friends

Argenta farmers market

Suzy Taylor Oakley food, friends, fun, health, nature

Don’t forget, locavores, Saturday is the grand opening of the Certified Arkansas Farmers Market in downtown North Little Rock (the 400 block of Main Street). The market has been open since May 3, but this weekend will have more hoopla, complete with a ribbon cutting, a live bluegrass band (no canned music for these fine folks), free beefalo burgers (free food — who could resist that?) and maybe even a few juicy, vine-ripened tomatoes. And all kinds of berries and other delicacies are expected. (If you didn’t see my article on Page 5A of today’s NLR Times, rush out and buy a copy now!)

Jody Hardin, Barbara Armstrong and the other farmers have been working hard to bring us fresh, locally grown, pesticide free, healthy produce and other items. One woman sells organic dog biscuits and a natural potion that stopped her dog’s itchies. It wasn’t in my budget the day I talked to her (and my dogs haven’t been scratching too much lately), so I haven’t bought any yet, but as soon as itchy season hits us, I’m all over that booth.

Do your part this weekend. Come out and say hey to your neighbors, support your local farmers and have a beefalo burger on the house (donations accepted, of course).

See ya there!

Goodbye to a good man

Suzy Taylor Oakley family, friends, God, health, inspiration, medical

My friend Donny died yesterday. Well, as an adult he was known as Don — by co-workers and others who haven’t known him as long as I have (more than 30 years). I think some of his co-workers probably still called him Donny, though. He had worked at the Kroger in Batesville since he was 16.

I tried to call him Don to his face. But to me he was still Donny, my brother’s buddy.

He was a good man.

Later I’ll write more, when I have permission from Don’s wife to publish a photo of him, plus maybe what the obituary said. She was devastated yesterday, and not at all sure how to tell their son, Josh.

Today is Josh’s 12th birthday.

Pray for them.

No complaints, Day 2

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, God, humor, inspiration, work

Today is technically Day 2, because I started not complaining yesterday. So I have a day and a half under my belt already!

I did a pretty decent job today, but I want to ask you whether these count:

1. Observing, as I drove home from my job at 9 p.m., that the gas at the corner is 10 cents higher than it was this morning, while remembering that last week it rose 11 cents in a day. That’s a 21-cent increase in less than a week! Does making such observations count as complaining? If everyone complains about the price of gas, does it count?

2. Having the phrase “drama queen” leap to mind in reference to another person. Maybe that’s not complaining; maybe it’s judging.

We’ll work on judging next week, right after I’ve mastered the art of complaining without sounding like I’m complaining.

Just do it!

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, God, inspiration, work

“Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.” Philippians 2:14-15

Man, I wish I hadn’t gone to church this morning! Harold issued a challenge that was long overdue for me: Stop whining!

I don’t think he actually used the word whining, but he did quote liberally from Philippians 2, which includes the admonition not to complain, with plenty of explication on why we shouldn’t.

I even copied down Verses 13-17 (in two translations) in my composition notebook while I listened to the rest of the sermon. (Gonna pin the copied verses to my cubicle wall at my job, which is what I complain most about.) It’s funny how you can read a passage many times and be only marginally affected by it until, one day, someone makes it come alive for you. That’s what Harold did this morning when he told me the reasons I should stop complaining. It was like a poke in the eye.

Because I’ve been doing a lot of it lately.

I could philosophize for hours about the virtues of obeying these verses, but all I’m gonna do is commit the next seven days to doing it.

And I have to proclaim it publicly so that you all can hold me accountable. Another thing Harold said is that God not only brought us into relationship with Himself, he brought us into relationship with each other, even those we haven’t met. And we sang about needing each other and praying for each other.

I need you.

Because not complaining for seven whole days ain’t gonna be easy.

So, friends, if you hear me complain, shut me up. But do it gently, please.

A brand new day

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, inspiration, work

My hardworking reporter DJ left me today. There is a whole other post in my head about what we have meant to each other as co-workers in the five months we’ve known each other, but today I simply want to share with you the last story he gave me (he edited it just a bit, and of course I couldn’t resist tweaking it just a tad myself. Wouldn’t be me if I didn’t, would it, Deej?).

One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and a sign that read: “I am blind, please help.”

A creative editor was walking by and stopped to observe. She saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat. She dropped in more coins and, without asking for permission, took the sign and rewrote it.

She returned the sign to the blind man and left. That afternoon the editor returned to the blind man and noticed that his hat was full of bills and coins.

The blind man recognized her footsteps and asked if it was she who had rewritten his sign and wanted to know what she had written on it.

The editor responded: “Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the message a little differently.” She smiled and went on her way.

The new sign read: “Today is Spring, and I cannot see it.”

Sometimes we just need to change our strategy. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always gotten.

Thanks, friend.

Yellow

Suzy Taylor Oakley family, food, friends, fun, inspiration, nature

Today’s color is yellow. I have to admit, it’s not one of my favorite colors — unless it’s BRIGHT, like these mums. Although my laundry-room story will seem to contradict that…

butterfly and yellow mums

My laundry room is bright yellow, although my plan was to paint it “butter yellow.” Bruce had decided to surprise me by painting it while I was in California for a wedding. Because of a mix-up at the paint store or a miscommunication on my part (or maybe just Bruce’s not knowing what I meant by “butter yellow”), it ended up being more what I would call canary yellow. But laundry rooms should be bright, right? So it has remained “canary yellow” for nearly eight years.

Sorry there’s no picture of the laundry room. You just get the mums today. (On White day, I linked to a similar picture.)

Tomorrow’s color is brown, quite possibly my least favorite color, although there are some wonderful browns out there nowadays. Still, it might be a challenge to come up with pictures to illustrate what I like about brown.

Added 03/08/08: I found this picture on the last day in the Week of Color, so I just had to add it. It’s a rose from a 40th-anniversary cake I made last year, modeled on the couple’s wedding cake.

yellow cake rose

It's not easy being green

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, fun, inspiration, nature

It seems Jerusalem got sidetracked by the little snowfall we had overnight, so she has postponed her green post until Wednesday. I had just spent a few minutes picking out my green pics when I saw her note, so I am ahead of the game — a rare thing nowadays. I’m too tired to write about what my green pictures mean to me, anyway. So I will take a day off with Jerusalem and go green on Wednesday.

White

Suzy Taylor Oakley food, friends, fun, humor, inspiration, nature

It’s almost bedtime, and I nearly forgot about Jerusalem’s Week of Color challenge to celebrate spring. Isn’t a Week of Color a great idea?

Because I work mainly with the left side of my brain, my job is not — no matter how hard I wish it could be — to work with artsy things. So I try, when I can, to provide an “alternative perspective” (some might call it “comic relief”).

When I got to thinking about “white,” I thought I was going to fail the Day 2 assignment (Day 1 was pink, but I didn’t refer to it — my photo yesterday just happened to contain pink). Then, as often happens this time of night, I thought about my favorite bedtime treat: Old-Fashioned Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt. So here is my entry in the White category:

white_frozenyogurt

Then I looked at Whitney’s pink picks and remembered that I had some white pics in my previous posts: this and this.

So I’m not such a loser after all!

Mission accomplished. Now, pardon me while I go eat my frozen yogurt while it’s still frozen.

Hawk

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, inspiration, volunteering

I’ve been meaning to introduce you to Sharon’s blog. She started it last week.

The rest of us write about silly stuff sometimes, but it appears that Sharon plans to use her platform as a way to call us to action. At least that’s how she has started out.

I’m sure she will write about light topics, too, but for now, in these beginning days of her blog, we get to see what a tender heart she has for those who don’t have homes, don’t have parents, don’t seem to have hope.

We serve a God of hope, and Sharon is tireless in her efforts to make sure the “less than” know that they are fiercely loved by their Creator. She is an advocate for the voiceless, faceless people we pass by every day in our busyness, sometimes without a thought to how we might make a difference in their lives.

Sharon is an educator with a servant’s heart. Let’s let her teach us.