It didn't rain today.
I spent all morning writing from the comfort of my recliner because Pam was in town for the ladies Bible study she attends. It got down into the low 40's overnight so Fred would have been too cold to work.
This is a section I'll probably re-write several times because it's somewhat technical and the position I'm taking is perhaps a bit outside what's typical. I'm right, of course, but I want to make my point convincingly.
I wrote last week about how attached I am to those who were in any of my churches or were students while I taught at the college. One of them was told last weekend that their spouse wants a divorce, another has a son who is back in recovery, and another is finishing chemo and will begin five weeks of radiation soon. Hard stuff.
I'm sorry.
Did you read the article that appeared in several places a couple of days ago about the number of people who are upside down on their car loans? A record high rate of 32%. The average car loan is now 68 months, and 30% of all new cars are leases. The average car loan is just under $30k with new car prices at a record high of $34k. Buyers now want all the bells and whistles on a larger SUV.
How crazy are Americans?
In the same category, we heard a bit on the local public radio station that "Subsidized or free housing for the homeless in the Eugene area continues to grow, but it still falls behind the increasing number of people needing it."
I can't be the only one who sees a cause/effect relationship here, can I?
Eugene has basically hung out a sign in the homeless community that says: C'mon down! We'll take care of you!"
You don't have to live here long before you figure out the place has a significant number of people who are professionally homeless and dependent.
As long as I'm in the neighborhood....
On our way home from Thanksgiving dinner at the Thomas' we drove by the Walmart on W. 11th. We go by it on almost every trip to/from Eugene because that's one of only two ways to get into town. What made this noteworthy is that a) it was 6:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, and b) the parking lot was FULL, all the way out to the street. Pam said she's never seen it close to that full.
We talked about it as we drove home from church Sunday, past the same Walmart with a lot almost as full. I asked Pam if she missed Christmas shopping.
We stopped doing it years ago. Pam makes a gift(s) for each of the grandkids but we don't exchange gifts or give them to our kids. If they behave themselves (!) they don't *give us anything, either. We had a conversation about it, I think back when we all lived in Michigan. None of us could afford the hit on the budget, we had everything we needed, and sure didn't need to make any statement about our love for each other.
Pam, not surprisingly, said she misses shopping for others. She is the ultimate nurturer and would spend unlimited time and money giving gifts to those she loves if it were possible.
But we both agreed we appreciate the freedom - from the crowds, the kitsch, the pressure of getting the right thing for each person on the list, the lasting pressure on the budget, but especially the trap of the gift as a metric for love and/or esteem.
About 15 years ago when we lived in MI we decided to give one gift. We picked someone we would not normally give anything to (not family, co-worker, etc), but was someone who had been a blessing to us through the year. We got them something small, like a gift card or movie tickets, and enclosed it in a card that explained that our intent was only to say think you for being that blessing. Sometimes we signed the card and other years we did it anonymously.
We dropped that a few years ago, but I don't know why. It was a good thing for several reasons. It caused Pam and me to think through the people in our lives and how they'd affected us, and reminded us not to take them for granted. It was also fun to decide on who that person or couple would be. We'd write down our choice on a piece of paper and then reveal them to each other. I think we had the same name 90% of the time.
We should get back to that. And as I type that, not having said anything to Pam about it, I can almost guarantee we'll come up with the same name again this year.
Chester's widow. Not because she's blessed us as much as because she needs to feel good.
*We have rec'd a spiral bound calendar for the new year with family pics, and that's a legit favorite.
No comments:
Post a Comment