104 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-15-16”

  4. Good morning Chas, Tim Mitcham is a high school friend of mine. He flies helicopters for the children’s hospital in Atlanta. We agree on virtually all political issues and Diana Rigg. Tim is more politically incorrect than I am. We take turns making the liberal girls in our class squeal.

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  5. Good morning. Just got caught up on yesterday’s thread.
    Peter: I cried when I read your comment at 10:54…because that’s exactly how I feel….I’m often overwhelmed by God’s mercy towards me…..the fact that He chose to save a wretch like me is truly an amazing miracle! I have experienced many miracles in my life and have felt the loving hands of God surround me….

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  8. Time to finish packing as I have a 6:30 am pickup for my flight to Port Moresby and then on to Cairns. It is so nice that our vans come to your home to pick you up and then drive you out to aviation. It is hard to travel in this country, but our Aviation department makes it easy to leave on an international trip.

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  9. Good Morning! Christmas ornaments and candy canes dress up everything festive…!! 🙂
    It was 6 degrees when I went to bed at 10:30 last night…I wake up this morning at 6:30 and it is almost 40 degrees out there!! Wild weather we are all having…Saturday the bottom falls out with a high of 5…then headed for sub zero temps…are we having fun yet?!

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  12. No drama in my life so far today. The estimate on BG’s car is $2,900. Her dad is filing it on his insurance because “he is broke as a joke” but he is worried about how much his insurance is going to go up. I’ve told you before, he is the poorest man in America.
    Anyway, my house is spotless because the deductible is $100 and I told her she had to pay it and she can’t have her car back until the deductible is paid in full. I paid her $8 an hour to clean yesterday. She works tonight on a floor reset from 8pm until 4:30am. If I still had the Xterra I could let her take it to work, but I don’t and with her driving record I cannot trust her with an unfamiliar car (my new to me one). Hopefully a friend of hers is working the same reset and can take her and bring her home. If not we will work out something else. The Boyfriend took her to work and went back to get her last night. I guess if all else fails he can take her again tonight and I will pick her up in the morning….it isn’t as if I am asleep or anything.
    She has to grow up sometime. As her mother, it hurts me to see what she is going through, but I know she has caused a lot of it, and I can’t always be around to fix whatever is wrong so I have to let her learn. That’s hard. She is stubborn. At least she and Mr. P are speaking again.

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  13. Advent – Day 15: This traditional English carol was first published in 1777, meaning it is older than that:
    A virgin most pure, as the Prophets do tell,
    Hath brought forth a baby, as it hath befell,
    To be our Redeemer from death, hell and sin,
    Which Adam’s transgression had wrapped us in.

    Refrain:
    Aye, and therefore be you merry,
    Rejoice and be merry,
    Set sorrow aside;
    Christ Jesus our Savior was born on this tide.

    At Bethlehem city in Jewry a City there was
    Where Joseph and Mary together did pass,
    And there to be taxed, with many one more,
    For Cæsar commanded the same should be so.

    But, when they had entered the city so fair
    A number of people so mighty was there,
    That Joseph and Mary, whose substance was small,
    Could get in the Inn there no lodging at all.

    Then were they constrained in a stable to lye,
    Where horses and asses they us’d for to tie;
    Their lodging so simple they held it no scorn,
    But against the next morning our Saviour was born.

    The King of all kings to this world being brought,
    Small store of fine linen to wrap him was sought,
    And when she had swaddled her young son so sweet,
    Within an ox manger she laid him to sleep.

    Then God sent an Angel from Heaven so high,
    To certain poor Shepherds in fields where they lye,
    And bade them no longer in sorrow to stay,
    Because that our Saviour was born on this day.

    Then presently after the Shepherds did spy
    A number of Angels that stood in the sky;
    Who joyfully talked and sweetly did sing,
    To God be all glory our Heavenly King.

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  15. Re: Kim’s 9:03 I never wore knickers nor ducktai hair. And Jimmy Dean was part of the problem, in my opinion.
    But my first car, a ’50 Chevy club coupe had those skirts for the rear tires and two wilres sticking our the right to help parking.

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  17. Well, Kim, I assume that whatever the insurance increase is, she will pay it along with paying her own portion of the insurance already?

    Our younger daughter has had to pay for two car repairs–one she chose to pay out of pocket, one she sent through insurance, but the car was totalled and she had just paid it off. I think the second one was quite a wake-up call as to how quickly it can happen, and how much a driver needs to use caution, and also how expensive and inconvenient it can be to have a car accident. (And how easily it could have been worse. She was driving with a couple of other friends and they hit the median on the expressway after going across a couple of lanes on an over-correction–it could have easily involved other cars or ended up with injuries.)

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  18. It’s nice that you put the words up Phos. I wouldn’t have understood what they were saying without it. Strangely, it was perfectly clear hearing it when you could see it. Strange things happen in your mind.

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  21. Chas, the style of melody is melismatic, meaning there is multiple notes per syllable of word. The melismatic style is more associated with music from the Middle Ages, indicating that the song may have a long history, but the modern ear is not accustomed to listening to syllable being carried out over so many notes.

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  24. I can understand not allowing her to drive your car. A few weeks ago, I got wind of a plan by twenty year old to borrow my monster truck (Ranger) and she would let eighteen year old drive her car. I nixed that telling son I would not let her borrow a car as she has had too many accidents and does not repay her bills. Shortly after that, he let her switch her car for his BMW and totaled it. She has not paid for any repairs but he is diligently searching for and finding parts to slowly get it put back together. No insurance involved as he did not want to lose his car to the insurance company.

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  25. Kim, I’ve been meaning to comment on your new gravatar. Is it BG’s face reflected in a Christmas window? It’s very sweet.

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  26. My nieces have had quite a field day damaging expensive cars but I felt sorry for them, and asked my friends on FB to tell me how old they were the first time they had an accident.

    The majority were 17–just like the insurance adjusters would have guessed!

    I got to 18, but had another at 19 (on the 405 near Torrance, Donna, while driving to UCLA for my band audition).

    That doesn’t excuse their mistakes, but I think it encourages them to know we were not always the perfect drivers we are now. 🙂

    (I tell them to close their eyes when they ride with me . . . )

    Meanwhile out here, we’re at 175% over average rainfall and there’s a monsoon out my window–which is supposed to carry on until 5 tonight. I’m hanging on to Chas’ comments that pilots won’t fly if it isn’t safe. 🙂

    (That’s why I come here, so you guys will correct my thinking! LOL).

    When daughter called yesterday to ask what to do, I suggested that if Alaska Airlines is vague, just volunteer to swap your ticket to the Oakland flight. My husband is in San Jose, picking up Hillary somewhere down there today after work and they can swing by Oakland on their way home.

    Sounds like a plan to me.

    Meanwhile, I’m debating–should I write my Christmas cards or take advantage of this miserable weather and go Christmas shopping? I’ve now been through the ads and have some ideas of things to go with the four presents I’ve already purchased.

    Have I mentioned how much I hate shopping? I’m a total sitting duck for Amazon as a result . . .

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  27. I’m going to watch movies and write Christmas cards. Other sales will come along–or, better yet–maybe my daughter will want to go shopping FOR me? 🙂

    In yet other news, Stargazer had his final interview on Tuesday and was pleased. We’ll see.

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  28. That might be an interesting QOD: How old were you when you had your first accident?

    I was 22. I was driving a friend’s van, a wider vehicle than I was used to, and I got too close to the cars parked on the side of the street. My rear bumper, which extended out from the side of the van, made a nice long scratch along the side of a parked car. This was from the days when cars had real bumpers.

    My dad insisted on paying for it. He tended to rescue me, even when I thought he shouldn’t. But I never argued with Dad.

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  29. Can’t wait for Michell’s rain to make its way down our way sometime tonight 🙂 Glory.

    I’ve been debating God’s sovereignty on FB this morning 🙂 Sometimes social media presents rather unique opportunities for believers, including those who disagree with each on on points of doctrine and what the Bible does and does not teach (if one can get others to put current politics aside, not always easy; today’s comments included Trump as a “junior Hitler” and white Christians being responsible for allowing the bullying of Muslims and gay teenagers).

    But in other news … I have a 2-day break to do more housework before workers show up again and I need to return to my “real” work of digging up some kind of news in the slow, pre-holiday days. Is Christmas really just a little over a week away? How did that happen?

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  30. My Jeep is 9 years old but my friend who’s visiting in January has a brand new car with all the computerized gizmos. There’s gotta be a digital curb warning system in those, right?

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  31. I still haven’t had an accident that was my fault. I started driving at 20, so I missed the teen-driving years altogether. (I wasn’t eager to drive, and also didn’t have the money to drive–we weren’t allowed to drive our parents’ cars, so basically I started learning to drive when I had nearly enough money saved to buy my own car. And with the limitation that a job had to be close enough to get there by bicycle, and I could only work during daylight hours, getting that first job and getting enough hours to save and buy a car both proved difficult.) My first accident was the one in an intersection with a drunk driver when I had the right-of-way (it was flashing red the other direction, flashing yellow my direction–several intersections in Nashville begin that every night at 11:00, and it was about 11:30), and I was 43.

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  32. I think my first one was shortly after I began to drive at 16. I thought I could get into one of those parallel parking spaces going the wrong way and I scraped the side of the car next to me. Oops. Definitely “my fault” written all over that one.

    I was terrified to tell my parents — it was the family car — but my dad was so gracious. 🙂

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  33. The car was fixed and (as one of our BSF leaders used to say about things that went wrong or we made mistakes) “no one died.” 🙂

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  35. Well, I lied above. I finished reading an historical novel instead and will now write my Novelpastimes blog post for December 26. Then, maybe I’ll write Christmas cards until I get my daughter-directed marching orders.

    It’s a perfect day to read with the cat curled up nearby and the rain pouring down.

    Oh, and I bought three Christmas gifts from Amazon’s deal of the day.

    Yikes.

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  36. In my twenties I hit a car bumper which put a small dent in my car rather than hitting a rose bush plant someone had left out in the parking lot where I was an accountant. Does that count as an accident? It was minor. My next accident was when the Animal Control truck backed into me in my late thirties. I have hit a mailbox while backing out of a driveway, too.

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  37. Sounds peaceful Michelle. Actually, I do have a couple things I need to pick up, a picture frame (8×10) and I wanted to check Home Depot to look at their temporary (cheap) fencing …

    Now that I’m using the back gate to come and go more often (since the new back sliding door actually can be locked and unlocked from the outside!), I notice the dogs getting too close to the gate — this happens also when workers and in and out of that area, and the gate doesn’t always latch on the first try — and I’m thinking it would be nice to have a “secondary” gate to keep them a distance behind the real gate.

    Wouldn’t take much, they visually respect “barriers,” so for now maybe just a stretch of plastic netting ? Until I can figure out a better more permanent something that would look decent …

    Another project.

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  39. No Cheryl that is me. It was one of those Christmas change your profile picture on Facebook so I snipped it and turned it into a photo to use as a Christmas Avatar. It is supposed to be against the wall of a log cabin.

    My first accident? On the 695 Loop around Baltimore. A very nice lady rear ended me. I was 1,000 from home and there was no way “daddy could fix it”. I had to handle it all myself. I was 19. At 22 I had another accident and was still on my father’s insurance in the same little Honda Prelude. The car in front of me didn’t have brake lights and I rear ended them. When my dad got to me his lips had disappeared and his words drew blood. We were also in front of the Ford dealership and one of the salesmen had walked out to make sure no one was injured. He scolded my father and told him she should be thankful I wasn’t injured. A month later Jimmy made me drive his new Mercury Cougar purchased there off the lot so that the salesman would think he had bought me a new car. 😉 It was to my advantage to play along.

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  40. I’m waiting for my younger daughter’s flight to arrive in San Jose Airport in a couple of hours–home for Christmas from college in Greenville! Yay.

    I just read in our neighborhood website yesterday that the guy who I had giving her private tennis lessons in our neighborhood park when she was 12 was just arrested for molesting a couple of his tennis students! And apparently he was already on the sexual offender registry since the year she was born because he molested one of his patients when he was a chiropractor. I’m so thankful that she wasn’t one of his targets!

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  43. I sent two of the children (fifteen and ten) over to the driveway to shovel snow. Only a short twenty foot section so the UPS could deliver. Other child and I went to do the chores. When we finished, we went to check on the two. They did not know what a driveway was so they had shoveled part of the driveway and out into the field at least twice as far. I told them they did not need to shovel the field, just where cars go.

    We are snowed in as son is using the four wheel drive since sister totaled his car. I like being snowed in. But I was not going anywhere anyway.

    From the oven is the smell of berebere covered venison. Mmm mmmm.

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  44. Yes, Cheryl, I texted her the press release and her comment was just, “Oh man, good thing I quit tennis!” and “That’s so scary!”

    I found a newspaper article in the San Jose paper that gave more details and the molestation sounded subtle enough that a younger girl might be confused and not really know what was going on. With the victims they’re aware of, this behavior started when the girls were only ages 6 and 7, but with at least one of them, it went on for about 6 years. Then she didn’t report it until she was over 18 when she told a friend about it, and it eventually got back to her mom.

    My daughter only took lessons for one summer and I used to go with her for a long time, and then for the last few, she went alone. Perhaps since she was older, or because he didn’t have a longstanding relationship with her, or because he knew I was paying close enough attention, or something, he didn’t target her. In any case, God protected her.

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  45. I should have been smarter, though. My friend/her friend’s mom, recommended this guy because he also taught her daughter and son, and I remember she told me that he used to be a chiropractor and we both kind of wondered why he would stop doing that and have to support himself giving tennis lessons.

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  46. I’ve only had one accident – the first time I tried for my driver’s licence. I drove right into the posts you were supposed to park between when parallel parking. Oops.

    I passed the second attempt and have never, ever parallel parked since.

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  47. Classic, Kare 🙂 Your story wins.

    I used to be good at parallel parking when I drove VW bugs, but since then I’m not so good.

    Scary, Ree. We do regular stories, it seems, on coaches being arrested on molestation charges — wrestling seems to be the most common where it occurs, strictly anecdotally from what we’ve observed in our area area.

    Feeding the dogs this morning I flashed back on a weird memory — years ago I found what looked like a little mouse face inside a can of dog food I just opened up. Shudder. Horrible experience for the mouse and me both, I suppose.

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  48. Hi, all. I’ve enjoyed reading the daily threads this week when time permits, but it’s been so crazy busy, I don’t have time to respond to the interesting conversations I’ve been reading here. 🙂

    Today is the only day this week that I have nothing going on outside of home, so I’m trying to catch up with home business. This afternoon is Christmas card writing.

    May I ask a question? My husband and I have never had any sort of credit card besides a few store cards — not Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, whatever else might be out there for general use.

    The few times we’ve needed one (for me to order music from the authors of the beginning piano method I now use — they don’t sell their products in music stores — and for my husband to order car parts online, which often are cheaper than buying locally), we had 1st Arrow order using his credit card, and then reimbursed him.

    Now that son has moved away, I am thinking it’s time to get our own card. What do I need to know? I’d like a card with no annual fees, if possible. Is getting a card through one’s bank (we’ve been at the same bank since we moved here 28 years ago, and have a great relationship with them) better or worse than acquiring a card another way? (What other ways are there?) Is it better for each of us to have our own credit card accounts, for credit rating purposes, or for both of us to be on one card?

    I don’t see this as something we would use often, and we would pay off the charges within a month so we wouldn’t be charged interest.

    Oh, and is January a better month to acquire a card than December, depending on yearly fees, or annual cash-back bonuses or anything like that?

    I know so little about this. If anyone would care to inform me about what to look for, what to avoid, etc. that would really help save me some time, I think.

    Thanks. 🙂

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  49. I’ve received pics from a bunch of you and we’ll get to them as the days progress. 🙂

    We’ve covered Peter’s snow, Janice’s bayberry today, some of Cheryl’s birds but I still have some, and Kathaleena’s artistic nativity scene 🙂

    I’ve got some shots of a frigid looking dog park from Donna coming soon. 🙂

    Kare apparently went to the mountains, and it is gorgeous. Some stunning views. 🙂

    And I’m saving Kim’s, because I love the star, and it came from Bethlehem (PA), about 6 miles from here. I suspect I even know the store. It’s looks like the work of our local Moravians. 🙂

    So we’ve had some great shots, and have some great pics to come. 🙂

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  50. Kare,

    I can sympathize. The day I took my driving test I only failed one thing, parallel parking. 😦

    I did everything right. I checked all my mirrors, looked over my shoulder, put it in reverse, checked mirrors again, and proceeded to commence parking. After backing up quite a ways I told the instructor I couldn’t see the back cone. He said it was because I already hit it and was pushing it backwards with the bumper. Oops. 🙂

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  51. Ree, I had two fairly “close calls” with pastors when I was 12 or so. Well, in neither case was I the kind of victim the man was targeting, but still . . .

    In one case, my church hired a children’s pastor. They told us before taking the vote that he had said he would only come if the vote was 100%. Of course, the pastors shouldn’t have told us that, but they wanted him to come . . . but it was a manipulation tactic that made any “no” vote a high-stakes one. Do you really want to be the one person who keeps this man from coming? No one knew enough about him to be the one person making that decision for everyone, which I’m assuming is what he was counting on. Furthermore, having voted “yes,” everyone was now invested in him. My family happened to leave the church between the vote and his actual arrival. Next thing I knew about him, a year or so later (I would have been 13 or maybe 14), I was reading the paper and found out he had been arrested. Turns out that in his “job” as children’s pastor, he would sometimes take little boys home with him (with parental permission) and (unknown to the parents, of course) photograph them naked.

    About that time in our lives, every time we were between churches (which was frequently), we had one particular church we’d attend a couple of times. Mom told me years later we probably would have joined that church except we kids didn’t like it. I have three memories of that church: they sang every song just enough too fast it felt weird, I didn’t trust the pastor, and every time we visited the pastor mentioned us from the pulpit, most of the time getting our last name wrong. One notorious time, he mentioned us three times (!), with a different pronunciation each time, only one of them right. Perhaps he was so flattering because my family had girls right around his favorite age . . . because only a year or two after that, he made the papers for having molested two twelve-year-old girls. The church had a school, and he was the principal, and two different girls had come to him telling of stepfathers who molested them, and he took advantage of both of them. He served about eight years. I googled him recently and discovered the shocking news he’d been a previous offender in New Mexico, but somehow no one told the church in Phoenix!

    Between those two and the pastor of the church I attended from ages 20-22 (right before college) deciding after I went to college that he wanted to be a homosexual, the churches of my youth showed me that pastors can indeed be wolves. Technically not one of those men was my pastor at the time he offended, and none of them was victimizing people in a category that included me, but all of them felt like shudderingly close calls . . . especially the one who preyed on two girls my age and seemed quite eager to have us attend his church (and presumably also his school, once he got us into his church).

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  52. AJ, my mother-in-law’s learning-to-drive story comes to mind, though she is never the one to tell it. But she always laughs and crinkles up her eyes when my husband tells it.

    She’s a bit short, maybe 5’3″, and apparently she had a real “little girl” voice as a young adult. And she’s 80 now, so this would have been 60 years ago, more or less. The car she took for her driving test was a large one, and the driving instructor told her to parallel park it in such and such a spot. And she looked at him and said, “You want me to put this great big car in that little tiny space?”

    “No. I guess not.” She got her license and I guess she never did learn to parallel park.

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  53. 6 Arrows, I’ve had several credit cards in my day, always Visa, and I always make sure it has no annual free and a 25-day grace period (that is, no interest if it is paid off in full each month). These days, though, you can also shop around to find a card with the best “perks.” For instance, my husband’s Mastercard is a Sears card–though it is a Mastercard, it came “through” Sears and thus he gets rebates and such when shopping at Sears, and he also collects cash back that he can use at Sears or at other places. My Visa is through amazon. (Michelle, cover your eyes, please.) All my purchases earn me 1%, with certain purchases (gas for one, and I don’t remember the others) earning 2%, and purchases on amazon earning 3%. I can get that benefit via check or other rewards, but I choose just to get it as credit on amazon. So if I spend $100 on amazon, I have $3 amazon credit. Spend another $800 on various things, that’s $8. It’s a nice little perk to be ready to check out and see I have $7.52 in credit to apply to the purchase.

    My husband’s card recently offered ten times bonus points (up to $100 “free”) for purchases made online. Well, he was in the process of ordering tires from Costco, so they counted. But he also ordered a Kroger gift card, and then when it came, he took it into the store and bought other gift cards with it (both for gifts and cards of places where we eat, like Subway)–because Kroger was doing 4 x bonus points (normally every $100 you spend gets you 10 cents off per gallon of gas, up to 35 gallons, so 4 x means $100 of cards reaps a 40 cent discount, or $250 in cards reaps the maximum $1.00 discount. Take two cars and a couple of five-gallon gas cans and you can get the maximum amount of gas and really benefit from such a promotion). So he got purchases he would have been making anyway, and for “free” he is getting a $100 gift card and $1.00 off 30-some gallons in gas.

    Promotions like that are not worthwhile if you have to pay an annual fee, but it is super easy to get a card without one, and find one with benefits as well.

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  54. Yet another confession. I’ve now looked at the Christmas cards, but haven’t picked up a pen. It’s now time to pick up my daughter–I hope.

    This is Hawai’i type monsoon rain that probably only Jo has experienced on a regular basis!

    I got distracted when I received an email about Oswald Chambers that sent me looking through photos I took 3.5 years ago at Wheaton. Lo and behold, I have a bunch of photos of Biddy’s Bible with her comments. I wish I had looked at these photos two months ago.

    Sigh; at least they’ll make a great blog post! 🙂

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  55. We have candy canes now! 🙂

    If somebody wants, a couple of more can get 57. That was the year we were married. But I’ll let someone else have. it.

    😉

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  62. I went out to do the afternoon chores and I found fifteen year old out shoveling the driveway. Now that she knows what one is, she has it covered. Not sure how long it is but I think we have about two hundred feet of fencing alongside it so she has covered a lot of shoveling. It is the width of the driveway as well as the length. Good work, daughter! Now she is moving two bales of hay with ten year old for the horses.

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  65. Not 62! Mumsee got it! And all I got was “You are posting too quickly. Slow down to let Mumsee in.”

    I guess the “So there!” was to me!

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  68. Sounds like husband is stopped over by Baker City. A couple accidents ahead of them so they are stopped on the highway. Another trucker pulled up next to him as people kept trying to squirrel by and getting in the way of the rescue personnel. Prayer of course for the people in the accidents and for the emergency responders. And for the folks waiting. These things can pile up.

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  72. Prayers regarding that accident scene, Mumsee. Is Baker City in CA? Or somewhere that it’s not getting dark out yet like here in the Central time zone? I hope things can get straightened away there before nightfall.

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  78. Mumsee, truckers often do that on the interstate. If one lane is blocked, a truck in the “fast lane” will pull up alongside a truck in the blocked land. The effect of this is to prevent cars from racing down the faster land and pulling in ahead of everyone else.

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  82. My Charlie Brown tree is waiting for rain — these are little pine trees planted (free) by the city of LA on residential properties with the promise that the city would water and care for them for 3 years.

    I called a couple months ago letting them know all the trees on my block were turning brown, they promised to come out to tend to them. I think they’re doing “something” as there are some new green sprouts amid all the brown branches. But I’m tempted to hang an ornament on it …

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  84. QoD- First accident at 16, trying to pass a line of cars behind a front-end loader. The pickup in front of me din’t see me and tried passing as well. Being inexperienced, i hit the gas instead of the breaks, veered off to the left of the road and swerved back onto it, hitting the bumper of the pickup behind the tractor.

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  85. Kim, Thanks for the Statler Brothers songs. Those are a couple of my favorites. Those fellows come from Staunton which is a really pretty little city in the Valley of Virginia. They are my parents’ age and their songs describe the world my parents’ grew up in, except their world had trees, hills and no sandstorms.

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  86. Kind of a weird story, if you watch Jeopardy. My husband and I watch it sometimes. We saw it two nights ago, but not last night. Tonight before the show aired I saw a news story that someone who was on Jeopardy had died before her sequence aired, and I recognized by the photo that it was the lady who won two nights ago. (http://www.avclub.com/article/one-weeks-jeopardy-contestants-died-her-episodes-a-247484 ) Well, we watched it tonight, and she was still on it, and she won at the end after trailing most of the episode (she’s the only one who got the final question correct). Since she was in third place going in to the final question, but not very far behind the second place person, the host said, “And our champion is still alive going into Final Jeopardy!”

    Um, no, not by the time the show aired, she wasn’t! Since he was the only one on the set who knew she was dying, probably as soon as he said it, he realized what he had said. She died ten days ago, after winning at least three episodes–tomorrow we’ll see if she won her fourth.

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  88. Those are frightening stories, Cheryl. A close friend of mine had her 12 or so year old daughter (at the time) targeted by a young man from their church, but my friend started getting a weird vibe before she went so far as allowing him to be alone with her daughter, so nothing happened. He had been planning on “helping out” by taking her to her soccer game, my friend was naive enough to almost go for it. But another friend who’d had a much less sheltered life saw this young man interacting with my friend’s kids one time, and told me friend to keep them away from him. Shortly afterwards, though, he was arrested and convicted of molesting someone else and he’s been in prison every since (about 12 years ago). It feels like a minefield out there sometimes!

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  90. On the subject of boyfriends coming to the door. . .Mr X would sit in his car & honk his horn for Nightingale to come out. We told her that was rude & inappropriate, but she didn’t think it was bad. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t feel that way now.

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  92. You know, I was thinking about the girls going out to meet friends, and in this household, when that happened, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just because they couldn’t wait to see the person and spend time with him or her. See, when I married my husband, one girl was a high school senior and one was in college, and they’d had a single dad since their middle school years. So this was not a home where teenage girls hung out. They’d go to their friends’ homes or go places with their friends, but their friends did not come here. Had I married their dad when they were younger, and we’d developed a good relationship as quickly as we did, then I might have played a role in making this the kind of home where their friends might hang out. As it happened, though, the presence of a stepmother did not initially make the home feel more like a place to bring friends; it felt less so. So they would either meet their friends other places, or their friends would pick them up and nearly always they would go outside and get into their friends’ cars without the friend coming to the door OR they would meet the friend at the door. If I met said friend at all, it was a casual “hi” or a brief introduction.

    So I think that is part of why running out to meet the boyfriend and leave felt all wrong. First of all, it’s bad etiquette. I’d read up on proper dating etiquette when I was young enough to know that you aren’t peering out the window waiting for him and running out before he comes to the door. You let him come to the door, and that way you don’t seem over-anxious and he gets to casually meet your parents if you live at home. Now, in this case we already knew the young man, since he goes to our church. But it still wasn’t a good thing to establish that dates mean run off without him speaking to us at all.

    Now, as it turns out, after she went out to his car that day they decided to come inside and hang out here; they didn’t go anywhere on that first date, and for more than half of their subsequent dates they also hung out here. But when she went racing out to his car, it wasn’t at all clear that he would end up spending a lot of time with us, contrary to what the girls’ female friends have done.

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  102. So glad that I booked the earlier flight and arrived here in the daytime. Not sure who all has done this, but arriving from the boondooks into a town and renting a car at the airport, well that may work okay. But when you then have to drive on the other side of the road. WWWjoooo heeee. I needed that daylight to help me figure everything out. I have been here several times before and knew where I was going, that helped. But it is still weird.

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  103. I just got caught up on yesterday’s thread….fun reading!!!

    My first accident was when I was seventeen –I was leaving my high school boyfriend’s home. I was turning left onto a highway — looked left, then right, then waved to my boyfriend (who was in his car behind me, heading to his job), and pulled into intersection. I failed to look a second time and a car T-boned me–no one was hurt, but it was my fault and did quite a bit of damage to the car…..Having already raised four kids to adulthood–one of whom had totaled three cars–my dad was extremely kind about it. Also, I got my first ticket at sixteen in South Padre during Spring Break….I was going 72 in a 55…..parents weren’t too happy about that!

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