So, no, we haven't been taking any walks, because it's been 95 degrees at 5:30 in the morning and the Breakfast Burritos weren't having any. We'd get 100 yards down the road and then they would lie down and refuse to get up unless I used the word, "home," which was fine with me.
HOT takes on a new meaning when you don't have garbage service. Us po' folks burn our trash and we're now in our third week of a burn ban. To keep us from becoming elderly hoarders, MGFG sneaks a grocery sack of trash into the dumpster behind the coffee shop on the highway in the mornings. He figures garbage-for-garbage is an even trade for the quality of their brew. One day I will probably have to bail him out of jail for it.
I am an unpleasant person to live with when I have cabin fever. At first I spent all day in the kitchen trying to cook new and exotic things, but then I realized that because I wasn't using up any calories, I shouldn't be eating fondant potatoes, which made me crabby. So I started a new diet, which made me crabbier. Then I thought I would tackle the stack of books waiting to be read. Halfway through the third one, I began to think that books were stupid.
There is television, but we only have antenna TV and there are only so many plots to old reruns of NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, CSI Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds, Private Eyes, and every Dateline Mystery of every Texas blond and blue-eyed cheerleader unknowingly married to a coach or a pastor who turns out to be a meth-head murderer. After awhile I locked up the kitchen knives, because, after 30 years of marriage, how much do I REALLY KNOW about MGFG?
And I didn't write, because every time I tried, all I could think to write about was Hell. The Bible has a gazillion verses about Hell, or at least about the judgment of God and a fiery penalty.
It isn't popular to preach about Hell these days, and every time I did it made somebody mad enough to say so, particularly if I admitted that I had a short list of shady candidates ready, if anyone happened to ask for it. But whether folks want to hear it or not, not preaching a warning about Hell probably earns us mouthpieces our own special spot.
Theologians argue about whether Hell is a final extermination or eternal punishment, but the metaphor of fire is the limitation of language signaling that whatever it is, we don't want to go there or touch it. My research shows that it is some combination of heat, loud, jumping insects, involuntary diets, bad writers, and antenna TV. And if you ask MGFG you must also suffer my presence. Trust me, you don't want to go there.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
"Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
"He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” Luke 16:22-31
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