71 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-22-16”

  3. Good Morning Chas….I’ve been awake since 3 and have my first cup of coffee. It is still and dark in the forest…this happens to be my favorite part of the day….
    Working today, yesterday was busy at work…we are pushing out the fall decor and displaying Christmas…we have had customers calling for the past two weeks asking when our Christmas will be out…rush rush rush!!! But, in our defense, we will be having our Christmas open house the first week of November and we must be decorated and ready…October is almost over!
    That is a beautiful birdie on the header photo Cheryl…what is is about certain birds that cause me to smile…so gentle and sweet….His Eye is on the Sparrow….

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  5. Hello from my home which feels quite chilly this a.m. I think it went down in the 40s last night.

    Karen is still in the hospital to try some new meds. Her condition is more serious than Art’s. We felt like we had a slumber party at the hospital the night before last. We may do it again. This hospital has the best thing I have seen for in the hospital room accomadations for overnighter. There is a small couch that converts to a bed. One side arm pulls out revealing a base on which the cushions for the back of the couch are taken down and put on the base to complete a twin size bed. It was quite comfortable all night.

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  8. 1. I slept in, and was able to even though Mr. P and our house guest got up early this morning to catch a bus to Tuscaloosa for the game at 2. That means I awoke to dogs that had been fed, and coffee already made. What a treat.
    2. My Christmas decorations go up the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving. I would much rather do that on the Friday after Thanksgiving than get on the road and fight Black Friday shoppers. I thankfully have never needed or wanted anything that much.
    3. My friends L & M will be here in about an hour to help me rearrange my kitchen…and perhaps a few other things. I once again find myself in possession of TOO MUCH STUFF but this time I can’t just donate it to a charity. It is Mr P’s priceless treasures.
    I don’t know how he is going to handle what I am about to do. He has told me for a week to move a plant back to where it was. I moved it from the corner where I intend to put the Christmas tree to the entryway.

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  10. The header photo is a yellow-rumped warbler. They fly through on migration, but usually (if I see them at all) I see them only at a distance. This year they have hung around our yard and our neighbors’ yards. This one was in a neighbor’s apple orchard. His trees were humming with these, with ruby-crowned kinglets (our smallest bird other than the ruby-throated hummingbird), with lots of chipping sparrows, and with an occasional bluebird.

    Well, as a general rule, the smaller the bird, the more it zips around a tree. A large bird like a flicker hardly ever flies, but a small chickadee is rarely on a branch more than a second or two; if you want a photo, your camera has to be zoomed in the right place at the right time (not focusing on a twig in front of the bird, but on the bird itself), and all or most of the bird needs to show, especially its eye. (A lot of bird shots are ruined because the bird ducks its head behind a leaf.)

    So here I am, standing in our yard, behind our fence, taking photos of tiny birds in our neighbor’s trees. And for the most part, they wouldn’t land in the tree right next to me (they seemed to know I was there), so I had to search all the other trees for movement and find the bird in my lens as quickly as I could. Nearly all were “misses”–the bird flies before you can get to it. Some were “hits” but bad shots. The rest . . . nearly all were chipping sparrows, a bird here in such abundance in the warm months that I already have quite a few good shots of it. I wanted the warblers and the kinglets. (I happily get photos of bluebirds every chance I get, but a group of about seven had been hanging out in our yard, and they breed here every summer, so I also have lots of good shots of them.)

    But I managed to get a couple of decent shots of the yellow-rumped warblers, including this fellow.

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  11. My new house cleaner comes today–a 15 year old, the second child in a home schooling family of seven. With all those younger siblings, I should be set for years . . .

    This means, however, that I will need to teach her how I want things done. I’m not particular, I just want the house cleaned without me having to bother. I have writing to do and a Bible study to prepare.

    But my work may need to take place later today or tomorrow. She needs to have me explain how to do things.

    I’ve been trying to frame it in my mind–the philosophy of house keeping? Getting it done and keep moving? Should it smell clean when she’s done? What is clean?

    I could influence an entire family!

    I’m probably over thinking this . . .

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  12. We usually put up our tree & start decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving, too.

    The realization hit me recently that with Nightingale being a nurse, she will most probably be working a shift on Thanksgiving or Christmas – or both. Well, we’ve always been flexible with holidays, so we’ll just work around her schedule.

    Last year, Nightingale had been very enthusiastic about decorating & buying gifts. After years of us adults not having stockings to fill, she insisted on buying new stockings, & she filled them all.

    This year, she is much busier with working varying shifts for two part-time jobs (one is only sporadic, but the nursing home job comes close to full-time some weeks), so I assumed she wouldn’t want to do all of that this year. But she tells me she is indeed going to do all that. I appreciate her & her enthusiasm for “the holidays”, both Thanksgiving & Christmas.

    Now if only she (& her son & her sister) could/would truly grasp Who it is we are thankful to & for, & Who it is we are celebrating on Christmas.

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  13. What’s all this holiday talk? It isn’t even Halloween yet!

    We have rain in our forecast for Thursday and Friday, let’s hope that forecast holds. I would love a good rain. So would my brown LA city tree. Poor thing.

    I need to pick up some more tile at the tile store today and see if I can’t get some things back in order inside this house. I’e had to move things around for all the window inspections & measurements. I also have a bag of electronic waste (batteries, an old fan, etc.) that need to be dropped off today so I can get that bag out of here.

    Have I ever said how much I love Amazon? I’d ordered some Bayer back&body aspirin and realized a day ago or so that I’d never seen it. I checked online and it said it had been delivered a few days earlier, but I double checked and could not find it. So I sent them an email. Within 30 minutes they’d replied apologizing and said a new bottle was being sent out immediately at no charge.

    There’s a reason they’ve taken over retail.

    And I think Black Friday is not near the “thing” it used to be, with most people shopping online. Of course, some love the thrill of the physical chase amid the crowds, tearing up the “clearance” tables. But it’s not something most of us would consider fun.

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  14. We have to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving anyway — truly one of the harder days of the year to go to work. But it’s always been that way for us.

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  15. I raked leaves off the side yard. I thought to my self that Miss Bosley must be thinking I am a fool for doing so on a dry windy day. The dry leaves tried to go
    flying out of the trash can as soon as I put them in. Miss Bosley looked at me when I got inside with eyes that said, “It’s just like washing dishes. As soon as you wash one pile another batch appears.” But at least I got a haiku to post on social media for my effort❤

    all the difference
    between colors green and brown
    industrious rake
    ***
    Thank You, God, for revealing truth later by layer.

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  17. Michelle, I once employed a neighbor girl to help some in the house. I found that mop water was poured into my kitchen sink. And she and her sister are the ones that when teaching them to bake, they cracked an egg that emptied on my two-year-old Wesley’ s head. I know you will be better at training than I was. LOL! I had no experience working with children at that point. I was trying to help a working mom with her children by picking them up after school. Eventually I had to say it was not working out. Wesley constantly missed out on his nap time. I think he did enjoy having the doting attention of the girls except for the egg on his head.

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  18. Hmm, it’s after Thanksgiving up here…

    No, I have not started decorating for Christmas (yet) but I have started thinking and planning on what will be my theme this year. I’m trying to use stuff I already have so that I won’t ‘need’ to purchase anything new. I did make some cute paper stars last week and I’ve commissioned my husband to build me some wooden stars out of scrap wood. 🙂

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  21. I know someone at the dog park who keeps fake Christmas trees up all year round (ever since her mom — who LOVED Christmas — died I guess). She’s older and married, kids are gone, but it’s supposed to be something to see when you walk into their place in the middle of summer.

    She’s hosting a Christmas party this year for all the dog park gang. 🙂 Guess she won’t even have to decorate.

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  23. I appreciate Christmas whether a theme is chosen or not. I like the theme of a homemade Christmas where decorations and gifts are made by one’s family. We never did that, but I would like that. I love stringing popcorn! At one point I used all red and white decorations which included an assortment of musical instruments with the base instrument covered in red felt and the strings and such in white piping. Over the years they disintegrated. Now a lot of my ornaments were made or selected by our son, given to me by preschool students, or given by friends. Some we picked up at after Christmas sales in Hilton Head. I need to purge again.

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  24. If I have a theme, it is eclectic and hodge podge. I don’t think Art likes it, but it is what it is. He always liked the office tree more which was classy and not so childlike. We did not put up trees last year. Not sure about this year.

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  25. A friend’s husband was the CO of a shipyard. She lived in an old Victorian with many more rooms than she used, so she just moved her artificial tree up to an empty room for the other 11 months of the year.

    She got a kick out of taking visiting children upstairs to see her “Christmas room.”

    Another CO’s wife same Shipyard, loved Christmas and had a decorated tree in each downstairs room. I’d never seen a Christmas tree decorated completely in Barbie dolls before.

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  27. I’m trying to move things around in my kitchen, I need to keep the area around the sliding glass door (the side that is set and doesn’t open) free for all the commotion that’s coming — so more purging here. I found an excess stash of spare of pet bowls that are going into a give away bag and some other things.

    There’s a year-round Christmas store in the mall at Hollywood and Highland. Carol and I went there two summers ago, kind of fun to look at the array of things.

    Maybe the dog park person has her trees in designated rooms, that’s possible.

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  28. Donna, does she have flocked trees to imitate the ones in the freezing dog park?

    Our house is really chilly today. Beer…now how is it that I typed in brrr and it got changed to that alcoholic beverage? So we know now what the autochecker has on his mind. It’s too cold for anyone to be drinking beer,
    LOL!

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  29. DJ – I hate when things are discombobulated. How about throwing a tablecloth over the boxes? 🙂

    We have a lot of things that need fixing around here, but we can’t afford to do much right now. 😦

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  30. I think that I will just skip Christmas this year. I gave my family gifts when I was home during the summer. I will be in Australia where I know no one. I do know a good church to go to and I am sure the missionary hotel where I will stay will have a Christmas dinner all together.

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  33. Long and productive day at work today…I am sooo tired! I did purchase a box of Christmas Greetings, a big ‘ol sugar pinecone, and the cutest Gingerbread man who has a fat head, a carrot nose and the sweetest smile upon his face….everytime I passed him as I was straightening the merchandise, I saw his smile…he came home with me…. 🙂

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  35. Kim: sorry for the delay in responding. I had to work Becca’s School’s Fall Festival today and haven’t been on the thread until now.

    Update on my mom: She is in rehab part of Kerrville Hospital. She is much improved since the blood transfusion. My oldest brother is staying with her for the next couple of nights. Then, my other brother, the doctor, will be with her Tuesday through Friday. They did a Doppler test of some sort on her carotids. They are functioning well enough that she doesn’t require surgery. (Hooray!). I spoke with her tonight and she seemed in fairly good spirits. They get Sunday off from any therapies and she’s looking forward to taking it easy tomorrow.

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  37. We lost? Bummer.

    I’ve been shifting things around in the kitchen since getting home from the dog park. I think this new arrangement will work better and I have more things to purge.

    Got the “formal” flyer invitation to the dog park Christmas party — I think she’s mainly into Santas. She was born and raised in Canada, 90 miles north of Toronto.

    Watched part of a movie tonight about a group of college green activists who go to the Amazon to protect the natives from some development. They wind up getting captured by the not-so-nice natives. I didn’t watch it to the end.

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  41. Mr. P didn’t get home until sometime after midnight. He is still asleep so hasn’t had a chance to notice any rearrangements. I didn’t do anything too drastic. I only spent $39 on a floor lamp—never thought I would buy one of those again. I have an idea now about what to do with a large blank wall using a mirror I already have.
    I predict the main thing he is going to gripe about is that I moved a round, cloth covered table from the sun room to the living room and the table from the living room into the sun room. The rearrangement is going to give him a lamp near where he sits/lies on the sofa to study. He isn’t going to like it anyway. Oh and I moved one of those tacky carved wooden chests from in front of window to closer to a door and stuck a really large plant on it.
    What I didn’t do that is going to be a struggle is that I forgot to throw away some dull stainless steel knives. You can’t sharpen them and he is going to want to save them in case we ever need them or one of the children needs them. Have I ever mentioned that my dad’s hobby was to buy and resell restaurant equipment? I’ve got some knives. I even have a meat cleaver that would sever an arm or a leg.

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  42. Oh and another thing is my friend L rearranged the pantry and made me throw out anything that expired two years ago. It’s a much more organized pantry and she put my spices in alphabetical order. 🙂

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  43. I have a beat-up butcher block table with one of those deep, tin flour drawers — my mom had picked it up at an antique store and I’ve always loved that thing — it also has 2 leaves that come up from both sides and a little slid-out cutting board.

    Since I’ve had it, it has become the table where I keep a lot of the pet food supplies. But it was in front of the unmovable side of the mid-century aluminum sliding door, which worked out OK (especially since that door is so ugly).

    I’ve now moved it to the end of the island, just turned it around and re-situated it (it’s only a few feet from where it was but facing a different way). That completely clears away the space at the door, which is good, it looks much more roomy in there now. And when I get the new sliding door — which is going to be really nice looking — it’ll look even better.

    I went to bed too late last night and then Tess kept waking me up, jumping up on the bed a couple times just as I was falling asleep (she is awful when she does that, she can’t lie at the foot or next to you, she throws all of her 50 pounds on your face and head). So I am really dragging this morning, hoping coffee will perk me up some before church.

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  45. I should have sent a white squirrel while I had the chance.
    They have white squirrels in/around Hendersonville. Not albinos, really white.
    We had a talk about them in our Lions club. A person brought a couple up from somewhere in Florida. They are all kin to each other. They think like grey squirrels in that when they think they’re in trouble, they flatten themselves against a tree, thinking they are camouflaged.

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  46. Is the butcher block table sealed or is is bare? Have you cleaned it with ammonia, let it dry, and applied mineral oil?

    Mr. P handled most of the changes well. He shot down one idea, but that’s OK.

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  47. The creature is a red squirrel–our smallest of three species of squirrel, not much bigger than a chipmunk and cute as can be. But they can be hard to photograph, since they usually see you before you see them and they’re off and running. This one, however, was on a branch over the trail we were hiking. A man was coming the other direction, and he saw me with a camera and politely stopped. Carefully I got two or three photos, and then I told the man OK and he (the man) went under the tree and passed us. I expected the squirrel to flee when he did, but he stayed in place, so I myself went closer and got some better photos, including this one. Don’t know if it was a young one or what, but I got several good photos of a usually shy species.

    We also have the larger gray squirrel and a much larger fox squirrel . . . and we don’t have white squirrels, but black squirrels. They’re the same species as the gray squirrel, just a color phase, and I suspect Chas’s white squirrels are the same idea. In our yard we only get fox squirrels, in my mother-in-law’s yard we see gray (including black ones) and occasionally a red squirrel, and in the state park we hike, we see all three species, but no black ones.

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  48. That squirrel is really cute. I recently saw one right outside the window looking in at me. I wish Miss Bosley had been there or I had my camera. I have never seen one that close.

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  49. Church was good this morning. The pastor is preaching from 1 Thessalonians about the end times. Timely subject.

    I have not spoken with Karen today. I would have stayed the last two evenings with her, but she sounded like she’d be okay. I tell her she can call me at anytime. I think I am the only one here in Atlanta who prays with her aloud. She is always calmed as we pray. I remind her it is God and nothing that I do other than be available. She may have an early procedure tomorrow morning so I really wish her husband would stay overnight.

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  50. Forgot to take my keys to church yesterday to give to the other family where my haus meri works in the morning. Last time she had to walk up the hill, she was quite irritated. If she is rude this morning, I am going to give her her pay and tell her not to bother working. She can decide if she wants to work for me, but it is not okay to lambast me. She is the one who changed the schedule for her convenience. I am learning to be firm and polite when others are disrespectful.

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  52. Butcher block is not sealed, so I wouldn’t use it for human food prep without a portable cutting board to work on. My mom also used it for pet food dishes/cans and preparation area, it works great for that. I used something called Boos Block on it and another butcher block conditioning oil over the years.

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  53. It’s been a busy week around here. Now for some catching up…

    Ann, thanks for the report on your mother. You’re all in my prayers.

    DJ, I enjoy reading your progress reports on the house renovations. Slowly but surely… 😉

    Slowly but surely for me, too, as far as implementing the many great ideas I heard at the music teacher’s conference I attended Friday and Saturday. My mind is full of musical thoughts. 🙂 There’s a lot to process — I’ll be chewing on it for a while. Probably taking things in little bits and pieces, judging what’s most applicable now, and what can be saved for more in-depth perusal later. But it IS tempting to take all the wonderful ideas and try to launch full-bore into all of it. I shall have to look at this as a marathon and not a sprint. 🙂

    I am looking forward to what should be a more normal week on the home front, barring anything unforeseen.

    (But it seems sometimes like the unforeseen things are most likely to happen when things look like they’re going to be normal!) 🙂

    God knows, and I’ll [try to] rest in that. One day at a time.

    Liked by 4 people

  56. Well was I ever confused (at first) reading Michelle’s post….you know it is the height of political season….when I read that “Hillary” attended a John Piper conference, then read she was struggling with ministering…my brain short circuited…..
    Now I know to pray for “Michelle’s Hillary”….whew!!!

    Liked by 4 people

  63. Above is another yellow-rumped warbler . . . or maybe the same one. Bird were whizzing in and out of the trees so fast, and were mostly just seen as a hint of movement within the apple trees. Whenever I thought I had a bird in the lens, I waited to be sure its head was visible if possible and shot the picture. Most of the photos weren’t good, but a few of them were both clear and cute. Then you look at this shot and imagine a bird just sitting on the branch for a minute or two while I look for the best pose and take his picture, when instead he might have been on that branch for three seconds, and shifted position five times (his back to me, his head behind the leaf, etc.), and only if I happened to shoot at just the right fraction of a second would it be a good shot.

    Tiny birds are maddening to photograph. But the challenge makes it all the sweeter when you look at the camera and see you captured a good shot. This is a species I have gotten in passing, at a distance, six or seven times over the last five years, but now I finally got a couple of shots that show both the bird’s color and its personality. I’ve gotten one or the other, but not both together, so I’m happy.

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  65. Great pics, such cute animals. Eeeee

    I’ll have to do some work on the butcher block table, it’s been a while since I’ve treated it.

    But I like it away from the sliding door, it provides much more light in the kitchen that way — and with the new, prettier door in there (it has a thin, pine interior frame, real wood), it’ll look so much better than the old aluminum frame window with the Greenpeace sticker I was never able to get off completely from the former owners’. 🙂

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  68. I’m just loving looking at the picture of the bird. It’s so restful to my eyes to see green. I find winter so harsh although it can also be very pretty.

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  69. Thanks, Kare. I was just grabbing any photo I could get of those birds, but this one has the hint of yellow on the bird matching so nicely the hint of yellow on the leaves, and I love how the apple trees in the background blended into a pale green. Green is my favorite color, and so I really love this one. I can say that because it really took no “skill” to take it, just perseverance and fortunate timing.

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  71. Internet was down this afternoon. Glad that it is working now and I can catch up with you all. Haus meri did start to lecture me and I told her she needed to talk nice to me. She changed the schedule. She had to come to school for the keys and then started to complain, so I handed her her pay, but not the keys. Said that she could decide if she wanted to work for me, but not today.

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