Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: Begin at the End

I don’t know how many of you actually noticed that I promised a sunrise picture at the end of last week’s jibber-jabber and didn’t deliver, but at least one of you did!

“You said you were going to end with a sunrise picture. Your editor didn't catch that?”

My editor only sees my words and doesn’t see the pictures until after I post it, so no, she didn’t catch it.

I knew I’d missed it, but here’s the deal. The addition of the sunrise photo would’ve pushed my printed pages to eleven with just a few words and the picture on that page. Then I’d have to pay extra postage and I didn’t want to do that. Sometimes, there are pictures on my blog site that aren’t in the printed version for the very same reason — and I considered doing that this time, too. Only, I thought the picture was too pretty to miss.

I’ll start next week with it, I told myself.

And so, we begin at the end, with the sunrise photo.

Last Sunday I lost a ring that’s precious to me.

Last Sunday I found the ring.

While it was all fresh in my mind, I wrote the story — and published it.

I think most of you have read the story and a few of you even commented back to me. My most favorite comment was this one. “So happy the ring was found...or not lost to begin with. But I'm leaning toward Angel Delivery Services.”

Angel Delivery Services.

Isn’t that great?!

This past week, I opened my freezer and saw a package of pepperoni. It's been in there a while. Wondering if it was still good, I opened the pack, took out a frozen disc, and popped it in my mouth. It tasted exactly like pepperoni. Imagine that.

"It's time to use it," Me said to Myself.

"But how?" Myself asked.

"I don't know."

I let it rattle around in my head for a while. I'd bought an economy pack of pepperoni because it was the better value, and I hadn't used it all in the recipe I'd bought it for, so I froze the rest. I didn't care for the original dish and wouldn't make that one again.

How about a Stromboli? I have puff pastry in the freezer as well.

I went to the computer and asked Copilot, my artificial intelligence buddy.

“Can I make a Stromboli with pepperoni and puff pastry?” I asked.

No answer.

I waited a few minutes and tried again.

Still no answer.

I waited longer.

No answer.

I tried several times over the course of a couple of hours with the same result.

No answer.

The 59 Club met that afternoon. That’s what I call our CDI class. Our Contenders Discipleship Initiative class had more people at the beginning, but over time everyone else has dropped out except for us three old gals — and we were all born in the same year. Can you guess what year that was?

“Do you know how to make Stromboli with pepperoni and puff pastry?” I asked.

“Isn’t it made with pizza dough?” Jody asked.

“You can make it with puff pastry, too,” Annette said. “Why don’t you ask AI?”

“I did but he’s not talking to me.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Later, the news reported Microsoft was having issues and both Outlook email service and Copilot weren’t working.

The girls gave me a general recipe.

“I love Stromboli,” Pastor and teacher said. “What time’s dinner?”

“It’s for Sunday night movie night,” I said.

“She’s bringing it to you,” Jody said.

We laughed.

Our class is so eclectic. We can go from learning, to laughter, to tears all in the same class.

Towards evening, Copilot was up and running again. I found a recipe for Stromboli and it’s very much like the one the girls gave me. I had everything I needed except for cheese.

In researching Stromboli recipes, I discovered you can use just about any cheese, except for cheddar, which was the only kind in my fridge.

“Can we go to Walmart tomorrow?” I asked Mike as we watched our evening shows.

“What for?” he asked.

“I need cheese and I could get Hatch a bag of cat food while we’re there.”

“Peg, they’re forecasting snow. I don’t wanna get salt all over the car,” he replied.

I didn’t really think the roads would be salted. The ground was much too warm for it to stick to the roads and the road crews would know that and not spread salt unnecessarily.

“Mark’s opened back up for breakfast, we could stop for breakfast.” Who doesn’t like breakfast out?

He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. Mike gets quiet when he doesn’t want to answer me. I’m used to that and know to bide my time. Either the answer will stay no or he’ll come back and say let’s go. Either way, I was okay with it. I could make chili instead of Stromboli and do the Stromboli for the next week.

The next morning the snow was indeed falling. It was so pretty. The dogs didn’t seem to care one way or the other. I just stood there and watched the fluffy white stuff drift lazily from the sky for a few minutes while Raini and Bondi did their business.

When Mike got up, he came walking out into the kitchen, buttoning his shirt. “Want to go Sam’s Club?” he asked.

“Sure.”

And just like that, we were off for an adventure.

The trees were so pretty dressed in their winter white.

You could see the snow line on the mountain tops.

As we made our way to Dickson City, we passed through places that had a lot of snow and other places that had none.

“It looks like Steak n Shake is out of business,” I said. We had meant to have lunch there sometime.

“I guess we won’t stop there,” Mike said.

The house is gone, the steps are still there.

The wire sculpture of a person sitting outside the art gallery, reading a book, in Clark’s Summit was dressed for the weather.

We were out two other times this week, both of them ahead of the snow.

Sugar had a vet check on her paw.

I took a couple of four road pictures on that trip.

As soon as we crossed the bridge on our little creek, I saw our resident hawk.

Mike stopped and I took a series of photos.

Somebody really likes Christmas.

Sugar doesn’t travel well. She both poops and vomits in the kennel and I had to smell it the whole way to the vet’s office. Once there, the very kind staff cleaned up her kennel for me.

“Any issues?” Vickie, the vet-tech on this day asked.

“Not really, except she’s been eating like a hog. I used to fill her bowl once every four or five days but since her operation, I’ve had to fill it every other day!”

Dr. Lori came in and examined her “She’s doing really well. You can’t even see where the claws had gone through her paw.”

The next time we went out was to have the oil changed in the car.

I took road pictures this day, too. The Susquehanna, both ways.

I took this picture because it stirred something in me.

How brave, I thought.

A man stood on the corner holding a sign that said, "Repent From Sin." Cars sped by. Some people, like me, agreed with the message. Others likely thought he was a fool. Many probably never gave him a second thought.

I don't know anything about him. I don't know where he came from, what church he attended, or whether anyone ever stopped to talk with him. Maybe not a single life was changed that day. Then again, maybe there was.

It's easy to share our faith when we're surrounded by people who agree with us. It's much harder when there’s the possibility of criticism, eye-rolling, laughter, scorn, or outright rejection. So few of us are willing to risk that.

Yet there stood a man who had apparently decided that obedience to God mattered more than man's approval.

Maybe that's why I took the picture.

Not because of the sign, but because I admired the courage of the man holding it.

We had our Harvest Dinner at church last Sunday.

There was so much food!

So much food!

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We did invite our friends and neighbors and we had a nice turnout, but we could have fed half the county and still had leftovers.

I made a new recipe (for me) called Tennessee Onions and they were good, but I brought most of them home.