68 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-9-15”

  2. I had written a nice long post that I managed to somehow make disappear. Hmmm….
    maybe Green is enough!
    I assume green refers to the header I can not see on this Smartphone.

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  6. Good Morning Everyone. It’s Friday! You know what that means. Two days I don’t have to deal with Guy are coming up. I also will get to do more unpacking and putting away.
    Mr. P hung a bird feeder on the back fence, straight outside the sun room window. I don’t have any little beggars yet, but am hopeful.

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  9. I have been debating whether to share this with all of you or not. I decided to share.
    As you know, two years ago we found an exceptional deal to rent. I fell in love with the house and wanted to buy it. My husband did not feel the same way, but I made an emotional bond with the house and when the owner’s daughter decided to sell it, we couldn’t do anything but move. I had thought we would be able to stay in the house for at least two years and I harbored the fantasy that I could talk my husband into buying it, so I unpacked a lot of my things.
    Seven months later I was facing having to pack it all up and move again. I tried to reason with the seller to let us stay there. No, she wanted to sell. I cried, and cried, and cried. I tried to reason with God. So I did what I do. If I can’t have what I want I will have something. I wanted something that was MINE and that no one else could tell me I had to move again. (Let’s stop and count here—Moving into that house was my TENTH move since 2002).
    I went out and found an older house for $130,000 that was about 1200sf. It wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t what I wanted. The thought of moving there was depressing, but it would be MINE and nobody could make me move. We made an offer. I was going through the process of getting a loan to buy it when the whole thing unraveled. We scurried around and found a house to rent. (Move #11) I HATED it. I refused to unpack. I refused to hang anything on the wall. I refused to make it homey. I wasn’t happy and I wanted to wallow in my self pity. We talked about the lease coming up for renewal in October, and decided to just stay there one more year. The thought of moving again just was more than either of us could handle.
    Back in August on a whim I contacted the mortgage lender from last year to ask him to pull our credit and see how we looked. He called me back and said that we needed to go looking for a house. He gave me a figure that I wasn’t comfortable with, but we went looking in a lower price range. The first place we looked at we couldn’t buy because it was considered a condo even though it looked like a single family house. So, this time I wasn’t attached. OK. I had already told the landlord we were probably going to renew the lease.
    ….But then another house popped up on MLS. We went to look. I used to work with the other agent. The house was empty. We both liked it. We made an offer and asked for all of our closing costs to be paid by the seller. They agreed!
    So instead of a house that was built in 1964 and needed work or a house that was built in 1982 and need work, we got a house that was built in 2009 and didn’t need anything. When the home inspector called me after the inspection he said the short story was to buy the house now, there was nothing wrong with it. So, move #12 in 14 years is into a home we both love that has nothing wrong with it. It needs no work. The master tub is a deep, double person soaker tub. The yard is fenced for the dogs. It has a large kitchen and breakfast area, a separate dining room, three bedroom, a double garage and I can finally unpack all of my stuff and no one can tell me I have to move…..all for less than we were paying in rent on the last rental house.
    Do you think God had a better plan than I did?

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  10. My tennis shoes are white.
    I wear them almost everywhere but to church on Sunday.
    This morning, on the phone, Polly told Elvera, “I’ll bet Charlie doesn’t know he isn’t supposed to wear white shoes in the winter?”
    Polly was right.

    So? What should I do?
    I think I’ll wear my white shoes to the Lions and see if anyone says anything. They never have before.
    But I could get an inferiority complex over a pair of white shoes.

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  13. Chas, last I heard (Kim could tell us) “no white shoes in winter” meant dress shoes, not sneakers. If it’s worth anything, I wear sneakers year round (unless there’s snow on the ground) and my current pair are all white. And I nearly always wear white socks, since it’s easier than figuring out whatever rules are involved with socks. (I don’t wear white shoes or white socks if I’m wearing black pants, though.)

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  14. Kim, that is really wonderful. I hope you can live there for always and never move again.

    I won’t tell my husband about your two-person tub, though. He’d be jealous. Most tubs aren’t made big enough for tall men.

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  16. They must be special, Cheryl.

    Janice, you’re missing Mouse in the header — a one-yellow-eyed mouse.

    And I’d call the background color pistachio (a little dark for that shade, but more or less).

    I have a small kitchen appliance in that color (I’ve gone for light vintage creams and that 1930s light greens for the most part, works well with the yellow counter tile).

    From my reading this morning (Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies):

    ____________________________________________________

    You don’t have to understand everything in your life, because your Lord of wisdom and grace understands it all ….

    Peace is found in trusting the person who controls all the things that you don’t understand and who knows no mystery because he has planned it all. How do you experience this remarkable peace — the kind of peace that doesn’t fade away when disappointments come, when people are difficult, or when circumstances are hard?

    You experience it by keeping your ming stayed on the Lord (Isa. 26:3-4). The more you meditate on his glory, his power, his wisdom, his grace, his faithfulness, his righteousness, his patience, his zeal to redeem, and his commitment to his eternal promises to you, the more you can deal with mystery in your life.

    Why? Because you know the One behind the mystery is gloriously good, worthy not only of your trust but also the worship of your heart. It really is true that peace in times of trouble is not found in figuring our your life, but in worship of the One who has everything figured out already.

    For further study and encouragement: Ps. 139
    ____________________________________________________

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  17. Yeah, I think tennis shoes get a pass. But they do come, of course, in many non-white colors. 🙂

    I hated that trend a few years ago for guys to wear bright red running shoes. We had a rich hipster type ($$$ from his family — boarding school background, trust fund, always jet-setting off on island or European vacations with the girlfriend) in the newsroom back then — he wore skinny-skinny jeans, bright red shoes. I know it was supposed to be hip, but it just looked so ‘off’ to me, just goofy.

    Which probably just means I am old. 🙄

    He left us as soon as he could and last I heard his fancy wedding (wife worked for Clooney) was actually written up in the NY Times. He never seemed to like us very much. 😉 I think we were too much of a working-class culture clash for him, he’d been pretty coddled & sheltered.

    Ah, but I digress.

    Shoes. Dark is better for fall/winter, but you can get away with white sneakers (with jeans or otherwise casual pants).

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  18. Oh look, my name is green too.

    Sorry, Cheryl, Peter & Linda.

    Doing a story today on a market chain that went belly up on an expansion into our area, now all their stores are up for grabs. There are 7 in our immediate readership area so I need to make some calls today to see if there are any bids on them.

    And the newly remodeled north wing of our gigantic mall opens today with Nordstrom and other high-end stores. Everyone’s quite excited, the stories we’ve done on that consistently lead the list of most “click” and reads.

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  19. The name color seems to depend on whether the name is a link. Chas and Donna link to their Gravatar profile. Kim’s links to her website. So, Cheryl, put a link to something and you too can have a blue-green name.

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  20. Kim–and the Lord gave you a memory to put in your heart and bring out during the next difficult season. Or, perhaps, now with the Guy?

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  21. Enjoy the new house, Kim — I’m sure the birds (and squirrels) will discover the feeder very soon. 🙂

    How are all the animals enjoying their new space? Nice backyard for them?

    We’re heading up for a triple-digit heat wave today, but it’ll be short lived, thankfully.

    And they’re still predicting a monster El Nino (nicknamed Bruce Lee) this winter:

    “One of the strongest El Niño winters ever recorded since modern records first began in 1950 continues to grow in the Pacific Ocean, federal scientists reported Thursday. …”

    Rains should start in November but most of the downpours will be in jan-feb, if past patterns hold.

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  23. My house has all the amenities of the early 1920s (which was when it was built). 🙂

    A couple of electric outlets here and there, but no more than “needed” — for the 1920s; postage-stamp-sized bathroom (with a 1/2-person tub); weird, small closets; funky-sized windows …

    But charm. It has charm.

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  26. Donna do a search for CCIM commercial real estate agent near you. Make friends and they will be able to give you the goods on the belly up chain

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  28. We have all heard or read the poem for women about when I am old I shall wear purple and red –which led to the awful red hat society.
    Many don’t know that a man responded to it and here is his contribution especially for Chas so that he can wear white shoes whenever he pleases.

    When I am an old guy I shall wear plaid pants

    With a T-shirt that reads

    “I’m retired, this is as dressed up as I get.”

    And I will recognize that old guys wearing

    Black nylon over-the-calf socks with sandals and Bermuda shorts

    Is an overworked cliche. But I will wear them anyway.

    I shall go out in my slippers to the mall

    And grouse at anybody who doesn’t offer a senior citizen discount

    And go back through the buffet line for more pie. Three, four times.

    Though occasionally I will want to dress formally

    And slip into my green velour warmup suit

    Which I will refer to as my “New Jersey tuxedo.”

    I shall write grumpy letters to the newspaper

    About how the country is going straight to hell

    Which is all the fault of the Republicans and/or Democrats.

    Then I shall nod off in the La-Z-Boy while watching “Jeopardy”

    And remain at peace until somebody nudges me

    And I growl in reply, “Snoring? I wasn’t snoring.”

    And I shall drive 35 mph in the fast lane on Route 17

    Because all those crazy young kids drive too fast,

    And if they don’t like it, tough cookies.

    And they’ll think my left-turn signal never stops blinking

    Because I’m a brain-dead old nincompoop

    But actually I do it just to hack them off, hee, hee.

    And I will spend my Social Security check at the bingo hall

    And drone on interminably about the good old days

    When you got a haircut for $1.50 and a baseball player for $20,000.

    But I will cling to some of my generation’s cherished beliefs

    Such as our belief that there’s been absolutely no good pop music since the 1960s, although maybe we’ll make an exception in the case of Bruce Springsteen, but otherwise forget about it,

    So I will STILL be listening to the Beach Boys on my car radio.

    But, basically, it’s all about the pants.

    Because once a guy puts on plaid pants

    He doesn’t give a hoot what anybody thinks.

    Yes, when I join the Plaid Pants Society

    This is what all my buddies and I will do.

    Except, hey, wait a minute …

    Don’t old guys do all this stuff already?

    Actually, that’s not entirely true. When I am an old guy, I think I’d like to be known as a natty dresser, someone who still cares about his appearance.

    Or maybe when the time comes I’ll discover I don’t care. How about another pass through that buffet line?

    Tony Gabriele

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  30. Hi, everyone. Thanks for all the responses to my QOD on Wednesday. It really is good to be back, seeing Jo and Chas opening us up most mornings, Chas reminding us when it’s Friday and Peter posting the funnies and the pickled pigskin picks, and everything feeling very familiar and homey.

    Janice, thank you for your prayer.

    Karen, I just caught up with yesterday’s stuff and was really happy to see your good news about R.

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  31. I am blessed to be at the office and see that diamond in Mouse’s golden eye. What an unusual contact for a cat’s eye. Do tell where you get such finery, please! Miss Bosley needs golden diamond eyes, too. 🙂

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  33. Janice, men don’t like feeling sidelined. Just not being able to life over 5 lb. for a short while is making my father a little upset (he explained to a vendor the other day, why I was carrying the merchandise and not him).

    Well, if nothing else, an election generates jobs. I’ve been going to training and am on standby for the advanced polls and will be working on election day.

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  34. 😳 That should be *lift over 5 lb. (not ‘life’).

    I just love to hear news like this: http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/new_home_missions

    Dennis Blea, who works with the Navigators in Germany, told me about two Iranian visitors to his church who “had always wondered what a Christian church looked like.” He called the refugee crisis a great open door for conversion: “I think we need to go to them and bring the gospel to them while they are ‘trapped’ in Germany.”

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  35. Kim @ 12:52 Only the last two lines are true. When the guys I know got old, including me, they got involved in other things and didn’t have time for most of those things he talks about.
    I do read more, and watch more news on TV. But it’s only an extension of what I did before.
    You’d be surprised at how much we have to plan our time.

    But the part about dressing is partly true. My dress shoes are over 20 years old and will likely never wear out. Elvera washes my dress shorts once a month rather than once a week as before.
    etc.

    Phos. It wasn’t the fact that he couldn’t lift five pounds. It is the realization that he isn’t the man that he used to be. A wife should never remind a husband of that. He knows it before she does. And a danger arises when he tries to prove to himself that he can still …… (whatever it was). After retiring, my dad went down quickly. I work out and do my own chores around the house to retard the progress as much as possible.
    But I’m still not the man I used to be. 😦

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  40. Chas, several years ago I heard of some person who was going to be working with the elderly, and someone attempting to help him (her?) experience what it was like had the person write down 50-100 things that were important in his life, and write them on separate slips of paper. They were all laid out on the table and read, and then the counselor started taking slips of paper away one at a time with a sentence. Independence, good eyesight, respect of coworkers (you’ve retired now), including the spouse because she has now died too. Even just reading about it was sobering to me, as I can imagine.

    But Chas, our culture’s idea of “what makes a man” is badly broken. My husband has 10-12 elements that in our culture are not considered manly. I won’t go through the list, as that’s a private matter and not a single one of them is an issue of character. Some of them are positive, just not “manly” (such as his being an artist and playing the piano), but others have to do with stereotypes of bulk and all sorts of things. My brother-in-law who died two years ago had all the manly stereotypes you can dream of, and my sister equates all of that with manhood. Sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly she has made all sorts of comments that imply my husband isn’t a real man. Now, to some degree I know what she is doing: her husband is dead and she is a little bit afraid that I will see her as a threat to my marriage if she doesn’t make it clear that my husband isn’t of the remotest interest to her. But seriously, I’ve known her “type” for 30 years and I know he doesn’t fit it. (He’s tall and thin, and she likes short and brawny.) I also know she doesn’t believe in adultery. (Nor does he!) She’s no threat and I’d never see her as one.

    Nearly all my life my oldest brother has had only one leg. (Now he has a prosthesis that he likes for the first time.) He has never carried boxes, mowed lawns, etc. His wife does anything “heavy” that requires two legs. Like my husband, he’s well over six feet and has a deep voice, but other aspects of his physical attributes are limited. But those things do not make a man.

    And you are not as physically strong as you were at 30. But you aren’t less of a man as a result. I despise that our culture doesn’t honor the aged. But we who are Christians can at least assert that manliness does not seep out as a godly man ages. We need godly men of all ages.

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  42. Well, Chas, I do frequently remind my father that he cannot pick up more than 5 lb. 🙂 If I didn’t, he would forget and might reopen that hernia repair. My mother also reminds him. We value his health too much – and he appreciates it, even if he grumbles a little.

    Cheryl, my father is also not a typical man. Oh, he works on his hobby of restoring an old car, and does the outside work like chopping wood and cutting grass. However, he never is intimidated by we women doing the same things, or suggests that our place is inside doing cooking and cleaning. In fact, he’ll help with the cleaning and does the dishes every night. My father is a very strong man (he used to carry around 20 ft. cedar logs); but he isn’t put off by the fact that my mother is a very strong woman (she used to haul feed sacks). He never suggested to his daughters that certain careers, like mechanic or builder, were off limits to us. When one of my siblings briefly considered going into the army, neither he nor my mother tried to dissuade her (she ended up getting married instead). He is the one who taught us to love to read and to love music. My mother, whose father valued his sons, thought that my father would be disappointed that she only had daughters; but he assured her that it made absolutely no difference to him. It hasn’t. I’ve noticed although my father loves his grandsons, he tends to find them overwhelming; while he is at ease with his granddaughters and is very gentle with them.

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  43. Cheryl, I also wanted to say that it is sad that your sister feels the need to put up such a barrier, that such a possibility would be foremost in her mind. My sibling’s spouses each immediately assumed a brotherly relationship with the rest of us. It would never occur to my siblings to be jealous, and it wouldn’t occur to any of the rest of us to do anything that could make them jealous. I can converse with, and joke around with, and even occasionally argue with my brothers-in-law. They’ve got my back, as the saying goes, and I’m just one of the family.

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  45. Cheryl,Phos.
    “Not the man I used to be” has nothing to do with what other people think.
    It has to do with the gradual loss of functions.
    Strength, hearing, vision, the list goes on. 😦

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  46. Thanks for the tip, Kim (way high on this thread) — He said he didn’t have anything to contribute, but gave me the name of another local guy who might so I will email him.

    Earlier, I reached a grocery consultant/analyst in Illionois who was very helpful, but would be nice to have a local voice.

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  47. Since my husband never got into sports except to watch some on tv, I don’t think it has bothered him as much as it would some men to become less able than he was before. I feel like he has loss a sense of independence in that he has to rely more on me lately to be with him for things he use to do by himself. I still go do errands by myself, but he has not been anywhere without me since this situation started with the heart trouble. When it gets better stablized and we know reactions better to his meds and how his illness limits him, then he will be able to drive himself places.

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  48. tennis shoes. yes I am glad that they come in other colors. White does not last long here. My current pair that I wear most days are gray with teal trim. Quite stylish! Yet when I went to kainantu I wore my old, broken down, brown shoes. Knowing that anything can be on the street. That red stuff?? buai spit

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  49. The colors are really off on my computer. The green on the sides is pale yellow with just the slightest hint of green tint. I can see the green names, though (but still have to highlight the text of people’s posts so I can read it. (It turns it into white print against a blue background, rather than gray against stark white.

    Tennis shoes: Nikes — all white except the swoosh is pale pink.

    Can’t believe the weekend is almost here. The week went so quickly, and I have so much to do. I picked up some music today to add to the solo I’m performing in December. To a version of We Three Kings of Orient Are, which is only a couple minutes in length, I am considering adding a gorgeous arrangement of What Child Is This? Gorgeous, but VERY challenging! Written in f minor, and including 32nd notes (in 6/8 time), I’ve got my work cut out for me!

    But before that comes a November performance with a friend, doing the armed forces duet medley I’ve mentioned before, and we have yet to get together to practice. (We also are doing a duet of music from the Nutcracker for the December show.)

    And my daughter and I are playing a duet in church the night before Thanksgiving. I may also do one or two duets with my church friend who is the organist that night.

    Hoping I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew… More opportunities came up recently than I was expecting, and it’s hard to say no. After a very long season of inactivity as a musician (well over a decade, closer to two), it feels so good to be “back.”

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  50. Roscuro, I had a brotherly relationship with my brother-in-law, too. I think part of the problem is that she had hardly any chance to get to know my husband before her own husband died. She went to Nashville for my shower and was at our table for one meal, and she came to town for our wedding and was there for the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, and the wedding. And then after we married my husband suggested we go to Nashville and also take a side trip to see my sister and her family, and we were at her house just under 24 hours . . . and within just a few weeks her husband was dead. We spent two weeks at her house after her husband died, helping her get back on her feet, but that was a much different scenario from two couples interacting, or even one couple and one single.

    And the problem is (I’ve heard this from other widows), within the church new widows do frequently get the sense of married women being territorial, as though the new widow can’t imagine anything more wonderful than stealing this woman’s husband. (My sister pointed out to me, “There is honor in being the widow of a good man. Why on earth do they think I would want to trade that in for the dishonor of being an adulteress?)

    So I really don’t think it has anything to do with me, and I suspect that if I had been married for a couple of decades and she had a comfortable, brotherly relationship with my husband when her husband died, the dynamics would be different.

    Sometime before my brother-in-law died, my sister and he were swayed by teaching that a man and a woman shouldn’t touch each other unless they are husband and wife or immediate family. (A brother can hug his sister, but a man can’t hug his sister-in-law.) In fact, something I found quite sad: When my sister-in-law died, my niece’s husband (her son-in-law) took it really hard. Well, a couple of times he reached to hug my sister, and my sister fended him off, though at one point he did give her a hug. Later she commented to me about him trying to hug her, and her not letting him because of that only-immediate-family thing. And I was like, “Trust me, your 25-year-old nephew-in-law didn’t think you’re hot. He was grieving the loss of a mother-in-law who’d really been a mother to him, and you’re a middle-aged aunt and nothing more.” Well, she warned me (with tears) to please consider the stance that my husband and I would not touch at all, not even holding hands, until we married. She agreed handholding was not sin (just that it “could lead to sin”–as many, many other honorable actions can, of course), but she thought it extremely unwise and that I would feel an immediate and overpowering sexual urge the moment we touched. (Unless I was frigid. She did give that concession, in a hanged-if-you-do-and-hanged-if-you-don’t scenario.)

    Anyway, my brother-in-law did not hug me on my wedding day. In years past, he had hugged me, but he was now a more godly, wiser man, and he didn’t touch me when he came for our wedding.

    But as my husband and I walked out the door after that one-day visit in their home, in what I did not know was the last time I would see my brother-in-law on this earth, he looked at me and reached out and hugged me. I’m glad he did.

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  51. My father raised me to be a co fident woman. There are very few men I touch. I hugged Peter in front of his wife. I hugged his wife in front of him. It was a sisterly/Christian hug. There are men I refuse to touch. Th we y aren’t “safe” I would probably hug any man on this blog because I would view them as a father or “safe” ie happily married. I don’t want any of your men. I have my own and I respect you too much to think differently. I wouldn’t hug Guy exc e pt for the morning after his mother died. Except he asked me not to. He said he was too raw and if I touched him he would lose it. I left him and went straight to his wife to ask what I could do. I have two friends whose husband’s are allowed to touch me but that is my choice. I love them like brothers. I have hugged Peter and Mike. It was a sisterly hugged. There was nothing sexual to it in any way. Unless they thought something I didn’t and if they did it I s on them not me.
    Kim

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