The Afghan. Ugh, the Afghan

I sorted all the squares into bags, so that each bag contains the number of individual squares necessary to make up the bigger squares. My living room floor looks like some bizarre scene from Horders. And I’m short squares. I’m not sure if it’s because I counted wrong to begin with or if I misdistributed into the bags. But I’ll work each bag and, if I come across extras, I’ll put them into the last bag and hopefully come up square.

So to speak.

If this afghan turns out, it’s going to be in spite of me.

The Hundred-Preacher Family

You know my dad is totally freaked out by the number of ministers in his family tree, half-believing that he’s been cursed to return lifetime after lifetime to preach until he gets something right. And I found even more ministers on his dad’s grandma’s side this weekend.

At first, it struck me as strange. How could one pastor have so many pastors in his family tree?

But now that I’ve been thinking about it, I think it makes sense. A minister of the types we find in our family tree–Methodist, Episcopal, Mennonite–were educated. They could read and write. When they were getting ready to get married, they probably looked for wives that would understand the life they were embarking upon and who would make good ministers’ wives, some level of smarts was probably an added benefit. These were, probably, the daughters of ministers.

So, it’s probably not surprising to find generations of ministers until larger populations of women had some rudimentary education, right? It’s probably not as weird as it seems on the surface.

The women who would make the best ministers’ wives were already related to ministers.

Our Walk, Cut Short

The dog was just not feeling our walk this morning. We got up to Lloyd and then she just refused to go any further. And yet, I can tell she feels better when she moves around a little, so I really hesitate to decide not to take her. Maybe we’ll just continue to walk as far as she can and call it good.

I don’t know how you judge the end. I mean, I don’t think that we’re there yet, by any means. But I just want to hit that sweet spot of the moment her life isn’t that much fun for her and before she’s suffering. But it’s hard to tell.

I just feel like the most important thing I will do for that dog, the moment I can repay her for everything she’s done for me, is to ease her out of here when it is her time and not let her linger in pain.

But I’ve only ever had one other dog, Fritz, and that was when I was a kid. Mom took him to the vet in the end.

With Mrs. Wigglebottom, it will be on me and the Butcher to know. And I am so afraid we’re going to fuck it up.

I don’t want to be one of those people who has a dog that everyone else looks at and thinks “My god, how can she not see that the poor dog needs to be put down?” I don’t want to put my fear of heartbreak before my dog’s needs.

I really wish I felt more confident about this whole thing.

Tim-o-thy! Tim-o-thy!

Bradley George’s story about Timothy Demonbreun is airing this morning on WPLN. You can also listen to it here.

He got into Demonbreun’s cave and, I have to tell you, I’m kind of jealous. Not that I want to go into a cave that empties out onto a river. That’s kind of a nightmare for me. But man, I would have loved to have seen it in person anyway.

Anyway, I think it turned out really great.