28 thoughts on “Rants and Raves 12-8-12”

  1. 😦 Shouldn’t have to get up early on a Saturday.
    🙂 We Lions have the Children’s Film Festival this morning.
    🙂 It’s lots of fun.
    :-(And lots of work.
    🙂 We raise lots of money.
    🙂 To help lots of people in the community; especially with vision problems.

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  2. 🙂 😦 Woke up at 5 or so and couldn’t go back to sleep. Got up at 6. Everyone and everything else in my house is still sleeping.

    🙂 After a bad start the week ended well. Thank you, God.

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  4. 🙂 Saturday, with a week off to boot. Then I work through the duration of the holidays as others take time off.

    🙂 Big shopping day for me today, including picking up the Angel Tree gifts for two kids (a 7-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy): doll, tea set, pink or purple sweater, dark blue jeans for the boy (I’m told H&M has the hippest clothes & prices aren’t bad) and a Game Stop gift card.

    😦 The cat escaped her indoor “prison” briefly last night, dashing out onto the front porch when I had the door open too long. But she was ready to come back in when I called her 10 minutes later.

    😦 It’s very stressful at work. Two colleagues managed to find other jobs it was announced this week, following a third who left a few weeks ago. Two of the 3 are headed off to work another newspaper that’s currently hiring, though, and I’m not sure that isn’t jumping from the pan into the fire. No newspaper is doing well and the outlook for all of them is uncertain at best.

    But … our current top bosses (and we have a virtual multitude of them now, the organization seems to have become top-heavy, announcing yet another executive has been hired quite regularly) are making a lot of wrong-headed moves, in the opinion of us down in the trenches trying to follow the ever-changing marching orders. So perhaps it’s bound to be better elsewhere. Sigh.

    Thinking I should probably get a resume made up and start at least monitoring some of the online job sites.

    🙂 God is sovereign and God is faithful. And this, too, shall pass.

    🙂 And it’s Christmastime. 🙂

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  5. A pleasant few days with the grandsons of late. They are here visiting while son goes elk hunting. There are some differences in child rearing so it comes with challenges though they are the same ages as the youngest two. They are allowed to leap and frolic on the couches, ours aren’t. They are allowed to run and scream through the house, ours aren’t. That sort of thing. But it is a good opportunity for mine to exercise self restraint. practicing not folding to peer pressure. They stand amazed at times.

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  6. 😦 Problems with acid reflux no worse but no better. I’m going to quit taking the medicine the doctor gave me since it doesn’t seem to be making things better. My impression was that it was supposed to be a short-term fix anyway, and it’s probably done whatever good it’s going to do. Long-term, I’ve read, the acid-reducing meds can make the problem worse.

    😦 I’m tired of not feeling all that great. Not really bad, just not really good either. I can’t seem to get interested in much of anything, which is one reason I haven’t been around here much lately. I try to lose myself in books or in being busy with stuff that keeps my mind off how I feel. I’m supposed to be working on creating the church’s web page, but every time I sit down to work on it, I can’t come up with anything to write.

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  7. Pauline, ex-SIL was having really bad problems with reflux. The doctor put her on a diet of plain chicken or fish. No beef. Vegetables and no carbs and no fruits until January so that her acid could settle down. She is only to drink water. No coffee or tea. It seems to be working for her. You may try a bland diet and see if that helps.

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  8. Mumsee, it seems to me that rules for children in one’s house could also reasonably be extended to grandchildren, that they too would come under your authority/ house rules in such a situation. ??

    I had the opposite problem with my “child” once when I took Misten to my brother’s house. His terrier was allowed on their couch; Misten had never been allowed on furniture. One day I walked inside his house, unhooked her leash, and she went right to the couch and jumped on. “House rules are different here, Miss Cheryl.” “Not for you they aren’t, dog. Get down!” I don’t even remember whether their dog was on the couch at the time, but she’d seen him up there on previous visits, and for some reason she just decided at that moment to test the theory that visiting dogs could go up too. It shocked me, but it was kinda funny at the same time.

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  10. Kim, I tried doing the very-low-carbs diet for about a week and it helped in some ways but made me feel worse in others. Now I’m adding back in some carbs but not too many and it seems to be OK. I gave up coffee and tea when the problems started – even before I read that they could aggravate it, I just felt miserable when I drank them.

    I’m not so sure about the “bland” part – from what I’ve read, which kinds of foods are a problem varies from person to person. Some are OK with spices, some aren’t. What I’m finding is everything tastes kind of bland, even stuff that normally tastes good. I don’t usually care for salty foods, but now everything tastes as though it needs more salt.

    I find it very hard to figure out what and how much to eat when I have no appetite – because nothing tastes good, and I feel the same discomfort before and after eating.

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  11. Cheryl, we are in a very delicate situation. And at the same time, interested in training the mom. She sees that more can be expected of her children and her house does not need to be chaos all of the time. Every time we deal with her, we see a saner family. Slow but steady.

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  12. 🙂

    A great vacation with the girls.

    🙂

    Being home again.

    🙂

    Wife Cheryl is feeling better.

    🙂

    Life is good, and I’m a very blessed man. Thank you Lord!

    🙂

    I have zero rants.

    🙂

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  13. 😦 “Christian” radio stations that seem to think playing “Winter Wonderland” keeps “Christ in Christmas”. That song doesn’t have a thing to do with the day, only the winter season.

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  15. 🙂 Nice blog pictures & text, Chas. Very cute family. Proud is OK. You done good.

    🙂 Whew. Done shopping for the day. I got the Brave doll (with her horse) and a wonderful porcelain children’s tea set from Toys R Us for my Angel Tree girl (and 2 pink sweaters).

    Bought a pair of H&M jeans, 28×32, and a Game Stop gift card for the boy.

    Requests (and then some) all filled. 🙂

    🙂 Now for the wrapping!

    🙂 An artist friend with a studio in town fixed the pottery candle sconce I broke last week, picked it up this afternoon — it looks great. Still trying to order another one, though, since it was meant as a gift. Waiting to hear back from the original artists in Big Bear to see if they can send me an additional one.

    🙂 I do like Christmas shopping. It was busy out there today, but not crazy. Crazy will happen over the next two weekends.

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  16. 😦 My father-in-law is in the hospital with another mini-stroke.

    🙂 I got to talk to one brother (briefly) for his birthday–he’s too busy for long calls, but we got 5-10 minutes.

    🙂 Christmas shopping is finished.

    😦 The notes for the Christmas letter just seem kind of dull. The kind of stuff that matters to us but not to anyone else. (I suppose last year’s “I met a man and got married” probably was a hard one to top, huh?)

    🙂 I’m plodding my way through the things I have to do–that’s all I have in terms of excitement at the moment.

    🙂 I did finish reading the Simarillon, so now I’m ready for The Hobbit. (Hubby also got all the way through for the first time–both of us had started and not finished in previous years.) It will be our first movie date!

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  19. 🙂 Some wrapping done, not all of it yet — I’ve been distracted by tonight’s AMC showing of “Miracle,” the movie chronicling the 1980 (?) Olympic USA hockey team’s unexpected win over the Soviets.

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  20. 🙂 I got the Christmas tree decorated today. We stopped putting up our old tree when we got a puppy four years ago, and we were afraid she’s knock it over and/or chew on the ornaments – plus the lower branches were in pretty sorry shape already, and the tree was too tall to fit in our family room (in the basement). We made do with a table top tree on the pool table the past few years, but I missed putting up the special ornaments we’ve been given or collected over the years (the little tree is too small for full size ornaments.) So I finally decided I could afford $20 for a small “full-size” tree at Walmart, and I got a 5′ tree that I put on our coffee table in the living room. It was nice to get out the ornament box and put up ornaments I hadn’t looked at in five years.

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  21. 😦 Whole day spent in bed with severe migraine

    🙂 Hubby who came home from work early to take care of me.

    🙂 Headache mostly gone now and able to eat and drink.

    🙂 How this online community cares about each other.

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  22. Glad your headache is getting better, Kare. Hopefully it will be completely gone by the time you read this.

    Now if I could just get back to sleep. 😦 Sixth Arrow woke up about an hour and a half ago, and while it didn’t take her long to get back to sleep, I’ve not been able to. Just lying in bed with a million thoughts swirling in my head from this past week. 😦 Might as well get up and do something.

    I’ll come back here after worship today and see if I can do something other than rant. In fact, I could just read my bible now — the Word of God helps clear the junk out of my mind and puts things into perspective in a hurry.

    Be blessed today, all.

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  23. 😦 My new cat Katy didn’t come home last night. i got a little worried.
    🙂 I found her in my neighbors garage. She probably went in there being nosy and got locked in .
    😦 I need to remind my neighbor to check for damage and offer to pay for it.

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  24. Kare, sorry about your headache. I had one yesterday as well, but it wasn’t a bad “have to go to bed” headache just a “nagging enough to ruin my day” headache.

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  25. 😦 Migraines. I used to get them, don’t anymore (at least not very often). They’re horrible, I literally feel you-all’s pain. 😦

    🙂 Glad Katy the cat is home safe. Annie’s still begging to be let out, she’s got one more week of indoor confinement. Sometimes when I’m going in and out a lot and just leave the screen door shut she’ll sit there just sniffing the fresh air.

    🙂 Got up early to finish the Angel Tree wrapping. Several weeks ago I’d covered a Saturday “gift wrapping” workshop led by a local woman who won a national gift wrapping award.

    Wish I’d remembered more from her workshop (I was busy taking notes for a story, didn’t have time to concentrate as much as I normally would have had I been one of the students).

    But one simple thing that did stick was to buy fabric ribbon. Frankly, I usually just grab whatever ribbon color matches the paper I’m using, I’ve not paid much attention to whether it was fabric or paper.

    Wow, what a dream that fabric ribbon was to work with. Fluid, easy to make just a simple bow that drapes perfectly. I used up the entire 30-foot roll of beautiful, thick red ribbon I’d bought yesterday. I also tied little silver jingle bells on the packages, another thing she’d stressed in the workshop — using gizmos as package decorations to really dress a gift up.

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  27. Another fun day with the grandsons. The five youngest and I left church together, leaving son and daughter in law to have lunch with an old friend and husband took the other eight with him to the symphony. We came home, had a quick lunch, did the evening chores, and I told them to play quietly while I took a nap. My nap does not actually consist of sleep so it was fun to listen to them interacting “quietly” for the fifteen minutes. It is so much easier to raise children now than it was in my twenties. I wonder why that is?

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