Oh, I’m at it again.  Falling behind on writing and forgetting to post.  Then I wonder why nobody’s reading this thing anymore.  Gee, why would that be the case?  I’m alive and well, just been busy and traveling again.  This trip was actually planned, believe it or not, well in advance.  My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last weekend (technically the date was October 2, but they had the party on the 10th.  We traveled to Nebraska and saw my dad’s whole side of the family, pretty much.  It’s weird how much his siblings’ families have fractured over the years.  I have six first cousins on that side, five of whom were at the party, plus me and my sister.  But I hadn’t seen any of them since we were kids, really.  I can’t actually remember the last time I saw any of them.  All of my dad’ds sibblings have been divorced (two of them have two divorces behind them, the other one).  My aunt is actually on husband number 4 as her 3rd husband died a couple of years ago.  Most of this was details that I was already aware of.  But my oldest cousin is separated from his wife, and while one could attribute that to being the child of divorce, his parents didn’t actually split up until he was long out of the house! I just share all of this as facts, however, knowing that the circumstances behind marriages ending are as various as the stars in the sky.  I don’t pretend to know what these families have gone through, as I hardly know the individuals involved!

That’s one of those things that is weird for me.  I barely know some of my family, and I guess this should bother me more than it does.  But we’re separated by geography and circumstances and just plain not knowing one another.  I can’t imagine what their image is of me and my sister, since we were not only pastor’s kids but also married pastors.

On top of all of this, my sister and her husband drove down for the anniversary, left the party early to drive home to South Dakota, and his last Sunday was the 11th.  The moving van came Monday morning and they moved into their new house in Wisconsin Wednesday.  So despite my life feeling a bit busy, I’m experiencing nothing compared to the chaos that is my sister’s life right now.

Meanwhile, I am determined to get back into a routine (I think I’ve written that before…).  Today’s Friday which is always a weird day to try to get things done, but since I have to put together my lesson plan for Sunday’s Bible study and also plan a skeleton idea of worship for November 1st so the praise team can practice on Tuesday, I guess it won’t be a typical Friday for me.  Monday will include a staff meeting and a dentist appointment (the 8th one this year, I think, or is it 9th?).  But I can handle it, I’m just going to bring my stuff to work on for worship and Bible study and stay in Hudson for the day.

As for the title of this post, it’s from an episode of Gilmore Girls.  The characters are talking about how funny the words “Oy” and “poodle” are.  Since I saw my grandma’s poodle this week, it seems appropriate.