Dear Kidlets;
I reached a watershed of sorts this morning; I weighed in at 289.4 lbs at the Rec Center. Your mother offered to feed me a pecan log to celebrate, but I settled for some Gatorade instead. I attribute this weight loss solely to your mother – she is my coach and my inspiration. My feet are now back to normal, human, size, as well. (I wish I could describe her many virtues without gushing too much . . . )
Your mother works as a tax preparer during the week from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. nowadays, as I think I’ve told you. Those hours she’s gone hang heavy on my hands. To liven things up we make dinner ahead of time to serve to people in the building at 6 p.m. Before that I usually read. Or try to read. I’ve reached that stage in life where the minute I sit down to read I begin to nod off. I no longer fight it. Perhaps just holding the book while napping will provide me with some information through osmosis. After dinner is served out I lie down to take a good rest, since as soon as your mother gets home she wants to ride hell-for-leather to the Rec Center for a workout before the place closes at 10.
Here’s the haiku I wrote for her early this morning:
buried in the dark --
her hair awash on pillow;
gold for the kissing.
I’m sure something more will occur to me to write about today. (It’s only ten in the morning and we just got back from swimming at the Rec Center, and stopping at the store for a head of lettuce and organic celery hearts.) Right now I feel the need to pick up a book so I can take a brief nap.
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Oh, and here’s another haiku I just wrote – at 11:15 a.m. (MST)
most things don't happen --
if they do happen, they're wind --
moving clouds away.
I sent this one to Andy Newman, a reporter at the NYT. He likes my stuff. He took the trouble to email me back about one of my haiku a week ago:
“Thank you for that ray of beauty and strangeness Tim.”
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I asked your mother to make me some scrambled eggs this morning. They were real good, but I forgot to thank her for them at the time. So at noon, as we were taking some chicken salad to the Hispanic Office in our building, I told her “Those were great eggs this morning. Thanks.”
To which your mother replied “I laid ‘em myself.” Then she went off into gales of laughter at her own joke. A true Norwegian. She’s still laughing and snorting over it right now. I’m worried she’ll reopen her hernia stitches!
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Well, we are still waiting to find out what needs to be done (if anything more) in order to regain our temple marriage sealing. We’ve talked to our bishop several times, and he did more head scratching than anything else. Even our stake president doesn’t quite seem to know how to handle our unique situation. So the bishop finally just said “Call the Temple to schedule a sealing and see what they have to say about it.”
What they said was that we have to wait to hear back from the President of the Church. Your mother already wrote him, explaining why she divorced me, married Rick in the temple, and then divorced him, and then married me civilly again. Who knows how long it will take President Nelson to get to our plight? We pray that he will make a determination soon, because life is uncertain and either your mother or I may shuffle off this mortal coil before any decision is made. So please remember us in your prayers in this matter.
Despite our best efforts, the apartment is getting cluttered up – to the point where it now looks like a permanently installed indoor yard sale. Your mother has made a valiant effort to keep everything organized and put away, but there’s just too much bric-a-brac to deal with. We have 2 wheat grinders. Two vacuums. Steve has left a bunch of his stuff with us. We have six computers. The linen closet is bursting at the seams with towels and gauze bandages and essential oils and ointments. The laundry in the baskets multiplies daily like rabbits until it flows onto the floor. I can’t open a kitchen cabinet without being inundated with plastic containers. As soon as my ship comes in I’m buying us a 3-bedroom condo in St. George, with an indoor pool, hot tub, sauna, and warehouse. This is not meant as a criticism of your mother. No, it’s just that the two of us like to live large and wide – but we’re restricted to a sardine can. When my ship comes in, when my ship comes in . . .
My, but we are pokey today. It’s already past 2 p.m. and your mother has to get ready for work at H & R Block in another hour – but we still have 2 more articles to rewrite. We just couldn’t get things together this morning. Too many misfires and false starts. I’m guilty of wasting much of our time with articles that we have already rewritten – they all look alike to me. Luckily Amy has a better memory and can tell when we’ve already done an article I’ve picked out to rewrite.
Amy is cooking pork short ribs wrapped in bacon, and I hope she gets to eat one before she leaves. I’ll probably leave mine until this evening – I just had a third of a microwave burrito that chewed like cardboard and tasted like an overwintering leather glove. Bleah.
I guess I better send this off. Roses are red/violets have bugs/If you were here now/I’d share lots of hugs!
Love,
Heinie Manush.
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