Beignets & Golf Clubs

The weekend before last, my Beloved & I had a delightful time. After the boys went with their father, we walked around Crocker Park for awhile. We decided to have dinner at Brio & sat on a bench with our buzzer to await a table. The bench was a beautiful, richly-hued wood. When J stood up to go to the bathroom, I saw why. Her backside was striped, like a denim tiger skin! When she checked mine, it was the same. Apparently, the maintenance crew had oiled the bench for glamour and it had not dried, due to the damp in the air. Luckily, it all washed out. We giggled all the way to our table over our stripey butts. Dinner was fine, but the service was quite slow & indifferent & I always feel that Brio is a touch overpriced. The food is fine, but for those kinds of prices, I'd rather skip the chains. For dessert, we opted for beignets from the stand by the bookstore. We sat at a little outdoor table & enjoyed them with a vanilla latté (me) and warm milk (J). After poking around in the bookstore, we went home & to bed.

In the morning, after luxuriating in bed, we went for more beignets! Thus fortified, we headed into Tremont for the Festival of the Flea at Pilgrim church & the Tremont Arts Festival. We found a bunch of books for a little bit of nothing & a set of golf clubs in a butter yellow case for $5. J is so excited to once again have her own golf clubs. After depositing those in the car, we went on to the arts festival. We looked at some wonderful altered art jewelry, were accosted by a pushy children's book author peddling his wares, ate fabulous arepas filled with a creamy guacamole concoction, visited with a number of dogs and met Tricia Dykers Koenig of Covenant Network. I'd had no idea she's based in Cleveland. I really value their work. www.covenantnetwork.org is their website address. We stopped on the way home for a drink on the Winking Lizard patio, then watched a movie at home. After climbing back into bed for awhile, we roused ourselves enough to throw a couple of Marie Callender's pot pies & a cherry pie into the oven. We had dinner in front of the t.v. before retiring to our books.

Sunday, we went back to the local church that was the first area church we visited. Saturday, God had nudged me, saying, "Hey, you should check out that first church again." I thought it wouldn't hurt to at least check the website to see what time the service is. When I opened the website, however, I saw that the church is just beginning the discernment process on whether to declare themselves "open & affirming"! They've had a task force checking things out & were holding an informational lunch after worship. So, we went. As soon as we walked in, we saw one of the friendly lesbians who had talked to us when we attended in early June. She remembered our names, welcomed us back & asked us to stay for the lunch. People were very friendly, there was ample evidence of social justice leanings and the sermon was a dialogue between the two pastors, on difference. It was really good & really encouraging. We stayed for lunch & by the end of it, an older couple had gotten us to sign up to host coffee hour with them! So, I am going to call the pastor & see what he thinks about me doing my internship there & how likely it is that the congregation would support me for in-care status when the time comes for that. He told me to call anytime, so I am taking him up on that.

After church, we came home, fell into bed for awhile, then cleaned house & hung fairy pictures. Our bedroom is all fairyed-out & I even found a Linda Ravenscroft calendar for next year. Once the boys got home, we took Pie to the pool. Boot had homework & although I urged him to bring it to the pool like I was doing, he knows himself well enough to realize he'd be distracted down there. So, he stayed home. What a responsible kid! He is very serious about his school work. The kids had already eaten, so we stayed at the pool until it was getting dark so that Pie could enjoy this last hurrah of summer swimming. Once they were tucked snug in bed, we had Swiss steak for dinner. We watched some t.v., I read a faiy tale to J & then she went to sleep while I spent time with Reformation studies.