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Our Daily Thread 10-31-12

Good morning! Well, for 5 more minutes it is.

Still no power. Todays free WiFi is from the fine folks at McDonalds.

Quote of the Day

“This stinks!”

Me

🙂

We’re hoping to have power back soon. The stuff in the fridge is a loss. But between ice and a time share on a generator from a good friend and neighbor, the freezer is still good. The problem now is it’s getting cold, and the furnace needs electric to run. Continued prayer is appreciated.

Thanks all.

46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-31-12”

  2. I have a portable generator I have shared with my neighbors. When power is out, I just run it to keep the refreigerator and freezer running. Fortunately, we have a gas fired fireplace.
    We’ll be praying for you AJ, as well as Karen and others in the area.

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  5. (donna j here): Praying, AJ. You get to eat burgers and fries in the meantime? Kind of the up-side?

    So, since it’s Halloween (but much more importantly, Reformation Day, marking the day when Luther nailed it, so to speak), here’s an interesting take on our culture’s current fascination with zombies:

    From Why Zombies Matter by Russell Moore – http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/10/31/why-zombies-matter/

    “… The gospel tells us that, apart from Christ, we were walking in the flesh, that is slavishly obeying our biological impulses and appetites without the direction of the Spirit. As such, we were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Eph. 2:1).

    “But we weren’t inert. We instead, though dead, ‘walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air’ (Eph. 2:2). We were walking dead slaves.

    “… Maybe our culture pays attention to zombies because we know what it is like to be dead inside, but unable to find peace, unable to stop walking. …

    “So let’s have some sympathy for the zombies. And next time you see the trailer for a zombie film, or see the picture of a walking corpse on the cover of a novel, remember that that was your story once too.”

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  6. Funny thing about power outages – our house, the house next door (which we own), and the one across the street (where son and dil live) are all three on different transformers and rarely go out at the same time. We can usually run an extension cord somewhere to get electricity.
    LSHAFFER

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  9. I was wondering about Louise, too. I don’t think I’ve seen her or MMcmurray at this site. Is Louise in Virginia and MMcmurray in Maine? I’m trying to remember where some of the WMBers we don’t see here are from.

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  11. Hi! Here I am. Well I spent the storm in the hospital. My area however is doing well with only gusting winds, water slightly up and some without power. This is all that we have had to deal with, so we know that it is God’s mercy on us. I was released from the hospital just a few hours ago.

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  14. It’s really kind of funny to me that my most unhinged left leaning friend has little or no sympathy for those in the path of the this storm. She said she had fair warning and was prepared. Evacuation plans were discussed in her state. People should have paid more attention.

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  15. Yes, I’m Ok Got in a vicious cycle of dehydration and was loosing many things faster than I could take them in. But I am stabilized now.

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  17. mmcmurray is fine, her FB page has pics of the kids in their costumes today & also a video she posted a couple days ago of the waves as they were building. But she apparently didn’t lose power.

    I was thinking about Louise as well.

    Been busy tacking down some fraud I discovered on my credit card, apparently some jerk has used it to order “adult” entertainment. Grrrr.

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  29. Today is a day to remember your dead on the church calendar and celebrate their lives and them being in heaven.

    Yesterday 24 yr old step (bonus?) son took a couple of good swipes at me. He is currently deployed but will be back in the US in December. I extended the invitation for Christmas, he declined. I then told him I just wanted him to know he had a “home” to come home to if he chose. (I am trying to follow my own stepmother’s example here). He told me he was 24 and had taken care of himself for the last 4 yrs and didn’t need his dad and me to have a home for him to come home to and he didn’t need to rely on the sympathy of strangers.
    I chose not to reply to that comment. When Mr. P got home I found out he had gotten the same treatment.
    This leaves me in the position of somewhat defending a young man who grew up motherless (see any similarities?) to a father who is not going to take any disrespect to him , to me, and to the son’s girlfriend (she also received a couple of swipes). I guess I should ask you to pray that something will softened this young man’s heart so that he won’t see me as a threat to his relationship with his father and that he can just accept me as I am. He had a mother who walked away from him, I could be a “bonus” mother-type person for him. There is something about him that tugs at my heart-strings.

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  30. Kim, at 24, he’s a grown man. He could have been more diplomatic, but he has a point. I doubt that he sees you as a threat.
    You remember your young adulthood one way, he another.
    When I was 24 I made all my decisions without consultation of anyone.
    But I did accept invitations to gather with family when it was appropriate.

    Having said that, the “sympathy of strangers” is a strange phrase to use. It couldn’t be you because he has no relationship with you. His father and girlfriend have a different problem. The father can let him go his way. If he’s making similar “swipes” at his girlfriend, she needs to think this through seriously. It doesn’t sound like truelove.

    He is a grown man. At least, he thinks he is.
    It may be wise for you to butt out and let father and son deal with it.

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  31. I am very much out of it. My mam-maw taught me to say “I ain’t in it and I ain’t gettin’ in it”. He is mad at his dad and I happened to have been in his path. I decided “family” gets a pass.

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  32. Kim, is he deployed to a war zone? That can make a difference in people. They have counseling for that. It can be serious. Unless this is just normal behavior for him. And a 24 year old does not need a home to come home to. He will not need a mother. I got my stepmom when I was about twenty five, living overseas, and had three children. She is wonderful, but she is my dad’s wife. Life moves on.

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  33. Checking in…
    My family in Ontario has come through the storm safely – Thank the Lord.
    Me? I’m OK. Still working on the language, killed a snake in my bedroom a couple days ago, spent several hours this morning at the clinic – things are picking up around here. Hope I can keep pace 🙂

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  34. Praying for all those affected by the storm, by the way.
    The real – I hear you about the fridge/freezer. The gas ran out on mine and I didn’t catch it in time, so all the meat was thawing – I cooked what I could, but I lost some of it. The joys of living without a reliable source of electricity.

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  35. Kim, I too got a stepparent as an adult, and though I called him my stepfather and called him “Pop” rather than using his first name, that was out of affection for the man he was, not because of any sense he had a parenting role in my life. I was on my own, in another state, and basically he was my mother’s husband and a good man. I remember fondly when I went to Arizona because Mom was in the hospital about to undergo open-heart surgery, Pop was so relieved when I walked into the hospital (he no longer had to care for her alone–he was in his early eighties and frankly worn out), and he gave me the bedroom and he slept on the couch (Mom would not have done that). One night he kissed me on the forehead and said, “Love you” and my heart went pitter-patter. He was such a sweet old man, and I was sad when he died. But realistically he just wasn’t my “father.” If he had lived longer, I would have enjoyed getting to know him better, and if circumstances had been different, he would have been grandfather to my children, and a good one.

    Now, my husband and I thought it would be best if we married before the girls were out of the house in order to have the chance to be a family and for me to be a little more than just their father’s wife. I do play a little bit of a mothering role (mostly cooking for them, picking up special things at the grocery store I know they’ll like, that sort of thing), but the reality is my mothering role is quite limited, because in the natural scheme of things they’d be transitioning into grown-ups anyway, even if their “real” mom were the one mothering them. He told me when we were courting that I’d never be the girls’ “mom” but assuming they married and had kids I would be a real grandmother someday, not a step-grandmother (based on his own life experience, since his father had a stepmom who was his own favorite grandparent); grandkids will grow up never having known any other grandparent but me. That was sweet, and I look forward to it. The girls have done little touches to show they appreciate me, but my take on it has always been it’s my place to “be” their mom (in as much place as that is appropriate for their ages–they’re simply past the tucking-in and reading a bedtime story stage!), but it isn’t their responsibility to “see” me as mom, and I can’t feel offended if they don’t. So any time they show a thoughtful gesture along that line (like the phone call on Mother’s Day from one, a rose on a special occasion from the other) is a bonus, and extra-special. And our relationship is good enough that I can see them taking my advice seriously when we have a family conversation where they are looking for guidance on something.

    Anyway, don’t feel offended. He was a bit rude, but he needs to be a man, and needs to be allowed to be. It’s good that he sees that. Many of today’s 20-30-year-olds are still big children, even after college graduation, and sometimes even after marriage.

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  37. Maybe grown men or women in their 20s don’t need to consider their parents’ home their home, but it is good to know that in certain circumstances, their parents’ home can still be home. That doesn’t necessarily make them less than grown up to live with their parents for a while.

    I may be biased on this matter. 🙂

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  38. I don’t know about the others, but when I see “roscuro” I automatically translate that to “Phos”.

    If my wife had found a snake in her bedroom, she wouldn’t be there anymore.
    “No worry, it’s only a bushmaster”.

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  39. Wow, Phos the snake slayer. I’m impressed! You’re acquiring an ever-widening set of life skills. 😉 Glad all is well in Canada with your people.

    So I need to get back with the bank’s fraud unit today (there’s 1 additional suspect charge at an auto parts store). Such a hassle, but it does happen & the banks are getting very quick at spotting anything out of line; they typically catch these things before you do now.

    Sounds like they’re finally doing some work next door on the vacant house (hammers pounding away this morning). They’re getting it ready probably to rent I guess. One of those ‘investment’ firms purchased it in the summer — I think generally they’re required to hang on to it for a certain period of time before re-selling, but the idea behind the purchase (according to the couple who sold it) was generally to “flip” it for profit at some point.

    I sure hated to see the couple who lived there have to move out, but they found a nice Spanish-style older home to rent that’s just around the corner so they’re still in the neighborhood.

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  40. Oh, and happy post Reformation Day everyone. As someone said on Twitter, Luther nailed it. 🙂

    Our church showed the 2003 Luther film last night (along with a European potluck dinner). I was beat after getting to work at 6:30 that morning to do cop calls so I just came home after work and called it a day, didn’t even pass out candy last night.

    That film BTW, is really quite good for those who haven’t seen it. Fascinating time in church history, I think we forget the sheer upheavals it all caused within Christianity.

    And the guy who plays Luther is pretty cute. 😉 I doubt the real Luther looked like that, however.

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  41. Karen, sure, in an emergency it’s nice to have a safety net. But that should be the exception and not the rule for a young adult. If one chooses to attend college, he might not have a full-time job immediately after college and might choose to live in his parents’ home for a few months if it works for all of them. And I personally know several adult single women who live with their parents in mutually satisfactory arrangements–they all contribute to the household finances, and as the parents begin to show age-related health concerns, they already have an adult child there who can help out. That’s particularly good for a widow with a limited income and/or health concerns.

    But particularly for a young man, the healthy adult thing to do is establish his own household, and that is doubly true if his parent is recently remarried. I think it’s good for any parent with adult children to keep a guest room–but it should be a guest room, not the child’s own room, unless the child is returning as an adult member of the household (paying rent, helping with such tasks as grocery shopping and yardwork, etc.). If there is a true emergency and the child has to stay with someone for six months after a life-threatening accident or something of that nature, that’s another issue; it would be ideal in such a situation if his parents have a room available and the physical ability to help him.

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  42. Anyone hear anything from NJL yet? Michelle? Kim, did you ever get a cell for her? Looks like it’s a pretty big mess back there in the aftermath.

    Amazingly, my high school friend’s marina in NJ somewhat survived, she said, although things area, um, “rearranged.” They have a house right there on the shore, too, and it’s more or less OK.

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  43. I did put “home” in quotation marks. I am not trying to be this guys mother. I am much too young for that… 😉

    I was merely trying to be nice to him and I felt that since P moved into the house where I was already living the invitation should come from me. Now I know how he feels. No skin off of my teeth. I have pretty thick skin and figured whatever his issue was, it was with his dad not me. He knows me about as much as I know him.

    I was very accepting of my stepmother. I knew what my father had been through with my mother and I wanted him to be happy. Maybe I AM strange?

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  44. Kim, I think most people are accepting of their stepparents, and you do sound like you have a wonderful relationship with her. But did you see her as “mom” in the first few years, or ever? (Would you have let her attend the birth of your child or that sort of thing, if you would have done so with your own mother?)

    One disadvantage I have with the girls is that I didn’t raise children, and they may not see me as an “expert” in any womanly discipline. They’d ask me book questions, as that’s my professional expertise. But I would love it if someday they would call me with the kinds of questions one would ask her own mother. (Hey, when you make a roast . . . If my son’t temperature is . . . Do you know what works on baked-on grease?) My hunch is they won’t. At this point in their lives, they still have a very healthy, smart grandmother (their maternal grandparents are still alive, and we see them a couple of times a year, but they’re in a nursing home and not doing well at all, just existing), and they’d ask her such questions. But they also have several aunts (both sides of the family, especially their mother’s), and my hunch is they might be more inclined to go to them if their grandmother weren’t around, not me.

    But all my life I’ve had a tendency to have mother/grandmother figures, and my hope is that the girls will see me that way, especially as they get to the point where they’ve known me a few years. In the meantime, they’re sweet to me and have never been at all rude, and that’s better than I might have expected.

    Kim, will he be coming for the holidays this year? Making sure he knows he is welcome, or even inviting him for “secondary” holidays if he has places to go for the major ones, may well be the first step for him to be comfortable in your home. But if he has issues with his dad, those won’t disappear overnight.

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  45. Cheryl, That is what I did. The invitation was that if he wanted to come “home” (IN QUOTATION MARKS) for Christmas that there was always room for family. I even jokingly said something about people who didn’t believe in Santa got underwear and socks for Christmas and that people who did got better gifts. (I know for a fact that he has never received underwear and socks for Christmas)

    Really it is his issue not mine. I still think I did the right thing in extending the invitation. How he accepted it is on him.

    What hurt I had in the beginning with my own stepmother I knew was from my father’s insensitivity not hers. When she bought me a clown for Christmas he should have known I am terrified of clowns. When I gave it back to her I explained my fear and told her that if Daddy hadn’t spent every minute in the paper mill he would have realized and steered her away from it. Artistically it was a very beautiful clown and I could appreciate it. She still has it and loves it.

    Of course by that time I had been through the therapist chair a few times.

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  46. Kim, then yeah, definitely he shouldn’t have seen it as any hint he isn’t yet a man . . . but that may well be the point, that he isn’t yet a man and thus feels threatened by anything that makes him wonder if he is.

    Sounds like you did everything you can, and basically he just needs to know he’s welcome to come home for Christmas or welcome to do something else if he prefers. Welcome to the world of stepparenting! (My older brother who lost his first wife to cancer married a widow with kids, so they have the issue with kids from two families. Only in his case, like with yours, all his kids are grown and they only have one of hers at home. But I know they’ve found it all tricky at times–his daughter was quite upset at how quickly he remarried, and his stepson has, I’m sure, found it hard to move to a different state under totally new life circumstances.)

    I’ve prayed for you as you work to figure it all out, though, and in time it should come together. As long as it’s “mostly good,” that’s all I look for with stepkids (as would be true with any kids . . . and is a whole lot better than is the usual case with foster kids!).

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