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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Hey, Sugar… (#335)

There's a new study out that shows that diabetics are 85% more likely to develop Alzheimer's than non-diabetics. 85%!

I lived on the edge of diabetes for many years before coming to my senses. Diabetes itself didn't scare me too much back then, although God knows it should have with my family history, but Alzheimer's? Now that's a scary thought.

I've suspected for years that a lifetime of disproportionate sugar consumption might be a leading cause of Alzheimer's, and this study seems to substantiate my theory.

And to think my theory was based largely on the fact that when I eat sugar, I am spaced-out, forgetful, and occasionally incoherent. Not that I've eaten any recently--it's been more than four years, and I've never felt better. My blood sugars are completely stable as long as I stay aware from the white stuff.

So, the way to largely prevent Alzheimer's (and who knows? possibly to reverse it in its early stages if eating habits are changed)is to avoid acquiring diabetes. And the way to avoid acquiring diabetes is to stop consuming simple sugars.

What are we waiting for, people? Don't imagine that the sugar industry and the pharmaceutical industry are going to let their favorite addicts go easily. They'll fight to discredit this study to the bitter end.

It's apparent that the brain you save will have to be your own.

---

Definitely (#336)

Can anyone tell me why, in this day and age in which so few people apparently still believe in absolutes, everyone's favorite adverb is absolutely?

Just thought I'd ask.

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Cool Shunnings (#337)

I've spent the better part of three days cooking for Kev's graduation party, arranging and then rearranging the piles of trays, bowls, and roaster pans full of goodies until the fridge is fairly filled with festive foods.

We'll have "Mary's Manicotti," "Mom's Best Garlic Bread," "Bridget's Fine Fruit Salad," "Liz's Bunches of Stuff Broccoli Casserole," "Carrie's Peanut Butter Cups," and "Annie Fowler's Lemon Bars." Not to mention "Katy's Low-Carb Sugar-Free Triple-Threat Choco-Mousse Delight."

Before I could start filling the fridge, though, I had to empty it. And scrub it. Hard. Until. It. Shone.

The fridge had been ignored for too long. The Rubbermaid containers of mostly green furry remains leered at me when I removed their plastered-on lids, mocked my absence from their lives, dared me to delve deeper into their psyches, to touch their repulsive insides.

It pained me to realize that I'd made them what they were--mere relics of their former creations, now encrusted in an eternal patina of mold.

And still I recognized them at their core, acknowledged what they had been, and what they might have been had they not quickly lost my attention: macaroni and cheese from that night after the game six weeks ago, DiGiorno pizza from the evening we hurried to get to the band concert a couple months back, an expensive cut of cheese from Christmas Eve, and Kev's ancient homemade truffles with a serious attitude problem.

And then there's the hot dogs--um, we won't talk about the hot dogs.

My fridge was downright nasty, and yet even my sorry leftovers evoked memories of good family times, shared meals, and even a culinary experiment or two.

Now that the fridge is starting fresh, I wish I could say I'll do better with the leftover manicotti, fruit salad, and broccoli casserole, but I know myself.

All I can say for sure is that when I pull the fuzzy manicotti out of the fridge several months from now, Kev will have started college. I'll peel the lid off the Rubbermaid, accidentally inhale the stench of the rotten ricotta, and cry.

No more soccer macaroni, no more band concert pizza, no more graduation manicotti.

Leftovers will never be the same.

---

Boy to Man (#338)

I'd closed myself into our walk-in pantry for the unlikely purpose of an in-depth cleaning the likes of which the much-used room had never seen. I must have sounded like the mom in Home Alone--only muffled--when she realizes she's left her son behind, bolts upright in the plane, and screams his name.

"KEVIN!"

"Mom! Where are you?"

If you know high school seniors, you know that few would respond like Kevin did. Some would answer, "Huh?" Others might offer, "What?" A couple might toss back a "Whatever..." and leave it at that. Many would pretend not to have heard their mother's frantic plea for help at all.

A very caring or prolific young man might call out, "What do you want?" When you hear his question, you sense he's just buying time, and using the few extra seconds it takes you to shriek, "Hurry! It's the biggest, harriest, scariest spider I've ever seen in my life!" to formulate his grand excuse.

"But, Mom...." he'd whine, "you know I hate spiders...."

Kevin does hate spiders, but he was running to my side before he even knew what I needed. He didn't waste precious time asking "What?" when he knew the only question that would help me was "Where?"

My youngest child graduates from high school on Saturday. He's still my baby, but now I know for certain that he's the world's grown man.

---

Dangerous Curves Ahead (#339)

"If it weren't for Curves, I wouldn't be here today."

Judith, the beautiful black contestant on Dr. Phil's Weightloss Challenge, appeared to me in a dream last night, larger than life. Or maybe smaller than life. Whatever.

"Just look at me!" she said, and I had to admit she looked fabulous. "Who wouldn't want some of this?"

"So, it's not Dr. Phil's bars and shakes, after all?" I asked. "You're telling me it's the exercise?"

I was worrying a bit for her reputation. What if word got back to the Dr. Phil Show that Judith had become a circuit-training, jogging-in-place advertisement for Curves? Weren't there conflict-of-interest issues at work here?

"I'm telling you," she said, "if it weren't for Curves, I might not be alive."

That Judith is one persuasive woman! I hopped out of bed and started to pull on my exercise clothes, repentant and freshly motivated. Too late, I realized it was too early...Not even Curves is open at four a.m.

I decided to check the online news, which was--surprise, surprise!--plump with juicy tidbits about Curves. Evidently, the evil owner of the world's fastest-growing franchise, Gary Heavin, has been donating a portion of his hefty profits to pro-life organizations. In fact, he and his wife contributed $5 million to a couple of crisis pregnancy centers in Texas last year.

For this, he is being vilified by a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, who attempted to link him to militant pro-life groups, but who was later forced to add a "clarification" (whatever happened to the word "retraction"?)to her piece.

So I sat in my shorts and t-shirt, one shoe off and one shoe on, and exercised my right to tell columnists and editors exactly what I think. I wrote three letters before my heart rate returned to normal, and was pleased with myself for having gotten in my aerobics for the day.

I may not find the time to haul my sorry you-know-what back to Curves anytime soon. But I won't let my membership lapse just yet, either.

Somewhere in Texas, there just might be a little kid who will someday sound like the Judith of last night's dreams.

"If it weren't for Curves, I wouldn't be here today."

---

Something Fun (#340)

Many of you know that I finished my first novel in January and entered it in a contest sponsored by the Christian Writers Guild. While the grand prize winner won't be announced until the end of June, I received a very fun interim email from the Guild last Friday.

Out of 290 entries, my story has made it to the top 20! So, that's something, isn't it?

---

Dying Well (#341)

"Death makes visible where our treasure is. The way we die reveals the worth of Christ in our hearts...the essence of praising Christ is prizing Christ. Christ will be praised in my death, if in my death he is prized above life."
John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

Three enormous photographs stood high upon easels in the front of the church, focal points for the thousands of mourners who came to share their loss of Butch Lombardo and his two grown sons, Guiseppe and Nino.

Slowly, the pallbearers processed down the center aisle, the reluctant bearers of three caskets. Each casket was placed beneath one of the portraits and covered with flowers before the men stood in a solemn line to kiss the widow, the mother, the tightknit family's soul survivor.

Then the time of worship began. One guitarist, several singers, leading us into the Savior's presence, word by word, note by note, pointing us once again to the giver and the taker of life.

For the people in the front rows, though, the portraits obstructed their view. As much as they needed to see the beautiful faces of the men they'd lost, they needed even more to see the face of their God reflected in the countenances of the singers.

One by one, the pictures were removed—by the mourners themselves—from their places of prominence on the easels. Nothing stood in the way of Christ being praised even in death.

It was exactly what the boys would have wanted.

---

She Said Yes (#342)

"Let's take a walk through the park, Gertrude," said one old woman to the other. "It's bound to do us some good."

The evening was cooler than they'd anticipated, coming as it did on the heels of a sunny April afternoon. If they'd been any younger, they might have walked faster. But if they'd walked any faster, they would have missed it.

"Look, Mildred, over there..." She pointed at the couple in the rose garden. The girl sat on a bench, facing the young man who stood beside her. Suddenly, to the great delight of the women, the man dropped to one knee.

They stopped walking then, since even time and all of creation seemed to stop in its tracks, and waited with something like reverence. They shivered, first of the increasing cold, but perhaps even more as they remembered other young men with similar lights in their eyes. Men now decades gone, but who still had the power to make Gertrude and Mildred feel young again with just a fleeting thought.

The young man held out a ring, and placed it on the girl's finger, and she must have said something, because he beamed a smile that reminded them for all the world of Gertrude's beloved Henry and Mildred's dear Cecil.

The old women grinned then, joined arms, and headed for home, but not before the bride-to-be heard one of them say to the other, "She said yes."

The evening had warmed considerably in a few moments' time, and Mildred had been right, as usual. Their walk had done them a world of good.

---

Time (#343)

"But I thought," said my lifelong friend Lori, "that we had all the time in the world."

Our friend Sue is dying, not like everyone will die, someday years from now. Our friend will die tonight, if not before. It is not a matter of time anymore. It's become a matter of eternity.

This can't be happening, we say. We've only known each other since yesterday, when we were all fourteen, and newborn and clean and freshfaced. All the universe unfolded before us then, neverending in its possibilities, as if we were at its center, and not it at ours.

God and all His creation were at our command in our unspoiled youth and, because of the indelible memory of that time, somehow even still they seem to be.

We know it isn't so. We are not naive.

We've learned too little, perhaps, but experienced too much to cling to hopes of never ending innocence.

We know we cannot squander time, and yet we do so with abandon, as if we were merely fourteen and a day, instead of what we've certainly become--women on whom time has played its sneaky trick of switching sides.

"The gravest of all human errors," I answer, "is to believe we have all the time in the world."

I hear the words of wisdom leave my lips, and yet we stubbornly believe our friend will not really die tonight.

---

Papers (#344)

I just put in a seven-hour day re-creating my mother's life as the respectable, responsible taxpayer the US government believes her to be. Against all odds, she has lost the pile of 1099s she's been collecting since the end of January.

We had to cancel her appointment with her accountant after I ransacked her entire apartment and came up utterly 1099-less, dooming me to a long afternoon of calling 1-800 numbers and rattling off my mother's mother's maiden name.

If it were not for the plethora of ephemera we produced during our search-and-rescue mission, the day might have been dismal.

But in her underwear drawer, we found her marriage certificate from St. Catherine's Church and three photos of the girl my father was in love with before he married my mother in 1950.

We found the cardboard boarding pass assigned to my father when he emigrated by boat from Scotland in 1946, something I'd never seen in all my life.

We found the letter my mother wrote on behalf of her fiance to the Halls brothers (of Hallmark Cards fame), imploring them to take a look at the enclosed poems highly suited to be greeting card copy, penned by a man whose talent she believed in with all her heart. (She never heard back from the Halls.)

We found a beautiful picture of my Aunt Cathie, circa 1944, which she had taken at the Emery, Bird, Thayer department store in downtown Kansas City soon after she came to this country. She'd inscribed it to her brother, my father, and sent it to him where he was stationed in the British army. "To Dev," she wrote, a shortened version of his Scottish hoodlum gang nickname, Devilero. (I come from interesting stock.)

Holy cards from my brother's funeral, who died at age four, and my father's, and my grandparents'. Newspaper clippings and death certificates and citizenship papers and even a love letter or two.

The only item that managed to comfort my rattled mother over the loss of her tax documents, though, was the timeworn, vintage magazine photo of Burt Reynolds, naked.

Mama, Mama, Mama!

---

Getting My Land Legs (#345)

I've got my sea legs, baby.

Doug and I just spent a week on the Norwegian Sky, the first time we've gotten away in two years. It was fabulous. We did Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Maarten's, Antigua, Tortola, Martinique, and in our spare time, a couple of poolside chaises.

Not counting the Puerto Rican rain forest and the every-afternoon-dessert-buffet, my very favorite thing was that while we were gone, no one died. (OK, I guess, technically, the head of Hamas died, but I can hardly be held even remotely responsible for him.)

You would have to know the sordid history of me and vacation to understand my relief, and I will spare you the sorry details. Suffice it to say that an entire week passed without terrible incident on the home front, and I am grateful and more than a bit amazed.

Now if I could just get my land legs back.....

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What I Don’t Get (#346)

It happens every election year, and I just don't get it.

Democratic presidential candidates speak from the pulpit at what seem to be (although, of course, I don't know this for certain) black, liberal-leaning churches. They spout Scripture to prove their positions, to--I suppose--get the vote out and influence it firmly in their direction.

Clinton did it, Gore did it, and now it's John Kerry's turn.

This is from the New York Times:

"If Mr. Kerry won over the town-hall crowd by setting the Bible aside, he showed Sunday morning that he could put Scripture to political use.

At the Greater Bethlehem Temple Pentecostal Church in Jackson, Mr. Kerry, who is Catholic, quoted James 2:14 - 'What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?' - a reference to the 'compassionate conservatism' espoused by Mr. Bush.'"

http://www.nytimes.com

If Republican candidates also stump in church, the media is failing to pick up on it, and somehow I think if George Bush crossed that line, it would be big news. The poor innocent church that invited a Republican candidate to speak his mind would soon enough find itself defending its tax-exempt status, and that's too scary for a rich church to contemplate.

The power of the separation of church and state is no where more apparent than in churches attempting to gain or hold onto their "status."

So what's up with this? If John Kerry can get away with it without there being a public outcry about "separation," why shouldn't George Bush preach his gospel at the suburban conservative leaning non-denom mega-church in Kansas City?

It happens every election year, and I just don't get it.

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Things That Go Bump In The Light (#347)

I awaken abruptly from a so-detailed-it-had-to-be-real dream about my mother and stumble to the kitchen, my eyes slits.

I fumble for the light more out of habit than need, since it only helps me to see in the dark when my eyes are open.

I pack Kevin's lunch perfunctorily, being in my twenty-seventh straight year of packing lunches. Sandwich. Chips. Cookies. Fruit Gushers. I stumble to the fridge for yogurt and an apple.

I pick up the yogurt first, squinting at it to make sure it's strawberry, since Kev would not enjoy something called "Black Forest Cherry."

I reach for the apple bag with the same hand that holds the yogurt. Looking back, I see this is where I first went wrong.

I have a vague but salient thought about how there is only one more apple in the bag, which makes me happy today is Friday. An apple for Monday, but after that, a trip to the Chopper.

I grasp the apple with the yogurt-filled hand, but the Granny Smith eludes me, slips from my fingers before even making good contact, hits the floor with a thud.

I hear two more thuds but see no apple. The slippery Smith has rolled under the open fridge door, and has landed--I am certain--under the adjoining cabinet.

I groan to picture the nasty bruises the apple will display after thudding thrice, and consider passing it off to Kev anyway. Does a high school senior stop to examine his apple before plunging in? I think not.

I close the door and begin the search, a long and grueling one--life changing in many ways, since it is performed completely without benefit of caffeine. It is the kind of ordeal that convinces a woman what she's made of.

I find the wayward fruit half a world away, around a corner in the living room, wedged into a crevice where the wood floor meets the carpet. Propped against the wall on the floor is a picture Doug has been meaning to hang, and so the apple loiters at the very edge of "God Bless Our Home."

I leave it there, a stark and graphic lesson of some kind, but what?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but it falls far indeed from the fridge.

---

Archeological—But Not Logical—Dig (#348)

Someday, years from now let's hope, your kids (many of them yet unborn) will excavate your home, weed through your possessions, and probably trash most of what you've accumulated.

Question: Is there a certain item your poor, unsuspecting children will discover copious amounts of? What is it and why do you have so flippin' MUCH OF IT?????

With my mother, it was manicure scissors and tweezers. Scores of each. Also thousands upon thousands of pencils and pens that didn't write. Also unbelievable amounts of what she called "scratch paper." In essence, office supplies.

For Doug's mother, whose house we are currently clean sweeping, it's ziploc bags, baggies, foil, wax paper, and cleaning supplies. (She's never been much for cleaning.) Also, HUNDREDS of those little purse-sized containers of Kleenex brand facial tissues. (I've never heard the woman sneeze.) Also, thousands of S&H green stamps. Really. A gazillion tiny bars of hotel soap, and she hasn't been out of town for ten years. And at least a dozen bra extenders. (I'm sorry, I know I committed two entries down to not writing about underwear, but stuff happens.)

What about you? When your descendents dig you out, what will they think of the civilization you've built?

I won't tell you mine just yet, but I have a feeling my kids might chime in here.

---

Almost Ready (#349)

The Passion of the Christ opens today, and I will see it. Soon. Really.

Being raised a Catholic, I am not unaccustomed to the more visual aspects of Jesus' sacrifice. I grew up in a church where the tomb may have been empty, but the cross wasn't. When the priest held up the eucharistic host and the chalice of wine and prayed for the elements to become the body and blood of Christ, one couldn't help but be moved by the stark reminder of Jesus' death. The image of his broken body hung on the cross behind the altar, a potent backdrop for the priest's upraised arms.

It's been said that the people who will be most shocked by Mel Gibson's film are evangelical Protestants, and I wonder if there isn't some truth to that. I read a review by a Christian singer based in Nashville who said, essentially, that until she saw this movie, it had never occurred to her that Jesus had actually felt pain during the crucifixion. Her understanding had been that, because Jesus was God, he couldn't actually feel physical pain--that He was somehow above that type of lowly experience.

It's estimated that approximately 250,000 Jews were crucified under the Romans, and it's plainly obvious that all of them experienced excruciating agony. With the exception of the crown of thorns, which was added to Jesus' torture as a form of mockery because He did not deny that He was indeed the King of the Jews, there is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate that his physical death was much different than anyone else's who died by crucifixion.

But I believe His experience was terribly, horribly, wonderfully different, that the extent of His suffering was indeed beyond what any man has ever suffered. I believe God's Son has a capacity for suffering that is as far beyond ours as is His capacity for love, because both the suffering and the love are completely selfless.

I am ready now, almost ready, to see The Passion of the Christ. Soon. Really.

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