To My Beloved Blogees,

Tonight I compensate for my too-long blogs by writing a too-short one. Isn't that great? What was it my granny used to say about balance?

Mike keeps me on my toes. When he read in my blog yesterday that the escalator in the plaza was BROKEN, he asked, Did you look on the other side of the plaza to see if the OTHER (in this case, UP) escalator was in service? No, I did not. He says I don't learn my lessons. What does he think I am, some sort of common sense genius?? I am a woman. I am not going to operate sanely and with practicality, like a man. I am going to react EMOTIONALLY every time. When the escalator said BROKEN, that's where it began and ended for me.

The big treat for the day was spotting something in the early evening thunder clouds. Stormy skies are quite the awesome thing in Florida. Back in the day, we used to have thunderstorms like clockwork. Ev-a-ree evening without fail, smack in the middle of swim practice, a huge thunder and lightning storm would break loose. The team would scramble out of the pool and huddle under the covered deck for safety. And watch. The Northshore Pool was on the Tampa Bay, quite the backdrop for a sizzling lightning display. It could be a little scary. These storms lasted exactly 20 minutes. No more, no less. They were so cozy. Well, they were, scary AND cozy. I wish you could have been there, it was the best. You would have loved it.

My sister and I always came home from the pool famished, and our favorite solution for starvation was Monk's white bread, toasted with butter and honey. Or Dark Karo syrup. I always imagined that was EXACTLY what the manna in the wilderness had to taste like. You know, the food God provided for His people the Israelites. The food that covered the ground like dew every morning for a singular forty years while they, the Israelites, all gazillion of them, wandered around because they didn't obey God, even though He had illustrated His mighty power and saving grace for them at every turn. And then poor Moses became the people's gripe target, whining day and night, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We're SICK of this manna, better we stayed in Egypt where we ate fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and garlic and onions. Oh, yeah, and we were slaves, but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. Oooooh, this did not sit well with the Lord. So He clobbered them with quail, which did not have an especially happy ending (see Numbers 11). I'm terribly afraid I would have been one of the complaining Israelites. First in line, big bad frown. I know it. I am fickle. Would have been just like my stepson, But we had this last night. 43,800 meals of manna in a row, wow, that might have tested my patience -- when in reality I had tested God's patience and that's why I would have been toasting in the Sinai desert for 40 LOOOOOONG years eating manna three times a day.

The Bible says manna tasted sweet, well, here, I'll quote the verse. Exodus 16:31b . . . and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Maybe the picture on the Monk bread sack of the monk in a long blue robe carrying a tray of his bread looked so spiritual that I automatically associated it with manna. I mean, let's face it, there is a spiritual lesson in manna. It looks forward to Jesus, the Bread from Heaven, Who will satisfy, and we will never be spiritually hungry again. Whereas manna was temporal and therefore didn't and couldn't sustain anyone eternally, even though it SEEMED eternal because there it was EV-A-REE day. And the toasted and honey part lined up with the wafers baked with honey. Oh yeah, and it was white, and the Monk bread in our kitchen was white. The only thing messing up my little comparison is the coriander seed. From what I can tell, they gathered the manna and it was a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground, vs. 14. They ground it to flour before they baked it into little cakes. At any rate, it translated into Monk's bread for me, etc., minus the parsley taste. Maybe there was no cilantro flavor, because the Bible says it was LIKE corriander seed. Whatever, it made it even more fun to eat because to my swim-soaked brains, Monk's toast with honey was EXACTLY like manna, no two ways about it. Besides, when I was little, I didn't know about the coriander part.

Oops, I forgot to say what was my treat, something I hadn't seen in years. A FULL HALF RAINBOW (well, I've heard of full circle rainbows, this was a whole half circle, oh rats, I don't know how to say it, a COMPETE half arc, touching the earth on both ends). It arched the sky in splendor, I mean, I didn't SEE where it touched the earth, but it did. It was SO CLOSE, too, like you wanted to swing from the arch. I should have had a list of all the Fiestware pastel colors that have ever been, because they were in that rainbow. (I think I got that backwards.)

Monk's bread is still on your grocer's shelf,
KEM