Wheat or tares?

Monday morning, a new week.

Yesterday I happened up on a good friend who is going through some hard problems. The problems dominated our conversation for the first few minutes of the conversation.

Then she made a comment about the problems, that if said in a crowd, might have seemed inappropriate. But her face broke into a smile and she began to laugh. She is beautiful when she laughs. And I began to laugh.
And she said, "sometimes you just gotta laugh to get by. And besides, some things are just funny, once you get over how bad things are."

She's right.

Friday afternoon my middle sister Deb and Daniel, one of her sons, came to my mother's house to deliver a mother's day present. They were going to weed my mother's flower bed which had been overtaken. I decided to join them in the effort. Weed-pulling at the end of the week can be cathartic. After surveying the project a few minutes we began pulling what we hoped were weeds. We were pretty sure about iris and peonies and mint, but sometimes weeds look like non-weeds and vice-versa. And then there was poison oak and one snake.

We debated plant identification and pulled weeds, we avoided poison ivy and ran from the snake, we took breaks for fudgsicles and coffee, we got all het up about church and politics. Everything ended in laughter, pure, eye-tearing, pee in you pants laughter. Laughing has always been one of the best things we do.

The flower bed looks better. We didn't quite finish, mostly because of the aforementioned distractions. Then we decided it was a noble thing to leave some for our other siblings to finish.

I will finish it this week. It will probably go quicker. But not nearly so much fun.

Yesterday I noticed a couple of small bumps of poison oak on my arm. My sister and her son both have the same. A small price to pay for a good afternoon.

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