58 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-1-16”

  1. Is that a fall flower?
    September got here before we are ready for it.
    Football is tonight.
    That’s the thing about time. It just keeps rolling on whether you’re ready or not.
    Good morning Aj, Good evening Jo. Good afternoon Tychicus and Ajisuun.
    Everyone else. Roll out and get with it.

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  3. Good morning, Chas and AJ.

    Funny thing, that some would think it acceptable to drive after shooting meth, but not after taking a benzo to keep them from crawling out of their skin.

    Wishing all a productive day.

    I have a funeral to attend. A 29 year old with 3 children. Car accident. Very sad.

    And there you have several unconnected thoughts. That’s what happens when you work night shift without having slept the day before. 😉

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  4. Sunflowers have long been one of my favorite flowers–the wild ones more than the cultivated, though. The campground in California (Ventura) that was a family favorite had sunflowers as we drove in (and rabbits playing in large numbers on an open field as we drove out), and sunflowers grew near the store where my favorite older brother worked.

    In fourth grade we planted seeds in pots, and the teacher gave us a choice of many varieties. Some even planted sweet potatoes, staking them in glass jars in the window to grow beautiful, lacy plants. But the moment the teacher mentioned “sunflowers” as one of our choices, that was mine.

    After sprouting them in pots and watching them grow, we could take them home and plant them in the ground. I did so. Only one survived to bloom, and when it finished blooming I pulled it up.Playing around with the flower heads, I saw a few ripe seeds, and on a hunch I collected them and made a seed packet. For the rest of my childhood (until we moved from that house when I was 15), each year I planted seeds from the crop the year before. I think I missed a year once, but a few seeds were still viable the next year.

    The first year the sunflowers were mildly disappointing. They were “teddy bear sunflowers” with a head more like a mum than like a wild sunflower. But the seeds reverted to wild, and I was pleased by that. One year I had one grow especially tall, either 8 1/2 feet or 10 1/2 feet, I don’t remember which, but it grew too tall for its stalk and so I tied it to the fence. It had flower heads in all directions, dozens of them in all, this big sprawling monster of a plant. But it was in the sideyard, and nobody but me cared about the sideyard, so I’d go sit under my brother’s window in the sideyard (where nobody inside our house could look out and see me, and I’d hear the door if anyone came out the back door), and I felt like I had my own “space.” When you share a bedroom in a small house with a little sister, it feels nice to have such spaces.

    A praying mantis found the plant as a little baby. I’d take it onto my finger, let it run up and down my arm, and then put it back on the plant. It stayed there until it became a winged adult, and it ran onto my finger willingly after that first time or two.

    I thought about having sunflowers in my wedding, debated between them and roses. My sister recently said that she’d thought I was going for sunflowers, and that I should have, because it would have been a uniquely “me” touch. I told her there were two reasons I didn’t. One, it’s really the wild ones I like (that includes the “basic” style of the header photo, as long as the blossom isn’t too large), and florist places tend to offer big-headed cultivated ones and not small-headed wild ones. Two, having brought them inside as cut flowers a few times, I know they produce an incredible amount of pollen (normally it blows off) and I’m allergic to the pollen. So I really need to enjoy them outdoors, not in.

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  5. I have a lot of sunflowers in my garden which I plant to attract birds, who, in turn, control the bad insect population. I have lots of yellow warblers right now. Was Wishing for Cheryl to take good pictures of them. I grow the tall multiflora type.

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  7. My Black-eyed Susans are still in bloom so that is what I first thought it was, in a close up shot.

    Yesterday warmed up so I had to close my windows. Not sure what to expect today, but I love the feel of the mornings right now.

    I need to go check out the Pigskins! 🙂 I hope I am not too late.

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  8. Disregard previous comment. We’ve always had Cheryl.
    I was thinking we had Donna back.
    My Bad.
    But I would like to see Donna and Karen back. I can’t keep up with all the changes.
    Ain’t nothing the same no more.

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  12. My aunt called earlier this week. There is going to be a family fish fry at her beach house this Saturday. Mr. P has asked to be excused because he has 4 football games he wants to watch. When we married he explained his obsession and I married him anyway knowing this, therefore I cannot pout, try to make him feel guilty, etc for not going with me. Really it is OK with me that he stays home and I go (that way I won’t have to watch 4 football games–I’m smart like that)
    Anyway, my aunt ALWAYS, ALWAYS, asks me to bring a dessert. Those of you who have spent any time with me or listened to me over the years know that dessert is not my favorite. (My name is Kim and I am powerless over appetizers). I always groan a little when she asks then rack my brain trying to figure out what to take. I decided yesterday and had to go look up the old Calling All Cooks (Yellow) https://www.amazon.com/Calling-Telephone-Pioneers-America-Alabama/dp/0978728300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472737479&sr=1-1&keywords=calling+all+cooks

    For your enjoyment I am sharing this here:
    Banana Split Pie
    1 box graham cracker crumbs
    1 large can crushed pineapple
    4 large bananas
    1 (8oz) pkg Philadelphia cream cheese
    1 1/2 c. powered sugar
    1/2 stick butter
    1 (8oz) Cool Whip
    1 (10 oz) jar cherries
    Pecans

    Spread cracker crumbs in the bottom a pie plate; add 1 heaping tablespoon of granulated sugar and melted butter. Mix real well and shape crust.
    Place a layer of sliced bananas. Drain pineapple and reserve 1/3 c. of juice. Spread pineapple over bananas
    Mix cream cheese and pineapple juice. Mix well. Spread over pineapple.
    Spread Cool Whip over cream cheese mixture.
    Top with cherries (that have been cut in half). Sprinkle with pecans.
    This makes 2 (9inch) pies or 1 (13×9 inch) rectangular pan.

    Believe me, one day real soon you will thank me for this.

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  13. I’m having some coffee to wake me up, first bid people get here soon. Everything’s such a jumble in here right now, curtains all down (so they can assess the window woodwork). I guess everything gets worse before it gets better. Or something.

    LA Fleet Week kicks off officially tomorrow and runs through Monday. Most of my work on that is done, although the photographers are going out for photos today and tomorrow I think. Hoping it all goes as smoothly as it can when you have that many people in that relatively small of a space.

    Happy September! I love fall, although we get some of our hottest weather in September/October. Like I said, it’s gotta get worse before it gets better. A life principle.

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  16. RKessler, sorry to be difficult but is the funeral for the mom or for the mom and the children. Did the children live or were they killed also? Either way it is an immensely difficult time for that family and friends.

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  17. Those flowers are lovely to look upon..but they make me sneeze, add to that watery eyes!……they are everywhere…thankfully they are fading and the pollens are not as plentiful now….
    I wonder if you can make Kim’s dessert with a fruit substitution…I am one of those who cannot stand the smell let alone taste of a banana 😎

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  21. Waiting, waiting. Handyman company not here yet, officially 15 minutes late (beyond the 30-minute window they’d given me yesterday). I need to leave for work in about 30 minutes so I may have to reschedule.

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  23. And it would be really really good, but it would not be the same as if you were here to enjoy it with us. You could keep your feet up and we would not laugh.

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  27. I would have had an anniversary today. I just got off the phone with him. He is mostly concerned about not paying any more child support. He wanted to know if I had received anything from the state that I did not turn back in. It cost him $37!!!!!!!!! to submit the paperwork to stop it. 🙂
    He IS the poorest man in America

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  28. I sympathize Donna. Nothing more frustrating than people who ignore commitments.
    Find someone else. if they had notified you in some way, they would disserve a second chance. They blew it.

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  29. Today, fifteen year old daughter is making cube steak casserole. She finished frying the floured cube steak and setting it in the casserole dish. Then she poured on some soup mix, topped with rice, and is putting on foil. These are all major accomplishments for her. Thank You, God, for bringing her this far, so much more than we had anticipated years ago.

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  35. Sounds delicious and like something we will make very soon.

    I like this time of year as the outside work has slowed down and the house is cooler and I can incorporate small people into cooking easier. They love it and hopefully they are learning something.

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  37. Kim, when we first got married, we had some family dinner coming up and I asked my mother-in-law what to take, and she said green-bean casserole. Well, I made a mistake of taking that at a potluck once, and of eating a bite or two, and I’d learned my lesson. But she asked for green-bean casserole, so I made green-bean casserole. Next holiday, same thing. Next holiday, my husband told me she wanted me to take green-bean casserole, and I finally said, “Could you please tell her I detest green-bean casserole, can’t stand the taste and especially dislike the smell” (cleaning the dishes when I got home was the worst part), “and that I pretty much don’t make anything with onions, no matter how the onions are packaged?” I probably said it in a sweeter way, but that was the gist. He explained that the girls had made it a few times, so she just assigned it to me. No. Yuck. Don’t ruin innocent green beans like that! And don’t ask me to do it for you.

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  38. An email from my priest:

    Apostles Family:

    A small group of five of us have returned from Louisiana and I wanted to give a brief update as many of you expressed interest in assisting in the future. Many of you also made generous contributions to this important relief effort.
    (Deleted Names)
    We volunteered through Samaritans Purse, a disaster recovery agency of Billy Graham Ministries. Their word to us is they will be in the Denham Springs area until late fall. We also heard that they have deployed a group to LaFayette and will be deploying further south of Denham as soon as the waters recede. Houses south have been in flood waters for three weeks. Hard to imagine.

    While the area does not have the look of a hurricane affected area with structures and trees knocked down, we were told that over 75% of all homes and businesses were flooded. Denham High School is closed as are the other level schools as are many of the Day Cares, and businesses like Wal-mart etc…are not in operation.

    I talked with one of our past members who moved to Baton Rouge/Denham, a few years back, and works in the hospital; story after story of her fellow employees is while their homes have initially been mucked out by neighbors and local people and agencies, they have little funds to rebuild as very few had flood insurance Our understanding is their insurance policies did not require it because it was not a designated flood zone. I will be the first to say I am still gathering information and do not want to pass on any false data, so please do your own research if you are a stickler for details.

    For those who want to assist immediately, our team would recommend Samaritans Purse https://spvolunteernetwork.samaritanspurse.org/ For those of you who know of other organizations please pass the information on and I will it on as I receive it. The work/assistance need will continue for many months if not years so let us not be anxious just faithful to respond as the Lord leads us.

    If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact anyone from the group I mentioned above.

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  39. My dad was 1 of 12, there are 26 or so grandchildren and I have no idea how many great-grands. It works this way. Host(ess) provides main course, siblings: salads and vegetables, grands: dessert, greats: drinks.

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  40. This morning the weather was perfect (70s), enough so that my husband and I planned in advance to set it aside and go for a walk. He suggested it two days ago; I think he knew I needed something to look forward to.

    We went to a site where we’ve only gone a few times, but where we are pretty much guaranteed good wildlife sightings, but we just don’t know “what” in advance. Today we saw lots of great blue herons (apparently some family groups), at least one great egret (one kept coming and going, so it wasn’t clear whether it was the same one all the time), a group of three swans, and lots of ducks and geese, as well as some smaller birds.

    But it was a really wonderful morning for butterflies and dragonflies. Monarch, viceroy, pearl crescent, buckeye, black swallowtail, lots of skippers, and dragonflies and damselflies in an array of colors, including some really odd ones. No mammals, frogs seen only as they leaped, a turtle that showed up in photos of ducks but I hadn’t seen it at the time, one pretty spider, and one huge fish. No eagles (we saw one last time) but we saw egret and they aren’t really “local.” (Great egrets “scatter widely in late summer” according to the bird book, so this is the second time we’ve seen them about this time of the year, but we definitely can’t put them on the calendar and expect to see them.)

    The swans came in to land in an impressive synchronized group. I’m assuming it’s a pair and one surviving (now grown) cygnet, and if that’s the case it would be nice if more had survived, because three was a pretty impressive dance. A few minutes later, the great egret came in (the second or third time we’d seen it) and started to land, but apparently it realized as it came in that all that white was the wrong species, not egrets, and it flew on!

    I got a couple of photos with multiple species in the same lens: all three swans, two great blue herons, and several geese and ducks. (Mallards and wood ducks are in “eclipse” plumage now, so they aren’t very pretty and no special find, but four species in one small area are still kinda cool.)

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  43. Happy Anniversary to you and your hubby, Kare. 🙂

    Sounds like a lovely walk, Cheryl. We’ve had beautiful weather, too, like what you describe. Different wildlife here, though. (And fortunately no rattlesnakes in the last week.) 😉

    I had a wonderfully productive morning — got 2-4 months of lesson planning done for my piano student. September and October are all mapped out, though the length of time she’ll spend on some repertoire is only an estimate at this point. Other things I’ve scheduled out longer, to the end of the year, like her composition exercises. I’ve established deadlines with those, so she can get used to preparing some things for specific dates, which is good practice for future employment. She plans to study music composition in college, and is the one who wants to be a film composer.

    She was so excited to tell me that she met a music faculty member in the composition department at the college she wants to attend, and he has connections to a film composer in California. There’s apparently a very expensive but valuable course in Cali for students aspiring to film composing that is led by this composer, I think. It’s quite intensive, and they recommend that students not have any job while they take this course, it is so all-consuming.

    Anyway, this is a ways down the road (if the opportunity materializes at all), perhaps after she graduates high school. (She’s just starting her junior year today.) Next summer will be a camp in the Midwest for composition students that she is hoping to qualify for first. She’s been working with her high school band director last year and continuing into this year on a wind ensemble composition as one audition piece, and with me for a piano composition audition piece.

    A lot of work, but she’s eating it all up and is coming along well in her composition skills. We worked on composition alone a long time at her lesson last night — 60 of her 75-minute lesson. Normally I don’t devote that much time to theory/composition (more like 1/3 of her lesson time, with technique and repertoire filling the other 2/3), but once in a while it’s good to go deep in one area, rather than go broad across many areas. The 60 minutes went quickly, and she shared many insightful comments about her reasoning in using the melodies, rhythms, chords, etc. that she did in this last bunch of exercises and short pieces she composed. So it’s great to see her thinking through what she wants to achieve in her compositions, rather than simply writing whatever comes to mind and how ever it comes out, that’s the way it is. (The novice approach, which she is well beyond now.) 😉

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  46. Oh the Weather People are just pure giddy. They have a hurricane. Now they are discussing how it they are talking about Florida not having a hurricane for ELEVEN whole years. They should be thrilled with NOT having one.

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  47. so nice to be missed. We had power problems last night, so no internet. I know the guys were working hard to get a new generator working. Delighted that I have power now, but it may go off again soon as they install the new generator.

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  48. No shows aren’t unusual for these guys, but I was kind of suprises since this was one of those handyman ‘companies’ in town, secretary/scheduler called me yesterday to set up the appt.

    We’ll see if the 2 more random guys show up for separate appointments Saturday — I’m only getting bids and ideas at this point

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  49. Scheduler called, very apologetic, so I rescheduled with them for tomorrow morning, same time — we’ll see, the more bids I can get the better for decision making

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  52. Janice, I meant to tell you thank you for a post a while back, in which you mentioned The Theory of Everything and its good film score. I haven’t seen that movie, but will look for it. Thanks for the recommendation. 🙂

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  53. The continuing saga of fifteen year old with no school supplies. Two nights ago he asked me for a pencil, I said no. Last night he asked me for a notebook. I said no. He has money set up at the school to buy those things from the teachers as he refused to buy them ahead of time, though he managed to spend the one hundred dollars (his money). And he destroys what I buy for him. He is not going to play football long if he refuses to get a notebook and pencil and do the work.

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  58. Happy anniversary, Kares.

    Designer girl wanted a sunflower cake for her birthday party one year. We had a sunflower theme. Not sure what age she was. I used to get the catalogue idea books from Wilton and they would look through them and pick something. They often surprised me.

    Oh, mumsee! How they fight against the goads and make life so much more difficult than it needs to be.

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