49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-27-16”

  5. Seeing that 12-27 up there reminds me . . . this is my half birthday (my husband pointed out that this was my 50th Christmas) . . . but also Misten’s “gotcha” day. Twelve years ago I brought home a sweet collie puppy. Her breeder gave her a pill to help her sleep all the way home, and instead she whined all the way home, and I sang songs so she could hear my voice. She was in a crate in the backseat with towels for softness. It didn’t occur to me until I put her in it for the trip that if I was going to do crate training, expecting an eight-week-old puppy to make it five-and-a-half hours home without going potty was expecting a lot! So I made several stops and got out and put her on the grass and petted her and talked to her. I was a bit nervous about those stops, since I hadn’t brought a collar or leash for her. But she never once went potty, didn’t go till we’d been home in the backyard for at least half an hour, maybe an hour. It was the first sign of her lifelong (until the last year) extraordinary bladder control. In her weeks of housebreaking training, only once did she go in less than five hours. And she learned “sit” her very first day as my puppy. She was such a good dog, a good friend.

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  8. There is nothing like the love of a good dog and I think dogs come into our lives for a specific purpose. Nothing on earth loves us like our dogs. Even our parents or spouses get angry with us from time to time but our dog’s love is constant. There’s an analogy in there somewhere and a trite little saying about dog being God spelled backwards, but I will refrain from making it.
    You all know that Amos healed my broken heart. There is a reason he is named King Amos Isaac.
    Cheryl, treasure your memories of Misten, we all loved when you wrote about her and we grieved with you because some of us have faced that decision in our pasts and dread the day we have to face it again.

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  9. We drove through the nature preserve yesterday. Many areas are closed off due to hazardous conditions from hurricane Matthew. I got out of the car and crept close to the heron. This photo was my first try for a photo. I am using my tablet camera for photos so I can’t get the same quality I achieved with my Smartphone. But I got so close to this heron that I took some really good photos.

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  10. Good Morning…it is a beautiful sun shiny day here in the forest….I get to go nowhere today!
    That is a long necked bird up there Janice….it does appear he posed for you quite nicely!
    Cheryl your sweet remembrance of Miss Tennessee brought tears to my eyes….we all did love her so….how thankful am I that the Lord gives to us sweet companions and memories to cherish for a lifetime…she was a good girl ❤

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  11. A List of John Ford’s 30 best movies:

    Nos. 2,6,7,and 18 all won Best Picture Oscars, but of course No. 1 is his masterpiece.

    I will always have a soft spot for Nos. 16 and 26.

    Judge Priest didn’t make the list, but it would be in my top 8. The Sun Shines Bright was Ford’s personal favorite and it also didn’t make the list.

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  12. Having grown up on John Ford movies, I recognized Monument Valley immediately when we camped there years ago.

    Its also a bit eerie because you keep wondering who will ride up next slinging a gun and if the natives are any friendlier than they were when Wayne and Company frequented the desolate area . . .

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  13. And I think there will be another dog in Cheryl’s future someday, when the time is right.

    But I have to say that losing them almost becomes harder each time one goes through it — I thought it would get easier, but it doesn’t. 😦 Sad note on which to begin the day when I have to return to work … I sure could use a week off. I went to bed early last night and feel rested (though with a sore back from yesterday’s step ladder and light fixture frustrations), but not ready to go back to work. At least it’s a short week with a 3-day weekend ahead again.

    Real estate pal thought he found a good prospect for my bathroom, guy was working on a house he’s trying to rent. But he spoke no (as in zero) English, so that would prove way too complicated, real estate pal (rightly) decided.

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  14. Monument Valley is really popular with Europeans, but the menu at the restaurant at Goulding’s Lodge is strictly Navajo. The last time we were there, I had a fun (but difficult) time explaining what Fry Bread was to the Germans who were seated at the table next to us.

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  15. Ah, Mr. Roberts. I remember watching that one night with my mom (I was probably a young teenager). And I have seen most of the top 7 or so, some of the others had familiar titles but I’m not sure I’d seen them. …

    The Quite Man (a favorite of my ex-boyfriend’s), the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Grapes of Wrath … all classics.

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  16. I grew up on westerns also, though, so I probably saw most or a good number of those older ones, I’m just not recalling them in much detail.

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  17. DJ, I have seen them all except for The Fugitive. My wife loves The Long Grey Line, but I had never watched it until this year.

    Donovan’s Reef barely made the list and is really not that good, but the Hawaiian Christmas play where Lee Marvin is “The King of the United States of America” and approaches the baby Jesus wearing a crown and bringing a record player as a gift is one of my favorite scenes ever.

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  18. Michelle thanks for sharing that link….very thought provoking indeed. I recall watching the movie with Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson…it was not strictly according to the book cutting out relevant portions….
    Dying to ourselves is a concept many cannot comprehend….sadly….

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  20. We have a little town that had a very big push to secede from the US long ago. They had a festival celebrating it for a few years–complete with passports. The mayor was very involved in the Democratic Farmer Labor party, I believe. It got them quite a bit of publicity. I am not sure if it got them the infra-structure help they wanted or not.

    I have made fry bread and it is one of the things we will often buy at local fairs and festivals. The next of these will probably be the first weekend of February. MMmmm. I like it with butter, cinnamon and sugar. My husband remembers his mother often making this when she made bread for his family. Their were a lot of hungry mouths to feed. My mom refused to make bread after she was married. She came from a family of 15 and had routinely made bread in a huge bowl. I never had fry bread until I married.

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  24. We had a place in our local mall in Phoenix (it would have been “walking distance” had I lived there as an adult) that had fried bread. You could get it with any number of toppings. The menu listed honey, or powdered sugar, or refried beans and whatever you wanted with them (cheese, peppers, etc.). I liked it with refried beans and cheese (no onions or peppers, thank you), and I liked it with powdered sugar. They have something similar at the fair here, called elephant ears, but I don’t think it’s quite the same.

    When I went to Phoenix when my mom had heart surgery, I hung out with her husband daily, had all my meals with him, and one day I asked if he had eaten at Fun Foods, and he hadn’t. (The mall wasn’t all that far from the hospital.) So we went there, and maybe we split one or maybe we each had one, I forget. It had been 10 or 15 years since I’d had one, and it was a real treat. I asked my stepfather what he thought, and he said it was OK. I guess it isn’t something you want to eat for the first time at 80!

    When we were back for Mom’s funeral (my stepfather predeceased her) about three or four years later, I suggested to one of my siblings that we go to Fun Foods, and we went to the mall and it wasn’t there any longer. It had been there at least 30 years, and it was a sad loss. But I was so glad I’d had that chance to eat there with Pop.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. I got a sweatshirt for Christmas. One of the girls got me a “world champion Cubs” hoodie. I was quite pleased. I don’t go in for sports clothing as a rule, but when the Suns played the Bulls in the play-offs, I had my mother send me a Suns T-shirt for my birthday so I could wear it among all those smug college students who assumed the Bulls would win handily. (They did win, but in overtime in game six, so it could have gone either way.) When the Bulls won their third series in a row, I bought a “Threepeat” T-shirt. And I kinda did want a Cubs hat or shirt, but the cost was prohibitive, so I was glad when she got me one.

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  26. I think I cried in thinking about Misten’s eventual loss before I even brought her home, and certainly I teared up throughout her life every time I thought about it. By the time she died, I’d lost my childhood dog and many smaller pets and collie mixes owned by two landlords (dogs I would have kept myself, had I been given warning they were going to give them away). But I’d also lost both parents and my stepfather, a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law (both under 52), and multiple friends. Born to older parents after all four grandparents were gone, death has never been a stranger to me. But it’s bizarre in a way I didn’t really expect–with a human you know they aren’t really gone, just no longer on this earth. But with Misten, it’s like all that exuberant but gentle life is simply gone.

    My mom told me once when our childhood dog was still alive that she had never had a dog for its full lifespan. She’d either gotten a dog as an adult or had it die tragically young (hit by a car at two when the neighbor boy opened the front door and let her outside, that was the story of one dog from before I was born, a favorite of the whole family). My childhood cocker mix came to us as a puppy too young to leave its mother (four weeks) and we had her till she was ten and Mom had her put down. But I’d wanted a collie my whole life, and with Misten I figured that I wanted the whole thing, puppyhood on. I wouldn’t be inclined to get another puppy, and probably not another collie (since a next dog would be a dog into our early old age and a collie is a fairly big dog). I’m thinking a sheltie, but not for another year or two, and I may have to do some sweet talking then to get my husband to agree. (He did love Misten.) So she was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and her life seemed to be over so shockingly fast. After she died, I marvelled that she had lived her entire life after my mother’s death in 2003; it just didn’t seem possible that Mom had been gone long enough for a dog’s entire lifetime to pass since it.

    When we did Christmas yesterday with the kids, I joked about one box being big enough to hold a puppy (it was almost big enough for a grown dog, actually), and my older girl said “A collie puppy!”

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  27. Donna @ 11;56
    I don’t wear t-shirts anymore. Not since I stopped going to the Y.
    but it occurs to me that if they had just worn T-shirts in Charleston in 1860, they could have saved lots of lives.

    I don’t even wear my CAROLINA ALUMNI T-shirts now.
    (I can get another free one if I send a donation.)

    Liked by 1 person

  28. I told you yesterday that Mr. P and I went to see Fences with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. I didn’t like the movie as much as I liked Collateral Beauty last week with Will Smith. Mr. P kept telling me all the reasons Fences was a superior movie and that Denzel deserved to win an award. I kept trying to figure out why I didn’t like the movie. It has been niggling (poor choice of wording when I finish) at the back of my mind all day. I am not sure what this says about me, your Resident Southern Belle/White Trash.
    We saw the movie the day after Christmas in a theater that was probably about 70% black moviegoers. Troy(Denzel) used the N-i-double Grrr word throughout the movie. Every time he called another character, including his son, “nigger” I squirmed. It jarred me. It made me uncomfortable. I noticed that the black people laughed at the appropriate times it was said but I didn’t. I shrunk back in my seat.
    I have erased that word from my vocabulary and have explained to my light haired, light eyed, Caucasion child why she can’t say it either. This movie was set in Pittsburgh in the 1950’s and usually I am for a period piece being true to that period, but this time I just couldn’t get caught up in the movie because every time I started to relax there was that word.

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  29. My dad went to school with Debbie Reynolds. They played French Horn together; my dad first chair, Debbie second and my godfather played third. Dad always watched Debbie Reynolds movies and talked about her coming to school in her girl scout uniform a mere two years before she starred in Singing in the Rain.

    She never forgot my dad and would invite my parents backstage when they saw her show in Las Vegas.

    I’m a couple months older than Carrie Fisher and because of that “family” connection, followed her career. She made a lot of poor choices with substance abuse but she lived her entire life in a spotlight.

    Don’t encourage your relatives to be famous.

    Very sorry to hear of Carrie Fisher’s death this morning.

    Liked by 7 people

  32. The Kid thinks he can say the “n” word because he is bi-racial. I say, “no you can’t”. People will think you learned that from us, plus I remember what a nasty word that used to be.

    Liked by 5 people

  33. KBells, Biracial kids are cunning like that. My son is white except when he finds it to his advantage to be a Mexican. His wife is also half Mexican, but is much lighter than he is. Nevertheless, he enjoys calling her a “Mexican”.

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  34. But with Misten, it’s like all that exuberant but gentle life is simply gone.

    Maybe. But we don’t know (without a doubt) everything when it comes to the afterlife.

    Liked by 3 people

  35. Ricky’s theater has trays? All we get is the cup holder on an arm rest shared with the next seat. And now Carrie Fisher has died. She has met the true “Force” and passed on to eternity, wherever it is for her.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. DJ, You are very observant. That theater is in Flower Mound, one of our new Californian-friendly suburbs. It has houses on small lots and Whole Food Markets. Those two things tend to repel and disgust native Texans with their giant pickups and gun racks. There aren’t many scores over 30 in Flower Mound.

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  39. All the roads are closed around here. Good thing I have nowhere to go. But then, my children are pointing out that we have not left the property in over a month so nothing new there.

    Liked by 1 person

  46. Let the blizzards come; we’re prepared. We each got a couple packages of chocolate for Christmas, and today we did our usual post-Christmas candy-and-wrapping-paper shopping–and also finally used a raincheck for Dove dark chocolate after the store has been out for the last month.

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  49. We hiked about 2 miles today. It has been ages since we have been able to do that! I am beat, and my stomach has issues tonight, but otherwise, things are looking up. But still no word on health insurance.

    Liked by 3 people

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