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Our Daily Thread 3-14-13

Good Morning!

1 week until SPRING!!!

🙂 🙂 🙂

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Quote of the Day

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert  Einstein

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Well, I promised some Charlie Pride, so here ya’ go.

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Who has a QoD for us today?

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110 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-14-13”

  2. I can’t tell if it is because I am so tired or what it is that is wrong, but I am very discouraged and easily hurt right now.
    BG is failing Algebra 1A AGAIN and I can’t get her to be concerned and her father says she will just have to go to Summer School. I don’t know how she is going to get there. It will surely be too inconvenient for him to do so.

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  5. That we do. The Easter Menu is being planned. I have one person in the household now who likes Leg of Lamb for Easter. I don’t know how to cook lamb. I have eaten it in the past but it is not my favorite and I want the smallest portion politely possible.

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  7. Good morning. I woke up early. Some of my atheist flock has flown. I am getting along better with my open-minded Christian friends than some of my atheist friends. I figure God will sort it out. I am planning to take a train to Portland on Monday to meet a [real] imaginary friend I have known for 8 years but never met in person. He just emailed me that he is fighting off pneumonia. I have to make a “go”/”no go” decision by Friday. Pray for him (he is a staunch atheist, like me) with a severe mental illness (like me?) but doing OK with that. Pray for me. It doesn’t do any good, but makes you feel better, I guess.

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  10. Random, I have prayed for you and I so feel so much better 😉

    QoD: Main crops in my corner of SoCal are citrus, avacados, tomatoes and strawberries, ranunculas, poinsettias, gladiolas and bird of paradise.

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  11. Good Morning, Y’all!

    AJ, Nice touch quoting Albert on his birthday 😀

    QOD: How do you celebrate Pi Day? I think I will seek out some pie!

    Kim, Albert E. also struggled in algebra…look how well he turned out…

    Seriously, my Mom had the same concerns about me. She had me work through a programmed instruction workbook and gave me a small monetary reward for each test I could pass with a 90 or better. It worked…I got it.

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  12. Kim, when I feel the way you do this morning it is usually hormonal. And it is usually trouble to try and find any other reason for it becaus then I create problems where there are none. Of course if someone else points this out to me I become discouraged or hurt 😉

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  13. QOD: Main crops are Peanuts, Pecans, Pine, Peaches and Poultry(I know, it’s not a crop but the alliteration was fun. Wonder if I should add pot?)

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  16. I just posted on the prayer thread, but I’m desperate for prayer this morning, so will repost here. My Mom got really drunk last night and was rude to Sandra. Things were very tense. I hardly slept and feel like a basket case today. I keep crying. I don’t know why I keep coming here –i always hope it will be different. We are leaving at 11:00 today and I can’t wait to be home.

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  18. Apples in Hendersonville, just south of here, in SC is the nation’s peach country.
    People don’t realize how much they use basic algebra in everyday life. Most people can survive without trigonometry or calculus, but you need algebra and basic geometry almost every day.
    Chuck used to complain about ‘word problems’. I told him “Chuck, in life, every problem is a word problem.”
    It took me a couple of seconds to figure what Inbutnotof meant by “pi day”.

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  22. My favorite breakfast now is teff, amaranth, and millet boiled together for a porridge with a pat of butter and spoon of honey added.

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  24. annms,

    I have had similar problems with family. I will pray for you. Sometimes I have to force myself not to give up and to just try to love them where they are…Praying! Travel safely!

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  25. You mean pi day is a real thing? I thought it was just something my daughter’s math teachers cooked up. They’re having a party in her calculus class today where they’ll eat pie and other round things. I made cookies for them.

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  29. Of course, the driver turned to soon into our driveway and got supremely stuck in the ploughed up snow. So thankful for helpful neighbours – one we had not met yet came with his tractor and dug out and pulled the semi free. Hubby will be helping him tin his parents’ roof this summer 🙂

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  30. QoD, this is a mountainous area, we don’t produce a lot of crops. We use to produce steel. Now we produce Doctors, rockets and football players.

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  33. We have not been able to get a log truck of logs for firewood. Instead, we are forced to drive back into the mountains to old logging sites and gather from their slash piles. And have a campfire. And roast marshmallows. And drink hot chocolate. And do some Dutch oven cooking…..

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  34. What Mumsee said about adios.

    Crops: wine, wine, wine (all varieties), gourmet food and organic food, mustard, pot, wine, pot. We’re a real foodie paradise, though we just cancelled every element of the harvest fair (you know, 4-H, kid rides, vegetables, dairy, etc.) to make it an all adult festival of wine and gourmet food.

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  35. Teff is the national food of Ethiopia. It is the ingredient for injera. When we gained our Ethiopian son, we learned about it. Then I learned that is is grown in southern Idaho which is similar in climate to Ethiopia. We eat a lot of teff.

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  38. My, I’m sounding bitter this morning–not much sleep. I actually got out of bed at 1 to do my Bible Study, just so I could accomplish something!

    So, I must return to good old Oswald to get my attitude adjusted: http://utmost.org/

    The cynic in me wonders, if I had given up sleep for Lent, would I be well rested now? 🙂

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  41. Interesting, in Michelle’s link, regardless of the culture, girls like dolls and boys like cars or guns. I wonder about the little guy in Brownsville, Tx. who likes dinosaurs and birds of prey. Mary liked dinosaurs, but she wasn’t obsessed with them.

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  42. Seems as though I’m not the only one missing sleep nowadays…this time change is killing me for some reason.
    I’m not certain what Colorado grows….beef…cantaloupe…apples…wheat…oats…hay…oh yes…and POT! 😦
    I think I’ll make a pumpkin pie for pi day…and I really don’t believe I use Algebra ever….basic math…that’s all..just basic math 🙂
    Kim…Hannah struggles with math….she didn’t care in high school….and she is now retaking Algebra 2 this semester at the community college…she got a D last semester….she is doing much better this semester and is showing signs of actually caring….hang in there…

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  43. Michelle’s featureshoot link reminds me of a book I bought several years ago, Material World: A Global Family Portrait.

    From the book description at Amazon:

    “In an unprecedented effort, sixteen of the world’s foremost photographers traveled to thirty nations around the globe to live for a week with families that were statistically average for that nation. At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions—a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others. Vividly portraying the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth, this internationally acclaimed bestseller puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption as it illuminates the crucial question facing our species today: Can all six billion of us have all the things we want?”

    Fascinating book, and great to use in conjunction with books such as Operation World or other guides on how to pray specifically for various peoples around the world.

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  44. Yes, Michelle, my daughter who used to post on World Mag Blog posted the pictures of the children. I thought it was a fascinating. Children are children the world over and the sadess thing is when they are too sick to play. They can make toys out of anything.

    Ann: I prayed for you this morning, as I do most mornings. I will do so again. I learned to not go for an overnight to my mom’s after similar happenings. Now I limit when we are together. Sometimes it cannot be helped, though. We can only pray for them and for ourselves to have the love and patience God’s word calls for us to have. It is not easy, by any means.

    We are a major producer of a product known as taconite. It is a product made with iron ore and used to make steel. There is now some direct reduction of steel going on using waste from old mine dumps.

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  50. Chas: “… but you need algebra and basic geometry almost every day.”

    Ah, HA. So I’m thinking this could explain so many of my problems. 😉 Who knew? I’ve apparently been sliding by without using it.

    I hated algebra. I’m quite sure I came close to failing it. Just the thought of it makes me recoil in terror.

    I never “got it,” even after my mom (who also never got it) hired a retired school teacher to tutor me (in exchange for our washing the windows of her gigantic house across town one Saturday). 🙂

    Lots of growing of flowers and bushes and trees (and weeds) going on around us here in suburban L.A. My annual crop of foxtails also is getting ready to spring forth and make my life miserable. 😦

    And I still haven’t made my appointment with the tax man. And the property tax check has to get mailed out here soon. Along with the homeowners’ insurance for the year. And the car registration (and I need to get a smog test this time). And I’m overdue for an oil change.

    I scheduled all my regular (and yearly extra) bills to go out online last night. 😦 Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

    In some ways I really hate this time of year. 😦

    I’ll actually feel happier in a few weeks when it’s all paid and the money’s just gone already. 🙂

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  53. Crops: Corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans, oats, corn soybeans, hay. Unfortunately we are also one of the worst areas for meth labs, probably because of so much rural land and few law enforcement officers. But interestingly, now all the meth busts are in the city because someone invented “shake and bake” meth that doesn’t require as much equipment to produce.

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  54. Donna, nine years and eleven months.

    Oops, nine months and eleven days until Christmas.

    That sounds much better now, doesn’t it? 😉

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  56. Answering yesterday’s question just because there’s a lesson and I’m full of it at the moment.

    A friend of mine works a very stressful ministry job and has seven children. She was unable to come to my fun launch party last weekend, even though she was planning for it as a leisurely activity, because a child got sick.

    I was thinking about her and praying for her yesterday and the “idea” popped into my mind to give her a book, but also to buy her a gift certificate for a massage.

    Okay. I had the money and I just “happened” to be driving by the spa while doing an errand for work so I stopped in.

    (This is where it becomes God laughing at me).

    The spa director recognized me from when I interviewed her last year for the book–which I had left a copy of for her a week ago. She had just posted info about it on FB and needed more input from me.

    So, I bought a friend a gift and got another dose of publicity excitement for my book. Very kind of God.

    They wrapped the gift certificate in a spa-type bag with lots of cute paper and with sufficient room for me to slip in a signed book and I took her to her just now.

    She began to cry.

    Yesterday, they’d taken one of the kids to Physical Therapy and as she watched her daughter get a massage in the neck and back, she saw the child visibly relax and straighten. My friend has never had a massage and thought, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to have someone massage my back and shoulders.”

    And then I walked in this morning.

    We worship a God who puts ideas into our heads that don’t always make a lot of sense. We don’t know what the words, gifts, visits, phone calls, we innocently make for no real reason, may mean to another person. Much less understand God’s timing in all this.

    My real gift, was being able to hear the story this morning.

    So–if you get some curious idea about doing something for some, I give you permission to go ahead. God loves to use “coincidences” to bless. 🙂

    Or at least he does for me!

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  57. On the way to school this morning, Hubby asked my the Kid what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, “I want to do something no one has ever done before. Something heroic, like….grow the world’s longest mustache!”

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  58. I asked an eleven year old to write out what he wants to do with his life. He wants to shoot a bb gun, shoot his slingshot, and have fun.

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  59. We could guess what rKessler is. Male or female. I used to think male but somewhere along the line, she mentioned her husband so I am guessing she is female. Sort of like the Arcadia thing. He was a guy but folks thought he was a woman.

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  60. I really have not planned anything for Resurrection Sunday. Cindi will still be in Ohio until the Middle of June. :sigh: I am excited about my daughter Sarah. She has been accepted to the Graduate/Doctorate program at Kent State and the Cleveland Clinic in the area of Audiology, plus Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Virginia has offered her a position with the Hospital when she graduates from Kent.

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  61. QofD — ice wine, corn, apples, strawberries,

    Kim — my daughter has the same attitude toward her grades. And apparently its always the teacher’s fault. An excuse I don’t like to hear nor will accept.

    Michelle — eliminate a fall fair and replace it with a wine and food event for adults?? Can’t have both? Simply wrong — part of growing up is going to the local fair with friends and getting into a little bit of trouble and having lots of fun.

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  63. Before I read today’s comments, I’m answering Klasko‘s question from the end of yesterday’s…

    Yes, I have heard of the Flylady, & over the years I’ve developed my own little ways. My current problem, though, is there seems to be more mess than I can keep up with, & it’s hard to clean & straighten when Forrest wants to “help” with everything. I know that letting little ones help is good for them, but that’s for Mommy to do, not Mimi. 🙂

    Add to this that Emily & I have very different ways of organizing & keeping house. I’m a clean-up-as-you-go-along type person, & she’s an I’ll-get-to-it-later type person Some times “later” comes; sometimes it doesn’t.

    I have found that I can get stuff done sometimes in the evenings when Forrest is asleep, or at least in the room with Emily. The pending beginning of our Hope Team will “force” us to come up with a system, & that is good. I’m ready.

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  64. Arcadia was a guy? How do you know, Mumsee? I used to just assume it was a guy until everyone started referring to him as a woman, so I figured they knew something I didn’t. He sure wasn’t telling.

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  66. Arcadia acknowledged it years ago with mention of his wife and daughter(s), Of course, Duncan talked about his husband but that is different.

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  67. Yes, rkessler is a female! The picture is of my husband and young son. Son is now 14months. I have 3 daughters, my husband 2, (daughters), ranging in age from 31 to 25. We have been married 2 1/2 years and have a son. Between us, we have 14 grandchildren, 4 of whom live with us during the week. Their ages are 9, 7, 5, and 2. I was married for 20 years, divorced for 9, and now married again. I homeschooled my 3 older children. I am now a full time homemaker. We have a few acres on which we have cows, chickens, horses, pigs, turkeys, etc. I garden and can. We grow and process all of our own meat. I read this blog every day, mainly for adult conversation. I have lots of conversations with little ones. I would rather listen than talk. It is a blessing to me to watch God work in other’s lives.

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  68. I never suspected that Arcadia was a guy.
    When I was eleven, I wanted to fly a P-38.
    And I wanted one of those crushed caps the pilots had that made all the girls flip.

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  75. Whidbey Island grows a lot of hay and a lot of vegetables. Anything that likes to get wet, such as peas and spinach, as well as beans, potatoes, hops, grapes (for wine). We have cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, turkeys, cattle and goats (both for meat and for milk), pigs. llamas and alpacas. A lot of fishing and clamming and oyster gathering.

    I canceled my train trip to Oregon and told my insane imaginary friend (who has been in the past suicidal) to stay alive until I get to meet him and find out he is real. I can’t put off lugging cinder blocks down to the chickens for my wife’s latest crazy scheme in endless estate improvement so goodbye for now.

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  76. The area in which I live seems to grow a lot of liberals 🙂 😦 😦 (that’s a ha! and too(2) sad) even though we are a red state . If you go further out from this area you would see crops mentioned by inbutnotof. We do have a lot of roads named Peachtree if that counts for anything. We grew a big piece of granite known as Stone Mountain. That would be some pet rock for Chas! In an area north of here I have been to a day lilly farm. I have also been to the largest conservation spot for kangaroos outside of Australia (north of here).

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  79. I am thankful that the wife of Modestypress keeps him busy. She keeps him fit with all that physical exercise. She sounds like a nice wife who keeps him busy to keep him out of trouble. 🙂

    Chickens are way cool! For a short time we had a delightful Rhode Island Red with us when my son was young. It was a young lap rooster. We took him in for show and tell at my son’s preschool. I could have become very attached to that chicken. He went back to live with the others at my brother’s chicken coop. His name was Albert Tweeter.

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  80. We only have 2 chickens. They are in the freezer.

    Boneless, and skinless are my 2 favorite variety of chickens.

    I do not make pets of my food, nor food of my pets. I like to keep the 2 separate, thank you very much. Although I have been known to share my food with my pets.

    🙂

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  81. Duncan is a very charming gay man who lives on the West Coast with his partner and their 2 or 3 adopted children. (One son came home from Haiti with the partner who went after the eathquake as a physician). Occassionally he and I still email.

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  84. We are adding some Khan academy to our school. After they finish their work, they can spend a bit of time on there, learning whatever they want. One likes the computer programming. Another likes history. Another likes the math things. They also like the Teaching Company Great Courses Algebra.

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  85. When my son homeschooled, we used Saxon math. It had no nonsense textbooks without all the bells and whistles and distraction of many math books used today. I also had some other math textbooks to give alternative ways of going about doing the problems if he seemed to struggle with one type of problem the way it was presented in Saxon. There are also some good games that are produced to help children visualize math concepts. Some people get tutors to help with subjects like this that students struggle with. I know some people thought Singapore Math workbooks were the best. I always think it is the teacher’s fault if a student does not progress in subjects unless the child has some kind of learning disability. I think the teacher has not found the right approach to use with the individual child. Some teachers may make a child think they have a problem with math and that sticks with the child for life when it is really the teacher’s lack of skill. I hope things can be found to help Chloe learn to like algebra. It can be fun if taught in the right way.

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  87. I think Arcadia said once she was female. I always took her as a man until she said that. Too bad the old WV regulars page isn’t archived somewhere.

    Oh, AJ- I like the quote.Too bad those in DC can’t figure that out.

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  88. I thought he was female until he said he wasn’t. But then I remember a bunch of folks saying he was female and he did not correct it. He said he did not want his gender to influence our interpretation of our thoughts.

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  91. I am so confused now. I was sure rkesller was a guy and arcadia was a girl.

    Kim, I don’t think you can say partner anymore, you have to say husband and wife. AP has just changed their style guide to that effect — if they’re married, they can use those terms and we should too.

    I’m really tired today. I had 2 things to do tonight — our home group study from church and a community dinner someone really wanted me to attend. I’m not up to either, I feel like I just want to fall into a crumple on the sofa. 😦

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  92. He sounded like a girl to me. I don’t know why.

    As for rkessler, the photo through me off obviously. 😉

    But I suppose some people then might also think I’m a border collie. If only I had THAT kind of energy these days.

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  94. I never caught the “through” vs. threw comment. In other words, I didn’t catch what Donna threw. 😉

    (I’m waiting for someone to say I catch like a girl.)

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  96. Son is trying to fix the dishwasher. He does not know what he is doing. I know less. So I am letting him carry on. If all else fails, they can wash them by hand. After all, they were told to rinse everything well before putting the dishes in the washer.

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  104. Sorry I threw yall with the picture of my guys. Speaking of guys, have any of you noticed that boys have a throwing gene in them? I raised 3 girls and they never had an instinct to throw things…My little man has a pretty good arm.

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  105. My dad taught me how to throw like a boy when I was a kid (much to my mother’s chagrin).

    But this reminds me of a colleague who was telling me about how she was eating out at a local Mexican restaurant the other night when voices began to get louder and louder at the well-populated table above them on a platform section of the restaurant.

    All of a sudden these two women (there were kids with them) began wrestling and then THROWING stuff all over the place (my friend was pelted by ice cubes).

    Crazy.

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  106. RKessler said: “Sorry I threw yall with the picture of my guys.”

    There’s that word “threw” again! 🙂

    Donna, at my 10-year high school reunion, a few people who hadn’t grown up yet started a food fight. Idiots. 😯 That was the first and last reunion I went to. 😉

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