62 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-3-16”

  7. Sorry if I went overboard last night in selecting mother-of-the-bride dresses. I noticed all the men disappeared from the conversation. While in college I worked in the Junior department of what has transitioned into Macy’s on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. I loved helping customers make selections in that lovely clothes department. But being the Junior department, we did not carry the really formal wear or cocktail dresses. I am glad Kim knows about those specialties.

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  9. I probably need to pay close attention to the advice and pics, but was too busy yesterday. In the past, I have just worn whatever was in my closet as mother of the bride. But there is not much left in my closet beyond skirts and shirts. Which is okay because that is who I am. But this probably next wedding, in October, is of my more worldly inclined eldest son and he has attempted to fix me in the past so I may have to buy something. Remind me in about August to look for stuff, though it will probably be just mail ordered.

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  10. Mumsee, the good news is I have seen you in person. I am only going by a photo with Cheryl.
    She likes green and pink, both of which are complementary colors to blue. Knowing Cheryl, I would like her to have something she would wear again. I have gorgeous blue dress hanging in my closet I may pack up and mail to her. 😉
    I have to go pull land comps now, but I will tell you that we got through the preface and two chapters of The Great Divorce last night. M (my associate priest) had a recording of it being read by an Englishman. He did different voices for the different characters which helped to keep the characters separated. He also passed out some notes that he had from another clergyman who also holds a PhD in Theology and breaks the chapters down into study notes. See? I got something like Cliff’s notes. It was good to be back with everyone last night. We prayed for Chas and Elvera.

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  11. I still have too many clothes. I keep getting rid of them, but still add a few pieces along, like those two pair of LL Bean slacks I found. I have only two or three summer dresses, and some nice slacks and tops for church. I have been wearing the same dresses for years. I would like to get a new one, but just don’t see much that I like when I have looked. Of course I only look in the clearance section so I am seeing what everyone else has rejected.

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  13. My last comment on yesterday’s thread went something like this”
    I was going to comment on wedding dresses but a rare streak of wisdom kicked in”

    Elvera has too many clothes. Polly is helping her clean out that walk in closet.
    It is a massive job.

    Same thing with jewelry. Department store stuff. I’m thinking we’ll just take all that stuff and sort it out later. I’m doing the same thing with CD”s and tapes. Too much to deal with for now.

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  15. I am sure your grand daughters would love to go through some of their grandmother’s jewelry. I saw something the other day where someone had taken a relative’s costume jewelry and made a piece of art out of it. It was done to look like a flower. Not something I would usually like, but this was done well.

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  16. Top photo is green darner dragonflies. The female is laying eggs, the male has her gripped by the neck to make sure another male doesn’t cut in and mate with her. They were a way away from shore, so I can see the action better in this shot than I could while taking it.

    Next shot is bloodroot. Last time I saw this flower, I only saw it blooming singly, so finding a group of about five (with these three spaced nicely for a photo) was nice. The root is red, and thus the name; it’s one of the first flowers to bloom in spring, before other stuff around it is green. It’s a large flower, so it’s easier to get detail on it for a photo, but for this one I liked the group of three.

    The bottom one might be a yellow violet. In the photo, it looks like the petals are thicker than violet petals, but that’s what I thought it was when I took the photo, and if it’s something else then I don’t know what it is. (I’m not an expert on botany.)

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  17. Good Morning…beautiful photos as always Cheryl…it must be Spring in your neck of the woods 🙂
    I missed out on the dress conversation….but it was fun to read the comments 🙂
    I got my mother of the bride dress at Dillards….I do not do well with pulling together an “elegant” look…but the dress was fine and it got me through…although I took the dumb heels off during the reception….all the wedding photos revealed I was in extreme pain…my feet didn’t forgive for that stunt for quite a while.
    Kim’s suggestion that the granddaughters would like to play with Grandmother’s costume jewelry is true…my mother in law let the girls play dress up with her mother’s old jewelry and it kept them occupied for hours…when my mother in law passed away, all the jewelry was place on her dresser and the girls went in to choose their memories of Mom…that time brought laughter, smiles and tears…

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  18. So, this is insect porn? (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

    How did you know to take the photo, Cheryl if you were a distance away? Amazing shot with that terrific camera.

    Busy day today and I still haven’t tackled all my email, much less my thank you notes.

    Heard back from the Osald Chambers people about my contract for the Biddy bio and they were all excited and pleased. The best news of all, so I should be in good shape all around with this project. Why do we ever worry when the Lord is in charge?

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  20. Great photo! 🙂

    My, Dillard’s is a popular place. Am I wrong to think we don’t even have them out here?

    google-google-google

    Ah, we have just 3 of them in our entire state, none anywhere near me.

    I was so tired last night I slept for 10 hours, which felt wonderful.

    Chas, hard when you’re on a deadline to move, but in a pinch you can go through some of that small stuff later. What’s happening with the house you’re in, are you all keeping it for now? Might make a nice rental property/income if you can afford to go that route (and you and/or the family are willing to deal with the landlord headaches), although having the cash for it might make more sense. But you can probably just put it up for sale once you’re all out.

    I feel your overwhelmed state. Just keep thinking, you’ll be on the other side in a few months.

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  21. I was a landlord for over twenty years in Falls Church.
    I kept the house when we bought one in Annandale
    Best investment I ever made.
    Someone else made the payments and I sold it for over ten times what I paid for it.
    But it also was a hassle.
    I am selling this one.

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  22. No Dillards around here. Our best store seems to be going downhill. The mall seems to be losing business after business.

    I find shopping more difficult the older I get. I end up finding the same style/color and tend towards casual. That is fine, but it is not always what is needed. I so wish someone would come out with a catalog with older models and not just thin ones. I am not one to keep up with the latest, but don’t want to look like an old woman either. Just a stylish old woman. 😉 I need a professional shopper. 🙂

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  23. Michelle, to be honest, when I took it I thought I was taking insect porn. I did get photos of mating butterflies on that same walk. The butterflies were chasing each other through the trees, and finally landed on the bottom of a log to mate. We saw two different pairs of courting mourning cloak butterflies, but one of the pairs went behind a tree and disappeared, and my husband said they were getting out of sight of the voyeur (me).

    The dragonflies were joined and flying through the air, and I assumed they were still mating. (They might have been, but they didn’t exactly hold still long enough to see.) Dragonflies don’t mate abdomen to abdomen, but the female curls her abdomen tip to the underside of the male, where he has transferred his sperm, and so they form a bit of a circle with their bodies as they fly. Basically, same position you see in that photo except that her abdomen would be curled underneath him to complete the circle. It was such a good photo, but I thought, “Can I really send AJ photos of mating creatures for him to post on the blog?” Well, when I saw that she was actually laying eggs, then I sent it. But I watched them flit around and hoped there would be some way to take their photo (I do think mating dragonflies are way cool), but then they landed. I had to find a spot on the shore from which I could zoom in through reeds without obstructions, but once I found an opening I saw that I had a really good view. Going online told me what species they were and confirmed that she was laying eggs while he was making sure that she laid his eggs before another male got hold of her. Apparently dragonfly males can get quite aggressive, even tearing apart mating pairs in order to get to the female himself. But she’s laying eggs on some log or something that’s submerged.

    Notice that his abdomen is bright blue but hers is not. That isn’t a trick of the light; male and female are colored a little differently.

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  24. Chas, probably a good choice, especially with housing prices up right now (which might not be the case in the even near future). At least they’re up out here again, haven’t kept up with the rest of the country.

    I won’t need a cocktail dress if I move to Idaho.

    🙂

    Mall shopping is definitely for the young. When my friend and I checked out our remodeled mall here just before Christmas with an evening of “window shopping” mostly, it soon felt like a forced march, not all that fun anymore! Ugh. We used to love it. 🙂 Times (and we) have changed …

    We’re losing several brick-and-mortar stores in our area, online shopping really has taken over the market. (Unless you’re young enough and love that bustling mall atmosphere, I suppose.)

    😮

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  25. Nordstroms just opened their free standing store The Rack last week…I’m going to take the plunge today and check it out….you know Nordstroms has a swell selection of great shoes! And it happens to be next to DSW….I’ll multitask shoe shopping…

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  26. Our malls are not bustling. They’re sad trudging dirges, even when you want to buy something. Maybe we should just wear burkas . . . then we could go around in our pajamas and no one will ever know . . .

    Says the woman who apparently buys all her slacks at Costco and her tops at Land’s End.

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  27. Good Morning, Y’all!
    Have not been present for a while…I have missed a lot, it seems.

    We have had a lot going on here as well…

    I am leaving my teaching position at the end of this year.

    I am pursuing a new career path in radiology.

    Oldest son graduated last Saturday with his B.A….now he is figuring out the next step.

    Youngest son is finally getting serious and is enrolling to pursue appropriate schooling to become a youth minister.

    Prayers for all of these ventures are appreciated.

    I have missed y’all…

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  28. Kim, I’m watching for the additional suggestions you said you might have for me today.

    Sunday one of our church members was in an accident on his way home from church (not his fault). He’s OK, car totalled. My husband offered to loan him our second car (which generally D-1 drives to work). This morning my husband woke up sick (well, he went to bed sick, but he woke up this morning thinking it was strep throat, which fortunately it isn’t). So our morning went like this: Husband: off to the doctor. Me: wait for phone call from D-2 that she is on her way home from work (driving her car); then I drop D-1 off at work, meet D-2 at church member’s house (halfway between her work and our home, half an hour for each of us and it was pretty much timed perfectly) to drop off our car, drive home (via the polling place) with D-2. Since my husband is sick, he won’t be voting. And since D-1 is at work without a car she can’t vote at the lunch hour, and probably won’t be voting, either, since she has somewhere to go after work. But half of us cast our vote this morning, and now it’s a quiet day back at home with one family member at work, one sick, and one sleeping.

    If my in-laws hadn’t voted absentee and mentioned it, I would have been surprised to find that the ballot still had a whole bunch of Republican presidential contenders who have in fact already dropped out. I was tempted to vote for my first choice even though he has already dropped out, but I voted for Cruz in the hopes that somehow he can get the Indiana vote. He may; we’re a conservative state, one of those places that in some races in the general election will only have Republicans on the ballot.

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  30. I get to skip voting a lot now in general elections — ever since California went to a “top 2” contender run-off system (called a jungle primary).

    My choice for many races boils down to (A) Liberal Democrat vs. (B) Liberal Democrat.

    Sigh.

    Next …

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  33. Donna, that’s how voting was in Chicago. In fact, in one case that made me rather angry, a district lost its Democrat nominee because he actually went to prison, and a black area of Chicago was in real danger of having a Republican in office, and of course a Republican is not permitted in Chicago. So a local pastor ran as an independent (wink-wink, of course I’m really a Democrat) and won, though he didn’t step down from being a pastor. (Talk about inappropriate involvement in politics!) But I’d go vote, no ID needed, and half the time only Democrats would be on the ticket.

    But then, for one race I voted for the Democrat nominee for governor . . . since he was a pro-life conservative and the Republican was a RINO. The Republican won, and I though, “OK, it’s not who I voted for, but at least he is a Republican, and hopefully will work with other Republicans. How bad can he really be?” Really bad. Involved in scandals, arrested, closed down any chance for another Republican for years.

    Then there was always Rostenkowski. I was actually living in his district when he had his scandal, and I looked forward to voting against him. Even voted in the Democrats’ primary just to vote against him and against an evil, unpleasant woman who was running for governor (and who won). Unfortunately, they didn’t have the updated address on file for me, so I had to go to my old polling place, and Rostenkowski wasn’t on the ballot in that district, so I didn’t get to vote against him till the general election. But he sent around mailings basically saying ignore the news stories and vote for me anyway. He got re-elected and then lost his office because he got convicted. Why he got re-elected under those circumstances I have no idea.

    Hmm, then there’s the second Mayor Daley, who wanted to close a small airport because he wanted to put a park where it was sitting. After 9/11 he thought he saw a good opportunity, and started appealing on the grounds that “it’s dangerous to have that airport, with small planes coming in.” Legislators said no, we don’t buy it, sorry. So in the middle of the night, he sent thugs out to literally destroy the runways (they carved huge X’s into them) and get his own way in a shocking third-world dictator move. Planes that were parked at the airport already had to figure out how to get out, and shockingly he got his own way. He closed the airport by force, and so they said OK and he got his park.

    Chicago politics really is as bad as they say. I’d much rather live next door among saner Hoosiers.

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  34. I am looking forward to seeing more dress choices, too. I do not know if I have a Dillard’s nearby. I only knew about Nordstrom because of that gift certificate. Macy’s recently closed shop in our mall about a mile from here. Pretty sad to see it go. There is another mall I shop at not too far from here but it is usually Penney’s or Kohl’s that I park in front of and only go in the store for a quick find of what I need. There is a Macy’s there, too, but I have not shopped much there since our mall was closer. We are not far from the extravagant Lenox Square in Buckhead which got to be the place to be seen. Not wanting to be seen unless I was all dressed up to hobble through the mall in heels discouraged me from desiring to go to Lenox and Phipps Plaza. They are probably casualized by now, but once a habit is broken…it’s hard to go backwards.

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  35. Well, the Nordstrom cocktail dress now appears on my FB advertising feed. It’s trying reel me in …

    Our California elections used work by putting the top-vote-getting Dem against the top vote-getting Repub on the general election ballot. At least then there was (potentially, theoretically) *someone* to vote for. Now they just put the top 2 “vote-getters” — who are always, always, always Democrats where I live — on the general election ballot. So there literally are ONLY Democrats to vote for in many/most races.

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  36. I mean, the Republicans always lost. But at least someone like me, in the tiny minority, had *someone* to cast a vote for. Now I literally bypass voting for many of the congressional/state legislature races because they’re all Dem vs. Dem.

    Hoping they change back the system at some point, but I won’t hold my breath. I’m virtually living in a one-party city/state. Something’s wrong with that picture.

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  37. It’s considered a non-partisan primary — but in effect it pits 2 candidates from the dominant party against each other in the general elections.

    jungle primary. A primary election in which all candidates for elected office run in the same primary regardless of political party. Also known as the “Nonpartisan Blanket Primary” or “Top Two Primary”, the top two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the next round, similar to a runoff election.

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  38. Donna, it isn’t a sex picture, but an egglaying photo (and you can’t even see the egglaying part, if that would be too risque). 🙂

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  42. You never know what you need until you see it in an ad. I would love to have that cocktail dress. I would even go out in the evening to get some Shirley Temple drinks to have a resonance to own it, LOL!

    I think those dragonflies are part of the old fashioned “birds and bees” sex education for the young that God gave in His goodness. Now sex ed in schools has been taken over by those with a godless agenda.

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  45. Supposed to be a staff meeting today and I am slated to give a devotion. I am going to use the Oswald Chambers August 23rd and then have a time of prayer. Please pray that we will have the meeting

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  50. Donna, I imagine in your line of work that you might have an occasion to wear a cocktail dress. I want someone to get it so I can hear more about it! When I first went to college, I was enrolled in a fashion merchandising program which was a specialty through the marketing major\BBA at Georgia Southern.

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  54. Cheryl,

    I’ll not comment on the porniness of the photo, but I must comment on the photo. It’s an excellent shot. Lots of detail (some would say too much apparently) and colors. The wings are clear and it shows their intricate details. But best of all is that you captured their colorful reflections on the water as well. Nice shot.

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  55. It is a very cool photo.

    Well, Trump winning big, Bernie may get an upset over Hillary — and Cruz has officially dropped out.

    On to the next chapter of political craziness that is 2016

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  59. Wait, Cruz dropped out? So I voted for him on his last day as a candidate? I suppose I might as well have voted for someone who already dropped out!

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  60. I was scanning the California GOP primary ballot and I suppose I’ll vote for Ben Carson, one of the few good guys still on there despite the fact that he’s dropped out.

    I would have voted for Cruz IF he’d done well tonight and was still deemed competitive. Now I’m a free agent.

    Not that that matters when there’s so little to pick from 😦

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