Spring (trip) is just around the corner!!??

It was a cold day in Lake Wobegon. Oh, wait. That is from Garrison Keillor.

It's been a cold month in Monroe. This has been one of the colder winters in recent memory anyway. I can't wait for it to warm up some, soon. We were planning a trip to south Florida and the Keys for mid February, but that just didn't work out; too much going on at work and too much going on at home.

The recent passing of a close Aunt of mine after a long illness put another damper on this winter. While she will be missed, we have come to realize what a strange and debilitating disease Alzheimer's is.

On top of that, the Lutherans are having their share of problems as well. And, no that is not a quote from Garrison Keillor. Well, it really is, but I'm saying it too. The recent decisions and actions of the 2009 ELCA Church Wide Assembly has caused our congregation to think twice about remaining a member congregation of the ELCA. The real problem is that there is no other good organization for us to join at this time.

But unlike Garrison Keillor's Minnesota Lutherans in Lake Wobegon, I am really, really ready for a vacation in a more southerly clime. Someplace warm. Someplace quiet. Someplace relatively devoid of Lutherans for a couple of weeks. (Pastor Fink if you happen to read this, please take it as intended.) I think Key West pretty much fits that bill.

We currently have reservations at Blue Water Key RV Resort, MM 14 Highway 1 for the last week of April.

I really do not want to wish time away. Time comes and goes much too fast anyway. It seems not that long ago that a bunch of us boys were playing in our yards. Playing in the woods. Playing. Not playing video games, or personal music devices, or Twittering, or DVRing something to play later, but just playing. We would play in the sandpile and in piles of leaves. It seems like we always had a good time. Parents scheduling "play dates" for kids was not something anyone had even thought of at that time. I don't think we even had much in the way of so called organized athletics. Maybe the boys in Monroe had Little League or something, but not us; that was for city kids. A Pee Wee Football team was eventually organized at our elementary school, but that was after I was already gone from there. Yet, without all that "parenting" (if that is even really a word) we did manage to develop social skills, and friends, and learned how to behave, and got our exercise, and came in for supper, and in the summertime went back out again after supper to play until way past dark.

And last Monday, standing in the sunny chill of a February afternoon, most of those that I had played with were nearby, their sons standing next to me in the pallbearer line at my Aunt's funeral. So I really do not want to wish time away. But I sure wish it was warm and we were with the cat in the RV on the way to Key West.