Harvesting Grapes

-
Grape arbors seem so romantic, a part of sunny days where the owner sits on his tiled porch, overlooking the hills of grape vines and sipping wine as a breeze plays with his graying hair.

Unfortunately, someone has to pick the silly grapes. And double unfortunately, that someone is me.

I once received training so that I could work in the fields here in California. I think my certification has expired now, but no matter. The grapes I have to pick aren't in a field. They are on a vine climbing up the side of my house.

All I need is a good ladder and someone who wants to climb it so that I don't put myself in harms way. I'll just hold the ladder steady.

Or maybe I will hold the ladder while the supporting joint unlocks and knocks me underneath my nose.

Don't ask my how exactly it happened. Suffice it to know that it did. And I have the bruise to prove it. It extends from cheek to cheek and from the roof of my mouth up into my forehead.

This event has brough notice to the fact that there aren't ice packs with airholes in them. There must be a market out there for them. Maybe you should invent one and then give me a small percentage of your earnings as I provided the inspiration. I'll use the gift for something good. Like maybe buying grapes at the supermarket.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It is important when getting injuries to consider how you are going to explain them to your friends. While receiving massive bruises to your face from a ladder accident seems somewhat bizarre, it ranks, I believe, slightly less humiliating as, say, falling out of bed. Or take my injury for the day: I was walking, and I fell and scraped up my hands. (Both of them. The skin is off of a part of my palms.)

When someone asks how I got my injury, it seems hard for them to accept the simple answer: I was walking. Even my 3-year-old godson did not think that explanation was good enough. He asked over and over, "But WHY?"

He wouldn't understand the difficulty of giving truthful answers about injuries, because he attributes all of his injuries, regardless of the actual cause, to soccer wounds.
5:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stone of Help

-
Image
For the longest time I thought “Ebenezer” was a cup. Not just any cup, mind you, one of those old drinking vessels that might also be called goblet or chalice. My reasoning, you see, was all based on the hymn, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come.” To my little girl ears, it sounded like someone was proposing a toast, glass in hand to having made it so far. I know better now, but I still feel as if I am far more likely to toast how far I’ve made it than to set a large stone on end. But truthfully, I’m not very likely to do either. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not slighting the role God has had in bringing me as far as I am. And it’s not a lack of gratitude that turns me into being one of the nine lepers who never returned to thank Jesus for his healing. (At least, not always.) Instead, I’ve found that many times I don’t want to draw attention to what God has done for me because I worry it will make others feel as if I am intimating that I am a favor
Read more

The Crazy Market

-
There is a place here in Beijing that I (not so) affectionately call The Crazy Market. Imagine four floors of wall to wall shops, one shop selling the same thing that 15 other shops are selling, all displayed with bright colors and lights and each shop having two or three people who call out "Hello! What are you looking for?" "Hello! We give you good price!" "Hello! How many coats you want buy?" "Hello! We have your size shoe!" (This one makes me want to stop and say "Oh, I greatly doubt it.") "Hello! Nice pearls for you!" If you so much as look at an item, it is immediately assumed that you will buy it and so they call out "What is your highest price? We give you good discount." The only exception to this is the very bottom floor that is filled with every imaginable and unimagineable sea creature and various sea creature parts in various stages of life. This serves as a good aroma which frequently makes its way up t
Read more

The Right Trousers

-
Someone once told me that a friend of theirs received a package from an anonymous person that contained a pair of pants inside. It was mailed from across the country, yet the pair of pants was the right size and style for this particular person. Now I consider that to be a great mystery. But I also consider it a mystery that I wouldn't mind happening to me. Because, you see, playing with children wreaks havoc on my pants. Especially if I have the misfortune to sit down on some unknown substance which then leaves a very unfortunate colored stain in a very, very unfortunate spot. I may have to consider some creative patch work, but that, too, has its problems. I say this because I have another pair of pants that developed a hole the size of Montana near one of the back pockets. (Please do not speculate on the size of the pants based on the size of the hole.) My most beautiful sister, in what I thought was a display of pure magnanimous affection, bought me a couple of patches to fix t
Read more