Those of you who watched the debate missed an interesting interview of Ashley Smith by Megyn Kelly last night.
I had never heard of Ashley Smith, but she has an interesting story. She has a book, Captive and I think they are making a movie. Too involved to explain here, but she was held captive for several hours by a guy who had killed four people. She was a druggie at the time, but is a Christian now and tells how she was delivered.
I Googled to see if this is real. Apparently it is.
Re the photo: I didn’t take it, but we have both species here, so I can ID it: it’s a silver-spotted skipper on buttonbush. It’s hard to get buttonbush in focus, so great photo.
I watched the debate. I have thoughts but am too stressed this morning to write them out.
I put a prayer on the Prayer Thread and would appreciate your prayers
Ashley Smith said she read portions of a book to her captor during that time.
I think the book was The Purpose Driven Life, but I don’t rightly remember.
Guy has a big land package to get out today. He was upset yesterday because I was involved in a baby shower for one of our agents.
I woke up this morning with the knowledge that today is going to be rough. I can’t even get started because I know whatevver I do isn’t going to be what he wants. I understand the overwhelming paralyzation that comes with fear of failure.
Kim, prayers. I thought of you yesterday when I was struck by how our editor didn’t say a word about the good job (I think) we did covering the Trump appearance. He only mentioned something that I’d left out of one of the lead-up stories to the event (again). Sheesh.
I finally said to him, “But we did good yesterday, right?”
“Yeah.”
Lavish praise from him, and forced by me at that. 🙂
Today I may get stuck covering a meeting at 4:30 p.m. that likely will trail into the early evening. I don’t wanna do it, but …
Made a salad for lunch today, also taking some red grapes. I was shocked when I realized that all I ate yesterday was a donut and small bag of fritos (but I did have some roasted chicken for dinner). I normally don’t eat that horribly, honestly, but the fact that I did really scared me.
She did, but interesting moment later when Christie took both Fiorina & Trump to task for bickering about their high-end biz careers, saying the construction worker and other middle class guys out there don’t CARE about the billions they’ve made and earned, they’re barely making ends meet. What about them? Scored on that point, is my guess.
I got up late after being out last night at ER and not home until 2 a.m. All day I have spent shopping around for meds. This is new to me. The system is REALLY messed up.
The ER doc put husband on something the doc takes for sleep and it works! I hope all the other meds work as well. Husband seems better if only for being able to get sleep.
I am tired! I did not have coffee this morning since I got up late. And, I have not been eating right either. Yesterday my main meal was blue corn chips with cheddar cheese nachos.
We first went to the Emory ER where there would have been a seven hour wait. So then we drove to the ER at the hospital husband was treated at. It was a long wait there, too, but they did lab work up front so at least we knew blood in the urine was from UTI rather than blood thinner.
We knew about the Ashley Smith story. If I recall correctly, our family had symphony tickets and my brother was all concerned that we should not go downtown while that man was on the loose. And I do remember that only part of the story was out at first so that we did not know that she had drugs. I think later we found out maybe she was trying to get clean to raise her little girl who was perhaps living with a relative? The story involving The Purpose Driven Life book shows the impact Christian books can make on people’s lives. Seems like it will be a good movie.
When I was at Sam’s Club and waiting for some prescriptions to be filled, i browsed the books and saw the adult coloring books. They do look fun. I was looking for a large print crossword puzzle book for my husband but found none. I only found two word search books.
I bought one of the adult coloring books on amazon (getting my order up enough for free shipping) . . . but was disappointed when it arrived that it really doesn’t look that interesting. (I was avoiding any that seem to be guided by eastern meditation or any that looked too ridiculously detailed, so I got one that’s ocean animals . . . but each one is one single animal on an otherwise blank page.) I did pick up a set of postcards that are in that genre, and am looking forward to coloring them, but the coloring book may not get used for a while.
I thought the one coloring book at Sam’s looked interesting. I have a BIL who likes to color for relaxation. I might buy him one if I can find the right subject for him.
I see I need to clarify about my last post. To cut a cat means to castrate him. The closest vet is about 75 miles away. Male cats are easy to fix.
My life has been crazy lately. I stop by and read this blog as a treat to myself. I do keep you all my prayers. Sorry I am not up to speed with all that is happening.
Janice, I don’t know what your insurance situation is, but with my stepsister, when she went home and had to go back to the ER there was some glitch that if my stepmother drove her it would start a new charge, but if she went by ambulance it was considered part of the same hospital stay. She also went in through the ambulance entrance and did not have to wait as long.
You may want to check into it. Ever since Obamacare I have been confuzzled.
That is alright, most of us are rather boring. A few are very interesting. I am not going to tell you which is which because then you will select who you want to read and skip the rest.
I didn’t know that adult coloring was such a thing. Perhaps I will stop and buy some crayons or markers tomorrow and print out some pages. When Guy asks what I am doing I can tell him I am relieving stress.
I’m not a Baby Boomer, I’m a Millennial (though my parents are both Baby Boomers – they got married and had children later than most of their generation).
I knew I was a Gen X’er or before that term they called us the Baby Bust. I just found out that my parents were the Silent Generation and my daughter is part of the New Silent Generation
Kim, toward the upper end, yes. But raised by parents who were two generations removed from me in age and even more in the way they saw the world . . . and I never identified either with the perspectives of the baby boomers of the busters/ gen X.
I have a new online friend named Renee. She is a very intelligent Catholic (but with a personal relationship with Jesus) lady in her late 60s. We “met” on the comment threads of a mutual Facebook friend, then “friended” each other. We have really clicked, & have exchanged several emails sharing our personal stories. She & her husband have been praying for Lee.
Renee considers herself a liberal-leaning libertarian. I consider myself either a libertarian-leaning conservative. But we seem to agree on a lot of things anyway.
After some comment of hers (I forget what she said), I cautiously asked her what her beliefs are about homosexuality. She said she figured I would get around to asking that, & answered that ever since her granddaughter announced that she was bi-sexual, she has accepted that God made her that way.
So I took my time in replying, being very careful about how I presented what I believe on that issue, & same-sex marriage. I explained pretty thoroughly, but respectfully & graciously, why I believe it is not God’s plan or will, included a few links to some really good articles, & emphasized that we conservative Christians do in fact love homosexuals, & feel compassion for their struggle & confusion.
Of course, I didn’t think I would change her mind, but I wanted her to understand well how I believe & feel about the matter, & hoped & believed she would at least have respect for my differing views. But I was kind of blown away by her reaction.
She actually thanked me for pointing her back to the truth! Can you believe that? Her heart & mind were open enough to not only respect my views, but to accept them. Wow!
Karen, I really wouldn’t go there except to say that “I still believe it is wrong”. If they two of you agree on everything but that it could be a great friendship.
Two of my very best friends are Pro Choice. I respect them and they respect me. They know how I feel about it and why I feel that way, but we still agree on more than we disagree on.
Karen, I might be completely out to lunch. But my tentative theory is that men have an inclination toward sexual attraction for women of for other men. (A very large percentage of male homosexuals seem to have been molested as boys, but I’ve never studied that and wouldn’t say so dogmatically. I can say that even if they were actually born that way, it’s a disordered attraction and not a healthy one.) Women, however, seem to be relationally driven. I don’t think there is such a thing as a “bi-sexual” woman. I think rather that any woman who doesn’t believe that same-sex sexuality is wrong can let natural affection twist itself into sexual affection. Just as we (most of us) are sexually drawn to the person we are attracted to, rather than sexually attracted to a man we don’t know, we can be sexually attracted in twisted, same-sex, sexuality.
I’ve never had a sexual crush on a woman. I just have seen way too many women who can readily go back and forth between a man and a woman, and high school girls who play around with their sexuality by acting out sexually with other girls when it’s trendy, and between observation and what I know of female sexuality being relationship driven, I think it’s a big mistake to think that lesbianism has many similarities with male homosexuality, other than being a distortion of God’s good design for sex.
Cheryl, in my experience, childhood sexual abuse has a great distorting effect on one’s ideas of sexuality. As a child who was abused by another child of the same gender, I had conceived of every possible sexual perversion in my imagination before I finally understood what normal heterosexual intercourse entailed. I figured out normal intercourse when I was in my early teens, and at that point, I realized all my other guesses at what sex was about were wrong. I did not realize that those guesses were considered, to use the psychiatric term, paraphilias, until I had to study such things in mental health. When a child is sexually awakened before puberty, they lack the mental maturity to understand the powerful meaning of what they have experienced, but they know that something significant has taken place. So they search through further experimentation for what that meaning is. I was blessed, in that I had not only my parents example of a loving, faithful marriage between a man and woman, but also a personal relationship with the God who made male and female, so that when I began to sort out the good from the evil in sexuality at puberty, I had some sort of guide. I saw other peers who had been similarly abused continue on in their childhood confusion, as the culture assured them that any kind of consenting sexual expression was all right.
When one considers that the statistics of sexual abuse are as high as one out of every four girls and one out of every seven boys, and when you consider that such statistics do not include things like childhood exposure to pornography, one realizes that it is evidence of God’s restraining hand that more people do not practice perversion. I have mentioned how our culture encourages such sexual experimentation, but complete silence about sex also encourages such perversion. I remembering examining a young girl in West Africa whose condition could only have been contracted from abuse by an older pervert; but it was unavailing to point this out, as the culture refused to even speak of such things. There was no agency that would act to protect the child or stop the abuse. That is the case throughout the culturally conservative countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central, South, and East Asia, as well as the Pacific Islands. Child sexual abuse runs unchecked because no one will address it. Poverty and the struggle to survive checks some of the practice of perversion in those places, although, as the daily, even hourly rapes in such places as the Congo demonstrate that not even survival is enough to check man in is his evil desires. Our culture is at a strange convergence, because at the moment when everyone is willing to expose sexual abuse of children is the same moment that sexual experimentation is encouraged; so that although a person may now speak of the atrocities committed against them as a child, they are not encouraged to think that those atrocities would have been in themselves evil if they had been of the age to consent. Such cognitive dissonance is enough to disorder the finest mind.
Wandering Views 
Wow, what a fantastic photo. We are blessed by the photographers in this group.
Morning all.
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Good evening Jo.
Good afternoon tychious.
Everyone else? GET TO IT!
How can I be first at 8:00?
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OK. So Jo is first. Ain’t fair because she can always be first. if she wants to.
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Those of you who watched the debate missed an interesting interview of Ashley Smith by Megyn Kelly last night.
I had never heard of Ashley Smith, but she has an interesting story. She has a book, Captive and I think they are making a movie. Too involved to explain here, but she was held captive for several hours by a guy who had killed four people. She was a druggie at the time, but is a Christian now and tells how she was delivered.
I Googled to see if this is real. Apparently it is.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Re the photo: I didn’t take it, but we have both species here, so I can ID it: it’s a silver-spotted skipper on buttonbush. It’s hard to get buttonbush in focus, so great photo.
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Good Morning, Y’all!
Chas…I remember the story well…it happened right up the road from me…
I just found out yesterday that “Big Brother” has unblocked this site…apparently you are not as dangerous as we thought 😀
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I watched the debate. I have thoughts but am too stressed this morning to write them out.
I put a prayer on the Prayer Thread and would appreciate your prayers
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Ashley Smith said she read portions of a book to her captor during that time.
I think the book was The Purpose Driven Life, but I don’t rightly remember.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Guy has a big land package to get out today. He was upset yesterday because I was involved in a baby shower for one of our agents.
I woke up this morning with the knowledge that today is going to be rough. I can’t even get started because I know whatevver I do isn’t going to be what he wants. I understand the overwhelming paralyzation that comes with fear of failure.
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I remember when that happened, Chas.
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Kim, prayers. I thought of you yesterday when I was struck by how our editor didn’t say a word about the good job (I think) we did covering the Trump appearance. He only mentioned something that I’d left out of one of the lead-up stories to the event (again). Sheesh.
I finally said to him, “But we did good yesterday, right?”
“Yeah.”
Lavish praise from him, and forced by me at that. 🙂
Today I may get stuck covering a meeting at 4:30 p.m. that likely will trail into the early evening. I don’t wanna do it, but …
Made a salad for lunch today, also taking some red grapes. I was shocked when I realized that all I ate yesterday was a donut and small bag of fritos (but I did have some roasted chicken for dinner). I normally don’t eat that horribly, honestly, but the fact that I did really scared me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debate — I stil lean toward Rubio, though I’m not yet thrilled with anyone and am worried it’ll just be another Democrat win.
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I didn’t watch or listen to the debates, but I heard that Ms. Fiorina got a couple of good jabs in.
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She did, but interesting moment later when Christie took both Fiorina & Trump to task for bickering about their high-end biz careers, saying the construction worker and other middle class guys out there don’t CARE about the billions they’ve made and earned, they’re barely making ends meet. What about them? Scored on that point, is my guess.
LikeLike
I got up late after being out last night at ER and not home until 2 a.m. All day I have spent shopping around for meds. This is new to me. The system is REALLY messed up.
The ER doc put husband on something the doc takes for sleep and it works! I hope all the other meds work as well. Husband seems better if only for being able to get sleep.
I am tired! I did not have coffee this morning since I got up late. And, I have not been eating right either. Yesterday my main meal was blue corn chips with cheddar cheese nachos.
We first went to the Emory ER where there would have been a seven hour wait. So then we drove to the ER at the hospital husband was treated at. It was a long wait there, too, but they did lab work up front so at least we knew blood in the urine was from UTI rather than blood thinner.
LikeLike
We knew about the Ashley Smith story. If I recall correctly, our family had symphony tickets and my brother was all concerned that we should not go downtown while that man was on the loose. And I do remember that only part of the story was out at first so that we did not know that she had drugs. I think later we found out maybe she was trying to get clean to raise her little girl who was perhaps living with a relative? The story involving The Purpose Driven Life book shows the impact Christian books can make on people’s lives. Seems like it will be a good movie.
LikeLike
When I was at Sam’s Club and waiting for some prescriptions to be filled, i browsed the books and saw the adult coloring books. They do look fun. I was looking for a large print crossword puzzle book for my husband but found none. I only found two word search books.
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I’ve been tempted by the adult coloring books myself.
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I’ve looked at them on Amazon, but haven’t bought one. 🙂
Janice, hope you both get some rest, you’ve had a crazy few days.
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I bought one of the adult coloring books on amazon (getting my order up enough for free shipping) . . . but was disappointed when it arrived that it really doesn’t look that interesting. (I was avoiding any that seem to be guided by eastern meditation or any that looked too ridiculously detailed, so I got one that’s ocean animals . . . but each one is one single animal on an otherwise blank page.) I did pick up a set of postcards that are in that genre, and am looking forward to coloring them, but the coloring book may not get used for a while.
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off to the last day of the term.
I found mangoes at the market, so will be making mango chicken this week.
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interesting to get emails from three of the candidates this morning asking for funds. Cruz, Rubio, and Carly
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I thought the one coloring book at Sam’s looked interesting. I have a BIL who likes to color for relaxation. I might buy him one if I can find the right subject for him.
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There are tons of free adult coloring pages on the ‘net.
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🙂 I seem to have started a Wandering Views trend 😉
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I see I need to clarify about my last post. To cut a cat means to castrate him. The closest vet is about 75 miles away. Male cats are easy to fix.
My life has been crazy lately. I stop by and read this blog as a treat to myself. I do keep you all my prayers. Sorry I am not up to speed with all that is happening.
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Janice, I don’t know what your insurance situation is, but with my stepsister, when she went home and had to go back to the ER there was some glitch that if my stepmother drove her it would start a new charge, but if she went by ambulance it was considered part of the same hospital stay. She also went in through the ambulance entrance and did not have to wait as long.
You may want to check into it. Ever since Obamacare I have been confuzzled.
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That is alright, most of us are rather boring. A few are very interesting. I am not going to tell you which is which because then you will select who you want to read and skip the rest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t know that adult coloring was such a thing. Perhaps I will stop and buy some crayons or markers tomorrow and print out some pages. When Guy asks what I am doing I can tell him I am relieving stress.
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Probably adult coloring books are popular because we Baby Boomers never grew up.
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Peter, I can “like” that post because I’m not a baby boomer, but I have four brothers (and a husband) who are.
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I’m not a Baby Boomer, I’m a Millennial (though my parents are both Baby Boomers – they got married and had children later than most of their generation).
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Cheryl were you part of the Baby Bust
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I knew I was a Gen X’er or before that term they called us the Baby Bust. I just found out that my parents were the Silent Generation and my daughter is part of the New Silent Generation
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHVN_enUS544US544&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=baby%20busters%20generation
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Kim, toward the upper end, yes. But raised by parents who were two generations removed from me in age and even more in the way they saw the world . . . and I never identified either with the perspectives of the baby boomers of the busters/ gen X.
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I posted my debate comments on the Political Thread if anyone is interested.
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I have a new online friend named Renee. She is a very intelligent Catholic (but with a personal relationship with Jesus) lady in her late 60s. We “met” on the comment threads of a mutual Facebook friend, then “friended” each other. We have really clicked, & have exchanged several emails sharing our personal stories. She & her husband have been praying for Lee.
Renee considers herself a liberal-leaning libertarian. I consider myself either a libertarian-leaning conservative. But we seem to agree on a lot of things anyway.
After some comment of hers (I forget what she said), I cautiously asked her what her beliefs are about homosexuality. She said she figured I would get around to asking that, & answered that ever since her granddaughter announced that she was bi-sexual, she has accepted that God made her that way.
Then she asked what I believe.
Oh boy.
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So I took my time in replying, being very careful about how I presented what I believe on that issue, & same-sex marriage. I explained pretty thoroughly, but respectfully & graciously, why I believe it is not God’s plan or will, included a few links to some really good articles, & emphasized that we conservative Christians do in fact love homosexuals, & feel compassion for their struggle & confusion.
Of course, I didn’t think I would change her mind, but I wanted her to understand well how I believe & feel about the matter, & hoped & believed she would at least have respect for my differing views. But I was kind of blown away by her reaction.
She actually thanked me for pointing her back to the truth! Can you believe that? Her heart & mind were open enough to not only respect my views, but to accept them. Wow!
I cried when I read that, & thanked Jesus.
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Karen, I really wouldn’t go there except to say that “I still believe it is wrong”. If they two of you agree on everything but that it could be a great friendship.
Two of my very best friends are Pro Choice. I respect them and they respect me. They know how I feel about it and why I feel that way, but we still agree on more than we disagree on.
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Karen, I must have been typing my response while you were finishing your story. I am glad she responded the way she did.
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Karen, I might be completely out to lunch. But my tentative theory is that men have an inclination toward sexual attraction for women of for other men. (A very large percentage of male homosexuals seem to have been molested as boys, but I’ve never studied that and wouldn’t say so dogmatically. I can say that even if they were actually born that way, it’s a disordered attraction and not a healthy one.) Women, however, seem to be relationally driven. I don’t think there is such a thing as a “bi-sexual” woman. I think rather that any woman who doesn’t believe that same-sex sexuality is wrong can let natural affection twist itself into sexual affection. Just as we (most of us) are sexually drawn to the person we are attracted to, rather than sexually attracted to a man we don’t know, we can be sexually attracted in twisted, same-sex, sexuality.
I’ve never had a sexual crush on a woman. I just have seen way too many women who can readily go back and forth between a man and a woman, and high school girls who play around with their sexuality by acting out sexually with other girls when it’s trendy, and between observation and what I know of female sexuality being relationship driven, I think it’s a big mistake to think that lesbianism has many similarities with male homosexuality, other than being a distortion of God’s good design for sex.
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WOW!
Good evening Jo. I hope you had a nice day.
I’m just waiting for TSWITW to holler that she’s ready.
🙂
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Chas, I will not be posting until someone else does. Can’t be first everyday!
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Cheryl, in my experience, childhood sexual abuse has a great distorting effect on one’s ideas of sexuality. As a child who was abused by another child of the same gender, I had conceived of every possible sexual perversion in my imagination before I finally understood what normal heterosexual intercourse entailed. I figured out normal intercourse when I was in my early teens, and at that point, I realized all my other guesses at what sex was about were wrong. I did not realize that those guesses were considered, to use the psychiatric term, paraphilias, until I had to study such things in mental health. When a child is sexually awakened before puberty, they lack the mental maturity to understand the powerful meaning of what they have experienced, but they know that something significant has taken place. So they search through further experimentation for what that meaning is. I was blessed, in that I had not only my parents example of a loving, faithful marriage between a man and woman, but also a personal relationship with the God who made male and female, so that when I began to sort out the good from the evil in sexuality at puberty, I had some sort of guide. I saw other peers who had been similarly abused continue on in their childhood confusion, as the culture assured them that any kind of consenting sexual expression was all right.
When one considers that the statistics of sexual abuse are as high as one out of every four girls and one out of every seven boys, and when you consider that such statistics do not include things like childhood exposure to pornography, one realizes that it is evidence of God’s restraining hand that more people do not practice perversion. I have mentioned how our culture encourages such sexual experimentation, but complete silence about sex also encourages such perversion. I remembering examining a young girl in West Africa whose condition could only have been contracted from abuse by an older pervert; but it was unavailing to point this out, as the culture refused to even speak of such things. There was no agency that would act to protect the child or stop the abuse. That is the case throughout the culturally conservative countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central, South, and East Asia, as well as the Pacific Islands. Child sexual abuse runs unchecked because no one will address it. Poverty and the struggle to survive checks some of the practice of perversion in those places, although, as the daily, even hourly rapes in such places as the Congo demonstrate that not even survival is enough to check man in is his evil desires. Our culture is at a strange convergence, because at the moment when everyone is willing to expose sexual abuse of children is the same moment that sexual experimentation is encouraged; so that although a person may now speak of the atrocities committed against them as a child, they are not encouraged to think that those atrocities would have been in themselves evil if they had been of the age to consent. Such cognitive dissonance is enough to disorder the finest mind.
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