65 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-26-16”

  1. We’re up early for a Saturday morning!
    We are on our way to Greensboro.
    We will celebrate the resurrection with Chuck and his family at Friendly Avenue BC.
    Then, we will have lunch at Mary’s. We will probably return Sunday afternoon,
    We don’t have a firm schedule..

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  4. We have a visiting pastor here for Easter and I went to tonight’s service. It was on waiting on God and we looked at Lamentations. It was refreshing to hear a good message and study.
    I gave rides each way. on the way home one of the gals said that she was having ‘the crowd’ over for Easter lunch and she invited me. I’m not sure what to do. The crowd is the group of young singles. Years ago I was told to stay away by someone who left long ago. I was praying today that I would be invited by someone for some Easter fellowship. The gal lives right across the street.

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  6. I made a major mistake this morning. I went out to see how the clematis was climbing on the trellis (turned up on its side drying rack) and ended up pulling some weeds around it. I had left the door closed but slightly ajar. When I went around the corner I saw the door was slightly opened which a little breeze could do or a cat. I did not see Miss Bosley outside so I figured she was inside asleep. I came inside, closed the door, and called her name. No Bosley. I opened the door and saw she was on the carport. I walked toward her and she was going to run so I grabbed her by her tale and reeled her in with a bit of yowling going on. She was not going to escape! After I brought her in, there was the most pitiful crying going on at the door to the carport. She got a taste of freedom outdoors in good weather and she is demanding more. We have to be on high alert now!!! I am sad for her, but indoors she must be. And a new kind of whining I suppose I now must endure.

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  9. Cheryl, I would love to see your books sometime, but I am afraid I would lose the link before I could see them. Do you have a website where you can put the link for anytime access or is it possible to put a link to them here on this site like AJ links to the blogs as a permanent link? I know your books are wonderful and just the kind of refreshment people need.

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  10. Janice, I don’t want to put the link on here because my name is on the front cover and my husband doesn’t want me to use my full name on here. If you have my e-mail address, you can e-mail me (I don’t think I have yours).

    I too loved that header shot. I wanted to get a red-headed woodpecker in flight, because when it flies it’s surprising how much white there is on that bird. Its wings are a deep bluish-black (the books all say black, but they look a definite dark blue sometimes to me) with a white patch, so the bird is sort of red, white, and blue. But when it flies, instead of seeing mostly black as you see when its wings are closed, you see that its entire body is white, the underside of its wing is mostly white, and it has a large white patch on the upperside too, I think. (I’m not too sure what the upperside looks like when the wing is open.) Well, here there is a perfectly focused shot of most of it, so it’s probably even better than getting the bird in flight, since sometimes those are in focus and sometimes they aren’t. I think it had just put its wings out to balance itself, or else it flew a little bit but stayed on the tree it was on. If you look closely, it has some food item in its beak.

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  11. So Donna is going to Iowa. Where, I wonder? It looks small on the map, since it is the smallest state West of the Mississippi, but it is a long way from the SE corner near me to the NW corner.

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  12. The red-headed woodpecker is the bird that both my husband and I think of as the iconic woodpecker. I saw a few when I was a child when we traveled to other states, and wasn’t familiar with woodpeckers at the time. (Arizona has the lovely Gila woodpecker that nests in saguaro cactus rather than trees.) Well, one day my husband and I were taking a walk through our favorite local state park, and it happened to be the time of day the woodpeckers were active. We stayed at one spot and saw nearly every species of Indiana woodpecker. Within ten minutes, we watched the downy, the hairy, the red-bellied, the flicker, and even the large pileated woodpecker. (Unfortunately I only had one camera battery in those days and it had gone dead–that was the day I decided a second one wasn’t optional!) As we left that spot, my husband marveled that we saw everything but the red-headed woodpecker (in fact we also hadn’t seen the yellow-bellied sapsucker, and we did see the white-breasted nuthatch, which is not a woodpecker but acts a lot like one). He said he hadn’t seen the red-headed in twenty years or more, but that was the one last species needed to complete the tally of the day. As he said that, we were walking through a stand that has hundreds of dead trees. He saw a flash of red, we both looked, and there was a red-headed! (I hadn’t seen one in thirty years, either. Apparently there aren’t nearly as many around these days as there were a few years ago, according to my research.)

    On our next visit to the park, and subsequent ones over the next two years or so, that area of dead trees never once failed to deliver at least one red-headed. We usually did not see the pileated or the hairy, but dependably we saw the red-headed. We sometimes saw eight or ten of them. Unfortunately, a year ago that state park went in and cut down about half of the dead trees, and now we’ve had a couple of walks where we don’t see a single red-head, and on other walks we don’t see as many.

    Note, by the way, that the tree the woodpecker is on has no bark on it, and you can see trails all over it from where insects tunneled under the bark while the tree was alive.

    The red-headed woodpecker is the only one of our species in which a human observer can’t tell male from female. It’s also the only species in which a young bird looks distinctly different from an adult. (It has a brown head and more white on the top of its wings than the adult.) And it has multiple holes in its territory, because not only does it nest in holes, but it stores food in holes and it sleeps in yet another hole. It also sometimes catches insects in the air, unlike other woodpeckers.

    That region of dead trees is also a wonderful spot to see red-winged blackbirds (spring and summer), bluebirds (all year round), and several other birds a little less predictably (goldfinches, phoebes, catbirds have all been seen there fairly regularly, and a whole flock of swallows last year). The sandhill crane I photographed a few weeks ago was on the other side of this stand, near a big swampy pond. We were walking through the dead trees when we saw and then heard the crane on the next trail over.

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  14. Amazingly, fourteen year old reports that his eighteen year old brother, the one who moved out, was at school all day yesterday as a guest. How does that happen? The boy is known for drugs and for sharing them and has an interest in little girls. How can he be allowed to roam the hallways of a public school? We had warned the principal and some of the teachers and asked them to try to keep him from his brother. Any other child and we would have yanked him out and homeschooled him.

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  15. Idaho, Iowa … whatever. It’s all the same, fly-over country, right?

    We’d be in the far northwest corner of Iowa (Milford) but I probably can’t swing getting off with work, boarding all the animals that quickly, not to mention getting proper Midwest funeral attire together that quickly.

    I’m still missing my car registration for the taxes so the next step is to go to my banking statement online and see if I can do a search (as I would have used a card to pay it online). It reminds me, too, that I still haven’t put my new tags on for this year yet, they should be somewhere in a bag around here.

    Nice fluttery wing action in that photo. 🙂

    Glad Miss Bosley was nabbed in time.

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  16. Well that was easy, found the registration payment from April 2015 online, $121. So I think (?) I have everything …

    (she said, vowing — yet again — to be more organized next time)

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  17. Rather than talking to you all, I’ve been thinking about Holy Saturday today and wrote an unusual Saturday post: http://michelleule.com/2016/03/26/holy-saturday-now/

    Now, even though I’d rather be writing about Oswald Chambers today, I’m going to be cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and thinking. I may get back to writing at some point, but for the moment it’s Easter prep . . .

    I’m tired already and would rather be reading . . .

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  18. Rain, rain, and more rain. Our back yard is still quite damp, but the new grass hasn’t had time to knit together. We went to ex mother in law’s house yesterday and dug up Lariope grass to edge some flower beds. We installed one. We have top soil that was purchased to do the drain in the back so we shoveled that into a wagon and hauled it over to the outlined flower bed. We got some things planted, but of course with how wet everything is we didn’t want to walk on too much. We were hoping to do more today, but there was a storm that moved through last night and more on the way tomorrow.
    Compare and contrast–Last time I undertook a project like this my husband wanted no part of it so my mother in law dug up the Lariope grass and she and my father in brought it to me. He used a roto-tiller to out line the beds as I wanted them and my mother in law and I planted it.
    This time my husband –bad back and all— went to ex mother in laws house with me. She pointed and he dug. We came home, he installed the flowerbed edging and he and I planted the Lariope grass.
    Surprisingly neither of us is as sore as we were sure we would be this morning.

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  20. I have a favor to ask if you are my FB friend. Please scroll down my page and vote for the young woman who is trying to win something with her engagement photo. She is getting married in June. As I have said before she is beautiful on the outside but she is even more beautiful on the inside and her Work Mama wants her to win. Thanks.

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  21. Mumsee, we had a child in our area molested in the school bathroom. The young man was able to sneak in. Allowing that boy to roam the school hallways is wrong on so many levels.

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  22. We had a local middle school band teacher arrested yesterday for child porn.

    Taxes dropped off, at last. His office was FILLED with stacks and stacks of file folders, boxes, papers — it’s crunch time. Feels good to get that out of my hands at last. Might not get a huge return this year, but then again he’s always super conservative with his verbal estimates during the appointments and then I get his bill & letter in the mail usually to find out the refunds will be much larger than anticipated. He’s good. 🙂

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  28. I just had the strangest call. The caller said she was a representative of Aetna, my health insurance provider, and they want to do an in home consultation and update for my health care provider. She said the call was being recorded up front. I told her I have NEVER heard of such a thing and if I need to see my doctor that I have one and know where to reach her. I received this week something through the mail advising that I should schedule an annual checkup at no cost and it was basically telling me what a doctor’s visit would involve. I thought that was strange, too. But I have not been to the doctor in awhile, over a year, but since Art and I share the same doctor, she has seen me when I have been to his appointments. I have been waiting to take care of me after all his stuff is taken care of.

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  29. Talk at the dog park today included several people joking that they’d be there in the morning “when everyone else is at church” – hahaha -and how the walls would cave in if they darkened the doors …

    So I said, hey, we (those of us in church) are all pretty messed up, we’re all very ‘real’ — and that’s exactly why we go to church …

    Silence, subject changed. 🙂 those who have ears to hear…

    He is risen

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  33. Jo, I never had Easter dinner until I was in my twenties. But I understand the sense of having “nowhere to go” for a holiday meal. I’ve experienced it, and it’s no fun.

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  34. Thanks, Cheryl. It helps just to say it. I went out and walked for an hour and a half and that helped. Met a friend returning from her dinner and she asked if I had had a good day. I told her no simply because I was alone. She understood and that made it better. Later she called and we talked. Just having someone to talk to makes it so much better.

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  37. Yes! He is risen indeed! You can have your chocolate bunnies and egg hunts, but do not forget that we live because He rose, defeating death for those who believe on Him.

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  39. Amen! Off to cook, hide chocolate Easter eggs, then to church to sing. Adorables will be hinting in no time . . .

    But the good news?

    He is risen indeed!

    (I have so many Christian friends on FB, I just copied and pasted my way down the page!)

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  40. I’m going to make the ‘early’ 8:30 service today. I would have had no plans had my cousins not been getting together, so I understand, too, Jo. For singles, holiday ‘traditions’ are ever evolving — we hit sweet periods where we settle in for a while with plans that don’t change. But then, someone moves or dies or something else changes and we have to start all over again!

    But God is good. And quiet holidays without all the fuss and rush are OK, too. For a number of years my Easters were crazy — had to be up before dawn and on the road to sing for the small sunrise services at my former church (where I was in the choir) at 6 a.m., then be back to sing for the regular 9:30 service then rush down to Orange County to my uncle’s where I was always he last to arrive since I was the only church-goer among the bunch. Home after dark. It left me exhausted and I always tried to take that Monday after Easter off as a random vacation day during that period.

    They had a sunrise service onboard the USS Iowa this morning, I thought I’d hear some of that as sound from the waterfront travels up to my house. But heard nothing, it’s foggy out, so maybe the sound travel isn’t the same as it usually is. No beautiful sunrise today here, though, unfortunately.

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  41. I am home today, nine year old has something or other. He is outside right now, getting fresh air, doing his chores. He will come in and have a plate of what dad made for the Easter breakfast, sausage and gravy and biscuits. I will have my bowl of teff.

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  42. It was neat to watch the wild turkeys strutting, trying to impress the home turkeys. They will be in the yard soon, trying to convince my turkeys they want to be coyote bait.

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  43. Jo, Art left early this a.m. for the office. I went to the Sunday School time in the media center where only one other person has been attending. Then I came home because I felt down and my tummy is a bit unsettled. I saw parked in front of my house, red lights flashing, an ambulance taking my across the street neighbor to the hospital, her second time this week. She is probably in the process of dying. So it’s just me and Miss Bosley for Easter munch…and when I walked through the door there was cat food vomit to greet me…are you getting the picture that your Easter sounds lovely♡ I am still feeling sad about my brother’s fall and how he messed up his face. I do not want to be feeling badly about Easter because it is such a joyful time, but this has been an off season for me.

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  46. Good service this morning and kind of nice to have a couple hours now before I have to be at my cousin’s. The 10 a.m. service will be packed even more than usual — the 8:30 was small, which just suited me well this year. 🙂

    There’s now also a satellite “Saddleback” church that meets around the corner from us at the local high school and also a Buddhist community that meets Sunday mornings in the adjacent business center to ours, so it’s always very busy with all the cars arriving generally around the same time and all of us peeling off into our own parking areas.

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  47. The house was cold when I got home from church so I threw on a long-sleeved T-shirt over my other shirt.

    Took me a while to notice that I put it on not only inside out but backwards, with the tag in the front.

    #Canttakemeanywhere

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  52. Janice, FWIW, insurance companies have started doing those in home consultations yearly. My husband’s insurance does that. My parent’s (with the same insurance) also had home visits. Many of their peers with the insurance refused to allow them. They did not trust the company. We have found the visits to be fine. They essentially do a few physical type things and question you about your health, medications and medical tests. I believe it is to make sure the patient is getting the testing, meds etc. that are best for them. The doctor who has come here twice, is a retired physician who covers a large territory.

    I do not trust doctors and am not fond of the one my husband and I have now. We do not have a lot of choice. The visits my husband has had with the other doctor was actually reassuring to both of us. I do not find any physicals done today thorough. They are nothing like we used to get, so I don’t think a second opinion hurts. Yes, you do have to take into consideration for whom the doctor works.

    These visits start at Medicare I think. I suspect they are checking out the environment as much as the patient.

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  53. HEIS RISEN INDEED

    We had a nice time in Greensboro, but glad to be home. The ramifications of that careless night in 1958 turned out to be HUGE…………………

    🙂 They are a bunch of good kids. They really are. The girls married good guys. I am thankful every day.
    But it’s something of a shock to hear your DIL called “grandma”.

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  56. We had a very sweet service this morning….came home and it was just us three….made a ham, potato salad, broccoli salad, sweet potato casserole….then I took a nice two hour nap….the Lord is good….and the roads are clear….

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  57. Mumsee, one of my brothers is several years older than his father-in-law, and another brother is now younger by a year than his son-in-law.

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  58. My mother-in-law seemed to be showing all of us she has still got it. Not only was today Easter, but it was my father-in-law’s birthday, and frankly I don’t think any of us expected him to reach it (though he’s doing fairly well at the moment). So we had twelve people, and we all ate well.

    She told me I didn’t have to bring any food items, and that her daughter was bringing only deviled eggs (and no deviled eggs showed up, so as far as I know Mom made everything on the table). We had ham, two kinds of potatoes, an applesauce salad, muffins, a couple of relish trays, I think I’m missing a side, and two kinds of pie. And she had nuts and various Easter candies, teas and coffee. We were all so stuffed we joked about not needing supper or breakfast. (Since my husband made soup earlier in the week, that became supper tonight). The house was well decorated for the holiday, and she used one of her many special sets of dishes. (She has different sets for each holiday.)

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  60. Thanks,Kathlt helps to know that. We have a very good doctor and she is thorough in doing testing. I have just neglected going to the doc because so much time has been devoted to Art’s needs this past year. If I was sick or in great pain I would go to the doctor. I know there are some age related declines in health, but it seems pretty normal.

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  63. Twenty of us at our house today, and six more (sister-out-east and family) via Skype. Good food and fellowship. A lovely day starting with worship at the early service, then coming home to prepare for our gathering while listening to Handel’s Messiah in its entirety.

    He is risen indeed!

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  64. Donna, I felt pretty creeped out by the thought, like real invasion of privacy. I truly had never ever heard of that. And, given that I’ve had Aetna for years and years except for when it got cancelled for that month or two because of Obamacare, and they never did anything like that. It seems like some more government nanny state kind of thing to me. I am not on Medicare yet, but Art is. I don’t think that the insurance company has any personal feelings about me, like they care about me as a person. I am a number with dollars attached, 600.00+ a month with hardly any claims. They should be content.

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  65. After a disappointing Easter service, we gathered with my family for a lovely turkey dinner and lots of fun and games. We were missing our daughter and my sister’s son, but my son came along with his fiancee; the first time we had seen them since their engagement!

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