77 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-1-16”

  3. Lindsey had a sinus infection and strep last week. Unfortunately, Scott is now sick…he went to bed early last night and still hasn’t gotten up. He rarely catches anything (in seventeen years of marriage, he’s never been on antibiotics).

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  7. I got up at 6:30 to make salmon patties for Art’s lunch. I figure that is one of the healthiest things I make since I add oatmeal, Greek yogurt and an egg along with dill seed and a few other seasonings. Miss Bosley had a canned salmon juice smoothie for her breakfast.

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  9. Ann, I had the same thing happen around midnight. I dreamed I was walking through a house, not this one, where I was living. Things were out of place. I walked back through and looked in the laundry room. There was a man standing in the corner on the phone. I ran but had trouble unlocking the front door. Finally I got out and went to bang on a neighbors door. The neighbor was some sort of law enforcement and I awoke as he was walking to his front door carrying a gun. ( I could see his shadow through the drapes of the front window). My heart was pounding when I awoke. It took a while to settle back in to sleep.

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  10. I rarely have nightmares, but a few days ago I woke from a dream in which I woke up and there were lots of people in our bedroom, just standing around talking, but my husband wasn’t in bed with me. In the dream I got up and walked out into another room and there were a lot of people everywhere I looked. I never did find my husband, but we must have had 30 or 40 people in our small house, and I was annoyed and wondering who invited all these people over, and why on earth they were there at 3 or 4 in the morning.

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  11. And we managed to get through January with almost no snow! We had one snowfall of two or three inches, and it stayed on the ground two weeks or more (the last of it is finally melting) . . . but I e-mailed a friend in Nashville after they had their eight-inch snowfall that in one day they’d had at least as much as we’ve had all winter. A freak snowfall in November brought about half of that, or we’d still be under four inches for the winter. It would be wonderful if this would continue the rest of the winter, just one snowfall (less than six inches) per month. We haven’t had to snowblow the driveway yet. In my 14 years in Chicago and five here so far, only once did I ever see a winter with this little snow–but it definitely isn’t over yet.

    Ironically, the year before I moved to Nashville (winter of 2002-03) was the year with very little snow in Chicago. That winter, one day I worked at home because I wanted to call some businesses in Nashville, but when I called them they were closed. I then called a friend in Nashville, who told me they had seven inches of snow (the most in 20 years, I think she said), and she was about to take her toddler outdoors to play in it. Nashville and Chicago got about the same amount of snow that winter, but it was twice Nashville’s average, one-third of Chicago’s! And in my eight winters in Chicago, only once did we have more than an inch total accumulation over the course of a winter, so I guess they get to that average by occasional snowy winters.

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  13. Good Morning….ummm….where’s the blizzard? One weather guy continues to declare that it is coming….I’m not believing it quite yet….the plow was on our road this AM removing yesterday’s snow…all schools,colleges,churches,are closed but there is no new snow that I can see…
    but it certainly is pretty here in the forest….looks like an Ansel Adams creation in real time….so blessed to experience this in an otherwise crazy fractured world…..

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  15. We got more rain this January than in the last four Januaries combined! Than you God!

    Did a close edit on chapter four and started on chapter 5. Amazing what you can get done between 4:45 and 7 in the morning!

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  16. My brain is always clearer in the morning.
    Dear Hubs backed my truck out of the garage yesterday so he could water seal our new adirondack chairs we had made. I knew something was in my truck that I needed this morning. I went to the garage and it wasn’t there. I went to my purse to get my keys they weren’t there. I looked in all his usual places to put things like that. Not there. I went outside to my truck. It was unlocked with the keys in the ignition.
    I got the calendar I was looking for and came back inside with my keys.

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  17. On a brighter note. BG has asked if we can go shopping this afternoon. It seems that American Eagle has some new one piece bathing suits and she is going to need one when we go on our trip to JH Ranch. Now while that might not sound like much or it may sound like manipulation to get a new swim suit…to me it says that she is looking forward to our Mother/Daughter week.

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  18. If Lee were on this blog, he would win the up time award, as he gets up at around 12:20 – 12:30am. 🙂

    I would probably be in last place, as I get up a few minutes before 8, due to my sleep patterns (not being able to get to sleep quickly, for one thing).

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  19. That is a good thing, Kim.

    And we often leave our keys in the vehicle, unless it is an auto lock deal, I don’t like those. But not in the ignition due to the small people. But it saves looking for keys. I suppose, in some areas, that would leave you looking for your vehicle. And that does happen around here on occasion.

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  21. Reading about these nightmares made my heart rate go up! I had a rare one a few weeks ago (I hardly ever have them either). I dreamed I woke up and there was a strange man who had come in through the bedroom window standing in the room. I told him to leave and he said nothing, just stood there silently and ominously as I tried to get out of bed. But there were too many heavy blankets on me and I literally couldn’t move.

    The sunrise photo was taken from my front porch, it’s the view through the tree tops across the street (just down the hill beyond that is the busy port, which is bustling 24/7; we’re getting spectacular sunrises lately and they’re especially striking with the cranes and ships in the foreground, but I’m never awake enough to get one of those shots; I’ve seen them on FB though, some of my neighbors are real early-birds).

    I normally don’t get up at all at that time, let alone being awake enough to go somewhere for a more interesting photo. But when I saw that sunrise from my bed (and it was time to let the animals out anyway), I managed to grab my phone, throw on a sweatshirt and stumble, half-asleep, out on the porch to snap a couple shots. Then I went right back to sleep. 🙂

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  22. I always remove the keys from the ignition. Even when I’m pumping gas.
    I have this self-made rule.
    “Never get out of the car while it’s pinging at you.” It requires some silly things like that, but it saves lots of trouble in the long run.

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  23. Michelle’s part of the state is hogging our El Nino.

    We’re still running behind, but are hopeful that February will be the start of our long-anticipated wet season.

    The wind last night was horrendous, a couple big signs collapsed at local shopping centers, we had widespread power outages and I have to go check out a house that collapsed nearby before I head in to work. Not clear if that was wind-related or not, it was under a remodel and no one was living there eat the time. Seemed to also be a gas leak, though no one heard an explosion.

    We did get more snow in the local mountains with our latest storm — just not a whole lot of rain at the end of it all.

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  25. Ah, small towns and rural areas. We never lock the house door unless we’re going somewhere overnight. Since there is usually an extra car in the drive, it looks like someone is home.

    Nancyjill: According to our weatherman, you’ll get the blizzard today, and Iowa gets it tomorrow. This one is supposed to go North, but Cheryl may want to be ready just in case it tracks South. By Wednesday morning, Des Moines is to have 10+ inches. Good thing the caucus is tonight.

    Michelle- WOuldn’t it more correct to say that you got more rain in January than you have the past 4 years combined?

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  26. The things I find in my backyard.

    The dogs recently destroyed a stuffed toy so it looks like it’s snowed or has produced a cotton crop.

    Then I couldn’t find the large (29 oz) jar of coconut oil that I put into the dogs’ food.

    Tess had managed to drag it outside (I know it was her because I found it in the little cubby-space among the vegetation near the south fence where she always goes).

    Luckily she didn’t get it opened, but there were teeth marks in the lid. It was a work in progress.

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  27. Peter’s remark reminded me. Elvera’s parents lived in the country.
    They were always careful to lock their doors at night and when they left.
    They had what we call a “skeleton key”. You may not be familiar with them. It was a universal key to a universal lock. You could buy them at the dime store.
    But they were careful not to leave the door unlocked.

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  29. But truly, I do not imagine anyone would want anything we own. They would have to repair whatever they got before they used or sold it. And they don’t wanna mess with the black and white jaws and claws machine!

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  30. I have spent the night in a house that only had a carved piece of wood driven into the door frame to make a “latch” to keep the door shut from the inside. You obviously couldn’t “latch” it from the outside. There wasn’t a holder or groove for the wood to fit in. It just spun on the nail to be open or closed. Looking back someone could have easily shouldered the door open, but then I was a child and as long as my parents were nearby I was safe. I do remember being in that house one night when my father was scared. That terrified me. There were cars going up and down the dirt road beside the house. They sounded one way going in and another coming out. Daddy sat up most of that night with a rifle. We were careful not to make any noise. He said it was moonshiners. I do remember the bogged down sound of the engines straining.

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  31. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brightwater+Methodist+Church/@31.9716833,-88.3835636,3a,75y,146.38h,97.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2n34EyewFtccXTctV1tJTA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x416556ab6e3026d4!6m1!1e1

    You can rotate the view on this little church (it doesn’t look like it did when I was a child). If you rotate around to the cemetary across the road …I am related to half the people there. I go back every now and then to look around and to put flowers on my grandfather’s grave. The last time I went was summer of 2012. I need to take BG. The last time I took her she was 3 or 4. Not that she would care, but I am the last person alive to know some of what I know.

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  33. We had crazy wind earlier and now it is snowing hard. We too leave our keys in the vehicles. I lock my front door at night because I don’t want someone to come in the house and catch me sleeping. The back door is always open. I have never had a problem in the 25 years I have lived in this house. I don’t get scared at night. I do have a machete and hatchet on the bookshelf by my bedroom door. I’m pretty sure I would be more accurate with one of those than a gun in the dark.

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  36. My family lives in a rural area, but we keep everything locked. Having lived next to drug dealers can do that to you. When I lived in the city, people were shocked that I lived in an area with high crime and yet I still went around by myself. I was careful of course, and listened to those inner warnings that women get; but it really didn’t intimidate me that much. I wonder if those early years, when the next door neighbours were on national wanted lists (not exaggerating) prepared me for how to survive. In my experience and from what I know from others, the country may actually be more dangerous than the city. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said it best through Sherlock Holmes:

    “Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

    “Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

    “They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

    “You horrify me!”

    “But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger…” – From The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

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  37. I understand that Donna is still looking for more rain. But actually Northern California sends most of their rain to the south via the aqua duct. It is more important that they get rain in the north as that is used for the entire state.

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  38. Well it is snowing…the flakes are teenie tiny and there are lots of them so it is adding up…but since they are coming straight down, I wouldn’t call this the blizzard as of yet 🙂 Now the weather guy is saying it will blizzard at 5 o’clock…and we on the Palmer Divide will get 18 inches..but the other weather guys says it will stay on the eastern plains…wonder who is right?!

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  39. We are at the end of the road to nowhere. And our place looks a bit like a fortress with the fence and gate. We do have a prison not too far away and the occasional escapee, there is the huge drug problem, and their is crime. But, as mentioned before, living in Germany, husband left his doors unlocked on his Saab, only to have the window broken so somebody could steal the radio. Most of our doorknobs would need to be replaced before we could lock them. And most of our cars are used by too many people to be locked. Daughter did lock her keys in the car in Boise when she was helping some people move.

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  40. I agree that the city can be safer in that people are frequently nearby. My next door neighbor is a writer and always home, and my neighbors across the street are always home and watching out. In the country people do not have the traffic and availability for easy crime, but if someone is targeted it may be easier to do whatever and not be seen. I have never lived in the country where you can’t hear your neighbors.

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  41. Miss Bosley is being Betty Bad today. Previously Art’s hinge on his laptop broke so it can not be closed. Miss B likes to sit on the keyboard so Art started keeping a fat notebook on top of the keys so she could sit on it without mashing the keys. Today she has been scratching at the laptop screen like she does on the television. I found a canvas tote bag and covered the screen. I left the room and when I went back in, the tote bag was bulging out full of cat and screen. I managed to get her in the tote and carry her away from there. Did that stop her? No. She went back to the scene of her crime. I started doing a high pitched whistle that she could not stand. That drove her away. I have to keep learning new tricks to keep Betty Bad under control. 😉

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  43. I was helping second sibling and her spouse move into their new apartment this weekend. While we were cleaning, we discovered that the outer window screens had been slashed. The windows were barred in such a way that the would-be thief couldn’t have got in (and wouldn’t have found anything anyway, as the place had been empty for a while); but the fact that the house was in an urban area probably helped. Smashing the window would have attracted too much attention.

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  45. One thing I keep in mind is that the Clutter family, the family of four murdered by a couple of young men (as told in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood), lived out in the country.

    A former pastor once said that he keeps his door unlocked, & that if someone wants his stuff, they can take it. But I thought, “What about the possibility of one of your daughters or your wife being raped?”

    Have you all heard about what we refer to as the Cheshire Murders? It involved an early morning home invasion by two men. They beat up & tied up the father in the basement. The wife & one (or maybe both) of the daughters were raped (the one daughter that I know was raped was only 11 years old). The wife was strangled to death, & the girls were tied up in their beds, doused in gasoline, & the house was set on fire.

    The husband survived, but lost his whole family. Their neighborhood was considered a nice, safe neighborhood.

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  46. Crime happens.

    But, on the other side, if it were not for our open door policy, we would not have had salmon for dinner today. I found a package of salmon in our freezer, cleaned, cut, deboned, and wrapped, ready to bake. It was marked salmon so I knew what it was. We don’t know who put it there, though we suspect we know. Salmon is big here as the Tribe uses salmon in exchange for lots of things and we have friends that help the Nez Perce and benefit from the salmon. Probably one of them came by when we weren’t home and popped it in the freezer in the kitchen. Could not have done that with the door locked. And the baking powder mentioned a couple of weeks ago. And several boxes of food over the years and bags and bags of clothing. A lot of good people out there.

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  47. I had to read In Cold Blood for an English class. It terrified me. I think I slept with the lights on (which only makes you easier to find if someone breaks in) and made my husband walk me to the bathroom at night. I may have too vivid of an imagination.
    Our house in Mobile was broken into when I was small. The paper mill was on strike and with my father being management it was probably more mischief than anything else. I slept through the whole ordeal but when my parents were whispering about it later I woke up. Moral to the story is if you talk about something in my presence I will tune in long enough to find out it doesn’t concern me. After that I couldn’t tell you what the discussion was about it I had to . Whisper about something and try to hide it from me and all radar goes up and you can’t sneak it past me. Or at least you will make me paranoid that you are keeping a secret from me. 😉

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  48. When you live in a rural area such as ours, you are aware that law enforcement is more than an hour away. We do not live foolishly, but mostly take care of things ourselves. I have chosen not to live in fear. Even when I was working on the road, I was not afraid, nor did I do things that would put me in harms way. Large dogs who live outside, roaming freely, are a big deterrent for those who might be tempted.

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  49. Re locking doors: When I was a child in Phoenix, we were always coming and going and there were a lot of us, so doors were locked only at night or while we were gone. Ever since then, I’ve always kept doors locked.

    When I was living in Chicago, I went to visit my sister, then living in semi-rural S.C. Her husband drove me to the airport, and we stopped at a gas station and he asked if I wanted to go in and choose something to drink for the trip. I got out of the truck, locked my door. He got out of the truck, left the keys in the ignition.

    If someone is looking for a house to break in, I doubt they actually walk down the street wiggling doorknobs until they find a house that’s unlocked.But a locked door with a barking dog behind it is likely to slow a person down enough to give him a chance to rethink his plan.

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  51. Well, inner-city Chicago was easily the most dangerous place I have ever lived. But I lived there for about eight years and was never robbed or otherwise a crime victim. But I took precautions. The first few months, I’d hear a noise outside and awaken in fear and quietly, discreetly look out a window. After I did that a few times one night, I woke, prayed, consciously chose to let God handle my safety and not worry about it, and went back to sleep. That was my mode from then on. I was careful, but I wasn’t paranoid.

    I tell people that in my eight years in that home, never once was anyone murdered on my block. That’s only technically the truth, though. The street behind me (which I drove every day to get home) had four or five murders in just one summer. There were murders every direction from me within two blocks of my house. I saw a blood trail in front of my house when I left for work one day; though the man who left it didn’t die, I found out later he had crawled down the street during the night to find help. (He dragged himself to the house of my assistant pastor.) Just around the corner from me was an atrocity that made national news (I know because my mother heard about it in Phoenix).

    All in all, I can say that the place I live now, out in the country in Indiana, is nowhere near the most dangerous place I have ever lived. We don’t have drug dealers fighting each other over turf.

    In Nashville one day a home-security salesman came by my door, and he offered to sell me a system. When I wasn’t interested, he told me there had been four break-ins on the street behind me in the previous year. I suspect he was making it up; I think I would have heard about it from my neighbors if it were true. But nevertheless, internally I came up with two responses. One was “I once had that many murders on the next street over in one year, and I didn’t buy a home security system from you then, so why would I do so because of a few break-ins now? You’re trying to sell me fear so you can sell me your product–and I won”t buy your fear, nor will I buy your product.” I refused to discuss with anyone what home-security measures I did have in place; it was none of their business. But I also refuse to buy fear.

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  52. Ooh, maybe we’ll get a big photo of rkessler wielding her machete.

    Jo, yes, I’m glad the northern part of the state is getting rain. But we want to wear our cute boots more often.

    working from home today, trying to nail down wind impacts — a couple cruise ships were delayed and longshoremen were sent home from some terminals because containers were flying around.

    Big tree fell on a car around the corner from me. Out of state plates (from Washington state), so not a very good visit fro someone. 😦

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  54. I read In Cold Blood many years ago and do not remember much except it was very well told story and scary. I think it made me glad at the time that I lived around a lot of people. I think I read it in late high school days maybe around the time I read The Godfather.

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  59. Dogs are pretty good security. But the people who lived on the corner had their’s sedated by burglars who broke into their house some years ago (dog was OK), so there are ways around even that.

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  60. I read of a burglar who brought dog treats to make friends with the dogs. That would definitely work with Heidi. But first she would have been barking her head off, which would have alerted – & annoyed – me. 🙂

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  63. Yes. About herding dogs. Although Tess has yet to accept the cat. I guess she just thinks of her as the sheep.

    They also give one of my gardeners a hard time (the guy who usually does my hard, one of their employees); the neighbor sometimes comes over and tells them to chill so he can come into the backyard. 🙂

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  67. But, the reality is, if somebody wants to get into your house badly enough, and is smart enough, he is going to find a way. Reasonable measures differ between folk. Everybody uses reasonable measures, though one person may not think the other person’s reasonable measures are that.

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  68. Two of my favorite collie stories, from the same book I think though I can’t remember which book.

    In one, the owners of a collie were employing a neighbor kid to do some work for them. One day, when the owners were gone, he came through the window. I think he assumed the collie knew him and would treat him as a friend, but the collie was smart enough to know people do not come through windows if they have good intentions, so the dog attacked. Or maybe the boy sneaked in in the middle of the night. Whatever the case, as I recall it was the owners’ return or waking up that saved the intruder from really serious injury.

    In another story, the owner had two short-haired tricolor collies. One day she was sitting in her living room with her front door open, enjoying the breeze through the screen door. Two men came in suddenly, apparently to grab the purse she had carelessly left near the open door. The owner screamed. The dogs came running with vicious snarls for the intruders. One of the men shouted, “Dobermans! Run!” So they fled without getting anything. The funny part, besides collies being mistaken for Dobermans (short-haired ones look like German shepherds to me)? The only reason the men got away is that in the dogs’ eagerness to get to the men, the dogs collided and knocked each other down.

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