Henceforth and forevermore:

You may locate this blog at:

http://justlikeaslattery.wordpress.com/

If you've set bookmarks, I'm forever grateful, and I hope you will follow me there.

It still looks a little funny, but I'm working on it. 

Thanks a million, and I'll see you across the hall!

Good churchin'

Everybody needs some good churchin' from time to time, whether they need the God aspect of it or not. It's good to be able to sit still for an hour and face forward and be quiet and let somebody else be in charge of the talking.

I, personally, am in need of some good churchin', and more to the point, am in need of a good church.

I am a member of a church that's good, but it's no good for me.

I sure was good for it, though, because I'm full of energy for their outreach programs, and I want to serve the least of these our brethren, and I want to be surrounded by like-minded people.

I'm a lonesome animal in a church – that church, anyway – because I'm single and straight and middle-aged and female and I don't have any children.

I am The Only One Like Me in the whole church.

They don't have a Sunday school class for me, even.

It's not like I'm going to church looking for husband, and truth be told, I wouldn't want to meet one there, because I don't want to give the false impression that I'm going to go every Sunday.

I quit going to the church I'm a member of, and it was both an easy and a hard choice.

I haven't felt included since the old pastor and his family left.

I talked to the two co-pastors about how I don't feel that there's a place there for me and they...just agreed. 

I chose that particular church because for one thing, I have historic ties to it, in the form of my late Aunt Virginia, and for another, it has an excellent outreach program, and that means something to me.

But every Sunday, I sat there alone. I did not feel the sense of community I think you're supposed to feel in a church. I did not feel that those other people were my people, let alone my friends.

Every few days or so, there would be an email, a prayer request for this person or that person in some sort of need. It's a pretty well-known fact that I can fend for myself, but not once, not one, single, solitary time has anyone asked me, "How are you doing, Susan?"

So today, just like that, I cut my last tie when I unsubscribed myself from the church listserv.

My heart is heavy, but it was as simple as falling off the pew.

Who are the real heroes, anyway?

McDonald's offers free breakfasts to kids taking the FCATS (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) and the AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards test), among others.

The breakfast consists of an Egg McMuffin and small milk or orange or apple juice.

And people are bitching that they'd rather see them offer the yogurt parfait or the oatmeal (at 31 grams of sugar, which actually makes it dessert, rather than breakfast).

And you know, sure, it's easy to say kids needs a healthier breakfast than fast food. They do. We all do.

But here's the thing: too many kids leave home in the morning with no breakfast.

Many of those same kids will return home to no supper, too.

If McDonald's is willing to step up and say, "Listen. We'll make breakfast for these kids, and we'll deliver it to them," then I don't care who you are, if you're not willing to do better for them, then you've got no business griping.

Yes, it would be nice to furnish those kids who wouldn't ordinarily have breakfast with organic, locally-sourced produce and grass-fed beef, served by virgins. But since that's not happening, maybe we should just all be quiet until we learn to smile and say thank you to those who actually show up.

So who are they, the heroes? Those will tell you what needs to be done, or those who just do it?

Is the government going to shut down?

I need to know, because tax day is right around the corner, and I need to know further how this affects me, on account of I haven't done my taxes yet.

I need to just sit down and grind them out. I have an early-morning breakfast day with three of my favorite girls in the morning, and I should rush right home and take m'dawg to get her nails clipped and then just do it.

And on Monday morning, when I know what the damage is, I need to call the payroll company and have them start taking more out of my paycheck so the whole thing will stop being my annual nightmare.

I have a tax bill so big from the year-before-last that I'm going to have to take some money from a retirement fund to just pay it off. Normally I wouldn't do that, but the economy is such that the interest and penalties are more than I'm making on the fund and I'm going to be working decades longer to make it all up.

In non-governmental news, I have been reading my friend Amanda's blog (which I would link to, but I don't know if she's okay with that), and I always forget how much she is just one of my ten favorite people, for so many reasons both big and small. She looks so tiny and delicate, but I have never seen her not roll up her sleeves and just do what needs to be done. If you had to pick someone to go on a top-secret mission, she'd be the best person, because she'd just hike up her skirt and get it done.

I am truly, truly blessed to be surrounded by great friends like her.

Results

Just like what the discharge papers at the hospital said, I have internal derangement of my knee. The Very Nice and Extremely Cute orthopaedist (don't hassle me, that's how it's spelled on the sign) gave me the medical terminology for that: your knee is jacked up.

I have a little bit of osteoarthritis.

Apparently a little goes a long way.

He gave me a cortisone shot in my knee and a prescription for Mobic, which seems to be more or less like Aleve, except easier on the digestive system.

The cortisone shot didn't hurt going in, but it hurts now. My knee is stiff and it feels full, which it is. I'm guessing it will feel better in the morning, after a good night's sleep, when it's all gone to wherever it needs to go.

Good help is hard to find.

I'm at the orthopaedist for my knee follow-up.

They have kiosks to check yourself in.

Not a fan. What are those people at the counter doing?

So I checked myself in and sat down to read the Internet and they called me up to the front.

I thought they might want me to mop the floors or clean the toilets, but they just wanted to let me know I was all checked in.

Another day,

another bowl of spinach and edamame and red bell peppers and garbanzos and grape tomatoes.

Doesn't anybody have any good French feta around here?