141 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-15-15”

  1. lovely clouds. Have a refreshing Saturday.
    I had time in the weight room then came home and got cleaned up and some teens came over and spent time cleaning my rain gutters and washing the solar panels. All of our drinking water comes from those rain gutters, so it is important to clean them.
    Then I spent several hours working at school. One of my students is going to a village for several months so I have to get all of the school work ready.

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  3. Lovely photo, Roscuro!

    When I lived in Chicago, sometimes I would look at some of the world’s most carefully designed buildings up against a cloudy sky. I would look back and forth between the beauty of man’s best and God’s “most casual” and find it a toss-up which was prettier.

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  5. Kim, I, personally, prefer this house over the other one. It does have a front porch, but you said it has a back patio. I would prefer that also. It is much more serviceable.
    A bit of advice, for what it’s worth.
    1. I notice that you have some bushes bordering your walks. They appear to be getting big.. Don’t let them get out of control, they are hard to cut back when they get big.. Trimming is a job, but not difficult. They will probably need trimming a couple of times a year in southern Alabama. I generally trim mine once.
    2, Also, you have a couple of trees close to the house. I don’t know what kind they are, so it may not matter. But you don’t want big trees that close. (I had that problem here and had to pay a guy to take it out.)

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  6. Chas, the house is vacant and with all the rain we have had it has gotten away from the owners I am sure. I would cut the shrubs along the walkway way back and keep them low—I wouldn’t want to be walking to the mailbox and step on a snake and that can ALWAYS be an issue around here. (Even at this house where the houses are right on top of each other and have been here over 10 years Mr. P came home and found a big ugly sandy brown colored one curled up on our front door mat. I know this because he had a momentary lapse of judgement, took a photo, and sent it to me). The trees close to the house are Crepe Myrtle and do need to be cut back but not “crepe murdered”.

    There is a lot to like about this house. Where we are now BG’s room gets the late afternoon sun and her room is several degrees warmer than the rest of the house. We looked at this house last night about 6:30 and the larger of the two bedrooms that she would choose from has double windows that face west. It was still cool in that room. It is also a split bedroom plan. There are lots of details such as the deep drawers on each side of the stove. So much easier to pull a drawer out and choose a pot than have to dig to the back of a cabinet. Also having had this situation before it is REALLY nice to put all of your spices in a drawer lying down so that the labels are facing up.

    Well I have said many times that I enjoy commercial real estate much more because there are less emotions involved and I have also told myself that I am not going to be emotional about getting a house this time. Last year I was so emotionally wrapped up in the house where we lived that it almost ripped me apart to have to move. I punished everyone but mostly myself when we moved into this house. I have never had guests in this house as much as I like to entertain. Last year, for the very first time since I have been able to set a table we had Christmas dinner on my everyday dishes. I have refused to unpack anything or hang anything on the walls. It is a house, not a home.
    So what happens this morning??? The gentleman friend of the woman who owns the first house contacts me. ( He is circumventing the listing agent by doing that) but he is an appraiser and is trying to help us get the property approved for a VA loan. Because I was being un-emotional I declined the counter offer on the first house and wrote an offer on the second house. Now the first house in back in play, but I have an almost accepted offer on the second house. The agent called me this morning and we are $2,000 off on making a deal. They are willing to pay all of my closing cost and prepaids if I will raise my offer $2,000. This isn’t uncommon if you are asking for assistance which is what the VA loan does. There are certain closing cost that the VA will not allow the borrower to pay and the seller has to pay them.
    We are close to a deal on House #2 but House #1 is being very accommodating as well. Mr. P had a rough night–he was on the sofa when I got up with the dogs and has gone back to the bedroom to try to get some more sleep. I can’t make a decision until he wakes up and we talk about it. My emotional side yearns to be sitting on the front porch of House #1. My logical side reminds me that the house will not look the same as it does in the photos with my furniture in it. Right now it looks like a magazine spread. House #2 is much more practical. My emotional side really doesn’t have much to say on that house, but my Logical Side says it is the right decision on all levels. As a matter of fact it turns out that I used to live next door to the sellers of this house in another subdivision. The know me and WANT me to have the house.

    Just for fun I will post the links to both houses and we can take a vote. You have all mostly been with me for every decision I have made the last 10 years so it is only fair that you tell me what you think. By the way, you can all have a say, but in this one the final decision maker will be Mr. P

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  7. House # 1
    Gives me butterflies in my tummy. I can almost imagine it in the mountains near a stream because there is a fountain off to the side of the front porch. The lot is no grass and very little maintenance. It would require culling more furniture to live here. I have fantasies of sitting on the front porch sipping my coffee, watching the birds at a feeder, and reading a book. It is considered a condo, so there are HOA fees and restrictive covenants

    . http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/655-Norman-Ln-Unit-B_Fairhope_AL_36532_M85172-27244

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  9. House #2
    Is laid out more like a traditional home. It is built to “green” standards with special insulation, and other building materials, so the utility bills are low. It is on the corner of two dead end streets. It is a side entry garage (which I love), It has a large breakfast room, a separate dining room, a living room and a pass through from the breakfast room and the living room to what they are calling a sun room. I have already situated the living room and sunroom furniture in my mind so that I could put bird feeders in the back yard, open the blinds in the sunroom, sit on the sofa or a comfy chair and watch my little beggars eat while I sip my morning coffee. I would not have to cull any of our belongings. I have already told you the pluses that the kitchen has. There is a desk set up in the laundry room so that is where all of Mr. P’s piles of papers could live. Also there is a small door in the wall in the laundry room that opens into the Master bath. In the Master bath there is a built in laundry something or other that opens into the laundry room….nice little detain. There are two closets in the Master Bath. This house better fits our needs at this time. The people put a lot of work into the house. Even the fencing is stained to match the house and it has a storage shed. Climbing up into the attic last night it is all floored so that I can walk around up there and store Christmas decorations and other things. All of the appliances and fixtures are top of the line. I can buy a fountain so that I can hear water and I can set the patio up to be a nice inviting place. I can be happy here…I just can’t pretend that it is a cabin in the mountains. It is also priced right and the owners are quite willing to work with me as is the agent.

    http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/210-Eleanor-Dr_Fairhope_AL_36532_M71210-43211

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  12. Tough decision, hoping a decision will be clear; maybe Mr. P has strong feelings of one over the other? They’re both really nice houses. (although those condo association fees could be a drawback since those tend to go up without a lot of control and the groups, I hear, at least out here, can get annoyingly controlling; on the other hand, it comes with some common maintenance that would be provided)

    I was going to sleep later but when I got up at 7 to go to the bathroom, the dogs snuck in and commandeered my bed — and I was too tired to re-take the territory. Plus the house already was starting to feel warm.

    Well, at least I won’t need that $600,000 gas log this weekend.

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  14. A police helicopter (locally referred to here as the “ghetto bird”) is circling just a few blocks to the northeast of me. I can hear the loud speaker demanding someone come out of the house.

    What we hear when we try to enjoy some coffee on the front porch.

    Just another Saturday morning.

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  16. There is an area just north of here where all the residents are somehow related. It wasn’t as bad as the Hatfields and McCoys but there were some disputes. Back when we first got a medical helicopter it was often referred to as a W (what an artisan does with cloth or thread on a loom) Retriever. Some shot at each other but mostly they knifed each other because as one of them explained to my dad, “he had never had a knife jammed up and not open but sometimes a gun would jam on you”.

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  17. So (seeing her comments on Rants and Raves), Cheryl and I are both enjoying the morning wildlife today.

    No deer or hawks here. Want a picture of the ghetto bird, AJ?? 😉

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  18. I don’t have an opinion on one house over the other, except that, if it were me choosing between two homes I liked and could afford, I would probably go with the more secluded one. I wouldn’t like having neighbors close enough to be breathing down my neck. I’m a country girl at heart. 😉

    Or maybe just antisocial. 🙂

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  19. Donna, except for upkeep, Mr. P doesn’t have a say in the matter.
    I’m sure Kim has heard the saying several times,
    “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”
    The woman usually makes the big decisions about the house.

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  22. Catching up on your comments from last night. Let me just say Central Heating and Air. In 1200 SF my electricity bill runs around $175 per month and that IS with someone in this house turning the AC down to 65 degrees!!!! Very often in the summertime you have to keep a sweater or something at your desk. I have a pashima like shawl I keep at my desk and sometimes when my fingers are frozen I walk outside and stand in the sun to thaw out. I think the fireplace is gas log.

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  24. Kim H
    Both are one story. After that, not much else matters to me. (“Bad stairs, Bad stairs!”)
    How many years will BG be there?
    Will the house up and move to the mountains?

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  27. I like the second house better. Of course, only your opinion is the really important one. I wonder about future value. Since, the second one has a lot of green features, will that add to future value? Always difficult to say what the future holds, but it would seem to hold higher prices for utilities.

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  31. The fires continue to rage. Conflicting reports abound as to what has burned and what has not. Lots of evacuations. Lots of canceled evacuations. We seem to still be out of the danger zone with our perimeter burn. But several more towns are being affected. Continued prayer for the firefighters and for the people evacuated, and for the people now without their homes.

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  32. I like the double sinks in the master bath. 🙂 Lots to like about both. #2 sounds like it is the less complex of the two for future purposes. Also since you like to entertain, it offers more needed space for that. But I loved #1 and understood why you liked it, too.

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  36. I went to the writer’s critique group this a.m. Only four ladies showed up this morning which made for a nice grouping to get through everything brought in. Everyone else seems to live up toward Marietta. I am totally out of my “inside the perimeter (of Atlanta)” stomping grounds when I go up there. I really feel blessed to be getting to know these Sisters in Christ.

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  37. Two parties to go to today — a homeschool grad party this afternoon, and a surprise party for a family friend who is retiring.

    Off to being social now. 🙂

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  38. 6 Arrows, I thought you were going to say Tupperware and Pampered Chef!

    I hear a lot of chain saw noise nearby. So many tree have been falling lately. It goes along with what Chas wrote earlier. We’ve had several taken down 8n the past. It’s probably time for another go around. It’s just so expensive!

    Miss Bosley has been throwing up. It is difficult to know why. Probably a week ago there was a boil water alert for several days that I did not know about. I use bottled water for personal drinking but tap for her. Just wondering… 😦

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  39. Mumsee, what’s your fire called and how much of it is contained?

    I’m with Carol at the Johnny Rockets at Hollywood and Highland, my old stomping grounds when I worked up here. Lots and lots of tourists and the usual pretty-pretty boys

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  41. It’s not consistent, but my phone will do the links to some commercial sites like the real estate agency websites. I will never understand this phone!

    I do have a memo app where I copied and pasted two addresses for the critique meetings. When I needed one this morning for navigation, it was gone. Just another mystery…

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  44. Just visited the year-round Christmas in Hollywood store. It’s about 100 degrees out here today & they were playing ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’

    Nothing is real here 🙂 so it works for us

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  45. With Holly in the name of the city, I think that qualifies it to have a “Holly, jolly Christmas” all the whole year!

    I remeber I gave Miss Bosley a very tiny bite of Extra Sharp Cheddar earlier. Could that cause a problem? It was broken into four tiny bits about the size of match heads (maybe altogether about one third the size of a matchstick) or smaller.

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  46. That is about what visibility is right now as well. Now I see there is some thought that it is fifteen percent contained. So far, thirty homes and seventy outbuildings have burned down. One elderly lady fell during evacuation and later died.

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  47. Has anyone used a Rainbow Bible?
    I saw there is a new NLT Bible that has a blue letter feature where all the mentions of Jesus in the Old Testament are printed in blue. That sounds interesting.

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  49. I cleaned out the trap under the bathroom sink the other day. Thought of Donna. My brother put in the type that does not require any tools to take apart, by the way. But I ran out of time and did not take apart the drain. I got it done now. Sink is draining just fine. With no alarming chemicals. Or tools.

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  50. Morning all. What nice choices to have, Kim. And thanks for letting us look at them with you. I love looking at homes and seeing the practicality of the floor plans. Still waiting for a look at the back yard. 🙂

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  51. Fire names.
    Several years ago near the border between CA and OR there were some fires. The 2 biggest were the Sourdough and the Biscuit fires. When they merged Cal Fire and the US Forest Service missed the chance for the best forest fire name ever, the Sourdough Biscuit fire.

    I would have remembered that. I think it all became the Biscuit fire. Lost opportunities.

    Bureaucracies have no sense of humor.

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  55. And the other one:

    http://www.ktvb.com/story/news/local/idaho/2015/08/15/lawyer-complex-fire/31789651/

    KAMIAH — The Clearwater Complex Fire, made up of several fires including the Lawyer Complex Fire, the Municipal Fire, the Fisher Fire and the Lolo Fire, continues to threaten homes between Kamiah and Orofino after high winds pushed into the area Friday night. So far 30 homes and 75 outbuildings have been destroyed by the the Lawyer Complex Fire. The fire, which has now burned 16,281 acres, grew 4,000 acres last night. …. The Fisher Fire, burning seven miles north of Craigmont in a steep area of Big Canyon, was started by lightning on Wednesday. Winds pushed the fire south out of Big Canyon up onto the prairie and crossed highway 62. Crews have been able to hold the fire to 13,800 acres.

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  56. Leave it to a reporter….guess I should ask you what is happening. I am having a tough time getting any info. There is a facebook page for the lawyer complex fire but it is mostly just chatter.

    News from friends is promising so far. Though there is a lot of destruction, mostly timber and shrubs and such which will grow back. Lots of homes burned and may still, but a lot more could have. Apparently, the Tribe lost a lot of homes. At least, the casino is closed while people get things figured out. Maybe just a precaution or an opportunity to serve the community.

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  59. Not like the French do. It is pronounced Nez Perce. Hmmm. That was probably not too helpful. Short e in Nez and er in Perce with a silent e. The Nezperce people call themselves the Nimipu: the people. Their symbol for themselves and that their neighbors had in Montana, was a hand signal swooped in front of the face, of people walking, like we would do with two fingers. It meant: people coming from the mountains, because they walked down into Montana through the Rockies. But it was misinterpreted by the French traders to indicate they pierced their noses. Or so say the Nimipu.

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  60. They are very scary fires. Meanwhile, lots of southern Idaho is burning as well. Lots of livestock will be without hay this coming winter, I suspect.

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  61. The casino would make a nice evacuation shelter if it comes to that and they can put a fire break around it and keep it wet. It hurts my heart to look at the video that Mike posted on Youtube. I cannot imagine what it is doing to those of you experiencing it for real.

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  62. Mr P and I argued twice today. That is notable because we don’t argue. He has decided he needs a Lazy Boy recliner because of his back. The one that felt best had memory foam but was this huge monstrosity of a typical tacky Lazy Boy (and those things aren’t cheap!). I tried to talk him down do one that more resembled a Wingback chair. I told the sales lady that he wanted comfort and I wanted style, it was up to her to make us both happy. She assured him that memory foam could be added to whichever one we chose. He also liked that drab Tacky Lazy Boy color that you see in the stereotypical trailer park movie. We finally convinced him that we could get the same FABRIC in a deep red, sort of a rusty burgundy. Eventually we got a quote and left to go have lunch and see a movie.

    We went to see Mission Impossible. As much as I dislike Tom Cruise I could sit through the movie again tomorrow. It was good and action packed. As we were headed home it hit me that there was no sex and no cursing that I could remember.

    Next we stopped by the house to figure out where the TEN FOOT long sofa with a SEVEN FOOT ;long chaise would fit in the living room AND accommodate the imaginary Lazy Boy Recliner. I know how it will go. He had to take a tape measure and measure and determine that this way and that way would not work. I told him how it would have to fit The chaise will go almost in the doorway leading from the living room to the sunroom. The green chenille sofa will back up to it with a sofa table in between. I could NOT make him understand and he continued to measure, the ask me why I wasn’t paying attention and saying anything. Mind you this took over an hour!!!!!!! I lost interest after 10 minutes. Finally I told him if he would stop yelling and telling me to pay attention, and would be quiet and let me talk I would tell him how it would work. We left with him telling me that the sofa would have to go with the 7 ft chaise in the doorway and the foot of it towards the fireplace. The my green sofa would back up to it. FINALLY I had to agree that he had a good idea and that is the only way it would work and we came home. I am so glad he thought of the solution and measured everything so there will be no mistake. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that it would be better to buy a new sofa than to try to find a house to accommodate the one he has?

    Now he is lying down on the ten foot section and I am sitting in the corner on the seven foot chaise. Lulabelle is on the leather ottoman that goes with the leather club chair and snuggled up next to Mr. P. The cat is on his stomach and Amos us at his feet and curled up beside me. Everybody is happy\

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  63. Kim – I understand your initial dilemma over the two houses. Before we bought this one, we saw one that was gorgeous, & relatively inexpensive (due to having no yard & being in kind of a “bad” area). The lady who owned it had painted in colors that I loved (except for the kitchen), & I loved the layout. But there were a couple reasons why it wouldn’t be practical, whereas the plainer house we eventually bought made more sense for various reasons.

    This house still needs work, but I am happy with it.

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  64. Both those houses are pretty large. Our two-family home is about 2500sq.ft., meaning each portion of the house (I don’t like to refer to them as “apartments”, because I don’t want to live in an apartment in my own home 🙂 ) is 1250 sq.ft.

    When we needed room for us, two grown daughters, & the little guy (before the McKs moved out), 1250 was pretty small (especially since the downstairs only has two bedrooms), but for just us, or even us & another daughter (like, say, Chrissy 😉 ), it would be just right.

    (Downstairs – where we are – only has the two bedrooms but has a dining room attached to the kitchen, with just a half wall between them. Upstairs has three bedrooms but no dining room.)

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  65. Karen, your home would be more accurately referred to as a duplex. There were lots of them built during WWII. My grandmother owned one when I was small. She needed it with 4 children left at home, a daughter living at home while her husband was away in the military and a son living at home while he attended college ( he was home from 4 years in the Navy). She also ran an in home day care. There were three bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a laundry room upstairs. From the laundry room you could watch the movie at the drive in theater but couldn’t really hear it.
    Downstairs was a formal living room, a dining room a kitchen and two or three bedrooms. There was a very large entryway that had stairs up to the second level. It was very “New England” the way it was set up. All the houses faced a green space in the center and the backs of the houses faced the streets. It was set up as a large square. I loved that house. Reading this I supposed she lived on one of the “sidewalk streets”

    http://cityofchickasaw.org/about/historic-preservation/

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  66. I’m not in anything like what Mumsee is experiencing, but we, like Donna, have had a miserable 95 degree day that reminded me of my LA childhood–so much haze and smoke in the sky you could barely see the nearby hills.

    It’s dropped to 95 now, but the air is very still and smells of smoke. I don’t know how I’ll sleep tonight. They’re saying the smoke is from the fires way north of us, but most of this is caused by an inversion layer sitting over the county. We don’t have an air conditioning. This is miserable.

    But I’m not worried about my house/neighborhood/town burning down.

    Stay safe Idaho folks.

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  71. Morning Chas. Sunday is ending here and time to get ready for Monday. Went to a hymn sing at the Meeting House tonight. I love hymns, and this was a favorite hymn night so folks just called out the number of the hymn they wanted. Instead of a funeral, I want a hymn sing of praise.

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  76. My house is about 1200 sq feet which I thought was large when I moved in here (I grew up in a house that was something like 800 sq feet and was most accustomed to apartment living after that).

    Looks like another hot day for us today, supposed to get up to 90 (yesterday’s forecast was the same, though and it was in the mid-90s). If it would only cool down at night …

    How’s mumsee and company in the wildfire zone?

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  77. I’ve seen the rainbow study Bible (re Janice’s question yesterday) but never used it — I have used my own color marking system, though, I think it originated for me with a suggested in BSF years ago (and it’s a Bible I still use as it’s the one with all my markings through the years).

    So I think the Rainbow Bible just does it for you in advance — but I liked doing it on my own, to be honest.

    I remember I used yellow for verses referring to the Holy Spirit, green for passages reflective of the fruit of the spirit — and in the OT minor prophets, I used red for Judah and blue for Israel … There were others, but I can’t remember the other colors I used offhand, but those were the basic ones.

    If you google “Bible markings,” you’ll find a lot of suggestions on how to use color highlighting or underlying by theme. I think it’s important to pick a method that is fairly simple and easy to remember, not overly complicated, something that works for you.

    One thing I did in my Bible was to mark dates at some passages, whether it was a sermon or a personal Bible time that prompted a particular verse to stand out. Now I love coming across a date from sometimes 20 years ago in the margin somewhere. I can usually remember why I marked that verse, what the occasion or circumstance was that prompted the marking.

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  78. Other than the thirty homes reported yesterday, no word on more homes burning. The fires continue to burn but they have quieted down and word is, are not longer advancing into the towns. The ones in the wilderness will probably burn until they burn out because the federal view is to let them burn. Same with the national forest, but others will still be addressed, especially if they are threatening homes and livelihoods.

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  80. God is so good.
    Click on the URL. Go down a little on the right to the map (satellite view) and there is our house.
    Did you notice the forecast for the coming week?
    You can hit the minus button on the map and back out.

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  82. Thanks mumsee. So no evacuation where you are?

    Lots of fires going on. From CNN on all the fires in the west:

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/16/us/western-states-wildfires/index.html
    ___________________________________________

    (CNN) Wildfires continued to ravage three western states Sunday, with scores of homes and cabins lost, and many more menaced by flames.

    The Lawyer Complex Fire near Kamiah, in northwest Idaho, has destroyed an estimated 50 homes and 75 outbuildings, according to the state’s Department of Lands.

    So far, it is 15% contained, with more than 770 officials working to bring the flames under control. It includes the Old Greer, Kamiah Gulch, Lawyer 6 and Adams Grade fires, across a combined total of around 20,759 acres. … Mandatory evacuations remain in place around Kamiah.

    ….. Wind-pushed fires burned around Chelan and McNeil Canyon, in central Washington state, and remain actively burning with zero containment and the potential to grow, fire officials said Saturday. …. (caused by lightning)

    And:

    A thousand miles to the south, in California’s Angeles National Forest, the Cabin Fire started Saturday.

    The fire covers 1,484 acres and is 20% contained, according to the national fire tracking website InciWeb. Five structures have burned down.

    Five firefighters were evacuated with minor injuries and 462 personnel are on scene, InciWeb said.

    The fire is south of Falling Springs off Highway 39, which is closed in the affected areas for the rest of the weekend.

    The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning for parts of California, where four years of historic drought have made it easy for flames to spread.
    _____________________________________

    And the fire that clear hills of all their vegetation makes for dangerous mudslides if we get a lot of rain later this year.

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  86. Back to Bible marking, you should use dry markers — they sell special markers for Bibles (which usually have thin paper so you don’t want something that’ll bleed through).

    (Zebra is one brand)

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  89. Kim, I haven’t seen the new Mission Impossible but caught the third one in the series on TV the other night and was surprised that I liked it.

    I wasn’t particularly a Mission Impossible (TV version) fan — but I do like spy thrillers. You just have to be sure to watch from the very beginning of those movies, otherwise it’s hard to catch up.

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  91. Yup! Bragging again.
    No jobs here except at Pelican Bay prison.
    Crummy hospital.
    US 101 constantly slipping into the ocean.
    2, or is it 3, Indian Casinos.
    2 supermarkets, Walmart and Safeway.
    Highest gas prices in the state.

    But yeah, Bob bragging again.

    (11, count’em, 11 stoplights in the county.)

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  92. Pastor Steve preached on I John1:9 this morning. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleans us from all unrighteousness.”

    He used an illustration from the Menninger Clinic. The chief of the clinic said, “I could empty this clinic of 75% of the people if I could convince them that they were forgiven.”

    I don’t know about that, but I know that guilt can become obsessive unless resolved.

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  93. Yesterday it was hazy and in the mid 90s in Fort Worth. We celebrated the arrival of the cold front.

    LOL! We celebrate the arrival of the warm front when it gets above zero here. 😉

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  94. A sign of the times:

    Today when I was in a hallway at church, I saw a boy of around eight tossing some sort of toy in the air. He threw the object upward, and it hit the ceiling with a big thud, then came back down.

    As I was walking away, I heard the dad’s boy say something like, “No more of that, or you won’t get any screen time the rest of the day.”

    Screen time. A lot of talk about that these days, especially regarding children’s use of tech.

    Maybe that could be a QoD. What’s your opinion of children and technology use?

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  97. Janice, if I had gone to a Tupperware party yesterday, that would have been my first one. 🙂

    Pampered Chef parties I have been to — well, one anyway, that I recall, maybe two.

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  103. This Facebook post is no longer available. It may have been removed or the privacy settings of the post may have changed

    The above statement replace Ricky’s pictured.
    It got three “likes”.

    OK! I know. But it struck me as funny.

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  104. Chas, I just received a book for review, The Forgiveness Project, about that very subject. I am looking forward to reading it.

    Now, if you all will forgive me for taking 100! 😉

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  107. So, Donna and the rest of you CA folk, could you send the National Guard back, please? All of the countries resources are tied up and our Guard is training in California. Yet another town and grade being evacuated. Helicopters and planes continue to fly overhead.

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  108. The subject of of Pastor Fred’s sermon was about money talking and an explaination concerning the passage in Luke about the shrewd employee who when fired began reducing debts of the boss’ debtors. The dishonesty was not being commended, only the cleverness of thought about what to do was being praIsed. I had never thought so much on the story to realize that the boss would not have gone back to get full payment because he would have appeared a fool…that is what the pastor assumed would have happened given the circumstances.

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  109. Will do when I see them, Mumsee. We use prisoners to help fight fires here; we’ve more than enough.

    BTW, a friend told me 2 weeks of fire fighting like they’re doing here nets the fire fighters $10K.

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  110. Next month is 3rd Arrow’s graduation party, and I’m always looking for a better way to put on events like that.

    Yesterday at the homeschool graduation party we attended, I noticed the graduate’s mom had put the bowls of cold food items in big inflatable rings filled with ice.

    I asked her where she got those rings.

    WalMart — $4.00 on clearance.

    Our graduate’s cold food will be served in two one-ring baby pools with cute starfish, crabs, octupi, etc. decorating the exterior. 😉

    Hey, works for me!

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  111. So Bob’s bragging about his county. How about this:
    No decent jobs except for a casino.
    No hospital, but several medical clinics tied into nearby hospitals.
    If you count the kind of traffic light that is only one flashing light (yellow or red) then I think there are half dozen in my county.
    Only one or two grocery stores, unless you count the convenience stores.
    One major highway (Avenue of the Saints, which goes from St. Louis, MO to St. Paul, MN). But it doesn’t slip into the ocean.
    And the county seat only has 106 residents. I live in the second largest town, population 931.
    And gas just went up from $2.399 to $2.509. I think our area is about average for Missouri.

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  114. Kim – Our house was built in 1900. From what we’ve heard, the house has gone through a few renovations. The attic was once used as a third story, maybe when it was a side-by-side two-family (or duplex, as you say). We don’t know how it was originally built, if it was once a one-family or has always been two-family. Due to the renovations not always done professionally, the floors have slopes here & there. There are seams in the some walls that seem to indicate where doors used to be. Interesting.

    We say the house has character. 🙂

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  117. We have been playing Sequence. It is a game eldest daughter thought might help a couple of them learn their numbers and other such skills. Anyway, it is a board game with regular playing cards and you need to play them so you get a sequence of five. I require people to announce their play each time as practice with what they are using. Thirteen year old played a queen and I asked her what kind of queen. She described it as a blonde with long curly hair, two eyes, etc. I told her that was not it. She finally remembered, queen of spades. Up until today she could not stop calling them hearts, as they are heart shaped. And so we learn…

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  120. Seven year old is very excited to be learning cursive. She asked to be allowed to practice today. I know, it is our day of rest, but I let her….Think what you will.

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  123. As you can tell, we are kind of antsy around here. With just me here to evacuate all of the animals and children, I am keeping close tabs on the fires. As close as I can through the internet. We are also staying in the house more due to the smoke and little feller’s asthma.

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  131. Even Monopoly Jr., which Emily bought for Forrest recently, can last longer than it should. Forrest starts to get antsy after a bit.

    Has anyone heard Glen Campbell’s last song, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”? It’s referring to his slipping into Alzheimer’s Disease. So sad!

    Last I read, an article from late last year, he is pretty far gone now. What a horrible, horrible disease. (Many of you may remember that we took care of my Alzheimer’s-afflicted MIL, & she lived with us, for a little over four years.)

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  134. And I’m going to see if I can get this house in shape this week, which I had intended to do last week.

    Too many detours and reroutes, with the unexpected twists and turns that came our way last week.

    Got some people to tend to, of course, too.

    Or characters. 😉

    You all have yourselves a great week!

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  135. Well, mumsee won’t play how hot-or-cold with me.

    It’s finally a little cooler outside than it is in my house (which is still 90 degrees at 7 p.m.). I am re-thinking getting at least some estimates for a-c before next summer, maybe I can find someone to do it for a good price. I already have the ductwork in the house for the heater.

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  136. Donna – How about just window ACs?

    The ones we have are window ACs, but because we have windows that open differently than usual, there are “sleeves” built into the walls of three rooms downstairs, & two upstairs, which the ACs fit into. I try not to have all three running at once, but on really hot & humid days, we may need them all on for part of the day. (The way the downstairs rooms are situated, there is not much air flow, unfortunately.)

    What I mean about the windows is that they crank open like a door would open, with the screens on the inside, so window ACs wouldn’t fit in them.

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  137. Donna- Try an attic fan. It sucks all the hot air into the attic and out the attic vents, and brings cool air through the windows. It works great at night, if you can put up with the extra noise.

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  138. Karen- I remember watching/hearing that song when it first came out. Yes, Alzheimer’s is sad, but then, so is every other malady caused by Adam and Eve’s bringing sin into the world.

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  140. Peter, Alzheimer’s is uniquely sad. Other diseases and other ways to die, the people left behind either have a diagnosis and a bit of a chance to say goodbye or a quick, shocking exit but without the high hospital bills. (Is it worse to lose a person quickly or slowly? There are advantages and disadvantages to both; death is ugly either way.) But Alzehimer’s has a spouse or a parent who is still alive, and still needs care, but no longer knows who you are and is no longer recognizable as who they are. The person is there, but the ability to communicate disappears, and the person may become angry in ways totally out of character. I’m sure that some forms of cancer or other disease are as ugly in their own way, but truly few are as ugly as this one, and as frightening for those descending into it or fearing they might be. Caregivers often don’t survive the ordeal; it takes so much.

    When my brother lost his wife to cancer (a four-year ordeal) he tended to become angry at any hint of “I know how you feel.” (If someone tried to empathize by saying they’d lost a parent to cancer and knew how bad a disease it was, he thought it a personal insult to compare death of a parent to death of a spouse. No . . . they’re different but both are real losses.) With just one exception–the friend who’d lost his wife to Alzheimer’s and told my brother that at least he was spared that, my brother agreed. At least he was spared that.

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  141. Staying inside and looking at clouds of smoke out my window. Wishing it was clouds with rain. So much smoke, aren’t all the hills burned by now. People are setting these fires to burn off the tall, tall grass.

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