The merry month of May...

And I truly wish it were over... First ,there was Derby Day - sad...Then Mother's Day - fair... Elysha and I went to our favorite (well, one of them anyway) restaurant - TGIFriday's in West Orange. We had a coupon to skip the line (heh, heh, heh) and got right in, but that didn't help a lot... Sigh. I complained online and the manager called to apologize and said he'd try to get us some comps so that we'd come back. So it worked out ok. I had a nice dinner, even though it wasn't what I ordered. :-) Elysha also got me a nice necklace earring set that was on my wish list at Amazon.com - and a Maddux St. sign (also from the list - LOL). She said she didn't want to just give me jewelry. I liked that. I got a nice card from Jenni - that was what she can afford, so that was nice. I called my mom and sang "Happy Mother's Day" - and also sent her flowers).

The day after I went to a meeting at church about the fill-in pastors for the summer. I am one of them, being the local lay speaker, I volunteered to take one or more of the Sundays, since I don't have to be paid and the "real " ministers do. So my Sunday is Memorial Day Sunday and the congregation may amount to maybe 5 people - that's a few less than this last Sunday, but... Our pastor is getting married to his Divinity School sweetheart this Saturday(the 24th). She's from Williamsburg, Virginia, so they are getting married in her home church, but with his home pastor. So this week, I'm noodling with church bulletins (I am having a time trying to get it to print right - I inserted a picture into a Word template and it all prints correctly except the part where the picture, the name of the church and stuff have been placed), prayers, litanies and, of course, the sermon, which the General Board of Ministries suggests should not be about Memorial Day, since that's too close to the "separation of Church/State". It advises use of Justice and Social Issues hymns, rather than the "Onward , Christian Soldiers" and "God Bless America" songs of yesteryear... My message is titled "What, Me Worry?" The Gospel lesson is Matthew 6:24-34, the piece that reads: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." So, the title is a good start, Alfred E. Newman notwithstanding... .

Other than that, looks like the rest of the month will be pretty boring, as usual, although work has had its moments - nothing like last month, but hey, we can't keep the police busy every Thursday night. :-) Somebody - well, a bunch of somebodies - have voiced their issues with the library on nj.com's Verona forum. I'm wondering where their kids are after school...Or how many of the library's books their mothers or their kids have at home - some that weren't ever checked out - or never returned. There are a few families who have pushed so many buttons that they've been banned from taking things out of the library. One family that claimed flooding destroyed over $100 worth of Children's books (which is what the forum people are complaining about) - when they were overdue and every member of the family had over $5 worth of fines (that's a lot here, since the fines are only 5¢ a day and top out at $2.00). There's nothing they can do about it, other than tell them they can't check anything out anymore. Sorry, that's a rant.

Anyway, Elysha and I are renting a car and going to my mother's house in June for Mom's birthday (and to avoid a briss, we hope). So we want it to be June soon!