69 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-9-15”

  1. Somewhere, here in Hendersonville, a young woman is up by now.
    Feeding her children, getting them ready for school and likely sending a husband out.
    She isn’t thinking about me. She knows she has to get out soon and spend the day looking into people’s mouths.
    She doesn’t want to do that. But that’s what she does on Mondays.
    The person whose mouth she’s going to poke around in doesn’t want it either.
    But we will meet in about an hour and get that done.

    😦

    The man on the radio said, “I’m done with this rain.”
    He isn’t; not yet.

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  2. Chas, they have a new screening process for dental hygienists these days. They weed out the sadistic ones.
    I distinctly remember the first time I got my teeth cleaned that there wasn’t blood. I didn’t think the dentist had done a good job. My dentist was closing his practice and retiring. He had let his assistant/hygienist retire first, he cleaned my teeth that day. When I said something he smiled ruefully and told me I wasn’t the first to comment and that going to the dentist wasn’t supposed to hurt.

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  4. Awww, cute song sparrow.

    Dog names: when I was nine or ten, my family started shopping for a puppy. We (meaning Mom, as I don’t think any of the rest of us had any real opinions) were looking for a female, black and possibly black and white, and maybe a cocker or cocker mix (like a cockapoo). We looked at a litter of puppies that had some white with brown spots and some white with black spots, cute as could be, but alas all the black and white were males, and we passed. We looked at a litter of cockapoos, but the last black female had sold to the people who were leaving as we arrived. (As I found out later, a cockapoo puppy that is black may not be black as an adult; it may be silver.)

    Finally we answered an ad by someone who had cocker puppies; she claimed they were purebred, but they clearly were not (as was obvious when she grew up). But she had two puppies left, including one tiny little black one with white markings. I picked up one puppy in each hand and put one on each shoulder–I was ten, and those pups were that tiny. Around her nose she had a backward question mark in white (the white on her nose caused one old lady to knowingly identify her as an old dog when she was a six-month-old puppy); she had a stripe down her chest, and she had white back paws. The rest of her was jet black. As she grew up, it became clear her legs were far too long and thin for a purebred cocker, but she had all the cocker character flaws, meaning she was stubborn as all get out, snappy as she got older (esp. with children), and subject to submissive urination (meaning that if she suspected you didn’t like her, she tried to curry your favor by peeing on your shoe or on the rug in front of you). But she was the family dog, and she was mostly my dog, and I loved her. I tried to train her, did groom her, walked her some, played with her, took photos of her.

    When we got her, the breeder told us they were six weeks (borderline young on leaving their litter; eight weeks is recommended), but based on the birthday they were actually four weeks. Ours was the smallest in the litter, and a wee little thing. Mom pointed out that she was marked just like Jet, a dog the family had had years before (before I was born, but my big brothers’ favorite dog), which she said was the only dog Dad ever liked, and immediately Dad said we’d take her. The first night, Mom put her in a box with a ticking alarm clock and a heating pad, and she was next to my bed. Mom told us that if she were discovered on a bed it would be obvious she had been lifted onto it, so know in advance she was never allowed on furniture, and don’t use that excuse. So during the night when she whimpered and whined, lonely for her family, I picked her up and took her into the bathroom with me, where I sat on the toilet and cuddled and crooned to her until she settled.

    We thought of puppy names and settled on Trinka, which I thought was really cute. I have no idea who came up with it, but I liked it and I thought it fit her. But when she was several days old, Mom thought it would be fun to name her after the black dog she owned in Africa and called Cricket, so she changed her name. I continued to call her Trinka for several days; I liked it better and it felt like it was already her name, but she became Cricket. And I eventually dubbed her with Jet as a middle name since she looked like the other Jet, and that way her “initials” were CJD, same as mine.

    When I was 20, Cricket was still living with Mom, ten years old now and losing control of her body functions. Mom tried medication but that didn’t work, and anyway Mom wanted to move to an apartment and didn’t want to limit her choices to one that allowed dogs, so she had her put to sleep. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I’ve never had a chance to say goodbye to a dog; the dog is returned to the pound while I’m in school, given away while I’m at work (that was a collie/sheltie mix my landlord said I could have when I moved out, and I wanted him, but he got given away to someone else), or it runs away and doesn’t come home. I don’t look forward to telling Misten goodbye someday in the next one to three or four years, but I still want to be able to; though I’ve dreaded that day since before I even chose her from the litter. Cricket was the first dog my parents ever had from a puppy into old age, and Misten is now a year older than Cricket was, and has been mine since eight weeks. She’s now a family dog, and I don’t think of her as extra especially mine (though I’m the one who grooms her, a task she doesn’t like), but my husband says she does respond to me differently, as though I’m more “hers” than the rest of the family is; for seven years she was only mine, and she still sees a special bond with me. Right now she is lying contentedly behind my chair, and I think I will post this and go pet her.

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  5. One of the hardest things you can do is say good bye to a beloved pet. A good pet owner knows this and doesn’t want their companion to suffer. No one can tell you when it is time only you will know.

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  9. If BG ever gets her act together she wants to go to dental hygienist school. Of course this is the child that has to have someone else heat up her food because she is two squeamish to handle it if it is cold or room temp and should be hot.

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  10. The hygienists I know are pretty into it. Obsessive and getting every last bit of plaque or tartar out of there! dig-dig-dig.

    The worst part are the lectures if you’ve been remiss in flossing every day. I’ve been pretty good lately so am expecting at least a shorter lecture when I go in next month. 🙂

    Dog nicknames are fun, too. Tess often is just BabyGirl (that’s what the foster owner called her a lot). Cowboy has become “Mr. Cows.”

    Tess’ hearing is still excellent. I was in bed reading yesterday afternoon and I quietly said her name.

    She was in the living room but happily came scampering up onto the bed to say high when she heard her name. She can’t stay up there with me, though, as she insists of lying right on top of me and pressing her face into mine. She likes to be closer-than-close.

    “That’ll Do” usually gets her off the bed.

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  15. The hygienist did something.
    Then they took me somewhere, took some pictures and the dentist did something.
    They asked me If I wanted a crown and something else done.
    I didn’t.
    They charged me $390. I suppose it was worth it.
    But they gave me a free tooth brush and a small tube of toothpaste.

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  18. I had to take the sparrow’s pic. It followed me along the path chattering at me for about 50 feet. I finally stopped, it landed about 5 feet away. I asked it what the problem was. It chirped some more, so I said fine, then I’ll take your pic too. As soon as I did, it chirped some more and then flew off. It really wanted it’s picture taken I guess… 🙂

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  21. Heidi was black & white when we got her as a little puppy, but those colors gradually blended into a grey/black/silver mix on her back & sides, with the rest of her being a shiny silvery-white. Her once-black ears are now a kind of tan with black accents. Her fur is wavy & curlyish, & very soft, with some areas feeling quite silky.

    No one asked, but I thought I’d share, since the topic of dog colors came up. 🙂

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  23. Karen, when I first saw photos of the puppies in Misten’s litter, I’d ruled her out as one of m options, because she had this figure-eight patch of two large white ovals on her face, and I didn’t find it attractive. But by the time the puppies were four or six weeks old, the top part had narrowed into a stripe. She basically just has a Lassie-like blaze down her whole face, no longer “trendy” among collie breeders, but pretty enough. But collies are born with blunt little faces (her breeder says they look like guinea pigs when they’re born), and it’s really hard to picture what they’ll look like when their nose lengthens out and their markings adjust. She ended up being the prettiest in the litter (ten puppies) by far, but I didn’t think so in the earliest pictures.

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  24. Misten is very pretty. 🙂

    Cowboy gets a lot of comments because he’s what they call a blue merle — and he had a mixture of both brown & blue colors in both eyes (mostly brown). My Aussie before these dogs also was a blue merle but with too much white (according to proper breed standards).

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  26. Donna, Misten also has large amounts of white. In America, “white” is a legitimate collie color (it isn’t in some countries). The dog is not all white, but its coloring is one of the three other collie colors–sable and white, tricolor, or blue merle–and its face is that color, and usually some patches on its body, but most of the dog is white. (Here’s a link to some photos: http://www.collierescuenetwork.com/white.html ) I’ve only seen one white collie in person. White is recessive, and so both parents need to carry the gene. Misten’s mother carried the gene, and so Misten is white-factored, with extra white. She is a white-factored, tri-factored sable and white. All of her siblings are tri-factored because the mother is tri-colored, but not all are white-factored because the mother was white-factored but not white. (It isn’t always easy to tell if they’re white-factored. Her breeder said that she knew there were whites in the dam’s family tree and she might be white-factored, but she didn’t know for sure until she had some white-factored puppies. But Misten and about two other puppies in the litter were visibly white-factored, white extra white and with white in some places where collies don’t usually have white.)

    If I had bred Misten to a white-factored blue merle, her puppies could have been any possible color combination, sable like herself, tri-colored, blue merle, or a white with any of those three colors. She also could have produced puppies that were white-factored like she is but not white (white genes from only one parent), and puppies that weren’t even white-factored (if they didn’t get the gene from either parent). Many breeders specialize for color–some breeders mostly breeding sable, some breeding blue merles and tricolor–but I don’t know that anyone breeds deliberately to get all the color combinations in one litter. But I think it would be a gorgeous litter. If she were bred to a smooth (short-haired) collie that was rough-factored, then I think she could mix any of those colors with either coat length, too (I think that’s how the genetics work for that one), but I don’t personally like smooth collies. Still, her mother had one litter of ten (the one Misten was in) and several litters of half a dozen. Well, a litter of six or eight or ten collie puppies, with multiple color combinations, would be quite a sight!

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  27. My hygienist says, “Brush your gums and floss your teeth.” I enjoy going when there is no extra trip necessary after the cleaning. I think my bill totaled a little under 200.00 for cleaning, dentist check, and no x-rays. And I got a toothbrush, toothpaste and two very small containers of Glide floss. 🙂

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  28. There can be some humor involved in a dog losing much of its hearing. I just tossed an empty peanut butter jar out the door for Misten to lick. She was lying in the grass looking away, but her head was up and her ears were up (she was awake). She didn’t move when the door opened or shut, or when a peanut butter jar landed a couple of yards away from her–clearly she didn’t hear any of that. But a minute or two later she stood to her feet with her nose working. (“Hmm, I smell peanut butter.”) She walked over toward the door and looked around, and I guess she either didn’t see it or noticed the smell was fainter. A minute later she had found the jar and was contentedly lying down and licking away.

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  29. I finished washing all the dishes from our Mini-Thanksgiving this morning. Soon it will be time to move on to a conference site. We got to see the Prof off to class this a.m. He looked sharp wearing a sports jacket with slacks and button down collar shirt. He wore jeans for all his other years on campus so it seems like a big change to see him dressed up for class. 🙂

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  31. We have a new cousin, a premie, who is a snowflake baby, one born from a frozen embryo. He arrived the day before the scheduled baby shower. They were not sure if they’d still have the shower, but they did with just the dad in attendance. The birth was accomplished through a related surrogate mom. So glad it all seems to be working out.

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  33. Cheryl – A Facebook friend has a collie who is white all over except for her head & face, which have the typical Lassie colors. She’s gorgeous! (So is your Misten.)

    I will admit that Heidi is not what we would call a beautiful dog. But she really is adorable! (Adorable as in very, very cute.) And she has a sweet, friendly disposition.

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  38. Apparently some lone-wolf “evangelist” of some kind in Arizona has made a FB video that’s gone viral, go figure, blasting Starbucks for changing the holiday look of its cups. He thinks taking snowflakes and reindeer off of the design and swapping it for a simple red and green color contrast is somehow anti-Christian. Or at least that’s what I gather.

    So no big deal, right? This guy is just some guy no one’s really heard of … Until all the anti-christian folk on FB discover him and have now launched this massive campaign ridiculing Christians who are upset by Starbucks cups but not issues such as homelessness, etc. Their filling up my newsfeed — I’d never even heard of this “controversy” until the anti- crowd got on board to use it as an item of ridicule against Christians.

    Oy.

    And sigh.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/09/starbucks-christmas-cups/75445122/

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  40. Meanwhile, I lucked out today and got to cover a news conference close to home & that way can write the story from home. Tess is at my feet near the front window (which is where my desk and work computer are set up); she’s anticipating the mail delivery I think. She really does have amazing instincts.

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  42. I’m at the library and saw a book displayed in the New Nonfiction area that may be of interest to some of you. Parenting Your Delinquent, Defiant, or Out-of-Control Teen: How to Help Your Teen Stay in School and Out of Trouble Using an Innovative Multisystemic Approach, by Patrick M. Duffy, Jr., PsyD

    I don’t know if it’s from a Christian perspective, but thought I’d pass that information along to any who may be interested in reading it.

    More information at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Your-Delinquent-Defiant–Control/dp/1626250839/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447111406&sr=8-1&keywords=Parenting+Your+Delinquent%2C+Defiant%2C+or+Out-of-Control+Teen

    6 arrows

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  44. So, while driving home, I was thinking ‘I hope that comment I made from the library didn’t sound flippant or anything.’ I’m praying for all who are walking difficult paths with your beloved children.

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  46. Donna – I haven’t seen the video, but I read a bit about it. Cameron shared an essay about it, from a Christian viewpoint (I shared it, although it was snarkier than I like), & Kim shared another one. And I’ve seen a pastor I used to know (well, I knew him when he was a kid & then a young man) who also disagreed with the man’s tirade.

    You can tell your anti-Christian friends that this guy is on the fringe, & most Christians are not having a fit about Starbucks’ red cups.

    Here’s the one Cameron & I shared…

    https://theconfessionalarp.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/concerning-red-cups-coffee-companies-and-pseudo-christian-things/

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  48. Thanks Karen — waiting for maybe World Magazine or some such source to do something on it.

    Honestly, though, are Christians *really* outraged over this? I’d never heard of it and think the cups look very Christmas-y.

    But the anti-Christian crowd is sure loving it.

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  51. I haven’t been commenting on the daily thread much lately, but caught up with what I missed while offline the week of my FIL’s death.

    How very disturbing to read about that CDD stuff. I’d never heard of it, but listened to the podcast Roscuro linked about it, and read some at the link Cheryl posted.

    Horrible. What a deception that anyone can think that is biblical, and practice it. 😦

    Yet, I am glad to know there are philosophies out there like that. A couple of people came to mind that I think could be very vulnerable to that deception, and it leads me to prayer on how or whether to approach the subject with them in a proactive way.

    But extremely disturbing at the same time. I felt weak and lightheaded in my chair, just reading about it. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be for a woman to experience it. 😦

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  52. A liberal Christian friend (who likes to poke at her more orthodox brethren, sometimes very pointedly and even unkindly) posted something, saying how surprising it is how many people let Starbucks define Christmas (or something like that). I commented “not too many, I think” 🙂

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  53. 6arrows – We’re actually having a really long and warm fall. We have usually had much colder temperatures and several inches of snow by now 🙂 We’re supposed to have a warmer and drier winter than usual thanks to El Nino.

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  54. Oh, what do I know, Kare? 🙂 LOL. I’m glad you have been having a better autumn than usual, and the same for winter will be great, too, if things go as predicted!

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  55. Haha, well she answered back — “More than you think!”

    Argh.

    Social media blows this stuff so out of proportion — but I also don’t appreciate the fringe people who get the ball rolling. Sigh.

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  56. To clarify, my sentence at 9:11 pm “Yet, I am glad to know there are philosophies out there like that.” does NOT mean I’m glad people believe and practice such things, but that I’m glad I FOUND OUT things like that happen.

    Probably didn’t need to explain that, but, rereading my post, it doesn’t sound quite like I want it to…

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  57. We got back to CO this morning at 5AM….with puppy tagging along 🙂 We left Saturday in the wee hours of the morning, spent the night in Indiana…drove on over to Ohio on Sunday morning, picked up our puppy at my sister’s home…drove over to say hello ,with a hug, for my Mom…left for home at noon. And her name is……Tallulah Bess….and we are calling her….Toolie! 🙂 Who suggested that name? We feel it fits her perfectly.
    It seems I missed Donna’s birthday…yikes…I don’t like that…any cake left over? Happiest of birthdays my friend….I do hope it was an enjoyable day filled with many blessings from above….celebrating our Lord’s beautiful creation of YOU!! ❤

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  59. 6 Arrows, I have the same sense. I know some people who are fringe, but not “that” fringe–but enough that they or their children might be vulnerable to it. (Let’s put it this way: I first heard about the ultra-fringe non-Mormon belief in polygamy about two years ago, when I proofread a book that mentioned it. But in the last three weeks, I have come across three references to the belief in “Christian” sources. To the best of my knowledge, none of the sources actually practice it, but I have heard/seen support on two websites and my husband told me about a conversation about it in real life in which it was mentioned positively by someone we both know. This is far from mainstream, but three different conservative sources in three weeks? That’s way too “mainstream” for my tastes!)

    I’m never going to be persuaded of any of these things, and am unlikely to have anyone seriously attempt to persuade me. But people I care about might well encounter such issues, and I need to have an answer.

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  62. Cute name — you’ll have fun with her.

    I have yet to see any defense of the Starbucks-hates-Jesus position, only a lot of posts about how awful and stupid it is that ‘so many’ people are (supposedly) outraged. So, as usual, it’s outrage against the (alleged) outrage. So tired of it. My one friend I think has a lot of anger somehow, she’s always taking digs at conservative Christians. It gets old, I’ll have to start ignoring rather than trying to gently engage as I sense this irritates her. 😦

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  63. So since when are reindeer and snow flakes “Christian” symbols? That “evangelist” needs to hear the Gospel. I really don’t care what secular companies put on their products for Christmas or any other holiday. They are not my church or spiritual authority. Let them put whatever they want. My problem is any church that puts Santa and reindeer up instead of focusing on the reason The Lord came to earth. Our salvation!

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  65. Nancyjill- I must have been in my noisy class since I didn’t hear the shout. Of course, your shout would have had to be pretty loud since I am 150 miles North of St L.

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  66. Re: CDD – I read through some of the articles on that site. These articles (written by both men & women) insist that women really want their husbands to take them over their knees & exercise their authority that way. It is presented as being a very loving thing to do for the wife. Spanking long & hard enough to bring her to tears is presented as the way to help a wife release her stress. I can see how people could be deceived into thinking this is a good thing.

    A couple articles mentioned that old movies & TV shows would occasionally show a man spanking his wife, which supposedly proves that until the last few decades, it was common & accepted. Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t those kinds of scenes usually done in a comic sense?

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  67. Well Peter I did make my way north of St Louis…it was just towards Indiana…. 🙂
    Tallulah likes to chew…on everything…she is just 8 weeks old so we have lots of chew toys around…seems she likes shoes, cords, jewelry, furniture… 😦 I do find myself wanting to call her Lulah….we may make some adjustments with the name….time will tell….for now it seems to fit…but she hasn’t a clue at this point….my sister called her “Girlie”!!

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  69. My wife received this email today.

    She lives next door to a mosque.
    She bought a husky.
    He is very nice and does not bite.
    She is now getting complaints from the Imam next door.
    She doesn’t know why.

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