Recently I read and reviewed an exciting book by Scott C. Todd, titled Fast Living, about helping end world poverty. The title refers to Isaiah 58 and the type of fast God requires of us. The author talked about how God will someday judge us for how we’ve used what He gives us, as taught by the parable of the talents.

           A few days later, we vacationed at the Oregon coast, thanks to a gift certificate from our daughter. My husband mentioned several times noticing some ceramic frogs in the motel gift shop.

            Several years ago, I reviewed a book titled, Eat That Frog, about over-coming procrastination. Since then, various types of frogs–ceramic, cloth and stuffed, glass, etc. have regularly appeared in my kitchen as gifts. I now own over twenty of these lifeless amphibians.

            Our last day on the Oregon coast, at the motel gift shop I bought a small ceramic frog for seven dollars.  I’d never personally purchased a frog before. Back in our motel room I felt like I’d gratified myself needlessly. I wasn’t over-drawing my checking account or using money meant for necessities. I simply needed another frog, as my mother always said, “Like you need another hole in your head.”

       I asked the Lord to forgive me for doing something useless with money that could have provided a meal for someone homeless.

         “Why did I do such a crazy thing?”I asked God. He didn’t answer.

            A few days later, a friend who makes jewelry showed me her latest work, including a lovely pair of gold-filled earrings. I almost bought the earrings, although I probably already own about fifty pairs, including several gold types. But suddenly I remembered that useless frog purchase and resisted the earrings.

            Then an ad appeared in my mailbox for a travel magazine at a ridiculously reduced price. I almost sent in a check for a subscription. But remembering that useless frog purchase, I knew I could easily read that magazine at the public library.

            That frog is not a useless purchase. Every time I’m tempted to spend money rather foolishly, that frog pops into my mind. That wee frog helps me resist temptation!

            The old hymn says, “Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin. Each victory will help you, some other to win. Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue. Look ever to Jesus. He’ll carry you through.”

My Not-Useless Frog

 Yesterday a nutty New Zealand friend currently in Beijing, China e-mailed me a greeting card that said, Happy National Temporary Insanity Day (USA). I checked my friend’s information and yes, that’s a real American holiday.

Fenny and I discussed ways to celebrate transient insanity. We phoned my most uninhibited friend, Ruth for ideas. She wasn’t available for frivolity with us because she was playing Bunco that evening.

Bunco isn’t momentary insanity. I consider it permanent. Every month my friend, Ruth, plays the game with a group of women. I don’t understand Bunco-mania, even though I’ve enjoyed insanity many times.

I played the game only once and lost miserably. The most inane moment that evening–the hostess asked for five dollars to pay for prizes, none of which I’d won. No way am I daft enough to spend money that way; Fifty cents, maybe, but not five dollars.

Fenny and I pondered half the day, wanting a great moment of lunacy that wouldn’t last permanently.

When Fenny and I first married, we often enjoyed brief insanity. If a nonsensical-fit hit, we’d rise from bed at 1 a.m. to chomp down double-decker hamburgers, hot apple pie and ice cream, usually at the Denver Airport restaurant.

This day, our brains cells blanked out. Have we spent too many years sane and lost our knack for playful craziness? Now, that is an insane state. I sure hope it’s temporary.

 Recently, my husband’s cousin sent me a list of strange uses for certain items. These lists roam the cyber-world, probably intended to increasing sales for various products.

This latest round of tips stated that warm oatmeal eases arthritis pain in a sufferer’s hands. I e-mailed several people with arthritis, asking if they’d try the method and let me know the results.

My writing friend, Zena said, “Save the oatmeal for mixing into your meat loaf. Warm water does equally well for arthritic hands.”

My brother e-mailed back that his wife would experiment but he insisted she insert her oatmeal-covered hand in a plastic baggie, so they could save and serve the cereal for breakfast.

Fenny and I were headed for bed when I mentioned my brother’s e-mail. My WMWM (World’s Most Wonderful Man ) said, “I’ve noticed that extreme frugality runs in your family.”

I replied, “My brother’s simply promoting two health remedies with one serving of oatmeal… for anti-arthritis pain and for a well-fed digestive system.”

Fenny said, “I’m glad neither of us needs a bag of warm oatmeal to cure arthritis pain.”

“If you did, I wouldn’t feed you the cereal. I’d bake the bagful as oat biscuits for the neighbor’s dog,” I didn’t mention that Fenny might unknowingly eat dog biscuits with his dinner.

“Poor creature,” said Fenny as he turned out the bedroom light and moments later snored. Which creature? The neighbor’s dog or Fenny-the-biscuit-eater? Tee-hee!

• The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. – Calvin Trillin, journalist and author

        An online writing friend sent me this quote. My children would vow that Calvin Trillin meant me when writing those lines.                  

       Calvin Trillin loves to eat, I suspect, based on the titles of books he’s written. His mother probably was like me. We eat because our tummies demand food and our bloodstreams threaten instant, overwhelming fatigue unless offered sufficient glycogen energy (better known as blood sugar).

       Calvin says his Mom cooked ONE original meal that lasted, as leftover’s, for thirty years. Now that is creative.

       I gave my kids an original meal at least every third day, although dishes on other days began their life as leftovers. They were truly original, however. I couldn’t bear to throw away food that hadn’t sprouted blue or white fuzz. (However, nothing ever sat in my ‘fridge more than 48 hours, so items seldom grew whisker-like toppings.)

       I do not enjoy cooking but I consider myself creative at the job. Over the years of preparing several thousand dishes, I’ve successfully combined unusual items, disguising them with enough flavors to fully hide the meal’s actual composition.

        At our house, the most unappetizing meals in the universe never slid into the garbage disposal nor was one bite wasted—at least while I sat on guard at the table during family mealtimes. However, I never wandered into another room when partly-filled plates sat in front of our kids. If I departed their food disappeared far too quickly, especially when the dog and cat lounged under the table.

       Our oldest daughter loves to cook. She says her culinary fascination started as self-defense. When she visits us, she takes over meal preparation and I originally appreciated that. But she cooks foreign foods—so foreign that no cuisine would claim them. And for the three of us, (her dad, me and her) she’ll prepare several gallons of an item, such as stew. We think her watery dish is stew, anyway.

             I won’t let her throw anything away, which means that we eat her one dish for her entire stay. Talk about leftovers–she surely could claim the championship for producing them. I should send her Calvin Trillin’s quote and insist he’s talking about her.

We have hundreds of spiders around our place and I’ve also wiped off a face full of web.

When our children were preschoolers, we visited the library every two weeks and they picked out books for me to read aloud. A favorite was “Millions of Spiders”, about a little old man who refused to clean spiders out of his kitchen cupboards. He explained the ecological value of these creatures. Because of that book, neither my children or I kill spiders…as long as they stay where they belong.

The spiders around our property are common and harmless brown ones with banded yellow and brown legs. They grow rather large, but probably keep away insects we wouldn’t want.

Zanna washed the guest room window. The next day, that shiny clean pane was inhabited (outside) by a nickel-sized brown spider on a web that covered three-fourths of this window. I wondered how any self-respecting bug would wander into a web in such a spot…about one inch from the glass.

For several days, brownie spider sat in one spot near the center of his web. And I wondered about his level of intelligence. He didn’t seem too smart, considering where he’d chosen to spin a web. I worried that he might die of malnutrition.

Finally I left the guest room shade up at night and a light on, hoping that would attract moths to the web. I wasn’t sure if moth’s wandered around this time of the year, but on my walk scared one from a rose bush I passed. I was relieved. Brownie might eat after all. However, the only critter I saw in his web was a skinny mosquito type that appeared all hair-size sticks, not fat food.

After a week of watching this poor spider never catch a decent meal, I caught him in a jar and released him on a bush. However, another brown spider already claimed that greenery and ran my brownie off. I hope he survived.

His first action was okay. “I can’t read the small numbers on our wireless phone,” he said. ” So I bought a new model.”I agreed that now our caller ID numbers show up better.

Fenny, an engineer, loves electronic gadgets. Unwilling to trash the old phone, he installed it on our dining table twenty feet from the new kitchen counter phone and visible from anywhere in our great room. The phones apparently winked at each other and started trouble.

Soon the kitchen phone rang. I decided to not answer. Then the tabled phone rang, called by the first telephone. When I hung up the second phone it immediately redialed the first phone. Back and forth, two wireless machines dialed each other. Fenny didn’t believe me until friends sipping tea with me during this phone mania assured him I’d correctly explained the problem.

To silence the second phone I unplugged it, not knowing that merely stopped the battery charger. In desperation, I dug out the battery and broke two fingernails in the process.

Fenny insisted we needed both phones to avoid a dash from the kitchen counter to the dining table. Not run twenty feet? I’m not that decrepit.

But this phone fiasco’s half of Fenny’s brain lapses. He has two phones (why two?) in his 12 foot by 10 foot office.

We’ve also had a phone on my bedside table for eight years, a phone we’ve used once. However, I like the two red lights atop that machine. They help my find my bed at night after I trot to the bathroom.

Five phones for two people who receive about three phone calls a week. Not counting messages from telemarketers, our reason for caller ID. Although we’re on the ‘Do Not Call list’, we regularly receive unsolicited messages. We often hear “This is an urgent message for Susan… somebody-or-other,” computer-generated calls for whomever had our number three years ago–surely from scammers.

Five phones! Crazy! And not one is a land-based line, needed during power failures.

Hmm, I’ll set the caller ID dining table model on Fenny’s bedside stand. Let him answer our non-existent calls.

I decided to give one phone to my cousin Froggis and his wife, Dianna, when they move into a new home. But Dianna said, “You didn’t notice six phones in our home; by my easy chair, Froggis’s lounger, the couch, the front door, in Froggis’s office and near the back door? And my cell-phone, necessary since Froggis is hospitalized with a stroke and I travel often.”

“No phones in your bedrooms”, Fenny asked.

“None,” Dianna replied. “None in the bathrooms, either.”

“The bathrooms!” Fenny said, a glint in his eyes.

“NO WAY,” I said. “You’d electrocute yourself in the shower. And what about a land-line to use during power outages?”

“I keep a land-line in my office closet,” my favorite engineer said.

“You can’t find things in full daylight. I can see you in the dark fumbling through shelves for that phone.”

“If it’s dark during a power failure, I’ll be asleep.”

“You were awake during our last power outage,” I reminded him. “We couldn’t cook supper so ate at a restaurant.”

“If we went out, we didn’t need a phone,” said Fenny with a smirk.

Fenny mentions often that we don’t own cell phones. For the two hundred messages no one ever sends us? I refuse to pay for such extravagance.

Oh, NO! A few minutes ago I found three old telephones in our garage! What is that man thinking of? If he didn’t smile with that special shiny gleam in his blues eyes and then hug me gently, I’d have his brain checked by a psychiatrist.

 I suppose I can put up with eight telephones. At least until my next trip to the Goodwill Donation center.

           Computers are stupid. Their innermost brain, a series of zeros and ones, respond only as directed by programmers.

          Occasionally, the machines appear to think. However, my recent experience with computers confirms their ignorance.

         Years ago I set up ‘Google alerts’—orders to a search engine to tell when my name surfaces on the internet. Many writers receive these alerts, to catch anyone who publishes their material without first informing authors. Search engines like Google deploy software called ‘Web crawlers’ or ‘spiders’, to locate names and send these messages.

          In the early 1800’s, a gentleman named General White sent records, probably surveying information, to a Kaskaskia, Illinois resident. His reports were recorded by Illinois State Historical Society. He’s mentioned in the accounts as ‘Gen’l White’. I’m not related to this man. I don’t even know the location of Kaskaskia, Illinois.

          Google’s spider can’t read. It decided that the ‘l’ in Gen’l White’s abbreviated name, ‘Gen’l’ is an ‘i’, the last letter in my name, Geni.

          Soon I received a daily report that I contributed to the Kaskaskia, Illinois historical records in 1819. Nearly two hundred years ago! The computer thinks Gen’l White and Geni White are one person.      

          I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I’d certainly not return to life with the same name or body I previously inhabited. What’s the fun in that?

           I refuse to label my age of seventy-four as old. I certainly don’t desire a hundred and ninety.

          Wait! This could be worthwhile. Should I inform Guinness World Records? Talk about senior citizen privileges! Media around the world would interview me. I could join a circus and travel the planet—write time-travel books or hilarious history about events of two centuries I’ve supposedly lived through. ‘Gen’l White reporting here. This year’s Kaskaskia purebred horse race was won by a three-legged burro.’

          Tempting, but I couldn’t prove the age statistic. Other than canceling the alert, how do I resolve this problem?  E-mail Google?

•                “Dear Google spider boss,
•                Your web-crawler thinks an ‘l’ is an ‘i’
•               and has relegated me to ancient history.
•                 IF a human reads this, please inform
•               your software of the truth.
•                 I am Geni, not Gen’l.”

          However, fixing software can take hours. Who’d search for one small glitch in a complicated program?

          Maybe I should inform Kaskaskia, Illinois about what an illustrious citizen they apparently have. Maybe they’d publish my little tale and shame Google into reform?

          I Googled that city for the name of their newspaper. Recent census report shows nine people live in Kaskaskia! No newspaper. I tried the county seat, Chester, and their newspaper, the Sun Times. Their chat line offered hookups with sexy single women. I’m too old for that, and prefer my husband, anyway.

My waistline betrayed me, grabbed ten pounds from restaurant menus and hid them around my belly. This spring my warm weather clothes snickered as I jammed my baby-elephant body into them. But I wasn’t fully aware of the problem until I stretched a tape measure around my middle. I have an old woman’s waist! Since I’m only seventy-four that’s totally unacceptable.

Only one recourse—new clothes! What woman minds shopping for new clothes?

I happily walked two miles to my favorite clothing store, Goodwill. The exercise removed calories but I had no idea how few. Two miles burned up less than two hundred calories. That’s barely one-eighteenth pound of rump fat…my rump fat. Sigh!

At Goodwill I sorted through racks for cotton shirts. Why do designers make hefty-sized women’s outfits with horizontal stripes? Do they want to shame us with chests and posteriors that appear twice their real size? Or do they think we’re lumberjacks with bulging bodies we want to show off? Or that we want people to believe we’re Mr. Universe contestants? Sorry, but our bulges inhabit different spots on our anatomy than prize winning body builders.

I hunted for half-price clothing, determined I’d not wear such sizes for more than a month or two. Styles are limited at Goodwill, but I persevered and found eight garments for $2.50 each. Lugging them home surely would remove more weight from my arms and back.

Didn’t work that way. I used less than three hundred calories on my walk. Ingesting three hundred calories of solid food takes five minutes or less and can be slurped down faster, if in liquid form. So unfair that we ingest trouble in a few minutes from which escape takes months.

Hmm. Seems this truth holds for more than over-eating. Almost every problem can happen far faster than recovery from the consequences.

 Since Fenny is an engineer, electronic gadgets fascinate him. He recently bought us a digital scale.

I like weighing each morning, but this scale lies to me. After I check pounds each morning, I exercise, again go to the bathroom, and reweigh myself, from curiosity. This crazy scale insists I have gained half a pound in the last fifteen minutes.

I haven’t told Fenny that his delight, the scale, is unfaithful and untruthful. Nor that I think the gadget laughs at me and shows a greater weight just to play tricks.

This scale works only if in contact with bare skin. Four gray pads on the surface indicate where to place your feet, two pads for heels and two for the balls of a person’s feet. Stepping on these pads feels like standing on four miniature ice bergs.

I tried to fool the machine in many ways, such as standing on one heel and the ball of my other foot. The scale refused to weigh me.

Finally, I bent over, my hands on the ‘ball’ pads, toes on the heel areas. The scale said, “error”, but did give me a weight (wrong). But in this bent-over position my pudgy tummy felt too squeezed and objected.

So I give up and will cease to argue with this weight-guessing gadget. An approximate poundage is okay, anyway.

I grew up in colder climes, where my parents treated ladybugs with reverence. We were never allowed to kill these helpful garden inhabitants.

Somehow, I convinced Fenny ladybugs were highly important treasures. Now, every spring, he buys fifteen-hundred ladybug larva in a mesh bag. I’m ordered to spread the creatures around our property.

I wonder why the supply must be replenished yearly, but these orange and black-spotted bugs apparently vanish during our winter rains.

Holding the mesh bag, in one hand, I wander by our bushes, trees and flowers and vigorously but carefully shake out the insects. I don’t want to damage any ladybugs.

But how to successfully remove hundreds from my hair–and brush off without harm ones that tickle my arms and neck? Why do they light on me instead of the roses? I’m not green or a leaf-growing yard ornament. Much as I respect these creations of God, I’d prefer they crawled elsewhere than on my skin.

Eventually I empty the bag. Then I pray the critters are safe, and after weeks of imprisonment in the nylon sack are ready to gorge in what I hope is ladybug heaven…our yard.