The View From My Fishbowl

I live in a house of 7 tormenting little brothers.

With the exception of one, I have grown up with all of these guys since they were barely walking (I actually remember ‘babysitting’ some of them!). Of those, with the exception of two, they are practically my little brothers, being in ministry together and our families spending much time together over the years. And of course, one of those really is my little brother, who urges them all on to bigger and better teasing. All of them, missing their own sisters to torment, heap on my poor head all the teasing they can muster.

They call me Maid – affectionately so, I like to imagine. They like to choose interesting outfits in town that they think I should wear, they like to make up all sorts of deficiencies in my completed tasks, and they all are convinced that I owe my brother $20 from a bargain we made 15 years ago. (As I recall, I paid my debt, but they all think otherwise.)

It’s almost like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, except I really am a sister and not a wife captured against my will.

*sigh*

At the end of the day (and usually in the middle of the day too), it is very nice to have my own room to lock myself into. I’m fairly certain I would start knocking heads together otherwise.

Oh…here’s proof.

His depths are immeasurable.

How can I presume to have dredged His grace and peace when I have only rippled the surface? An hour with Him shows but a thimble-full of His grace spilled on the thirsty sands of my soul. A morning in His presence gives only a cupful from the ocean of His peace.

Satisfaction in the moments is incomparable to the joy found in living in His presence.

…is pathetic.

I bought three plants full-grown: basil, mint, and cilantro. 

Here’s the mint:

It’s not looking very hopeful for him. 

My original cilantro plant died. Looking droopy and turning yellow, we cut him back and used what cilantro had already grown. He didn’t grow back. So I planted some seeds, which I’ve had success with in the past, so we’ll see what happens.

My basil plant is actually doing very well. I cut basil off of it for one or two meals a week, and yet it continues to grow more stalks and leaves. Now that there is no danger of frost, I’ve moved it outside where it can get full sun and rain.

And last, but certainly not least, I planted some lavender seeds in the middle of a bed of wave petunias. There has been quite a bit of bird activity in this area of the yard, so I’m just hoping that something comes up.

My four herbs…like helpless little children, dependant on a neglectful mother. Pretty sad, isn’t it?

Paul the Critic is a ‘tag’ story that has been going on for a bit now. If you haven’t read any of it up to now, you may or may not want to get started. If you want to go back and read all that came before, start here which goes from Round 1, Part 1 to Round 2, Part 2. Round 2, Part 3 is here, and there is nice little summation of important characters here. I was tagged for the next part, and let me tell you…this was tough.

The story had, up to this point, a LOT of loose ends. I tried to tie some of them up, but there are some things in the story that just don’t match up (even some direct contradictions from author to author) and make it very hard to find a resolution for. Some things I didn’t even try to resolve and for that I don’t really apologize. Part 4 seems to step back a bit from where Part 3 left off, but I felt it was important to establish some facts and a bit more background before the big mission.

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Inside the building, Sarah was now huddled in a corner, sobbing and feeling very alone indeed. The door swung shut as Richard exited her room and a stinging red mark across Sarah’s face showed how well their conversation had gone. He had been the start of this whole deal, and now it looked like he would be the end of it.

It all started almost a year ago, and Sarah’s mind flicked back to that carefree time in her life. At that time, she never would have guessed this to have happened. She was a successful biochemist in a veterinary institute, but quite frankly, she found the work to be a bit boring. Maybe it was all those sci-fi books she started checking out of the library, maybe it was her 30^th birthday, or maybe it was just Paul’s preoccupation in his own work that frustrated her. She felt that her life was dead-ended and although she was good at what she did and had opportunities to excel, she wasn’t quite sure which direction to go. That’s when she met Richard.

He bumped into her at the grocery store, and at the time it seemed a happy coincidence, though she bitterly realized now that it was purposely planned and she had been watched for months before it happened. They both were picking out mushrooms in the produce section, he had dropped something, they struck up a conversation which moved to a coffee shop next door over a couple mochas. “It seems appropriate we should have met over a fungus,” she thought wryly.

He was everything she thought she wanted: handsome, a bit older and more mature, always impeccably dressed, confident, just an edge of danger, and terribly interested in her and what she did. The more time they spent with each other, the more common interests they found, and she convinced herself she was falling in love. Soon he introduced her to some of his colleagues and began telling her a bit of what they did. A pack of liars, the whole lot of them! Richard told her about ‘saving lives’ and ‘top-secret government agency’ and other things that were not at all true, but coupled with his continuing attention, it was just what she was ready to hear. He was, to her, a dedicated man to a good cause. How wrong she had been about what cause he was dedicated to.

Too late had she realized what was happening. Too late had she recognized who they really were. Trying to make things right had only involved Paul. She should have gone to him as soon as she realized what Richard and his cronies were up to. But she tried to fix it herself, which had only gotten them in a big mess.

When Sarah realized who she was working for and what they were planning on doing with her research, she began going back and changing records. It was long and dangerous work, because if they caught her, she knew they would kill her on the spot and still have the information. But since this was something she started, she was determined she would finish it without anyone getting harmed. Leading Richard on was easy at first, but got harder as time went on. She thought that maybe he was lying to her even about his interest in her, but over time, she realized that he truly did care for her, and that was what made it so hard. If it had been a game, each of them trying to deceive the other, it would have been one thing. But it was entirely another when Richard divulged all and asked her to marry him. She agreed for a short time, just to keep up her farce, but she couldn’t hold him off indefinitely. Now the truth was out for all sides to see, and he was a man spurned, not only in his mission, but in love.

The formula Sarah came up with and was ready to hand over to the evil friends she had fallen in with was really for a strain of the flu. Though the victim would at first feel great fatigue, with a bit of rest and fluids they could be completely well within 12-16 hours. The most important thing was for them to relax, as getting concerned or stressed out about it only aggravated the virus and increased the time of infection. Richard and his group didn’t know this, however, and allowed Sarah to ‘work’ on it for months, while she secretly was destroying her previous research and changing her records to a bunch of jibberish. She would turn the ‘flu’ formula over to her employers with just enough evidence to convict them for what they were trying to do. Once it was in their hands, it was a simple job of the good guys with the appropriate big guns taking care of the bad guys and she would be safe and no harm would be done.

With a premonition that the whole thing had an incredible opportunity to go bad, she gave Paul a card for Christmas that year. There was a short poem in the card which read:

When all goes black and you don’t see sense
Take care of yourself and don’t get tense
From Santarem to Paris, from Calgary to Venice
Remember I love you and always meant it.

It was just the sappy sort of thing that Paul despised and tolerated only from his sister. She had to agree it was a pretty ridiculous poem, yet it was riddled with meaning and she could only pray it had come to his aid in time.

Plans didn’t, as was more than evident, go as planned. Somehow, the wrong people received word of what was going on. She tried to make contact with the CIA, but her time was no longer her own since she was suspected of betrayal, so she had not had the time or presence to explain fully. She knew they had bad intel, straight from her mouth as it were, but her only concern had been having Paul protected. Her life was in danger, and unfortunately, so was Paul’s, who she had talked about so freely to Richard. Even worse, she had to lie to Paul about what was going on, and she knew that he hated her at this moment…if he was still alive. She only hoped he remembered her silly poem, and most importantly, the message it contained. If Agent Brice had gotten to him in time, surely they would put all the pieces together.

So many ‘ifs’…but if they all fell in place, Paul  and Agent Brice would know that she had taken care of everything – everything, that is, except herself. She had known being carted off to the Amazon was a very real possibility, hence the hint of it in the poem, yet she really hadn’t thought it would happen that way in the end.

With a whimper, she slid further to the ground, ignoring the puddles of stench around her. She could still hear Richard’s voice screaming in the background, probably taking out more of his anger on an unfortunate underling. A man spurned in love is a dangerous thing indeed. 

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I plan on doing one more part and finishing up this round with some gratifying resolution. If anyone else wants to continue it from there (*cough* Tobi *cough*), it’s totally up to you. I’ll try to leave Paul in a good place so if no more of his story is ever written, at least he won’t be left half-dead.

I’m taking care of my cousins for the weekend, and we watched the Beverly Hillbillies tonight. I think this is possibly the best quote in the entire show, starting around 5:34 to the end of the clip:

It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

Jed Clampett in many ways reminds me of my grandfather…I could see him saying something quite similar to that given the options. He’s the country boy grandpa, tall, lanky, and sometimes the only one thinking level-headed!