Ten-Finger Exercises

Making hay while the sun shines...

Quickly, before Sophie and Jack get tired of their new colored pencils, I'll blog.

Passed the sanity test of a new facility today. It used to be harder than it is now, probably due to fire marshall's rules. I remember a place which only had the keypad code for entrance and exit posted on the outside of the nursing home so that residents wouldn't leave on their own without anyone knowing. If you forget, which I did several times, actually expecting it would be posted somewhere inside too, then you have to slink over to a staff member and try your best to appear very "not-from-here" and ask for the code.

The code where I went today had previously been posted outside, then inside but up higher than most people would look. Now it's low enough to be seen by even the most stooped, but it says: "1092 backwards". Don't you imagine at least one person has tried turning around and fingering the keypad behind their back?

I guess they figure now that if the residents can figure out how to do it, they're safe to be outside. Or, like other governmental rules, they have no other choice.

The second place is a mite harder. The instructions above the keypad say: "The code is the same as the date on the first of January in the year 2004." Now, that one is a little trickier. The answer is not 1-1-2-0-0-4; it's 0-1-0-1-0-4. It would help if they even told you the number of digits.

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I looked up Albert's response to a zucchini poem, remembering that he had suggested two particular forms. I thought I might give one a try. To my amazement they were links to his previous zucchini poems, infinitely classier than my little ditties. And they look difficult. I'm sure I won't have that much time this week.

So, today I have to settle for a zucchini riddle. How are zucchini growing in the garden like people? Answer: one minute they're young and tender, and in the blink of an eye they're old and tough. And if they've been hanging around with crooknecks as mine have, they're even warty and bent. Not very cheerful outlook, eh?

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On the way to Vacation Bible School today (which the twins are enjoying--yea!) we saw pygmy goats kneeling, neatly trimming the fenceline of a house down the block. Then we saw four deer in the hay field by the creek. (Today it has been cut down and is lined up in rows drying--a scene that always makes me smile, but didn't have any affect on the kids.)

Tonight we have the VBS ice cream social and musical performance. The kids decorated cloth bags and filled them with school supplies to send to a teacher in Afghanistan who is the nephew of one of our parishioners. His job is to get school going again there. It was a good project everybody got into.