet Ms. Right.

Until that moment arrived, he’d continue on his “quest”.

Worthiness was a big concept.  It was a noble concept.

This morning I’m wondering if we’re ever really worthy of anything.

Maybe it’s not something to be earned by our efforts or our self-awareness and improvement.

Maybe it’s all our choices that set the ball rolling.

Maybe we just choose to love.

Choosing to love doesn’t mean we’ll be loved in return, but it has to be a better start than supposing that we deserve to be loved because somehow we found ourselves “worthy” of it.

I hear people say things like, “Oh…we just fell out of LOVE.  That’s why we aren’t together.  The magic that brought us together just kind of dried up…disappeared one day…blew out like it blew in.  Kind of hard to figure, isn’t it? We just kind of FELL OUT OF LOVE.”

“Fell out” like the whole thing was just stubbing your toe or something.

“Oooops, I’m in LOVE”.

Finally.

I think that when we “fall out of love”,  we just run out of endurance…lose our faith. It’s not something magical…we just stopped loving.

Who knows?  Not me, for one…but I don’t think it’s a matter of losing our worthiness suddenly.

The whole concept of worthiness just sets us up to wonder just why we can’t find lasting love…and one of the reasons must be that WE WERE NEVER WORTH LOVING.

Not yet worthy, in any case.

We convince ourselves that we “have some work to do”…and when we get it right, we will finally be loved.

I just don’t think I have the confidence in “us” that we ever get it right.

I do believe in “love at first sight”…or maybe just “overwhelming attraction” at first sight.

I think it happens.  I know it does.

But the long-term love is a choice.  It’s a conscious thing.

More than worthiness, it’s a willingness to love that goes the distance.

If it had been a matter of worthiness, I’d still be alone.

I’d never be ready to accept love if I was convinced that I had to be worthy of it first.

And if someone could love someone as flawed and unworthy as I was…well, there must be something wrong with them.

Surely, someone who was worthy themselves could see my unworthiness a mile away and steer clear of me.

I am never going to be worthy of love because of my efforts.

I don’t have it in me to deserve it.

But I have love in my life.

I guess that’s where grace comes in.

Love is a choice.

Choose.

“we need to share”

Posted on by November 11, 2013

sharing

I’m up before anyone else in the house most mornings.

Sometimes, Jenny can’t sleep and she’ll get up in the night…drink a glass of water, watch some television, then try and get back to sleep….but I’m usually up when it’s still quiet in the morning.

It has to be pretty early in the morning for it to be quiet.

The past couple of mornings, Nate (our 4-year-old) has gotten up a couple of hours after I have.

I hear him open the door of his room and pad towards me in the darkness.

I can tell it’s him by the weight of the footsteps.

At this point, he doesn’t weigh a whole lot.  It kind of sounds like a two-legged dog when he’s walking towards me in the early morning.

What he does carries a lot of weight in our house…but he steps lightly.

When he gets to me, he’s asked, “WHERE’S MOM!?” the last couple of mornings.

Now that I know how irritating the aftermath of my giving him information about her location is, I probably won’t tell him anymore.

I’ll stop writing and go into the living room to watch cartoons or something with him.

But I have to admit, it’s been kind of nice to be able to say, “She’s in our bedroom…but be really quiet….she’s still sleeping.

Come to find out, he wasn’t just going in and quietly laying down by her to go back to sleep for a while.

Come to find out, it wasn’t like that at all.

I wondered about that.

It turns out that he doesn’t like my memory foam pillow with the strange shape.

He likes Jenny’s more traditional pillow.

When he went in to her, one of the first things he did after laying down was to grab the edge of her pillow and pull most of it out from under her head so that he’d have the bulk of it to lay his own head on.

“WE NEED TO SHARE” he’d tell her.

Really, though, how was I to know that “passing the parental buck” would have such devastating consequences for Jenny?

All I was doing was answering a child’s question.

I was only answering a child in need’s question.

Now I know to catch him before he can get in there…maybe buy Jenny another half hour of sleep before she has to get up.

Jenny taught me that was the right thing to do.

I think that I already knew that it was the right thing to do…it just wasn’t what I did.

That whole “need to share” thing is pretty smart.

I could have a pretty good time out in the world if I could remember to use that line more often.

If I could remember that it’s an instructional phrase and not a request, I could have a heck of a lot more fun.

If I saw something that might make my life nicer…something that someone else owns…I could just sidle up to them, drop the “we need to share” bomb, and go enjoy the spoils of my straight forwardness.

Nate’s some kind of genius.

Forget all these self-help books.

I’m going with what my 4-year-old teaches me from here on out.

DYNA-MO

Posted on by November 10, 2013

CoolHandLuke23

When I was in High School, we lived in Marietta, GA.

I worked for a builder named Otis.

I always called him Mr. Ragsdale…but his first name was Otis.

He was a good man.  I enjoyed working for him.

Marietta is only a couple of miles above Atlanta…and it gets really hot there in the summer.

It gets hot and really humid.  It’s like being in a jungle sometimes.

We don’t have any air conditioning here in NC.  In the summer, we just leave the windows open and the breeze cools things down some.

It doesn’t work like that in Marietta.  It is really hot.

I remember one summer I got to work with my friend Ben.

Otis had us digging a ditch that day.

I’m not really sure why we were digging a ditch in the summer heat.  I don’t remember digging to try to find anything….it doesn’t make sense that it would be for drainage from what I remember about where the ditch was.

I don’t know why Otis would have us digging all day like that.

It was hot.

Crazy hot.

Ben was a running buddy and we were in band together.

We were both used to working hard…but it was too hot.

When Otis finally got back to check on us later in the day, I think we’d just about finished digging our ditch.

From what I remember, it seems like it was waist deep and about 20 feet long.

That’s a lot of digging…a lot of hot digging.

I think that we must have been dragging a little bit at that point, because when Otis got out of his air-conditioned truck, he walked over to us and grabbed one of the mattocks, jumped down into the hole, and took a couple of swings at the dirt.

“LOOK AT ME!!!  I’M A DYNA-MO!!!  THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!”

When he was finished, I think he gave us a little more instruction and got back in his cool (temperature wise) truck and drove away.

I don’t know if he was kidding about the “dyna-mo” part.  If he was, he was a hilarious man. He was probably one of the most subtly hilarious men that’s ever lived.  It might have been really funny.

But I don’t think that he was kidding.

Ben and I stood in that long hole in the ground that we’d created and looked at each other.

Hot, sweaty, and dirty…not even sure why we’d dug this ditch in the first place…probably slightly brain-damaged after baking in the Georgia sun all day.

We looked at each other and wondered what had just happened?

That old man was a dyna-mo and we were the ones digging the ditch.

It seemed like a poor use of resources.

It was a confusing character building moment for Ben and I.

Now, anytime I can jump into a situation where someone has been working at something that looks like it’s completely exhausted them and they’re at the end of their endurance…and I’m coming in fresh to maybe provide some help towards the end of the job…I think of Otis and his “LOOK AT ME!  I’M A DYNA-MO!!!” comment.

He was a hilarious old man.

I think he meant it to be funny.

It had to have been a joke.

real deals

Posted on by November 9, 2013

When I was 15, I was asked to be the youth representative on our church council.

I was as idealistic as any 15-year-old could be…pumped up on impending maturity and the need for my spirituality to be intense and kind of self-righteous.

Now that I think about it, it really was kind of self-righteously intense.

I was intense and self-righteous like only a 15-year-old could be.

I think I thought that I had come pretty close to figuring it all out.

I suppose that I expected the adults on the church council to be a more mature version of myself.

I expected them to be the most spirituality intense beings I had ever come into contact with.

It was one of the more eye opening experiences I’d had up to that point to realize that the church was as much a business as it was a vessel for spiritual renewal.

I didn’t even consider that the church would have to be a business, too.  I was still living at home.  My parents were paying my bills, buying my clothes…feeding me.

Why should I consider what anything cost?

Now, I’m a little older and I experience straddling the line between spirituality and physical need everyday.  It’s not a shock…it’s just something that people who are realistic about things recognize as being a necessity.

We’re right here…better get the “distractions” taken care of…take care of the needs we can when we see them.

pope2The news machine ran this picture the other day.

This new Pope, this man…this “elected official”…this chosen one…goodness gracious, he makes me cry.

He’s the real deal.

I’ve gotten the impression with some of our leaders that we couldn’t trust their public image.

They present themselves to the world as something wonderful and heroic, but in private could be something else completely.

I guess that’s kind of cynical.

Maybe it’s just a mature worldview…head everything off at the pass with skepticism before I’m disappointed again.

With this new Pope, there’s something other than just being a figurehead for the Catholic church going on.

He’s an emissary for more than just the earthly institution known as the Catholic Church.

You don’t have to dig deep to see that he loves God…and loves God’s children.

I get the feeling that if this Pope went “rogue” and headed out into the countryside in his new “old Renault” that he’d be doing this same kind of thing, whether the cameras were rolling or there were any crowds gathered to watch his kindness.

It is so amazing to see this kind of expression of Faith.

billy_graham_01Billy Graham gave his “final sermon” this past Thursday.

He’s 95 years old now and the media is presenting this as what they are expecting may be his last televised message.

You can watch his message here.

He’s another “real deal”.

95 years of consistency…that’s a legacy.

He’s been a great “Man of God” for a lot of years.

When people can “take care of business” and still present God in an accessible way…share something with the world that represents God like these men do…that is so inspiring and worthy of respect.

These two men of God are “real deals”…cameras or no cameras, they represent.

God bless them.

God bless us all.

 

the rooster veered

Posted on by November 8, 2013

Flying_Rooster

I throw the porch rooster off his perch when he starts crowing in the morning.

It’s not really his fault that he crows early…our neighbor has a big security light that looks like the sun turned down a few notches.  It’s confusing for a rooster to sleep in the artificial daylight.

He wakes up early, I wake up earlier, and when I hear him start to crow, I throw him off the porch before he can wake everyone else up.

It’s one of the many aspects of my comforting routine that have become both…comforting and routine.

This morning, when I picked him up to aim him toward the grass below and set him free to do his awkward rooster flight to freedom, the rooster veered.

He almost flew into the minivan.

What the heck?!  I set him up to have the same kind of experience he has every morning…a flapping, squawking combination of falling and flying down to the ground below.  It should have been the same as every morning we spend together.

But he veered and for a moment things got more exciting for the rooster than either of us expected.

“What were you thinking?! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!!!!”

If I were the rooster’s father, I might say something like that to him when I made him hand me the car keys.

Roosters do what they do.  This particular rooster is like a dog…follows us around and gets in the way. I can’t really teach him how to behave.  I am not a “rooster whisperer”.  I am not Dr. Doolittle.

He’s beautiful in the way a rooster can be beautiful, though…kind of prehistoric, really, if you get a chance to ponder just what’s going on with those rooster legs and those lizard like eyes.

Take a good look next time you get a chance to spend time with a rooster.  They’re kind of weird-looking.

It’s strange to get used to such a big bird hanging around.

I don’t really know what made him veer this morning.  Maybe it was some new atmospheric anomaly, something in the wind…barometric pressures that only he could feel.

Maybe he just hadn’t really had a chance to wake up yet?  Maybe he was having a weird rooster dream that confused him…got him off course.

Who knows what a rooster is up to.

But who can blame him for veering a little when the routine can be so jarring and strange.

It’s an odd way to wake up in the morning.  To have something quite a bit bigger than you pick you up and throw you off something…whether you could fly or not…would be an odd way to start the day.

They’re getting ready…and when I say “they’re”, I mean the USPS…to do what they call a “duo” to our office.

A “duo” is when they combine offices in order to save money.

They move the drivers from one office to another office…and then “let” the drivers deliver out of that new office.

We still deliver to the same boxes, but we start at an office that’s far away from our route.

The new office is in another town…down a twisty mountain road.  It’s a fairly long drive to get there.

This saves the post office money.

Somehow.

I guess that the big move is going to happen sometime next week.  Some folks are coming to talk with us this morning about what’s going down in a couple of days.

I don’t know what was going on with that rooster this morning, but I feel like veering, too, after all the changes in the air.

There’s a great bakery across the road from our “new” Post Office, though.

Maybe veering off course isn’t always a bad thing.

eating a cake

Posted on by November 7, 2013

soho-house-pancakes-laist-400x300

I lived in Auburn, AL for a time after I graduated from college.

It was sort of a postponement of adulthood or something, one last gasp in an extended wheezing avoidance of really growing up.

I had a real talent for postponement.

It was a fun time.

You know, I don’t really remember any of the jobs I’ve had with any great clarity.  They aren’t memories I feed…I don’t look back fondly at many of those moments.

But I remember living in Auburn with my friends.

We shared a big house on Thach Ave.  Rent was cheap and the heat was included in the price.

I used to make these mammoth piles of pancakes…put apples and raisins in them…I think I used some bananas sometimes.

Pancakes were cheap…good.  It was fun making pancakes for people.

I remember once sitting down to a pile of fresh cakes and my friend Grinnell came upstairs and looked at my plate.

He looked at the pile of flapjacks for a moment, and then said, “You’re eating a cake.”

And he was right…the pile was about 10″ across and 6″ high.  It must have been about 6 or 7 big pancakes stacked up and covered with syrup and butter.

I’m making myself hungry writing this.

A big pile of buttery pancakes, steaming in the coolness of an old Alabama house kitchen in the Fall.

I looked at that pile and realized that eating a whole cake at a sitting wasn’t something that was really socially acceptable…but somehow eating this pile of pancakes was an activity I could get away with.

It did put things in a new perspective for me…”eating a cake…”.  I felt like more of a pig when I looked at my pancakes in light of that revelation.

I still ate all of them, of course.

I think that I might have made Grinnell a “cake” of his own to eat.

Connotations are funny.

(I couldn’t remember that word until I’d slammed down the plunger on the french press and had a quick cup of coffee…funny how that works, too…I doubt that coffee really has that quick an effect…)

Connotations….

Until I saw the “cake” blatantly hidden in that pig pile of pancakes, it was just another thing that I ate for breakfast.  It was a big pile of breakfast food.

And then the “scales fell away from my eyes” and the big picture was revealed.

The fact that it didn’t say something like “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SONNY!” on it couldn’t hide that I was really eating a cake.

I was eating a whole cake, alone in my kitchen until Grinnell came up the stairs.

I was like one of those binge eaters you see on TV…chowing down on a half-price sheet cake in the closet so that no one sees them.

Except that it was a pile of pancakes that I was eating, so it was socially acceptable. It was OK to be a breakfast glutton.

I didn’t frost my pancakes. They didn’t really make a cake, even though for all practical purposes they were a full-size cake.

I think about perspective quite often.  I think about perspective from as many angles as I can imagine.

Now I can add “connotations” to my pondering.

It was a breakfast time paradigm shift, an awakening, a new reality.  It opened my eyes and made me see the truth.

It still didn’t stop me from eating the cake.

Could you please pass the syrup?