62 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-12-16”

  2. Good morning, everyone.
    Lindsey missed the bus this morning, so Scott drove her. Becca’s busily getting ready for school. I drank too much coffee and am feeling so jittery….

    Recently, I upgraded my Pandora account to the one without commercials. I love it! Lindsey gave me a pair of Bluetooth headphones for Christmas, which I’m currently using to listen to the John Denver station…

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  5. I survived! I have to give credit to Mr. P. He is a terrific Grandpa. The other night we bathed the children together. I was knelt down by the tub helping with bath and he reached around me to pull up my long sleeves. I got up to get Master S off to day care–His daddy dropped him off and we will go get him after lunch. He was a little sideways and defiant yesterday which is somewhat understandable. His Mommy left, then his Daddy left him with two strangers. Grandpa got up with Miss Em, got breakfast, and is now off changing the nasty diaper. Again, I don’t know how DIL does it all. Perhaps she has youth on her side?
    Some issues are coming out with Oldest Son and prayers there would be appreciated. His Dad is not happy with him right now on the way he is acting. I understand that he does have PTSD from Afghanistan, but that doesn’t excuse everything.

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  6. Lovely photo! Is that mistletoe in the tree? I assumed it was, but didn’t know if that’s a California shot or if the stuff grows there.

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  7. Good morning! I slept and slept and slept…long enough to have two dreams. The first is a reoccurring dream about being 8 a timeshare and it is time to leave and we have so much stuff to pack up that it seems impossible to get it all done before time is up. That usually happens on a much smaller scale each year at our time share. This year I did things differently and did not take an ice chest and boxes of food for the week. It did make getting out easier, but still we were last minute.

    My other dream involved going with a group, similar to a home school field trip, to a giant farm type place where we walked around and saw different things. Then at the end we were to see the rodeo show but some of the zoo like animals, lions, etc., had escaped and were running lose in the rodeo area. After that was taken care of, big rains came and the show had to be delayed. As it continued, cows came up real close to where spectators sat and they were close enough to pet and they would nudge you if you didn’t. All the time I had conversations going on with people in the group. Then before leaving a man in the group was asking that because of delays, etc., that we needed a refund or replacement tickets to see the real show. It was an unusual dream.

    Are your dreams long or short? My dreams seem lengthy and can be quite entertaining and even funny at times.

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  10. I know I dream. Sometimes I remember them vividly. Sometimes I remember having the dream but can’t remember what it was. Sometimes I can go into that not quite asleep or awake state where I can control the dream. I know I didn’t want to wake up this morning because I was having a good dream, but now I can’t remember what it was about.

    Janice, how is Art doing today?

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  11. I dream and often remember the dream, but usually only if I put it into words soon after I wake up. (If I tell myself or someone else what happened in the dream, I’ll remember it; if not, I won’t, even if it was vivid when I awoke.)

    Sunday afternoon I napped on the couch a bit, and woke from a terrifying dream. Ants grabbed onto my fingers and formed a chain, and in the dream I knew that meant they were army ants. (I don’t army ants actually do that, but in the dream I knew they did.) I was lying down and trying to stand, and trying to scream for my mother, and couldn’t do anything and was afraid I was a goner, and then I awoke. (I’m guessing it was Mom I was screaming for because army ants are an African species and Mom and Dad married in Nigeria, where both were missionaries.)

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  12. Art seems to be ok each time I ask him. He has not needed anything but the prescribed Flomax and peridium for localized pain. That is why I was able to sleep so soundly. I am not on nursing duty this time around, at least so far.

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  13. I keep a supply of toilet paper in a wash stand. Miss Bosley has learned to open the door to the stash. In case you want to know why a cat would be interested in toilet paper, we use the kind where the rolls are individually wrapped in a thin paper. Those papers are what we roll up into balls for Miss Bosley to play with. It does not matter how many rolls of toilet paper she manages to remove from the wash stand, I don’t think she can speed up the process of getting us to unwrap those rolls. Miss Bosley is a control freak of her home, but some things are still out of her control.

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  14. One of my children missed the school bus once. Nobody has since. That could still happen with this one, we will see.

    I rarely remember a dream, and then, seldom for very long. My understanding is that dreams happen in an instant and we remember them if we wake up right then. That does not explain people thrashing and dogs running.

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  16. It is a lovely day in the forest and I am purging “stuff” from this house….too much stuff!! It’s trash day and our guy must just love me on these days…I’m ridding us of those “we may need it one day” items….just watch…we’ll need it next week!! 🙂

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  17. Kim, on toilet training advice from yesterday, eldest sibling’s four year old was dragging his feet on getting toilet trained, so they told him that if he was toilet trained he could do soccer in the spring. That worked – he was training himself quite responsibly while he was here. However, I think for some children, they genuinely have some challenges – he did get into considerable difficulty a few times (missing the toilet) and he isn’t the only four/five year old boy whom I have known to have real difficulty with aim, which makes me think some children develop slower in that area. Sometimes, for those who are just being stubborn, the humiliation of having a younger sibling who is trained before you also works.

    QoD: It depends. Some nights, especially when I’m in discomfort (usually breathing related) the entire night seems like one long dream which I can’t escape from, not really a nightmare but not a nice dream either. I tend to remember the dreams that come in the morning hours, and have seemingly dreamt an entire novel plot on more than one occasion. When I finally get to sleep after several hours of mid-night wakefulness, my dreams are usually vivid nightmares, when episodes of sleep paralysis are most likely to occur. The strangest nightmares are the ones in which I wake up in relief that it was a dream, but I then get into another awful situation which seems real (having woken up from my dream). When morning finally comes, I realize that both were dreams.

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  18. Chas, do not read this comment. Others read at your own risk. Today I added fresh cranberries to the celery, onion, cabbage, pepper mix. It was a shock but quite tasty. Somebody gave us three bags of fresh cranberries, which I had never used before, so I am trying to come up with a use other than cooking them in sugar.

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  19. I’m a very active dreamer and typically remember them, though not always for long into the day unless they were especially notable. I’ve been known to be dreaming about something, and then resume the dream later after getting up and going back to bed. Chapter 2. Last night I dreamed I was staying with friends at the beach somewhere but there was a long dirt trail I had to walk up to get to their house.

    As I was walking up there, I discovered a homeless man and his dog — a gorgeous long-haired shepherd — in the little cave-like portion of the trail I had to duck down under. They moved to let me go through but I was then claustrophobic and panicked, couldn’t walk though there, it seemed to have shrunk and I was going to have to crawl through …

    That dog showed up periodically later in my dreams that then took me into a house where all my colleagues were staying for a few days (I ran into the editor in the kitchen and she told me we had to keep doing more and more and more and more or we’d all be out of work).

    Well, I could go on, there were a lot of different elements — a photo that got turned in too late, leaving a note (in the bathroom) for editor that my story was done and she could now edit it (!), some little girls who were doing folklorico dancing, walking along the harbor and chatting with some of the longshore workers …

    Crazy, they’re all crazy dreams. But entertaining. And very vivid. Every night.

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  24. Donna, your dream description sounds a lot like how my dreams are, like, here, there, and everywhere. I think I know where the farm/rodeo dream came from although the source was not in the dream. The person in the media centers on Sunday told me he owns 27 older cars he has that are restored or are in process of being restored. He wants a large property where he can drive his cars around the perimeter to keep them operational. (I know, truth is stranger than fiction.)
    It made me think of when my son was young and we went to the old train museum. It was a great field trip. I was thinking of suggesting this guy could offer something like that as a way to share his old cars instead of just a kind of hoarding hobby. I do not know if I would be out of line suggesting such a thing so this is on my mind.
    What do you think?

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  25. I think that is mistletoe in the trees–I see it a lot around here in NORTHERN California. The photo, however, did not do God justice. The dawn was far more glorious than you see here.

    Off to teach on prayer. 🙂 We’re starting with the opening scene from Fiddler on the Roof, now that I’ve mastered the technology in the room. Ha!

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  26. I mentioned that Elvera has short term memory problems. It’s getting worse.
    But I don’t have that problem. I don’t think.
    I was going to the bank to check on some stuff. I had the stuff in an envelope.]
    I got ready and looked all over the house for the envelope.
    Nowhere. It just disappeared. Somebody broke in and stole my envelope.!!
    Then I reached into my back pocket for a handkerchief
    🙂
    It was so embarrassing, and I’ve not told anyone buy you..
    I know you won’t laugh every time you see me.

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  28. Chas, my mom once looked around the entire house for her glasses. After she gave up looking, she went to the fridge to get some milk, and there were her glasses.

    Stuff like that is why when I’m looking for something, if after a reasonable search I cant find it, I stop looking and figure it will turn up somewhere, someday.

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  33. The worst time I had in losing keys was when they were partially hanging out of my pocket. Within a very short span they were lost. I later found that as I had passed by a chair with a crocheted afghan on it that they had become attached to the Afghan as if it were doing a pickpocket routine. I thought I was crazy until I finally saw them hanging there in that unexpected place. It was the last place I looked! 🙂

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  37. Michelle, one day I went to visit my sister and her family in Alabama. I was there over Christmas, and on Christmas Day we all took a walk in the park. At one point I called my sister over to whisper something to her–because a few yards ahead of us, a tree was growing over the path, and we would soon be walking right underneath mistletoe on Christmas Day! She thanked me for pointing it out, and a minute later she was able to accost and delight her husband. 🙂 (And embarrass her kids.)

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  39. Wow! That article about homeschooling has some very negative vibes! I know probably all those things and more can probably happen with any who are homeschooled, but each child is different, and some will thrive while others rebel. I just did not get the impression that the article was constructive. It sounded more like a rant against homeschooling. And it did not offer any numbers to back up what was written. To use an old cliche, it sounded like someone had a bee in her bonnet. 🙂

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  43. Grandpa and I took Miss Em shopping with us today–as if leaving her at home was an option!
    When picked Master S up from home daycare. He went to the library today for story time and make a rocket ship.
    We decided to have leftover hamburgers from last night. When we got home we discovered the dogs had eaten all the hamburger buns and were halfway through a loaf of French bread.
    I think I salvaged dinner pretty well by making brown gravy over the hamburger patties, cooking some rice ( not my best because I am different cookware than I have at home), heated up carrots and corn from Saturday night. Not bad.
    Miss Em is exhausted and has gone to bed. Master S ate all his dinner and is celebrating with a few chips and a couple of really expensive Gummy Bears. 🙂

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  44. That is funny. I just finished reading the article and found it excellent. I was just discussing the same idea with nineteen year old (the one staying with my folks). She said my dad wants to know how I feel about eldest being the black sheep. In reality, I believe my work as a mom ends at eighteen and the fun of being a mom is all that is left. Sure they will make stupid decisions. And some will get hurt. But they will have been offered something else. They are all entitled to make their choices, just as God allows us to do. Not that I am God, but they are not my possessions and what they do does not reflect on me. I am not making those decisions. It is not my fault if they do well or if they do poorly. Excellent article. Homeschool mom.

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  45. I agree that that is probably mistletoe in the trees. However I took some pictures of bare trees like that in Colorado when my daughter told me that what I was seeing in the top of the trees, the clumps, was squirrel nests.

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  46. I read the article on FB, Janice.

    The reason I posted it is to take some of the guilt pressure off homeschool moms whose children do not turn out the way they hope. I reminded some of my friends that there is no cookie cutter method of child rearing and just because you do everything “right” does not mean the child will “get with the program,” and follow in your footsteps of godly living.

    On Tammy’s post, I noted that some people seem to make an idol of the passage, “train up a child in the way (s)he will go and when (s)he is old (s)he will not depart from it.”

    Obviously, we want our children to love God and follow him but they have just as much free will as we do and may make mistakes, as Mumsee indicated. That’s why I posted it.

    I often think the easiest thing to do would have been to lock my children in pretty boxes and set them on a shelf where I could see them and keep them safe from the world. But that would not be much of a life for them. My task was to provide them with the resources they need to use their particular gifts, talents and abilities the way God created them to do so. Three have ended up doing well; one is floating at the moment. But I refuse to feel responsible for that child’s choices. That child needs their own relationship with God–wherever it takes the kid.

    That’s all.

    And, of course, a person’s life is not over until it is over. There’s always hope. 🙂

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  47. I don’t think parents should get an overload of guilt or glory for how their children turn out. I agreed with the article in the message of don’t feel guilty if your children end up doing things against the way you trained them. I felt disturbed about the unnecessary listing of all the wrongs that can be done. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list. I happen to know of some things that were not mentioned that were negative outcomes for homeschoolers. But what was said could be said of all children, not just homeschoolers.

    I think it was reminding me of when I first attended my church and I was the only former home school mom in a ladies group that was at odds with the homeschoolers at church. I was out of sync with both groups as retired from homeschooling. I had to listen to all the complaints about homeschoolers from those who had not homeschooled. It felt very awkward. I felt like I was absorbing a lot of unwarranted grief. I think that is one reason I drew closer to the oldest group of women at church. I was not in the cross hairs of the other two main groups.

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  51. Janice, there are a lot of homeschoolers out there that are shocked when their children become independent and exercise that independence in ways the parents do not anticipate. She was simply giving a very brief listing of a few of the things that might show up. Forewarned is forearmed. I was a bit that way when I started, but my children set me straight. Not that they have done any particularly egregious things, but they have not necessarily followed the path I would have chosen for them. That is mostly a good thing. But, in the beginning, I saw a lot of perfect moms with perfect children and was a bit concerned I was not doing it right. This article provides a valuable service.

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  52. I was not around those “perfect” moms. When I first started homeschooling we were pretty isolated. Everyone I knew was using either public or private school. Later I found the local home school group, a secular group with most not practicing religious beliefs and considered all-inclusive, so we were around a really eclectic group for a number of years. Then some people in my husband’s church, which was our family church back then, followed my stepping out of the norm and began homeschooling. We had a small group of maybe eight children at the most. It was not until son was in the later years of high school that we got more involved in the Christian home school groups, but I was too late in to really develop strong friendships there. So maybe you can see that I did not have that sense of perfection driving me. My drive was to keep providing resources and learning experiences that would continue to foster a love of learning. I tried to incorporate some religious studies, but it was only in hindsight that I felt I had not done as much in that regard as I could have. I suppose our rather low key approach gave son enough to foster interest and not feel he had to rebellion against overload. But I can’t take credit for much except for really researching resources and what was available as far as home school classes all over the metro area. I did have to drive all over town in later years to get the best learning opportunities. I would not have done that except that son was an academic type and made the most of learning opportunities. It was worth my effort and the money spent for his unusual pieced together education.

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  53. Michelle, your son worked extremely hard to get his PhD so he is successful. The lack of a job market in his chosen field is reason enough to knock the wind out of his sails for a time. I pray y’all will remain hopeful. The fact that he, stuck with the program and got his PhD shows tenacity, the same as sticking with Scouts to become an Eagle. He has greatness within that will work it’s way outward in time.

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  55. Obviously I have not homeschooled my children, but most of my siblings have. And I think the article is a necessary reminder. While our family has not faced sorrows as deep (in terms of rebellion) as those some of you have seen, we’ve seen choices that parents would not have foreseen. But I still see parents who pretty much believe that perfect parenting is nearly within their reach, and perfect parenting (they admit) may not quite guarantee perfect results, but . . . and then they tell of plans for their family in generations to come, as though setting the foundation right in this one will mean that they can speak confidently of the righteousness of their great-great-great grandchildren.

    We have no such guarantees. Our hope is in God, not in our methods, not even our good methods. I do think that good parenting choices are important: even potty-training choices. But they are not guarantees of anything. When our hopes are misplaced, when they are in the perfectability of the human soul by use of the proper human methods, we are in danger. And that misplaced hope may be a minor element in the homeschool movement–I have no idea how major or minor it is, as I’m not an insider–but it is most definitely there.

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  56. Donna, I thought of you on my way home from work tonight. There’s a dog park on the way home. It was covered in snow, the wind was blowing, and the temperature was around 18F. And I thought to myself, “I’m sure glad I don’t live in Southern California where the dog parks are really cold.

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  58. I certainly don’t know how prevalent it is. Nearly thirty years of homeschooling and I have rarely had interactions of any depth with other homeschoolers. Only slightly involved with support groups over the years. But I have heard of families devastated when the children did not turn out as expected.

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  61. The idea Kim mention of controlling a dream is new to me.

    The closest I ever got to that was when I was a lad of 8 or 9 and had nightmares about ferocious animals. Once I dreamed I was sitting in the living room and a huge polar bear walked into the living room on two feet, roaring. This is the only time I ever remember knowing within a dream that it was a dream. Having recently given my heart to Jesus, I prayed to wake up. That answer to prayer fed my young faith.

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  62. Well, as Roscuro could testify, there are some really controlling elements of homeschooling out there, some that think that if you do everything just right, x + y = z every time. Some aspects of those, at least in theory, have everyone who isn’t perfect kept out of your life.

    I heard a young homeschooling mom tell me in seriousness that a father of a 30-year-old woman who had a job in New Zealand or somewhere exotic like that, if the daughter was raped it would be her father’s fault for “letting her” go to another country instead of demanding she stay under his roof until she marries. (In her world, this young woman shouldn’t even have a job two doors away from her home, unless her father or brother or other relative is her boss–even her mom, if all the employees are female, but she can’t work “outside the home” and under anyone else’s authority.) And one thinks, in the real world are there actually people who think that parents have that sort of authority over fully-adult daughters, such that when the daughter wants to take a particular job they would even try to use “authority” to talk her out of it?!

    And the obvious next question is, if this young woman’s children ever make a choice she wouldn’t approve, what will she do? If one of my daughters ever gets assaulted (God forbid), I wouldn’t even want to tell this friend, because her worldview is so smug and self-satisfied, so focused on technique, and so rigid in what is allowable. And my young daughters do have jobs outside the home, and we approve such choices. Furthermore, we don’t think we have any right at all to restrict them from such! But if something were ever to happen to one of them, even if it was unrelated to her employment, I can just hear her willing herself not to say, “Well, if you had only followed biblical principles of parenting, this would not have happened! You sacrificed your daughter, and so did your husband, and both of you are reprehensible for it. I bet you’ve learned your lesson now, though. Or are you still insisting on foolishness?”

    But I fear the day when one of her children either engages in serious rebellion, or finds life isn’t quite that tidy, or so forth. Because even though she acknowledges in words that we can’t guarantee our children’s holiness, a worldview that would voluntarily speak out loud that another parent is negligent for “letting” his 30-year-old daughter do something, and would dare casually equate her theoretical future assault to bad parenting, is a worldview of a parent who needs a serious wake-up call before it’s her child, and not that other person’s child, who rebels or gets hurt in ways that good parents shouldn’t have to suffer.

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