AN AMAZING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

Bill and I flew to Lima Sunday from Bolivia and then left Lima at 1:20 in the morning yesterday to fly home. It was a wonderful week in Bolivia and I will write more later. To tease it up, check out this photo of two women sitting outside in the cold as they learned how to improve their family's health and how to better manage their little businesses.

But this posting is not about that trip.

I decided to not sleep on the flight (I did nap for an hour and a half) and try to catch up with the 400 plus emails I was behind on from not having internet access for a week. The result: I was beat. And I am still nowhere near caught up on email.

So I went to bed at 9pm last night. The result: I was awake at 3am.

So I called Cathy who was in London but flying to Chicago today where we are, in theory, going to meet. I say in theory since they are forecasting up to 5 inches of snow.

So since she knew I was up that early since I talked to her, she then had Andrea send me this email:

hey, we are waiting for the cab to go to the airport and mom wanted me to ask you to please put some water in the tree before you leave today

hope you have a safe flight!

love andrea

While I realize most people would know what this means, I had no idea given we have dozens of trees around our yard and it was not clear to me why I had to water one of them. So I called them again and they reminded me we had a Christmas tree in the Family Room.

So I went and found a watering can (this is not something I have much experience in) with one of those long spouts. I filled it up, got down on the floor by the tree, stuck the can under it and the spout in the stand and started pouring the water in. Because of the thinness of the spout, it came out running like a water faucet and quite loud.

I suddenly had to pee as I listened to this.

I finished watering, went to the bathroom and back to emails.

I started thinking about it. I filled the can up some more, climbed back under the tree, began pouring and I had to pee again. Off I went to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later I conducted the experiment for the third time with equal success. I have clearly discovered something.

It appears that if you are tired, the pouring of water on a Christmas tree thru a thin spout creates some kind of sound waves that makes you have to pee. That is amazing to me. I went and had my 5th cup of coffee for the morning to recover from my trip and pondered the significance of this.

REFLECTIONS DURING MY FLIGHT TO LIMA

The Thanksgiving holiday was full of good things and tremendous sadness. The good things were having Grove, Cris and the boys with us.

Wes running with well coiffed hair


Landon running so fast he was tilting as he rounded the corner



The boys enjoying the outside



Group Cooking (Grove was taking the photo)


Thanksgiving Dinner





But on Friday we went to the funeral of our friend Diane. Diane was so much like Cathy. She was balanced in everything in her life. She was a calming influence when you were around her. She ate healthy and worked hard to stay healthy. She was devoted to her two children, a boy and a girl, and she worshipped her grandchildren. Like Cathy she was called “Grammy” by her family.

Nearly five years ago she and Cathy were diagnosed with cancer at almost the same time. They talked about their struggle at various times. Diane has lost the battle and as I told her husband Frank in our condolence card, the world is a better place because Diane was with us but is now a lesser place without her.

At the funeral I wept like a baby. The pain in my heart for Frank and their children seemed to be too strong for me to deal with. And I must admit, like anyone who is married to someone who is being treated to prevent the return of cancer, some of the pain was caused by all the thoughts that came up about Cathy and then I felt selfish and guilty.

Right before we went to communion, their two kids, Darren and Susie, walked down the aisle to bring the offering to the priest and I basically fell apart and could not recover. After the service the priest invited us to join the family for something to eat and Cathy turned to me and said “You have to get a hold of yourself before you go in there”.

I talked to her a lot about it afterwards. I am not sure why I seem to be impacted much harder by sad situations than others. That is likely not fair to say. I am sure others are also impacted but they can control their emotions and I can’t. It is why I cannot and will not go to any movie that has 30 seconds of sadness in it, which rules out most good movies.

So, this caused me to reflect on what I have to be thankful for given it was Thanksgiving and I was trying to get my head in a positive frame of mind. And I realized that I have so much to be thankful for that making a list would take weeks. So I asked myself what were the three most important things to be thankful for.

They are my Mom, who I have written about so much on this Blog. For all she has done for me. For continuing to be my role model of loving life and keeping a positive attitude in the middle of life’s difficult moments as she has so valiantly done.

For my children who I would truly lay down my life for if I had to. I cannot explain how much I love my children and their spouses and children. I would absolutely do anything in my power to help them if they were in need.

But most of all, for a day in May, 1965. I was standing in a used car lot called Dunton Motors, all 120 pounds of me, in a short sleeve white shirt with a tie shorter than my sleeves and a cigar hanging out of my mouth that was as thick as me. I was a used car salesman looking for someone to hustle into a car so that I could earn some cash to do what I did best, go on the road to California or Phoenix to hustle pool.

And it happened. A girl I knew who later was a bridesmaid in our wedding was walking by Dunton Motors on the other side of the street with a “new girl in town” that I had not met. I swaggered over (picture swaggering when you are as skinny as a cue stick) and introduced myself to Cathy Lollie, who I am certain looked at me and the cigar and stifled the urge to vomit right there on the sidewalk.

The rest is history. But early this month when we were out visiting my Mom, despite her protestations on what a dumb idea this was, I got her to go stand on the exact same sidewalk spot at Dunton Motors where I first saw her and let me take a photo of her.

Just like 1965



I also had flimflammed Andrea two weeks earlier to pose in the exact same spot since she looks a lot like Cathy did back then and I didn’t know I was going to get the real thing to pose.

Like her Mom, she thought this was a dumb idea

Posing for photos and being the center of attention is not something my WOTH enjoys. Nor does she like my WOTH term but it is my Blog and I mean it in a nice way. On the other hand, I like to be the center of attention for the whole family so we have a lot of balance in our lives.

Given my career aspirations back in 1965 coupled with my sophisticated demeanor, if I had not met her that day I would either be gone from too much partying or working at the 7-11 in Kingman today. And so when I really think about my blessings, I have to start with her. She is the singular thing I have the most to be thankful for.

On Sunday night I met Bill Robinson at the Atlanta airport, which oddly enough was almost dead even though it was the busiest travel day of the year. We boarded a plane for the six and a half hour flight to Lima, Peru. I got to bed a little after 2am and had to get up at 7am as we had arranged a City Tour. I have been to Lima before but not Bill so we spent 4 hours seeing all the sights. It was 80 degrees and 92% humidity and when combined with the side effects of the high altitude medication we were taking for Bolivia, we were alternately feeling okay or feeling like crap, mostly the latter.

We returned to the hotel and had a Pisco Sour with lunch and both immediately fell asleep for 45 minutes. That was followed by a shopping tour without any purchases, a dinner at the airport where I forgot and had a drink made with crushed ice and now we are on a TACA Airline flight to La Paz, Bolivia. It is a great airline, a great airplane and a great crew. We will arrive a little after midnight, be met by some of the staff from Freedom From Hunger and then drive to the town of Huatajata on Lake Titicaca where tomorrow we will meet up with the rest of the delegates going on this trip (of which I will write more later). I have wanted to see Lake Titicaca since I was about 7 years old and had a postage stamp in my collection with a photograph of it. I had the same desire to see the Alhambra in Granada and Stanley Peak in Hong Kong and I cried when I saw those and will probably do the same when I see Titicaca. Plus its name makes me laugh.

XXXRED-UPDATE

I wrote the above but was unable to post it as I am now in Huatajata, Bolivia (arriving at 330 am today, not a little after midnight as I thought) and there is no internet service or even dial up phone service here on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Today we took a three hour hike at an elevation of 13,000 feet, a wonderful experience to improve your red blood cell count if you can stand the pain and suffering. Since we are now back from that stroll (it was truly fabulous), I thought I would close with a photo I took while on that hike of a woman, her husband and their crop laden donkey hiking up the mountain. I started this Blog talking about what I have to be thankful for. Seeing them reminds me of how much we all have to be thankful for.

Who knows when I will be able to post this? I might be able to do it from an internet café in a town we pass through. If not, I will do it this Saturday when we check into a hotel in La Paz. This is a breathtakingly beautiful and serene country but more about Bolivia and what we are doing here later.

A life we cannot imagine

It is for people like these that I work with Freedom From Hunger