The Cubs Are in the World Series

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Roger

I’ve always known that it would happen sometime in my lifetime. It’s one of the reasons I never stopped rooting for them. How depressing would it be to have it happen the year after I gave up?

The Cubs played the San Francisco Giants in the National League Divisional Series. I don’t have cable or dish or MLB network, so I was reduced to following them on the radio while watching the stats online. Usually I could see replays of great plays about half an hour after they happened.

I stayed up until nearly 2:00 to hear the Cubs lose game three in 13 innings. Cub fans were stressing. I posted this on Facebook.

Joe Maddon tells his players, “Never let the pressure exceed the pleasure.” I think that’s pretty good advice for fans too. Baseball is, after all, “entertainment.”

Game four wasn’t going well. The Giants were winning 5-2 in the top of the 9th and about to tie the series at 2-2. I actually went to bed — it was 11:00, and I was tired. But I couldn’t bring myself to stop checking my phone. Bryant and Rizzo reached base to start the 9th and then Zobrist doubled. I got up and listened to the rest of the comeback and victory in my study. The Cubs won 6-5 to move on to the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I wasn’t able to listen closely to a couple of the games in this series because we were getting things ready for our garage sale, but I checked in as often as I could. After falling asleep and losing games 2 and 3, the Cubs came on strong and won the series in six games. The Cubs were in the World Series for the first time in my lifetime — for the first time since 1945. They were playing the Cleveland Indians.

The World Series was on Fox, so I was able to watch it! After the first game, I posted this on Facebook.

Two observations: 1) I look forward to the day I can listen to a Cubs’ World Series broadcast in which every sentence doesn’t end with, “for the first time since 1945.” 2) I like statistics and odd records as much as the next guy. Maybe more. But COME ON Fox. “He is the first Puerto Rican shortstop with a wife and two daughters and a Z in his last name to ever get two hits off a 6’5″ lefty with halitosis” isn’t a record. It’s just a coincidence.

The series didn’t start out great. The Indians won games 1, 3 and 4. The Cubs won game 2 by a score of 5-1, but they could have won 15-1 if they ever hit the ball with men on base.

We watched part of game 3 at my mom’s place where we, and my sister, were celebrating her 95th birthday. I saw the end of the game at home. I just want to say this — the guy who scored Cleveland’s run was picked off third base. The call was safe and the replay review confirmed it. But he was really out. He had long dreadlocks, and you can clearly see that Kris Bryant’s glove tagged the runner’s hair before his hand touched the bag. If I guy wants to wear his hair like that, I’m OK with it. But it’s part of his body. He was out. He scored moments later for the only run of the game.

We watched the depressing game 4 at a friend’s house. As the game got out of hand, I posted this:

Please exit the Cubs bandwagon to the left. (To the LEFT, M’am!) Proceed in an orderly fashion. (No pushing and shoving Sir!) There’s plenty of time for everyone to get off. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to see you again next October.

If the Cubs lost game 5, the series would be over. I decided I needed a Red Chair photo to commemorate the fact that the Cubs were in the World Series, a significant moment even if they lost. Again, due to circumstances, this was all I could come up with.

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As I write this, the Cubs are down 3 games to 2 and headed back to Cleveland. Do I want them to win the next two games and the Championship. Of course. But, win or lose, this has been an entertaining year to be a Cubs fan. And after all, it is just entertainment.

UPDATE

The Cubs won game 6 fairly easily, 9-3. And then came this.

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It was a long, stressful game, complete with errors and heroics and awful ball and strike calls by the umpire. The Indians tied the game in the 8th. At the end of the 9th, there was a brief rain delay. The Cubs came out afterwards and scored two in the top of the 10th and gave one up in the bottom of the inning until the Cubs finally closed it out 8-7. I watched alone at home. I can deal with the stress of an exciting game or I can be sociable. I can’t do both.

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The game ended around 11:30. I got to bed about two hours later. Just fun.

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My Listening Place

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Roger

Once in a while I feel the need to step away from the pressures of life, to escape the lists of things I have to do, to tune out the noise and busyness. 

When that happens, I go here. Its a small knoll in a prairie/savannah about three miles from our house. It isn’t the garden spot of the world, but it’s pleasant enough. The noise of civilization is generally distant. And I’m almost always the only one around.

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I lie back on the picnic table and look up at the sky through the leaves of an oak. Sometimes there are hawks or Sandhill Cranes or Great Blue Herons flying over. This spring I watched a Bald Eagle circling high above. One October afternoon, I sat for an hour and watched a parade of Monarch butterflies migrating south through a brisk cross wind.

Sometimes I close my eyes and just listen. I once identified the songs and calls of 18 species of birds in an hour.

One more than one occasion, I’ve fallen asleep for I have no idea how long.

I make it a point when I go here not to worry or think about anything in particular. No planning or writing. Just listening. I’ve probably made it there about six or eight times a year for the past 15 years or so. It’s one of the few things about Illinois I’ll miss.

 

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Footprints on the Carpeting

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Roger

I’m developing a theory. It goes like this — you can tell how interested someone is in buying your house by seeing how far they walk into the bedrooms.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We decided to put our house on the market a few months ago. The realtor came out and took a look. Then we had to make an appointment to go to her office so she could show us fancy graphics that picture all the things she would do to sell our house. (She’d already told us all these things during her visit, but they were very nice pictures.) Then we signed a contract.

The next morning there was a “For Sale” sign on our front lawn. We weren’t ready to show the house yet, but the sign was there to constantly nag us to do the things we had to do.

For example, we had to make an appointment with a “stager.” We’ve sold two houses in the past, and we never had to use a stager. But apparently stagers are the thing now. You can’t show your house until you’ve met with a stager. So the stager came out and, for $400, spent an hour walking around our house to tell us that we decorated very nicely and didn’t really need to do anything. Except maybe move the fish tank off the kitchen counter to make it look less cluttered. And replace the upstairs carpeting.

That the carpeting needed to be replaced really wasn’t news. It was awful. It’s been in the house as long as we have. It may have been original with the house. It may have even been here longer than that.

So we dashed over to Home Depot and bought some lovely carpeting. I then spent a week packing up my books and cleaning closets and moving everything except the very few largest pieces of furniture. I carried everything downstairs so the carpet guys could come so I could carry it all back upstairs so we could stage the house to sell its so I could carry it all back downstairs to move.

Finally it was time to show the house. We had a day’s warning for our first showing, so we made everything perfect. I vacuumed the new carpeting. We packed our cats into their cages, piled into the car and ran some errands. When we got back to the house, I noticed that I could trace exactly where the potential buyers had walked by looking at their footprints on the carpeting. They had walked into all the bedrooms, checked out the closet space, looked out the windows. When we got the report the next day, we learned that they were somewhat interested in our house but still looking.

Three days later, we had another showing. This time my wife was at work. I was at home without a car. I cleaned the house, packed the cats into one cage this time (since I was on foot), and walked outside into a driving rain. I grabbed an old coat to cover the cats and walked next door and sat on a bench on my neighbor’s front porch.

The potential buyers didn’t stay long. When I went back inside, I saw that they hadn’t entered three of the bedrooms and only made a quick trip inside the fourth. That didn’t bode well. The report stated that they weren’t interested. They said the house “felt dated” because of the way it is decorated. We decorate with antiques. We’re going to take them with us. The new owners don’t have to decorate the same way.

Something I’ve learned during this process is that a lot of people — maybe even most people — can’t see past your stuff. They can’t see the space for what it is. They can’t imagine what the house will look like with their stuff in it. This is a real thing. People this unimaginative really go house shopping. When they do buy a house, I wonder if they’re surprised that the former owners didn’t leave all their things. “Wait,” I imagine them crying, “this isn’t the house we looked at! Where are the modern-looking decorations that were in this room?”

Then came this past Friday. I was planning on leaving home at 3:00, picking up my wife at work and then heading down to my mom’s to celebrate her 95th birthday. At 2:30, I got an email requesting a showing at 6:30. We have to sell the house, so we don’t want to turn down any showings. I called my wife and told her I’d be late. Then I scurried around and cleaned the house. I vacuumed the carpet. I packed the cats into their cages and took off. It wasn’t part of the plan to take the cats to my mom’s, but I couldn’t come up with a better plan.

I was about a third of the way when the car began to stink. I turned around in time to see Lucy depositing a pile on the towel in the corner of her cage. I didn’t think cats did this. But she was doing it. I was just about overcome with the odor. I opened the windows and continued on. I drove carefully. Lucy was being very careful to stay at the opposite end of the cage, and I didn’t want to make any sudden moves that threw her onto the pile.

My wife got in the car and immediately sensed that there was a problem. We drove to a nearby dumpster and tossed the towel. Fortunately things were contained and the problem was solved.

Or not. The smell lingered. Then my wife noticed that Millie had also deposited a pile in her cage. But not in the corner — right in the middle. And she either couldn’t, or just didn’t, avoid it. She was coated with gunk. I pulled into a Walgreen’s and went inside for wipes and paper towels. I did my best to hold the cat out while my wife cleaned her off. But this was a kitten who was already stressed and wasn’t enjoying any of this. By the time we’d done all we could do, the cat was still a mess, the car seat wasn’t much better, and both of us were wiping spots off our clothes.

We just wanted to go home. But the showing was scheduled for about the time we would get there. And my mom doesn’t have 95th birthday parties every day. So we drove on. I carried Millie in her cage into my mom’s bathroom and put her in the tub. I poured about two inches of warm water into the tub and let her out. Fortunately, she’s one of those cats who doesn’t hate water, so she was remarkably patient while I scrubbed her as best I could. Once in a while, she would lift one of her paws out of the water and shake it, showering me with drops of I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it. I finally got her and me as clean as we were going to get. The rest of the party went fine.

And the showing?

The bedrooms had hardly been entered.

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On Measuring Success

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Roger

My wife and I were planning on living in our house until we retired. Oh, we’d talked about selling it now that we’re empty-nesters, but chances are we wouldn’t have gotten around to it — not in light of the way Illinois property values have plummeted. And I was certainly planning on staying at the ministry where I worked until I retired. I’d been there for 34 years and felt that I was still contributing significantly.

But then early this past summer, I was told that the ministry had decided they could get along fine without me, that I didn’t fit into their future plans.

So I spent the summer writing resumes and cover letters (neither of which I’d ever needed before), searching job sites, joining groups of other unemployed folk to hear pep talks on how to find work, taking online classes to learn skills I didn’t particularly want, doing practice and real interviews, taking on every freelance job I could find no matter how small, filing for unemployment, putting my house up for sale and, recently, accepting an offer for a job in another state.

At times I felt anger, depression, sadness, worry, disgust and resignation.

But I have done my utmost not to dwell in any of those places.

A lesson I learned during a difficult five or six year stretch awhile back has helped me. I know everybody is different and is dealing with different troubles. I know that no two people process things the same way. And I know that no two people have the same relationship with the Lord. So I’m not telling you this because I think it’s some sort of magic formula. Really. I don’t believe in magic formulas. I’m just telling you what helped me on the off chance that it can help you.

Here it is.

This is a broken world. All of it. All of us. All the time. It’s messy and unfair and cruel and ugly. Everybody has problems. A lot of people have a lot bigger problems than they ever let on.

[Insert my problem here] is just part of life. I’m not the first person to deal with it, and I won’t be the last.

I believe we’re programmed in our culture, even in Christian circles, to measure our success based on circumstances and results. If our kids make bad choices, it’s our fault. If I lose my job, I did something wrong. If (and this may be the most insidious) I have problems, I didn’t pray long enough, hard enough, often enough, enough enough. And on the other side, successful days are those with positive circumstances and good results.

In 2 Timothy, Paul wrote about his final days. He was in prison, shackled to two Roman guards. He knew he was about to be put to death. The Lord had told him that he was going to have to live with his thorn in the flesh. He wanted his cloak, so we can guess he was cold. All of his friends had abandoned him and, most depressing of all, “all those in Asia have turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1:15).

Who were “all those in Asia”? The Ephesians, the Colossians, the Galatians — all those churches that Paul started and labored for and wrote long letters to and loved. All of them had wandered away from his message and allowed themselves to be swayed by false doctrine.

Paul had reason to be angry and depressed and sad and worried and disgusted and resigned, and I’m sure there were moments when he was. Based on circumstances and results, his ministry could not have seemed very successful.

But then he wrote these words — I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).

When I was going through my rough patch a few years back, I came upon that verse and realized that it would be a much better way for me to measure success. At the end of each day, can I look back and say with honesty, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”? Has my focus remained on Christ Jesus and the hope I have in Him and NOT on my circumstances or results? If it has, then no matter what that day held, good or bad, it was a successful day.

That way of measuring pulled me out of my funk back then and carried me through this summer.

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Garage Sale

Posted on October 20, 2016 by Roger

It’s amazing how quickly stuff accumulates when you own a home. It seems you never toss anything because there’s always somewhere to stick it away. Then, when you decide to move, you’ve got piles of stuff too good to toss but too stufflike to move. So you have a garage sale and hope that your stuff is someone else’s dream of a lifetime.

I tried to drum up interest in our sale with a series of Facebook posts.

Buy Santa at our garage sale this weekend, and we’ll throw in the stylish hat for free!

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This set of three Western items will be available at our garage sale this weekend!

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Help this bear stop singing the blues. Come buy him at our garage sale this weekend.

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Come to our garage sale this Friday and Saturday and buy all my books. Then you can be as well red as I are.

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The appeals kinda worked. I sold the skull and cow horns and several of the books.

We had some big, bulky items we wanted to get rid of. Some of them went. Some didn’t. Then there was the treadmill. We had it listed for $25. I wanted to give it away, but my wife said a price would give it perceived value. Early on the first day, a guy gave me $25 and said he be back with another vehicle on Saturday. Three or four other people asked about it, and I told them it was sold. The guy never showed. I have his $25, but I also still have the treadmill. I’d rather have neither.

By Saturday afternoon, things had slowed considerably. I posted one last appeal.

Come to our garage sale and I’ll let you ride our desk chair down the driveway.

 

My mother-in-law asked if was hurt and if I did that on purpose. My answers were yes. And yes.

In the end, we got rid of a lot of stuff and got the amount of money they say you need to get to make a garage sale worthwhile. I took most the leftover stuff over to the nearby charity thrift store. I still have the treadmill.

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