"Remember we're all in this alone." ~ Lily Tomlin

Welcome once again to a brand new work week. It's good for us to have this time together and I always look forward to finding out what lands on the page reflecting this, that, and the other thing also. It's Monday, June 15, 2015, and we are only six days away from the official first day of summer. Tell the feels like of 104 we had the other day that he should have been waiting. Whew! We went from near flood conditions here to bone dry in one week. The wife and I agreed that while we already could use a good rain, it would be better for us to water than to see folks further distressed by all these rivers that have been out of their banks for weeks. I noticed the grass immediately next to the street has already turned yellow. That didn't take long. Guess what? The wife left me again. She is over in Louisiana with her twin sister (born 18 months ahead of her). They are on some kind of trip together. I have a few chores to keep up with while she is away. By now you are most likely aware of the one that really matters. It is the seeing after of her plants. Heaven and earth may pass away but I will do all I can to make sure those plants are alive, (and well), when she returns. I'm working on it. Believe me. I am. Thankfully, she will be home tomorrow. Sometimes when she reads my blogs she doesn't always grasp the ironic joking aspect of my comments. In fact, I've read those comments a couple of times and I may have trouble grasping it myself. You do know I am joking. I really am. I can prove it. (But, I may still need a character witness to back me up, so be ready when I call on you.)

Some of that home alone nonsense may have sounded a little like sour grapes but it really wasn't intended to come across that way. When folks tend to be somewhat critical, well, that's where many who profess to know the Bible say they were only speaking the truth in love. In my case, I'm just sitting here with a cup of Community visiting. You know. More or less just shooting the breeze. That idiom seems somewhat appropriate since it typically means to kill time by engaging in idle chit chat. Some date it along with similar ones back to the early 1900's with them having to do with talking into the wind. My grandfather used to say that he thought I talked because I liked to hear myself speak. And, to be honest, I can't remember ever being accused of being economical with the number of words I use. I most likely attended more than one productivity enhancement workshop that covered the need for communications to be brief and to the point. I am familiar with the concept but maybe the practice of it was not that high on my priority list. The late great comedian George Burns offered this advice, "The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible."

Having written that self incriminating paragraph about me being wordy caused me to go back and edit out some of the unnecessary words. I know. I still have a long way to go but you do have to start somewhere. Here's a long sentence about the beauty of long sentences. It was written by Pico Iyer, an essayist, in an article written for the Los Angeles Times. "Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered and lavish and abundant in tones and suggestions, that has so much room for near-contradiction and ambiguity and those places in memory or imagination that can’t be simplified, or put into easy words, that it allows the reader to keep many things in her head and heart at the same time, and to descend, as by a spiral staircase, deeper into herself and those things that won’t be squeezed into an either/or." I think I agree with him. And, I do see some of my writing to be like a spiral staircase, maybe it ends up going to nowhere but climbing it and observing stuff along the way is what I am all about. Or something like that. I may or may not know what I am talking about but one thing is clear. It is time to bring our little Monday morning visit to a close. I suggest we all take a deep breath and then do our best to enjoy the day that God has allowed us to experience. Amen.  ....More later.