College Student's Financial Lament

He Who Must Be Obeyed called. We haven't seen one another since Wednesday morning. My neighbor across the street asked me if I was getting lonely. I don't think I am capable of it. So then why do I groan over being cosmically lonely periodically? It makes no sense. I was glad he called, glad he hasn't hurt himself, and glad he is coming home sometime on Sunday.

My mundane life revolves around a clean house, a perfectly clean back yard, a sparkling clean, cold swimming pool, even my trash cans are clean. I am one happy Finn.

In the morning I shall put the Altar Flowers in urns beside the Altar and arrange the six white roses and filler in a crystal vase on the Altar. It is All Saints Sunday, six members have died during the year. I will be preparing the items for an infant baptism for the 9:15 service. The question is shall I go to early church (uugghh) or go after it is over and sprint with the set up in the 15 minutes between services and then go to Loud Church. I need Liturgy so I had better go to 8:00. This is called plinking or plogging as I plan and blog.

My college student grandchildren are lamenting college costs and their financial burdens. My folks borrowed my first year's college costs. They could not afford to borrow more, so I took the harder road of marriage, five kids, one foster niece; and 17 years from that first year of college we all ate bologna sandwiches and mixed powdered skim milk, as I paid as I went, to get my degree at 40. We all suffered. If I hadn't been such a bumpkin, I surely could have gotten an academic scholarship as I graduated Cum Laude. I didn't know about that sort of thing and had no one to guide me into the logical route of graduation at 22. I did get 36 credit hours that first year and that gave me a good jump at the new start when I was 37.

Do you hear the violins in the background? Of course I walked to school forever as we didn't even own a car until I was 17. In the snow, now here come the brasses, coming home for lunch as there was no hot lunch at school, the basses and drums rise to a crechendo. A tiny little flute sounds, I walk home from college, three miles, as we only have one car. The violins rise and fall and the flute fades away. I graduated without one college loan, the knowledge that I could do anything, signed a teaching contract and my 40th year was indeed the beginning of my life as a person.

It rained and the old man's pipe went out.