Hanging @ the Space Bar is the news column of Lyndie Blevins. The Sage Space Bar is the diner on the square in Sage. Between the domino game in the back and coffee bar up front, you can hear opinions about most major topics being discussed. It is a great place to stretch your imagination, especially since they've added WiFi! This is the...
Hanging @ the Space Bar is the news column of Lyndie Blevins. The Sage Space Bar is the diner on the square in Sage. Between the domino game in the back and coffee bar up front, you can hear opinions about most major topics being discussed. It is a great place to stretch your imagination, especially since they've added WiFi! This is the backdrop for Lyndie Blevins' column in the Record.
It has been a slow week. My head healed nicely, but I had to tell the story again and again. Tuesday, I had my cable switched from the local cable company to AT&T.
I got a tetanus shot Sunday. It was something I have been meaning to do for a while, an action item on my life plan. It just wasn’t scheduled for Sunday.
Last week, I read that overgrown shrubs and hedges need to be cut to the ground and dug up. It is best to start with young, new plants. This was sad news to me. I had trimmed the row of hedges at the street to waist high, but I stopped there. It was safe; I thought it would give me more options.
It is not just that the work is hard, it is also frustrating. First there is the problem of getting the tools from the garage the 200 feet out to the street. Driving the tools and using the Astek as a work station is not an option. The parking at the street is the same place the cut brush is left for pickup. I have a great garden cart that I load up with chain saws, hedge cutters, water, gloves, insect repellant, sun block, camera and chair. By the time I get the cart down and up the driveway, I am usually out of breath.(This gets better everyday.) The driveway is steep in both directions and when it is wet (like it has been all spring) it slippery.
One day in the midst of considering how to make my home, property and myself more inviting, how to be a good steward of my land, how to increase my physical activity, the planets must have aligned and I received a letter from the city. Letters from the city are never good news. Often they remind me of something I know that needs to be done, but I haven’t gotten around to. This letter was different. The city had bought a new fire truck that was 2 feet taller than the current ordnance allowed the trees to hang over the street. In other words, they can’t get the truck down most of the older streets. They asked us to trim our trees as soon as we could. Working on my property became my next project. I started out to just trim at the street, but once I started clearing, I couldn’t stop. Most everyday I try to spend some time working on the land. As I cleared the overgrowth, I also started learning about my life.
Then there was the diabetes diagnosis. My triglycerides have always been higher than normal. Since the chemo, nothing has seemed to phase the counts. With my April cholesterol check, the counts were high enough to trigger the diabetes switch. In reading about diabetes and talking with my doctors, I decided that the best thing I could do to prevent the increased blood sugar was to increase my physical activity. Working on clearing my land every day would be a great way to increase my physical activity.
In this same time period, a reoccurring theme has been appearing in my Bible studies, that of being a good steward of God’s creation.
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My land is composed of 2 acres of overgrown forest. It is one of several lots on my street that you can’t see the houses from the street. I was intrigued by the mystery of not knowing what was down the driveway. My house sets in the middle of the 2 acres. Each room has large windows that allow you to have a panoramic view of 2 sides of the forest. There is very little evidence of the surrounding suburb. You can almost believe that the birds and occasional small animals scurrying around were the only neighbors. And somewhere in the sounds and colors of nature bouncing through the trees, you overwhelmed with a sense of life. The sounds always take me back to the hot days of summer church camp in Cedar Hill. While it is memories of being hot and miserable, they are always outweighed by the tremendous sense of peace and tranquility that comes from being aware of being in the center of God’s creation. It is a sound that made me think the trees were so hot that their branches and leaves could only creek in pain. It is possible that it certain type of bird or the chirping of crickets, but whatever it is my property is full of it. And the afternoons on my land
Last week, Ishtar, one of my all time favorite movies, was brought to mind when one of my bosses made the statement ‘I am not going to be popular for a couple of weeks.’ When the choice of telling the truth or being popular is presented to me, the theme song from Ishtar, Dangerous Business, always starts to play in my head.
In December, 2002, my routine mammagram revealed a 'sinsiter' spot that was really a stage 2 tumor.
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