75 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-21-16”

  4. So? What is It?
    🙂 You saw the e-mail that I sent to several WRT the Old Mean Mama.
    My sister, a former Navy wife volunteered to come down from Md. to help me.
    I told her I had everything under control.
    She said, “OK, but you know that if I’m not on the ship I’m only a phone call away.”

    She probably heard that a hundred time.
    Michelle likely relates to that.

    She’s still lolled up in thr bed now. That’s OK.

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  5. Morning all
    A tough day. It began with a meltdown of a child. had to call the principal to come get her.
    Later, in the middle of a lesson the vice principal brought a family in for a tour with a boy that will be starting tomorrow that I had not heard a word about
    Then I came home to a computer that died

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  8. Chas, I am sure that pneumonia is wiping out her strength. Rest and fluids will help until the medicine kicks in. Did they give her a shot or anything yesterday?
    I meant to reply to something you said they other day about grocery shopping. Winn Dixie is bad about their Buy One Get One free specials. If you get two packages of the item you do get it free, but if for whatever reason you only want one, you still pay the full price. With your scenario of 4 for $10 that would make each item $2.50. Make sure if you only need one they aren’t charging regular price ($3 for example) for it.

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  10. Glad to know Elvira is on the mend.

    Sorry to hear about all that, Jo! That’s a lot of stuff. 😦 A new child in the classroom can change dynamics. It’s disturbing that you had no more notice. It was like that sometimes at the preschool. I sometimes felt put upon, like as they added children throughout the year that I should be paid more for the extra responsibilty. And then at one point, for budget reasons, they were going to take away a sick day. I rebelled on that one and said NO because we got few as it was, and you can imagine how many germs we encountered, especially when people sent their sick children to school.
    So we have another thing to pray over for you, Jo, that the boy will be a model student and an asset to your class.

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  11. That is a beautiful header, Peter. At first I thought it was from a church window, but then remembered you do the house church.

    Annms, that is tough having one child be off from school and the other not. Since I only had one, I can’t imagine how I would deal with that to soften the blow. Maybe work with the one at home to have a surprise party for when sister gets home from school?

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  13. Because laughter is the best medicine.

    * My goal for 2015 was to lose just 10 pounds. Only got 15 to go.
    .
    * Ate salad for dinner! Mostly croutons & tomatoes. Really just one big, round crouton covered with tomato sauce. And cheese. FINE, it was a pizza. I ate a dang pizza.
    .
    * How to prepare Tofu:
    1. Throw it in the trash
    2. Grill some meat
    .
    * I just did a week’s worth of cardio after walking into a spider web.

    * I don’t mean to brag, but I finished my 14-day diet in 3 hours and 20 minutes.
    .
    * A recent study has found that women who carry a little extra weight live longer than men who mention it.
    .
    * Kids today don’t know how easy they have it. When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag carpet to change the TV channel.
    .
    .
    * Remember back when we were kids and every time it was below zero they closed school? Me neither.
    .
    * I may not be that funny or athletic or good looking or smart or talented…. I forgot where I was going with this.
    .
    * I love being over 50. I learn something new every day…and forget 5 others.
    .
    * A thief broke into my house last night. He started searching for money so I woke up and searched with him.
    .
    * My dentist told me I need a crown. I was like: I KNOW! Right?
    .
    * I think I’ll just put an “Out of Order” sticker on my forehead and call it a day.

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  19. Middle GD, Mary called a couple of hours ago.
    Mary is a nurse. I have lots of confidence in her.
    When I told her that Elvera hadn’t had anything to drink (that I know of) since lunch Sunday, she game me my orders.
    ” Get 23 ounces of liquid into her immediately or take her to the ER for treatment”
    So. I have spent the last couple of hours trying to get her to drink something”.
    It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is to get someone to drink some water.
    I don’t know where the number “23” came from, but I measured it out and have been pushing her to drink.
    You can’t imagine how hard it is to get someone to drink WATER.
    She gets mad at me and say, “OK I’ll gulp it down.” Then she takes a sit and put the glass down again.
    Mary says that hydration is the biggest problem now. But when she gets rehydrated, other symptoms may appear worse when her body starts functioning.

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  20. Chas, Mary is right. Remember when BG let herself get dehydrated last fall and I took her to the doctor because she was throwing up? She almost ended up in the hospital on an IV. I bought Gatorade and got her to drink that; it has electrolytes in it which is something the body needs. Also at the grocery store you can buy Pedialyte which may be even better. If all else fails chip up some ice and get those into her mouth. Is there anything she enjoys drinking? Fluid is fluid at this point.
    Above all else, if you need some help with her, PLEASE call someone. You don’t need to get sick too, so take care of yourself.

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  21. . She has finally gotten about 20 ounces down. We are fighting over the rest. I have a feeling this is going to be an ongoing problem, because the 23 ounces was the immediate solution. We now have to keep it up. Keep drinking.

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  22. Listen to Mary. Daughter has to push liquids on step mom as well. Very resistant so daughter tries things like tea and soup and coffee and juice and water and and and….

    Stepmom has a kaleidoscope on top of her tv cabinet (yes, the same one my dad had when I was growing up), and the children love to look in it when we go to visit.

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  23. Nancyjill got it right: It’s a kaleidoscope. The owner of the cave gave them to regular employees last year. He makes them by hand. So the other day I set it facing a window and took a few pictures through the eye hole. Those are colored stones, not plastic chips.

    Kim- 😂

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  25. As mentioned, son asked girl to the Prom. This is our afterward conversation, roughly:
    Me: How did it go?
    Son: Good, I think.
    M: Are her parents good with you taking her?
    Son: I think so.
    M: You have met them?
    S: Yes, I have talked to them several times.
    M: So did the grapevine have her aware you were going to ask her?
    S: Yes. She knew. I asked her boyfriend before I asked her to make sure it was okay with him.
    M: She has a boyfriend? Shouldn’t he be taking her?
    S: He goes to (another nearby school) and is a cowboy. He has a rodeo to be in that weekend.
    M: Oh. So he trusts you?
    S: Yeah, I guess so.

    Does that seem odd to you? He has had his eye on this girl for several months. But what do I know, I never went to or wanted to go to a Prom.

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  27. When my friend’s owned an antique shoppe, someone brought in about 30 different antique kaleidoscopes….they were amazingly beautiful and I probably spent 2 hours just looking through them all….I am so easily entertained sometimes! 🙂
    I’m wondering if you can try frozen juice bars or frozen Pedialyte popcicles to get Elvera to take in fluids? When I worked at Hospice, we would grind up ice into a snowcone…the patients enjoyed taking in fluids in that manner…we would flavor it with juice or sweet syrup…whatever they enjoyed…..

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  28. Well Mumsee, seeing as how BG isn’t going to her Senior Prom because her boyfriend goes to another school….it probably is a solution to both their problems.
    I went to my Senior Prom with a friend. He and his girlfriend broke up a few weeks before prom and I didn’t have a date. It was no pressure and we had a great time.

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  30. Chas, try putting a straw in the cup. A few sips every 10 minutes or so can really add up. While I am not big on soda, 7up is a medicine in my house. Many times they will take that when they will not drink water.

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  31. Yes, good time to get creative with “fluids.” Soups, fruit juice, lemonade — whatever she likes.

    Gorgeous header photos! At first I thought they were stained glass images also, it looked like Easter again. 🙂

    I had such strange dreams again — one had me in outer space, I had to deliver something on one of the floating space station gizmos out there, I just remember having to climb up this long ladder on the thing-y in space (I didn’t have a space suit or anything) and telling myself “don’t look down, don’t look down” 🙂

    Then I dreamed I saw my journalism friend with Parkinson’s in a grocery store as I was checking out — and he was his normal self again. Made me realize I hadn’t been in to visit him in a while. …

    I’m feeling so groggy this morning, I hope this coffee can wake me up. I’m off tomorrow, going to the Pet Expo with my friend, and so I’ll have to figure out 2 stories to leave the editor so he has something from me for the weekend.

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  34. Chas, you are making me recall when my brother was in the hospital from having had an insulin reaction and the nurse demanded that I feed him a whole plate of food while he was nauseous. It was difficult, and I got to see the food before and after it went down.
    That’s great that you’ve gotten her to drink that much. Some lemonade from Chick-fil-A might seem like a treat and give vitamin C, too.

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  35. Just got back from getting Becca. It’s pouring again, with rain forecast the rest of the day, so school sent out an email requesting parents pick up kids ASAP. Roads are beginning to flood again….

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  36. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. He asked in the Fall if he could go, so he has been planning it this long. I don’t know how long she has been with her boyfriend. I don’t know if his heart will be broken. But that is his call. We tell them not to date until they are ready to take on a family. I believe he is though he may want to wait a couple of years. But she is only a Junior or Sophmore, I think.

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  37. Funny thing about step mom is she will say that sounds good, but by the time it gets to her six seconds later, she has changed her mind. It is kept close as she might just change her mind again in three seconds.

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  39. As I was going out the door to check on my plants, I was startled by two Jehovah’s Witness ladies. Thankfully I did not scream. They offered me their little booklet with an article about anxiety and read a Bible passage from Matthew about not worrying about tomorrow. I thought about how they had just created anxiety by scaring me! I told them where I go to church and that we don’t believe the same. They are always such super nice people. I came inside and prayed for them. I reread a passage of Scripture from my reading yesterday that I had underlined:
    2 Peter 3: 16-17 (NLT)
    And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.

    I asked forgiveness of God for not being prepared to witness to them. I felt sad for how they have been deceived and believe so wrongly. So how do you deal with this type situation?

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  40. Not that I would recommend it but my father in law once saw them headed to the door, told mother in law he would handle it. He got a beer out of the refrigerator and went to the door in his boxer shorts….
    Even now this makes me laugh because in his whole life he may have weighed 130 pounds soaking wet. He was fond of saying that all of his mother’s children turned out just fine except the Baby…HE became a Methodist minister. 😉

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  42. Also, I forgot to mention that when I threw up last night instead of risking passing out and falling, I laid down on the kitchen floor and called for Art to bring a pillow. He brought the big bowl, too, but a large cardboard box that we had in there for Miss Bosley to play in happened to be in the line of the spew. Well, since it was pretty late, I had just taken that barfy box outside, and I hope the JW ladies did not glimpse to see or smell what that was. Then again, it might be just the thing to act as repellent.

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  43. Kim, those are pretty good ones. 🙂

    I asked my hubby to check on how good I’ve done on removing photos to clear up more memory on my computer. I knew I had to be at 50% or more, was hoping for “more,” and I’ve gotten to about 65% of what he requested. Yay! It’s tedious, but it does give me an excuse to look at all the bird photos I’ve taken over the last several years. (The ones I took three years ago are easier to clear out than more recent one–my camera wasn’t as good, and I saved photos I wouldn’t save today, now that I can take better photos and now that I have plenty of photos of some species.) But my computer is still not acting the way it should, so he worked on it this morning and hopefully it’s functioning better now.

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  44. I like kaleidoscopes a lot. I have one on a bookshelf in our bedroom that I look at periodically. I also just bought a build-your-own kit for one of my sister’s kids for Christmas.

    Actually, that comes with an amusing story. While my husband and I were at the conference last weekend, we had several hours to kill between the pre-conference and the conference, and so we went to the mall and sat and read some of the books we’d bought. At one point I glanced over my shoulder and saw we were next to a toystore, with great big Lego people in the front window. I said, “Oh, that looks like a fun bookstore–it looks a bit like The Toy Shoppe” (a store we go into at a favorite vacation site). He said, “We don’t have anyone the right age these days.” And I thought OK, I thought he’d be interested, but if he isn’t, he isn’t. Half an hour later he looked over and said, “Oh, that looks like a really fun toy store. Did you see the giant Lego people?” So then he wanted to go in. I’ve finally realized that half the time he doesn’t show interest in something I think will excite him, he has only heard about half of what I have said, and is distracted. He just heard “toy store” not “toy store like that other store you like.” So we went in, and he raved and raved about how many games they had, even called one of our daughters to tell her about the store, telling her it was even better than that other store. He himself didn’t buy anything, though, while I collected gifts for four of my sister’s five children. (The oldest will be 18 in a few months, and I really need to find out from his mom what specifically to buy for him.)

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  46. Cheryl- A terabyte external drive is a good idea, and it would take a lot of photos to fill it up. (1 terabyte = 1,000 megabytes. Typical photo is 1 or 2 megabytes)

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  47. Seconding the auxiliary hard drive and saying again how thankful we are for Mozy which automatically backs up the computer daily. The annual cost is a business expense and the peace of mind is blissful. We’ve downloaded our old computer directly to a new one via Mozy twice.

    Misting rain in California, we are happy.mso sorry for Houston, though?

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  49. Peter, I have a terabyte external hard drive. But I’ve been putting most of them on my computer. I look through the photos on my camera, delete the obviously bad ones, and then pull them up onto my computer, and again delete the ones that are obviously bad now that I can see them big. Periodically I take them and sort them (robin photos in one file, deer in one, wildflowers, etc.), but I got behind on sorting, and it’s really at that stage that I delete the ones that are more than obviously bad. (Two photos that are nearly identical, a photo that is similar to a better one I took a year ago, or, now, a photo that is old but I now have better ones of a similar setting. For example, when I was first trying to get photos of song sparrows singing, I kept some weak ones since they were all I had. Now I have good ones, and I can delete the weak ones.)

    But what I really have to figure out is how to use the external drive usefully, not just for backup (which is what I’ve been using it for). In the meantime, I have to clear enough off my computer to make it run better. And it does seem to be doing better, with the work my husband did on it this morning. (Occasionally I tell him that’s why I married him, that I needed an IT guy. 🙂 )

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  50. Because I like all of you, I am going to give you my secret to chicken salad. Me? I like chicken salad just about any ol’ way, but this is one of my favorites and I just made a big bowl of it for the wedding shower I am having at my house tomorrow night. I still need to add the celery because I didn’t make a complete shopping list yesterday and forgot it, but I have time…..

    I cut it out of Southern Living a long time ago and glued it to the back cover of my favorite cook book

    http://www.food.com/recipe/fairfield-grocerys-chicken-salad-490446

    INGREDIENTS Nutrition

    YIELD
    8 cups
    UNITS
    US
    3 lbs boneless skinned chicken breasts
    1 (49 1/2 ounce) can chicken broth
    1 cup finely chopped celery
    1⁄2 cup finely chopped water chestnut, rinsed and drained
    1⁄2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
    1⁄2 cup finely chopped yellow bell pepper
    1⁄2 cup finely chopped red onion
    3 cups mayonnaise
    1 teaspoon ground red pepper
    1⁄2 teaspoon salt
    1⁄2 teaspoon white pepper
    On Sale Near You
    See what’s on sale in recipes and in your Grocery List.

    Find s
    DIRECTIONS

    Place chicken breasts in a large skillet; add chicken broth. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium low, and simmer, covered, 30 minutes or until chicken is done. Remove chicken from skillet, and let stand 15 minutes or until cool to touch. Shred chicken.
    Combine shredded chicken, celery, water chestnuts, and next 3 ingredients in a large bowl.
    Stir together mayonnaise, ground red pepper, salt, and white pepper until well blended; spoon over shredded chicken mixture, stirring to coat. Cover and chill at least 4 hours.

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  52. My secret for chicken salad? Stop by Harris-Teeter and ….:-)
    I did go to Harris teeter to buy some straws and orange juice. Polly said orange juice because she needs the sugar.
    Elvera’s sister, Polly, came over to help this afternoon. She was lots of help. She took Elvera for a short walk.
    She is not improving. I have another Dr. appointment for tomorrow at 9:00>

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  55. For my dad, running off to pick up the various things suggested would have not happened. He did not have somebody to watch stepmom while he was out. Now he has daughter and it makes it much easier. As tough as it must be to have a nineteen year old living in the house when you have been childless for forty years…..

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  56. Kim, your recipe does sound wonderful. I thought maybe it was like one I used once when I catered a luncheon for my brother at one of his pharmacy sales doc offices. But the one I made used whipping cream. I found a YouTube version, but not what I made. This one looks really good, too.

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  61. She likes lots of juices, but she isn’t drinking anything now.
    I’m taking her back to the Dr. tomorrow at 9:00.
    She had a bit of soup for dinner, but lost it a few minutes ago.

    You’d be surprised how enervating it is just sitting there trying to get someone to take a sip of water/juice.
    Maybe some of you do know..

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  62. Chas – I do know. My MIL Mary would not cooperate with me when I needed to get her to eat or drink. It was a several-times-a-day battle. I acted as patiently as could be, but she was determined to not cooperate with me. Every morning I would have to coax her to drink down a few ounces of water with her pills. Knowing I was waiting, she would take a tiny sip, casually swirl the water in the glass, take another tiny sip, casually swirl the water, etc. I remember one time trying to get her to eat, it took five hours for her to finish HALF a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, & each tiny bite came only after coaxing from me.

    By God’s grace, I usually kept my sense of humor about it all.

    I can imagine how very, very difficult this is for you. You have my prayers.

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  65. Chas – I realize it must be infinitely harder to go though this with a beloved spouse. I do not compare my struggles with Mary to what you are going through.

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  66. Chas, I just prayed for you, and my prayer began, “Father, I lift up our beloved Chas and Elvera . . .” The “beloved” part just slipped out, and then the tears did too. May God grant you both rest tonight, and good medical care when you see the doctor in the morning. (If you need to take her to the ER, then do so.)

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  69. Praying for you and Elvera, Chas. Got the midnight Eastern time covered.

    The Lord bless you and keep you;
    the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
    the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

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  73. Thanks everyone for your prayers. We are getting ready to to to the doctor.
    She is eating breakfast., drank a small glass of orange juice.
    That is something.
    Busy day for me.
    Busy consists of sitting around doctor’s office.
    I will keep everyone updated as soon as I learn something.

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