November

November was a big month. Lee finally had his back surgery leaving Ellen as the only one in their home that is allowed to pick up Olivia. Lee waddled around only a short while before he was back up and moving with a John Wayne inspired saunter. He and Ellen are very excited to have him back in working order. Ellen continues monitoring Liv's daily explorations while maintaining an inner zen that we have never seen before. Who is this calm, thoughtful person? I like her. The other day, Ellen made sure that I had snacks for a short drive.

"Huh?" I grunted.
"Are you hungry? Here, take these in case you get hungry." she replied. I stared at her quietly.
"I think you just Mommed me." I told her.

Dad's achy toe nerves continue to fire on all cylinders keeping him awake at night and oddly averse to wearing socks. He has switched to a new medicine and he says things are getting better. Watching Baba Ganoush realize that he is in his 60's has been a little disheartening. Brazen, optimistic Pops is never down. Defeated? What's that? He knows no such concept. We've decided this was God's way of slowing Dad down gently. He'd have never slowed down on his own and doing it all at once would have deflated his spirit. Maybe, just maybe Dad will now have empathy towards other people with aches and limitations.
Or he'll continue to see them as excuses. 

At the beginning of this month I was scolded by a Catholic priest. There's this church out near Kiawah that really hates wedding decor. They allow folks to get married there but they get their pious panties in a bunch when the brides want a few flowers up by the altar. If and when you bring in a floral arrangement, you are required to donate it to the church afterwards. So, they don't want your flowers, but you have to give them your flowers. I've done one wedding at this church before and they would not allow me to put the flowers on the altar like we agreed to. They made me put the cascading arrangement that the bride paid a few hundred dollars for on the ground where it could neither cascade nor be seen by the audience. I never heard from that bride again. 

So I was helping out a florist friend with an elaborate wedding setup out at Seabrook. This was an over-the-top, dripping with flowers (literally) kind of wedding. So large and grandiose was this celebration that it took two days to set the reception space. There were white orchids cascading from the ceiling and a living room-sized dance floor with their new family seal painted on. I'm guessing this to be a $90,000 celebration. The day of the ceremony my flower friend asked me to deliver two urn arrangements to the church to place on either side of the altar. 

"No problem!" and I drove off towards that caustic catholic cathedral. I pulled up, unloaded the urns, shimmied through the church doors and walked the long aisle. To my dismay, stretched across the altar was a kitschy Thanksgiving display. Pumpkins, mums and gourds all slowly dying on a burlap runner. I mulled over my options. Looking at it as a wedding florist, my job is to create a cohesive look throughout the wedding day and most importantly, deliver on the bride's expectations. Looking at it as a bride, I'd be furious if I walked the aisle on my $90,000 white orchid wedding day and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade had settled down next to my Groom. 

I decided to move the display. But where to put it? There was nowhere to hide the knickknacks. I elected to drag the whole thing around behind the big marble altar and I left a little hole in the middle for the priest to stand in. I walked halfway down the aisle and turned to check that no gourd stems or dried lavender peeked out from the behind the altar. I placed the little urn arrangements and fled the scene, back to the reception setup. A few hours passed while I worked on centerpieces. Then my phone rang. It was my florist friend. 

"Hey, did you move some pumpkins at the church?"

"Oh yes, lots of pumpkins." I said proudly.

"I just got chewed out about a Thanksgiving display?" she said with a question on the end.

"Oh." I said, feeling all the heat in my body escape through my neck. 

"What happened?"

I explained the dilemma and my flower friend was very kind about it but was clearly upset about the verbal lashings she received from "a mean old lady." The lady screamed at her that she had no permission to touch anything on the altar. I felt awful about it. I should be the one that got screamed at. The church said we had to come back and put the pumpkin display back exactly as we found it AND take our flowers away. They don't even want to look at them. Flower Friend asked me to do this since she didn't know what it looked like. 
The ceremony was still happening when I got there, so I had to loiter in the back of the church in my black spandex pants and then wait for the place to clear out while the priest and the mean old lady eyed me from the pulpit. Walking down the aisle while they stood watching me felt like walking the plank with no pants on. I climbed the three wide steps to the altar and immediately set to work. The priest in his white bathrobe and pendant jewelry stomped right up to me and put his finger in my face and sternly said, "You listen to me. The next time you come here, you don't touch anything on this altar." 

"I just do what I'm told," I said, very matter of fact. In reality, I wasn't sure if this was true but they knew a wedding was happening that day. Did they expect their holy gewgaws to accepted in the scene?

"This... is MY church!" he barked.

I held my hands up as if at gunpoint and said "OK" with the sting of unconcerned teenager. I was livid. The whole thing was so stupid. I couldn't believe he was making such a scene of it. Also, I doubted he owned the building. He said something else to me but I wasn't really listening and then he and the mean old lady left me up there to reposition their seasonal gimmick. "And leave the urns!" the mean old lady said as she left. On my long walk back down the aisle I eyed my blessed bullies as they stood flanking the church doors. I thought of many rude things to say to them if I was a more courageous person and also not temporarily representing someone else's business. If I had been there under my own name I would have told them that they let Jesus down that day. 

Instead I said, "It's like nothing happened." and then I pushed through the double doors and strutted into the parking lot, pulling sunglasses from my pocket and shaking my hair in the wind. (That last bit is a lie. I think my knee double-bent as I stepped off the curb.)

In other news, here is a photo of Moppy hard at work for Lux n' U.

And here's a rough picture of our pig neighbor, Miss B (the animal - not the woman).

Brett and I had some Discovery Cooking days (did you know how easy it is to make pasta from scratch??), endlessly amusing visits with Jeff, and virtual game night with Alex and Jessie while they are quarantining. 

Pippa has taken to having full-scale wheezy meltdowns at about 8 o'clock pm. By this time she has been walked and eaten her supper so the highlights of her day are behind her. She falls apart hoping for a meaty nightcap. Be it a crunchy oat treat or her dental bone chew, she absolutely and completely demands to have it. We don't know how this happened. We are not consistent with treats. There is no time of day that the girls should expect one. Somedays are treatless. Other days they are gifted the remnants of our lunch. But suddenly, Pip now waits for 8:00 and then sits her little but down by the dog cabinet and bats her tail on the ground (thump thump thump) and cries her wheezy whistles with increasing volume and frequency. I think it is the most annoying thing. Brett finds it terribly amusing. Meanwhile, Grace rolls her eyes from her bed and prefers to know which treats we're giving out to help decide if it's worth getting up for.

Unrelated to everything, the winter light has scooted over to shining into our bedroom and it's become just the best place to curl up and read a book. I love this room in the winter time. In the summery months it's dim in there and not a place I like to kill time. Now it's all sparkly and warm and bright. Look how exciting it is in there. 

This is the sort of thing I take note of that I can hear Dad's reaction to. What does he think after spending a few moments reading about someone excitement over window light? Can't you just hear his confused disinterest? Makes me smile to think about.