49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-28-15”

  2. It’s 8:36 folks.
    Get with it.

    I’m on the laptop. My old XP isn’t working this morning.
    So. Ignore typos.

    Hi jo, if you’re still up.l

    Like

    Reply

  4. Lots of things Michelle
    Possibly when I bought my first car..
    The transition wasn’t sudden. When I left my family, I was inn the AF, which was sort of a surrogate family for an eighteen year old.
    I told you several times that I grew up poor. I remember walking down the street and saw something. It occurred to me that, :”I can buy that if I wan to.” Just because I want it.
    most of you have never had that experience.

    Like

    Reply

  6. There has never been ONE thing that made me think WOW I’m an adult now. It has been a journey.
    1. I asked my dad’s opinion on something and he told me I was an adult and made pretty good decisions, I would have to make that one.
    2. Bringing a child home from the hospital.
    3. Getting a divorce (I had gone from my father’s house to my husband’s house and that husband is 8 years older than I am- so he always discounted anything I said or wanted and told me it was time to be an adult) Eight years and especially the last 4 of it on my own was a real shock. Eventually I found peace.
    4. My father dying. I no longer had a safety net.
    5.. Buying this house with Mr. P. Neither of us have parents. No one helped us buy it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. Peter, nice photos, especially the middle one.

    Well, in truth I felt like I was an adult from about the age of 16. I had been doing the lion’s share of the housework for years, I’d finished high school, and I was heavily involved at church (teaching Sunday school and sometimes VBS, singing in the choir, serving on the music committee and sometimes choosing the music for the service), and my dad died weeks before my 17th birthday. But I told myself, “I may be mostly an adult, but other people would think I was silly if I called myself that.” So I decided I would wait until I was 20 to consider myself a woman. But at 20 I bought a car, got a full-time job, and then was able to move out of the house into an apartment shared with my sister and another friend. I chose to leave the church I had been attending (initially my whole family attended, but when my mom and younger siblings left I chose to stay; but our apartment was many miles from that church and I couldn’t afford the gas in a gas-hog car, and the church was going through some weird changes, so I chose to leave at that point). So, basically, making a series of adult decisions at age 20 was my step into full adulthood, but in many ways I do still look back on that 16-year-old self as an adult. (I was as much an adult as my 20-something daughters, though I had fewer life options since we were living in a community with no jobs; my father had retired and we were living in the middle of nowhere; when he died, we moved back to the Phoenix area.)

    Interestingly, when I went to college at 22, my college chose to send important mail (including my grades) to my “home address,” and I had been given the post office my college address as a forwarding address, so it would go from Illinois to Arizona and get forwarded back. I went into the college office and told them that the college address was my actual mailing address now. They asked for my parents’ address and I told them I hadn’t been living with my mother and my mother was not paying my way; I was an adult, currently living at college, and college was my address. (I used my college address to register to vote, and would have used it for a driver’s license if I had gotten an Illinois license.) But college insisted I needed a “permanent mailing address.” Well, my mom had moved to an apartment I’d never lived in and would never live in, and my sister had moved out of the apartment we had shared, so using either of those addresses made no sense. (And in my four years at college, I returned to Phoenix twice, one week of one Christmas break and one spring break. I paid my own plane tickets, and couldn’t afford them more often.) So I asked a professor if I could use her address as my permanent address, and she said yes. I gave them her address, and anytime she got mail for me, she brought it to school and either gave it to me in person or put it through inter-campus mail. But they simply had no place in their “system” for understanding that a college student might actually be a self-supporting adult! They had a few students who were in their thirties or older, and quite a few international students, so really they should have had a way of recognizing some students as full adults, but they didn’t.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. I should have felt completely like an adult at thirty when I bought a house on my own without parental help. My father was not willing to be a co-signer at his age. But I did not totally feel myself to be an adult until I had Wesley. Then came the realization that I must be the adult since I have a baby who looks to me to raise him up to adulthood.

    Like

    Reply

  10. Cheryl mentioned sending grades home.
    I was 41 when I went to Purdue.
    They sent my grades to Elvera. 🙂

    Elvera came out to visit me while I was there. We rented a room in the student center.
    When I started to pay the bill, the lady said, “We’ll just put it on your child’s bill”.
    I gave her My credit card.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. I am similar to Kim: I cannot think of a defining moment when I realized I was an adult. I wrote notes for excuses and signed them with my mother’s name when I was in high school. Yet there were so many ways I was very immature even after being married. I do remember thinking what in the world I was going to do with our first baby! I suppose having another being one is completely responsible for is a wake up call to adulthood. Sadly many don’t see it that way.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Which reminds me of the meme going around facebook. it said something like this, “The moment you look around for the adult and suddenly realize you ARE the adult.” Of course, there is a picture to show you the face with shock on it. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  17. Nice photos — and it’s feeling like fall even in L.A. these days, though the temps are still warm. I noticed, though, that on Tuesday next week our projected high will be 72. Time to get the parka back out.

    Adulthood was a process, but it was probably 25 years ago when my mom suddenly died without warning (which was 20 years after my dad had died so it left me parentless) was when it hit me the most on a basic emotional level.

    Off to work again after taking some down time (working from home) yesterday. I could use another one of those days, but have to prepare for a morning interview tomorrow with the port director.

    Like

    Reply

  18. One thing about the maple- It is in a park that lost dozens of trees in an 80 mph straight wind in July. There was so much tree damage in the city that there still are piles of branches along city street.

    And you’re welcome for the comments.

    Like

    Reply

  20. There’s another FB thing that goes around suggesting this adult thing really just isn’t working out so well, so I’m going to pitch a tent in the living room, grab my flashlight and a book and go back to being a kid for a day … or more. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  21. The sun is finally out! What ought to be illegal out of Mexico is they should have had to keep their own hurricane!!!!!

    My favorite memes from FB are:
    I have felt like running away from home more as an adult than I ever did as a kid
    I have a bad attitude. You should send me to the beach and not let me return until my attitude improves.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  24. Hey Kim, I was watching NCIS NO last night and part of the show included what was called a Red Dress Run.

    Is that a “thing” in New Orleans?

    Like

    Reply

  26. Kim – I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I think there is somewhat of a similarity between being an adult child of an alcoholic (ACA) & an adult child of an adult child of an alcoholic (ACACA) who did not deal with being an ACA. (Oh, great. I’m “a caca”. That’s not what I was going for.) Or maybe not quite a similarity, but they each come with some serious problems. (Although, the problems of being a child of an alcoholic are probably worse.)

    My mother’s parents were both alcoholics. She never really dealt with the hurts & such that caused her. Each year she would laugh about how every Christmastime when she was growing up, inevitably her dad would knock over their Christmas tree while drunk. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that that must not have been funny at all to her as a little girl.

    The way Mom was affected by having two alcoholic parents was that she had a great need for control. And I was the one she most tried to control, even as an adult. She also could be verbally & emotionally abusive with me (although not nearly as bad as some stories I’ve heard from others). She once admitted, sometime in the last couple years before she died, that she knew she could intimidate me, & she used that to her advantage.

    I loved my mom, but spending time with her could be emotionally & mentally wearying as I walked on eggshells around her, being careful to not say the wrong thing, not be too cheerful, but also not be too quiet, etc.

    When Mom died (I hate to admit this), almost six years after Dad had died, I felt free. That would crush her to know that.

    I am grateful, though, that Mom softened in the last couple years of her life, when she knew she was dying. She left a brief letter for me, which I read after she died, in which she said that she hoped I would find the love I deserved. (I think she was writing in a general sense, as she knew – & had remarked on – how much Lee loves me.)

    I’m sorry you didn’t have an opportunity to reconcile with your mom. It is good that you have dealt with the issues you’ve faced because of her alcoholism. It is probably an ongoing process.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  27. Well, if being an adult is moving out on one’s one, earning one’s support, and having a family – I haven’t reached that place. I’ve been making a lot of independent decisions since I was 19, and have moved out temporarily several times. I’ve lived a lot of different places, sometimes by myself, sometimes with housemates or with other relatives. I’ve been a caregiver, a missionary, a musician, and many other things; but I’ve never been economically independent. Oh, my parents haven’t paid for everything, a lot of other people have helped on the way – including some of you. However, I’ve never had a steady job and income. So, while I consider myself an adult, I wonder if other people do.

    I was raised in a slightly different culture due to some ultra-conservative influences. Girls going out to work, while it eventually became necessary for us, wasn’t encouraged in our homeschooling program. My eldest sibling went from finishing high school to marriage to stay-at-home/homeschooling mother without ever having a steady job. My other two siblings did each work for several years (and became invaluable employees) before marriage. Second sibling still works from home – but they are the more socially outgoing siblings. Eldest sibling and I are the introverts. Sometimes I feel like I was raised to be an early-19th century lady of the upper class (I can sew, draw, and play the pianoforte), when in reality I was born into the working class of the late 20th century.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  30. Karen, I think you are right. I tell BG all the time that worse than me caring too much where she is and what she is doing is having no one who cares. I have held on to her loosely because I did not want her to be co dependent on me. It may or may not have been a mistake…only time will tell. I have lived my life by What Would O Do? If I thought my mother would have done one thing I have done the opposite.
    Not too very long ago I was at the end of my rope with BG and I told her she was just like my mother. She didn’t care who she hurt or what the consequences were as long as she got to do what she wanted to do and most often the person that was hurt the most was me! I was appalled at myself. When I told her father what I had said he was stunned.
    All I can do now is pray that the independent streak she has will pay off in the long run.

    Now about that story of knocking over the Christmas tree? What you can’t deal with you laugh about. I still do it.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  31. Roscuro, I’ve often put it a different way. It’s actually illegal to be too poor. Examples: much of the world goes barefoot as a matter of course, but it’s illegal to send your children to school barefoot, or to go in most public places barefoot. Even if you own your own house, you have to pay property taxes, and you’re at the government’s mercy what they are. You are now required to buy health insurance. And let’s not forget that if you lose everything and are reduced to homelessness, in many places it’s illegal to do such things as beg, sleep in public, etc. Oh, and I once saw some write-up about child abuse that included “negligence,” and some of what they counted as negligence would definitely include many poor people (inadequate food or nutrition, inadequate clothing), so in some cases it might also be considered illegal to raise one’s own children.

    I’ve been poor with no one else to fall back on, where a serious car repair or health crisis would have knocked everything out from under me. I was raised in a frugal household so I knew how to shop smart, but even so my sister and I did eat way too much ramen noodles, and meat was a luxury we rarely could afford. (I would buy the smallest package of hamburger or a couple of cans of tuna if it was on sale.) I once went shopping with a roommate, who earned more than twice as much per hour as I did ($10 to my $4), but because she got pregnant out of wedlock she was suddenly eligible for food stamps. So her half of the cart hard pork chops and steak but mine (for myself and my sister) had one small package of the cheapest hamburger.

    I once had to spend every penny of my savings–including a couple of hundred dollars that belonged to my brother, but he was having me hold onto it until he decided whether he wanted it back or whether he wanted me to spend it for him as he first planned when he sent me the money, and I figured that by payday I could repay it–to put a new engine in my car. It sobered me to realize that if I’d had such a repair during that period of my life when the repair would have represented a few months’ income, I would have really been in a bind. I lived 11 miles from work (my car got 13 miles to the gallon if I used air, so even in Phoenix where a.c. in a car was not a luxury, I used it as little as possible), public transportation wasn’t available where I needed to go, and I had no one who would loan me that kind of money. My family wouldn’t have let me be homeless, but issues like that could have made it impossible ever to afford to go to college, even for someone like me who knows how to squeeze a dime to get every drop. But I’ve never not known if there would be another meal or been unable to pay the rent at all.

    I’ve had family members who have been poor in ways I can’t even imagine. One lived through his first winter in the South (which is colder than the Southwest) heating only the infant’s room because they couldn’t afford heat. One somehow made a $10-12/hour job stretch to care for a family of seven, but the quantity of food and the amount of heat or cooling in their house would definitely not fit the most basic comfort level of most of us. (Mumsee excepted.)

    Like

    Reply

  33. The article is true. I have said that for a long time even though I had no research to back me up. I SAW it.
    Poor people tend to have bad credit or no credit so they are charged a premium and have to pay up front because THEY HAVE NO CREDIT and they can’t get any. The are financially raped when they do buy anything on credit because they are being given the PRIVILEDGE of using credit and they are going to have to pay a higher interest rate.
    I noticed it a few years ago when I was having to watch my spending. Stopping in a convenience store for something to drink going back and forth to the beach.
    V-8 Juice $1.89
    Water $1.99
    Coke/Sprite 99 cents
    What would a mother with limited funds and thirsty children buy? Well of course the soda. You would be able to split it between two children for a whole lot less than giving them something nutricious that costs more

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  35. Cheryl, on your first example, I love to go barefoot when it is warm enough. When I was in West Africa most people were nearly barefoot – they wore cheap flip-flops which often broke. However, schools required the children to have shoes. [In fact the children all had to have complete uniforms, something which I also saw in Northern Mexico.] There are actually really good reasons for encouraging and even requiring shoes. The little girl whose toe one of my teammates had to reattach because she stepped on a scythe is one reason. Wearing shoes, even in a warm country is safer. Another reason is health – the mission children had a habit of kicking off their sandals to play soccer and every rainy season they would have to be treated for worms (which were visible under their skin) in their feet. While I was there, I had to help dress a wound of a man with severe elephantiasis, so I did some research on the condition. I found there are several causes for elephantiasis and one cause is going barefoot in soil containing volcanic ash. I understood much better just how important shoes are after my experience. As the paraphrase of Chesterton goes, “Never tear down a fence until you know why it was built.”

    I’ve never actually had to miss a meal or miss a months rent, but there were months when I didn’t know where the money would come from, and weeks when I didn’t know if I could buy food for the next week. Everything was provided, just at the right moment.

    While I’ve never owned a car, I’ve seen how the expense of repairs can keep someone from getting ahead. Second sibling and spouse are struggling and their car is a wreck, but they do not want to put any money into fixing it because it simply isn’t worth it. They plan to keep driving it until it quits, and meanwhile are trying to put by some money to get another used car in better shape. My father did all the repairs on his own vehicle, and I remember one car he had for work (he repaired office machinery) which he had carefully fixed up was totalled by someone running into the back of his car while he was stopped at a red light. It might have been repairable, but that my father had slammed on the brakes and wheeled to the side of the road to avoid hitting the person in front. That twisted the frame. The person in front was very grateful he had prevented a larger accident, but my father lost all the time and money he had put into the vehicle and had to spend more to get another.

    Like

    Reply

  36. Of course, we generally took water with us when we went places. One of the requirements for getting into the car here is to have a full water bottle.

    Like

    Reply

  38. Kim, my physician goes with a medical team regularly to Central America, to an area around a Coke factory. There, Coke is so much cheaper than water, that people drink it instead of water. You can imagine what happens – not only are things like diabetes rampant, but the high acid and phosphate content destroys their teeth and eventually their bones (phosphates in soft drinks leech calcium from the body).

    Like

    Reply

  41. Kim – The difference between you & my mom is that you are very aware of your “issues”, & are consciously working on overcoming them. You approach your role as a mother with open eyes & open heart.

    And the fact that you are a believer in Jesus makes a big difference, too. Chloe is blessed to have you, whether she realizes it or not.

    Like

    Reply

  42. Has anyone here ever seen a website called “Biblical Gender Roles”, run by a man who calls himself Larry Soloman (he says it is a pen name, that he wants to remain anonymous)?

    A Facebook friend shared an article about this man’s site (not in support of it). Thinking the quotes in the article must be exaggerated or out of context, I went to the actual website.

    Wow. This guy says that a man should not tolerate a wife’s refusal to have sex (unless she has a good enough reason), & even advises that he should force it on her. He advises not looking at her face while doing so, but focusing only on her body.

    I haven’t read the whole article yet, nor looked at much other stuff on his site, but it makes me shudder to think that there may be some men out there taking his advice. And I also shudder to think that as this man & his site are being written about, many people are going to think this is typical of conservative biblical teaching.

    Like

    Reply

  43. Karen, unfortunately, some of those attitudes grow out of an over-reaction to our culture’s disintegrating family and gender roles. Those kind of ideas, I think, reflect a complete loss of biblical balance. But I don’t think they’re all that uncommon in some of the patriarch-based faith communities or cults (although not looking at her face during sex is a new aberration — creepy).

    I’ve never heard of that guy, but I’ve heard similar ideas expressed on the fringes. Hope he isn’t married, he sounds like a bit of a nut.

    Our society has become essentially rudderless. It will reach a point of chaos & more lawlessness eventually — but then the danger is the over-reaction of clamping down with an authoritarian framework. But I can see that happening in our nation (maybe not in my lifetime). Things seem to be spinning so out of control, with no sense of basic ethics, that it can only go so far before things really unravel and the counter-reaction begins (which can be just as scary if not more so).

    Late night thoughts, long day — and I have an early day tomorrow.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  44. I must admit that my characterization of what the man had to say was a bit off, & was based on what I had read about what he wrote as well as the little bit I had read of his writing.

    Turns out he does not advocate forcing it on a wife. Although, the part I read was ambiguous as to how to go about dealing with a “begrudging” wife, & it could have been taken to mean forcing it on her. The words about not looking at her face were his.

    Like

    Reply

  45. Karen, is the not looking at her face on general principles (during any sexual encounter) or some form of punishment for her being reluctant? I did find some sort of site like that a couple of weeks ago (not sure that it was his, but someone said something about the really fringe man-in-charge people and linked to a website that had that sort of idea, that treating her harshly is the best way to earn her respect and admiration).

    Like

    Reply

  47. Roscuro, that’s interesting about the hazards of going barefoot in a poor area. I grew up mostly barefoot all summer, but it was in my own yard. (Now, it was in Phoenix, so each year I had to toughen my feet by starting early enough in the year to be able to do it! But I never stepped on anything worse than dog poop.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  48. Nice dog walk tonight, kind of windy, the neighborhood garage band drummer was practicing … I smiled at the faux geese lawn ornaments in one of the front yards we pass (when they first appeared I thought they were real — the house is across the street from a park where there are geese — and I was puzzled by the lack of response as I talked and cooed at them).

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to donna j Cancel reply