On Coffee Mugs

I broke one of my favorite coffee mugs today, the one I got when we went to the Cincinnati Aquarium. It was perfectly weighted, a little bigger than average, had a easy-on-the-hand handle, and had cute little penguin drawings all over it. It had one small chip on the rim that I had super glued back into place, but it wasn't in a place where my lips would touch so it didn't effect the comfort level.

I have lots of average mugs I can use and I don't tend to keep any that are truly awful, such as the one that are really light, or too small or too big. Anything that makes you dribble when you drink or that has a really wide rim is out, too. If the color or design is a turn-off then the cup is out, but a design I love can push a borderline mug into more frequent use.

I despise drinking out of Styrofoam cups, and paper cups aren't much better. I usually grab a mug off of our open cabinet on my way to work, and I have three or four that I keep primarily for work. I keep my true favorites for the weekends when I can enjoy leisurely drinking coffee at home with David.

When I picked up my penguin mug today the thought crossed my mind, "What if I break it?" I told myself that it was just a mug and it would be fine. I didn't think anything else about it until I was rushing out the door of my office this afternoon and somehow managed to whack the mug on the edge of my desk. It flew into pieces, spraying coffee all over my desk and credenza, but the bottom of the cup landed upright on the floor with coffee still in it. High performance until the end.

I had one other coffee mug end its life in a semi-spectacular way. It was my "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History" cup, and one day as I was leaving the house I tried to balance it on our back porch rail while I locked the back door. It tumbled off the rail and broke on the ground below. But the really bright part of that was soon after David build a little shelf onto the railing for me to set my cup down on. He even carved our initials in it. (Yes, he IS amazing.)

Goodbye, Cincinnati Penguin mug! You will be missed.

Unfinished projects

I think my list of unfinished projects has started to get overwhelming. I think I need to write them all down, purge what I can and get cracking on the rest...

We all MUST be heroes

There is one thing that I keep hearing during this crisis that I find frustrating. It is the same cry that rises up after every disaster in the world- "Where is the government? Where is the official help?"

The fact is that during the midst of a disaster there is no way for a governement or relief organization to know exactly what is happening or going to happen. There aren't enough resources or eyes to predict or even assess the event as it happens. Normally it is something that has never happened before so the best they can do is make educated guesses.

In the immediate aftermath there is much confusion and misinformation as the urgent needs are addressed and rescue efforts are organized. There is no communication in the hardest hit areas so sometimes it is not known where they are.

During the recovery period all that the governement and relief agencies can do is provide a framework to help and try to get a grasp of where the needs are. Any one of us who has organized a yard sale, fish fry, fund raiser or family reunion knows that even with weeks or months to organize it is still a huge job with huge obstacles. Now make it a matter of life and death that affects thousands or millions of people and try to make it happen instantly, with little or no warning.

There are still pockets of devestation that have not yet been found. Those residents have no water, no power, no home and no way to know where to go for shelter or apply for aid. It is up to those of us largely unaffected to connect with aid agencies to volunteer, but more importantly, don't wait to be deputized by an "official" agency. Go, do, serve. Be the bridge between the people in need and the agencies that can help them. Be the hands that take water and feet that wade through the filth to clean out a stranger's house.

As we go through this time of recovery it is up to each one of us to do most of the heavy lifting. We must take care of our own homes and the homes and businesses of those around us. We all must be heroes.

What a weekend!

We have managed to collect more than fifteen inches of rain in our gauge since yesterday. The rain collected about 1 1/2 inches high in our basement, and trickled down our chimney into the laundry room. The boys bailed the basement and I supported their efforts with lots of good cooking. We have been okay since the rain slowed down, but things are really rough in Nashville and all of Middle Tennessee tonight. Hundreds of homes underwater and the worst is yet to come as the rivers start to crest. Here are some pictures the boys took of the soccer fields near our house. Fortunately we are way up on a ridge and it is down in a bottom, but close none the less.

There are two sets of pictures taken several hours apart. You can click on the photos for a larger image.

Also, we are quite close to the Opryland Hotel and it has been evacuated and the water is in the parking lot of the hotel and Opry Mills Mall. It is all very surreal.

These steps at Lock Two Park go down to the Cumberland river about ten feet further down.
May 2, 2010 at about 11:00 am.


Heartland soccer fields
May 2, 2010 at about 10:30 am


Heartland soccer fields
May 2, 2010 at about 10:30 am


Heartland soccer fields
May 2, 2010 at about 10:30 am


Heartland soccer fields
May 2, 2010 at 5:30 pm



May 2, 2010 at 6:00 pm



May 2, 2010 at 6:20
The disappearing fire hydrant. Now you see it...


May 2, 2010 at 6:45
Now you don't.

Fire hydrant mostly gone, and the blue storage containers from the earlier pictures are just visible in the right corner.

Inspiration at Work

I had a horrendous morning and was looking for some inspiration. I asked someone for an encouraging word, but she didn't have any. Then I asked her why we keep showing up every day to do what we do. I thought I wanted to hear something about how "children are our future" or "it takes a village." Maybe a dash of "being where God sent us" and even a bit of "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." What I got was "to pay the bills." And you, today I think that was just what I needed to hear.

Easter Pictures

First Mowing of the Year

Nick's Room

Nicholas is getting a belated birthday gift with a freshly painted room. One wall is black, the opposite wall is neon green, then one of the other walls will be black with small green stripes and the last wall will be green and black checkerboarded. David and the boys have been working hard the last two days to get the base coats down, then we will start figuring out how to do the stripes...

Saint Patrick's Breastplate

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

Latest Nicholas News

Nick has conqured the EEG and MRI and now we just have to wait for all the results. Our Dr. moved our next appointment to April 29th so we will be waiting for a while.

Nick has not had any seizures since that first one and life has just about returned to as normal as it gets around here.

Please pray for good results, wisdom on the course of action, and our finances. David's work schedule was quite a bit lighter last year and has been very sparse so far this year. The combination of less income, more medical expenses and tax season has really put a squeeze on our finances.

I'll post an update on Nick when we have anything else to share.

Nicholas' Stinky Day

Last Wednesday, February 17th, David got a call from Nicholas' school that he had thrown up and needed to be picked up. A few minutes later they called back to say Nicholas seemed to be zoned out and was possibly having a seizure so they had called the paramedics. The short version is that we spent the afternoon at Summit Hospital and the evening at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. The neurologist ruled out most of the big scary things and the standard protocol was to start Nick on an anti-seizure medication and then follow up as an outpatient.

Nicholas took a day or two to recuperate from the ordeal and has been going full steam since then with no more seziures. We had our first appointment with the neurologist this afternoon and Nick has an EEG scheduled next Tuesday and a MRI on 3/11 (or maybe the other way around.) The plan is to continute on the meds for now then figure out a long term course of action after the tests are completed.

There are a few possibilties as to what the test results may show.
1. Absolutely nothing to indicate why Nick had a seziure. This would be frustraing but obviously our favorite option.
2. Scar tissue or some type of genetic or developmental areas that would most likely explain the seziure.
3. Least likely, but still a possibility, a tumor.

Regardless of the findings the suggested course will include finding the most effective dose of meds and continuing on them for two years. If he remains seziure free for 2 years then they would try to wean him off and see if he remains seziure free. If not the meds would be restarted. If it were #3 there would likely be neurosurgery involved, as well.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as the Lord leads, and here are a few specific requests as well:
*Peace for all of us because it is easy to be fearful sometimes
*No more seziures, ever
*Financial provision
*Wisdom for everyone on Nick's medical team.
*Wisdom as we make medical decisions
*For Nick to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how much God loves him

Thanks to all of you who have supported us with your actions, words, time, finances, and prayers. It has been a blessing to remember that we are not walking through this alone. Much love to you all!

My Father's Stories

I have been working for several years to collect my father's stories. I have hours of tapes that I have transcribed and have started editing them for readability. I thought you might enjoy reading some of them here...

The first time I saw my official birth certificate it was a bit of a surprise to discover my name listed as Gerd Fredrich Franz Schmitz. My first name as far as I knew had always been Gert. Fortunately that was in an era when a misspelled name on a birth certificate could be overlooked. And it was only one letter.

I think the earliest memories I have are kind of sketchy, more like flashes. I can see myself in a little wicker basket on wheels. It has 4 legs on it and a kind of white finish, with rings around the rim. That was my basket to sleep in. We lived upstairs in an apartment of the house where we later lived downstairs. I was in the bassinette about a foot from the stairs and I remember that I looked down the stairs. Then my mother came and grabbed me because I was jerking my body in the basket and jerked it toward the stairs. If she didn’t pull me out I would have gone down the stairs in that basket. I probably would have gotten killed.

I remember once when I was about three years old, I walked off from our home, toward Trills, which was the next town. I just took off and a friend of ours recognized me when he passed me on the street. He took me by the hand and brought me back to my mother. She was already looking for me.

Another early memory of while we lived still upstairs and we had walls that were kind of slanting down because of the roof line. There was a window about two feet off the floor, but it dropped lower behind the floors I could actually sit on the edge of the floor with my feet down a little more on the window sill. During the German Carnival people would run around in the streets while wearing masks. I was sitting in the window watching them and some older boys saw me sitting up there and said, “We’re going to get you! We’re going to come and get you!” And I was afraid and said, “Mommy! Don’t let them come up here and get me!” I was scared to death they were going to come up and grab me, but they never did. That is engraved on my mind.

Then the next thing I remember is almost drowning in our septic tank. We had an outside septic tank but it was like quicksand. There was straw on top that they took from the chicken and rabbit bedding. There was also the liquid stuff and the bad stuff in there from people. One day mother had me all dressed up in a blue knitted outfit with a matching hat with a ball on top, like skiers wear. I picked that day to try and walk on top of the straw and I went through the straw and into the sewage so all you could see was my hat floating on top. We had a German shepherd by the name of Rolf and he barked and barked and barked. My mother came out to see what was wrong, because she knew I was outside. Rolf looked to that big concrete pit and kept barking. He went wild! Then my mother saw just my hat there sticking out of the straw, and she pulled me out. I remember my mother pulling me out and the dog barking. I must have swallowed some stuff while I was under there because told me much later on that I stank for days when I burped.

There was another blue outfit I remember. A blue Kossack outfit with black trim. She had me all dressed up, washed and combed with knee socks on and nice brown shoes polished and everything. We were supposed to go visit somebody, and she got me ready before her so I went outside. Mr. Rüffert, the one that owned the place (he was also a relative- his wife and my dad’s mother were first cousins) had a long bean stalk, about twelve feet long, that had a big cloth ball on the end, like a Q-tip. He used that to clean out the chimneys and he had laid it alongside the chicken coop. I saw it laying there and had to get my hand on that ball! I went in all that soot, and played with that. I was one sooty mess! I had a knack of getting into things like that, especially when I was all cleaned up. My mother saw me and had a fit. She had to change my clothes and wash my hair and get me all cleaned up again. I don’t know why I played with it. Because it was there I guess. I don’t know where we were supposed to go, but it must have been important because we all got dressed up.

Those are the earliest things I can recall. I also have very clear memories of the years before I went to school, when I was 4 and 5. My favorite playmate was also my uncle. He was the son of my mother’s father and his second wife, Maria. Maria was close to my mother’s age and Helmut was close to my age. At that time Maria worked at Stallenhouse. That was a big farm, really a huge farm, almost like a castle. They had the houses in a square with big doors where you could come in and be protected inside the square. That’s the way they built them way back in the 1700’s and1800’s. Stallenhaus had lots of land and cows and pigs and chickens. Thousands of chickens! My grandmother was in charge of the kitchen there and they had to cook a lot. They had eight or ten farm hands that came in for breakfast and lunch and dinner.

When Helmut got out of school, there was nobody at his house because his and mother were both working. I wasn’t in school yet, so he took me with him to the farm in the afternoons. I had nothing else to do and Helmut and I were together a lot, so he and I walked up the street about half a mile to the farm where she worked and we stayed there on the farm just fooling around until she got off. We had pretty much the run of the farm and we constantly got into trouble.

We loved to play in the barns where they had the straw. We would build passages in the straw and crawl around inside. We must have breathed in dust by the pounds! It was so dark in there. We played in there all the time and we called it buden bauen --- that’s an old run down place where people live.

Stallenhaus had all those chickens and a huge chicken coop where all the chickens laid most of their eggs. But the chickens were also allowed to run loose so they went all over the farm. We didn’t call it “free-range” back then but they definitely were. The chickens loved to go into the barn, and would get way up in the rafters. There were little boxes formed where the four by eights went horizontally and the rafters came down at an angle. It was a perfect nesting place for the chickens so some of them would lay eggs up there. Nobody could go get those eggs but us kids. The grownups wouldn’t climb up there. They didn’t even know about it until we found the. We would climb from rafter to rafter and to get all the eggs out and would throw them all down in the straw. They usually didn’t break when they hit the straw. We had 10, 15 eggs sometimes and had to make sure we didn’t throw them on top of each other. We’d have to make sure we spread them out. Then we climbed down and got a basket and took them to my grandmother. She paid us a penny for each egg we found, which was pretty good! Helmut and I each had a book. One was Helmut’s Egg’s and one was Gert’s Eggs. That’s how we kept up with our earnings.

How do you define church?

I was pondering this morning what exactly defines a church. I have been feeling a bit disconnected at our home church, although we have attended several years. I have been encouraging myself to get more involved and attend more activities but sometimes all that "more" just make me feel stretched so thin. I was trying to define what it is I feel like I am missing and really it boils down to relationships and shared lives with people who hold the same core values and beliefs that I do. Which led me to the question of how to define church. I spend 40+ hours a week with a small congregation of people who share one another's burdens, pray for one another, cry on each other's shoulders, encourage my faith, minister to the poor, pray for deliverance, and prophesy. We've even been known to break bread together and share what we have to meet one another's needs. We do all this as we fulfill with excellence our roles as teachers, administrators, and servers of all kinds. Now granted, we rarely pray together or study the word together and those are both things I require to keep my soul from shriveling up. So while I don't intend on giving up church membership because of a great workplace, maybe many of us should remember to appreciate and recognize the community of faith we are privleged to be a part of each and every day. What a blessed woman I am!

Lower standards

I know in a world where we are constantly trying to do things better you might be shocked to know that I've discovered the secret to happiness is sometimes lower standards. Realizing that it is okay to not vacuum the living room because we allowed Nicholas to create a Ninja room by stringing out an entire skein of macrame cord is not the end of the world. I can live with a messy house (but not a dirty house.) It is simply not possible to do everything on my to-do list every day, so instead of feeling chronically guilty I just quit making such a long list.

It was also a revelation to figure out that perfectionism had the ability to paralyze instead of spurn forward. Example thought pattern: "I need to change that light bulb, but while I have the step stool out I should clean the fixture and if I'm going to clean the fixture I should go ahead and dust up there, too. If I get the duster out I might as well dust the rest of the room, but if I dust then I will need to vacuum because dust will be all over the carpet. If I am going to vacuum I need to move all the furniture around and I better sprinkle some deodorizer on the dogs sleeping spot so it will not smell so much like dog"... You get the point.

I'm telling you, for some of us less is definitely more!

Katie's Hair

I know it has been a while since there have been any Katie hair updates. That is because since around June of last year it has been a natural color. Shocking, I know! Actually, to get it from purple to brown was a much greater trial than anything else we had ever tried. It involved bleach, hair color, several trips to Kroger and finally an emergency call to our stylist who has been doing Katie's hair her entire life. She was kind enough to meet us at her shop that evening and worked a miracle that got Katie's hair from a funky gray to a natural looking brown. We haven't touched it since then with anything stronger than shampoo. I say all this set the stage for this evening. Katie is in the bathroom right now washing off some Mahogany Brown hair color and I am waiting for the grand unveiling. I'll keep you posted...