73 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-21-17”

  2. I couldn’t decide whether this belonged on the R&R or Politics thread, so I put it here.

    The most significant statement Trump has made so far is restoring Churchill’s bust to the Oval Office.
    I thought long ago that I would have told my staff that I want Churchill to be there when I get there. Apparently that’s what happened.

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  3. A couple of days ago, someone asked about early morning routines. I forgot to mention that early every morning I check my iphone to see if all my people are where they’re supposed to be. I just did that, and they are.

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  4. Good morning. I am in San Marcos with Lindsey. We checked out Texas State University yesterday. A good friend’s daughter is a junior there and she gave us the inside scoop after we went on the official tour. Today we plan to hit the outlet malls…..

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  5. Oh the racoon in the header is so cute! When I was about 14 we moved into a house that had a blocked chimney. When my dad took the junk out of it, there were 3 baby raccoons in a nest. We tried to put things back for a couple of days, but the mother never returned. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them, but I got to keep one and raise it. She was so small I fed her with a tiny baby bottle and tucked her in my pocket when we went out to the store.

    When she got older, she would ‘wash’ every thing we fed her—rubbing it with both hands in her water bowl. I used to give her bread sometimes just to watch her bewildered expression when it dissolved in the water as she cleaned it. 😀

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  7. Debra, that reminds me of a book from my childhood Little Rascal, an abridged version of Sterling North’s Rascal. I used to dream of having a pet raccoon after reading about the antics of Rascal, who also washed his food. Later, I read the unabridged version, which was a much grimmer account – North was an adolescent during the 1919 flu epidemic and he doesn’t spare in the description of how it devastated his hometown. I’ve since learned, that raccoons, beside their propensity to carry rabies, also carry a deadly parasite that can be picked up through their droppings. Also, they are vicious killers, one eviscerated (literally) a flock of young chicks we were trying to raise and we lost quite a few grown hens to them as well. One of those animals that looks cute and cuddly but is actually deadly, like the weasel. For some reason, about a decade ago, ferrets were all the rage to have as pets. I’ve noticed the trend has died away – probably one too many death grip bites from those weasel jaws.

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  8. That raccoon is a juvenile. It was on my side of that little “creek” with its back to me and I got a couple of photos. It didn’t seem to know I was there, but it went to the other side and disappeared among the plants there. A butterfly landed on my arm, a species I hadn’t seen before, and so I worked to get photos of him (which isn’t easy to do while the critter is on your own arm), and then the little coon popped back out, but I didn’t have a clear view of it, and it was quite a few yards down. Soon a semi truck came by on our road, and I used the noise of the truck as background, and moved closer to the coon without it noticing me. Then it looked up at me, and I shot several photos while it decided whether or not it needed to leave. I was torn, because it should be afraid of people, but I love coons and wanted the photos. But it finally decided it needed to get out of there, after I’d taken photos at several different distances.

    I live in an area that would be swamp if it was ever allowed to revert, so it takes constant management of water. Many of my neighbors have retention ponds, and many of the farm fields have yellow “drain” at the lowest area of the field (and that low area almost never succeeds in producing crops–the field nearest our house got its whole crop this year, and our older daughter said it was the first year she ever saw that happen). Half a mile or so down the street is a house set well back from the road on a bit of a hill; on its left side is a meandering creek-like drainage area that turns at the street and runs along the front of the property, with a little bridge over it for them to get to their house. Behind the “manmade creek” along the street is a row of mature evergreens, and across the street is a poorly drained property that sits idle and simply grows in weeds every year (no house on it and no crops). Thus, except that this area is fairly close to the road, it’s pretty “wild.” That is where this little fellow was.

    In this same bit of water, I have photographed frogs, turtles, muskrats, dragonflies, lots of butterflies, countless red-winged blackbirds (females nest among these plants and males sit on the wires across the street and curse at anyone who walks along this property), cedar waxwings and other birds. My husband and I also saw our first mink there, though it was a brief view and no photo. We’ve also seen groundhogs up on the land, and I got a good photo of a rabbit just a short distance away on the property. As we drove by one day, I saw a great blue heron down there. All in all, it may technically be a drainage ditch, but it’s a lovely place for wildlife and I always approach it slowly when on foot to see what might be there.

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  9. Good morning from soggy Atlanta. It is pouring this morning. I had to close my windows. Earlier it was cool and foggy.

    The raccoon header is so cute. When I stayed overnight with a friend, she and her husband had a troupe of raccoons who visited for food daily. It was neat to watch them from behind the glass. Since my friend’s husband has allergies to animals, those raccoons filled the bill as pets for them.

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  11. Yep, I too read Rascal and wanted a raccoon. We had neighbors down the street who had all sorts of pets, including a raccoon for a while. I know they are pests where they interact with people, but as purely wild animals, they are intelligent, beautiful, and fascinating. I have quite a few stuffed raccoons (the number pared down when we were preparing to marry, but I kept my favorites).

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  12. Ann, I loved those college visits. Of course everyone is on best behavior when the college/university wants to be seen in the best light, and the student wants to appear desirable for acceptance into the school. It was great fun considering all the possibilities (except for considering the cost).

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  14. I had Sidney for about a year and a half. She was very obedient to me, but as she got older (and wilder) she became more independent. Towards the end, she would climb up about 30 feet into a big tree and lay across the branch with all four legs dangling. I would stand at the bottom calling her and lecturing to no avail—would just look at me and make little chirrup calls. We ended up giving her to a small zoo near the house. It almost broke my heart. That was in Indiana.

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  15. Raccoons are adorable, we have quite a few that live in our neighborhoods. But they can be hard on dogs, they’re fighters when cornered and the dogs usually get the worst of it.

    Mine have never been victims, but a friend had a raccoon family in their backyard for a while and her dogs were frequently having to go to the vet. They never figured out not to chase or corner them.

    Waiting for the bead board guys, it’s going to be a long day as this won’t be a straight-forward as painting for them. It could be tricky. And I never could find the top rail cap pieces I wanted, so I’ll just have to “settle.” Not worth running around in search of what I wanted at this point (I’ve tried and oddly I can’t seem to find straight-edge MDF pieces for some reason, everything’s curvy and curly).

    I’ll learn to live with a curly top. I just want a bathroom.

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  16. Mumsee, if one of your children wanted you to go visit a college with them would you decline? I only applied to one school which was about five hours from home. We did not go see it before I went. That seems rather strange to me now. Neither of my parents went to college, except my mother went to secretarial school which I think was termed Business College. I think because they had not been to college themselves, they did not realize how much important information is relayed during those visits.

    One thing a college used as a selling point was the televisions they had all over campus so students could be glued to their favorite show wherever they were on campus. For us that was reason to reject that college. You never know what you will see, experience, or learn.

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  17. First child went to college in Florida, we lived in New York. We put him on a bus at seventeen and off he went.
    Second went to school at U of Idaho, we lived here but had both attended U of I. Then he went to school in Arizona while we were in Greece.
    Next went to school in Florida from here but we had been there for first son’s graduation so had seen it.
    Fourth went to Florida and then Arizona at sixteen while we were in Greece so we tossed him on a plane and off he went.
    Tenth went to Boise when we lived here but was very secretive about it so we let it be.
    Eleventh plans to attend Idaho State and he will probably just drive himself there.

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  19. I am reading a book called 30 Events that Shaped the Church by Alton Gansky.
    (Someone here may have recommended it, I don’t recall. I don’t recall what caused me to buy it.) Interesting book. He says that the invention of the printing press was instrumental in bringing about the reformation.
    I agree. And I reckon that the printing press was one of the great inventions of all time. My list, from greatest is: 1. The wheel, 2, The printing press 3. Ben Franklin discovered electricity, but Edison created uses for it. 4. Isaac Newton -Not that he was invented, but his contributions to mathematics and physics. 5 Internal combustion engine. A couple of guys, one named Otto seem to have done this at the same time. 6. The atom. (Not invented, of course.)

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  20. Janice, I never visited the campus I attended before I went there. I was earning $4 an hour, and a plane ticket there would have been too costly when I needed all my money for school. I never even considered a campus visit, actually, and up to the point when I flew across the country at 22 to attend college, I’d been on a high school campus three times (once to do my ACT test) and I am not sure whether I had ever been on a college campus. But I’d heard of the school all my life, I could afford to work and put myself through, and I applied and figured if God didn’t want me to go there they would reject me and the door would close. When I got on that plane, I thought it might be four years before I ever got back to Phoenix or saw any family; I did manage to get back twice, for a week each time. And my mom came for a few days my freshman year, my sister came to the school for a year my junior year, one of my brothers visited me on campus once, and my sister came for my graduation.

    The first semester my school mailed my grades to my “home address.” Well, I’d shared an apartment with my sister, but she only stayed in that apartment another couple of months (until the lease was up) and then took a studio apartment, and my forwarding address was the campus. So it came back to me, but the long way around (to Arizona and back), and I was quite annoyed. I went into whichever office mailed the grades and said it was silly to wait for them to be mailed to Arizona and forwarded back, and that I needed mail to be sent to my campus mailbox. They said they couldn’t do that, but needed a “permanent address” for me, and what was my parents’ address? I said my mother was living in an apartment where I had never so much as spent the night, my mother was not helping with the expense of college a single penny, that her address was totally irrelevant, and that further I was 22 and had been “on my own” before even coming to college. This is my address for the next four years. That wasn’t good enough (and I didn’t think to ask what on earth they did for international students). So I went to one of my professors and asked her if I could use her address as my “permanent address” and she said I could. So from then on college mail got sent to her, and when she came in to work she put my campus mailbox number on it, dropped it into inter-office mail, and at least I got it quicker than I would have if it had had to go to Arizona and back.

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  21. When our younger daughter was checking out colleges her senior year of high school, she narrowed it down to three choices. She went with her cousin to the one in Michigan, we drove her to the one in Georgia, and she chose the one in Georgia and never visited the third campus. Ultimately she decided she couldn’t afford the debt load of four years there, and wasn’t sure she needed it for what she was considering doing, and she came back home for a few years. Now she’s applying again, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she went for a few campus visits, but she’ll go on her own if she does. Our older daughter went to a college near enough home that we drove her back and forth around school holidays, but this daughter has her own car and has driven many miles (she likes taking car trips), so she will go on her own. We’ll go fro graduation, and it’s possible we’ll take a trip sometime while she is in school, but she is going to college as an adult, and we no more “need” to go with her than we need to check out a jobsite where she is considering working. We’ll send her care packages, but she is looking at schools far from home (since she’d like to experience life in a different region of the country), and we won’t necessarily be traveling to visit her.

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  22. I’m a veteran of four college tours, four college orientations and four drop offs to college freshman year. I also attended the graduation ceremonies.

    (I also taught the same four kids to drive, but that had nothing to do with college)

    I’m very thankful I took those trips and would do it all over again. It’s given me peace of mind about my kids, a chance to visit my alma mater for one and to return to a former home for #3.

    My husband didn’t bother except for dropping off his baby girl and attending all the graduations.

    Visiting colleges, for me, was an opportunity to get a feel for what happens on campus these days. I learned a lot about American values and the absurdity of some colleges.

    I’m also pretty cyncial about higher education as a result.

    And I was totally horrified at the blase way UCSanta Barbara treated binge drinking on weekends. Someone should be fired for that attitude as expressed to the PARENTS!

    I have not been to the current grad student’s school . . . though I toured it with one of my traitor children 15 years ago. We will attend her graduation . . .

    My kids could have managed fine without me–may have preferred it in some cases since two of them told me to leave–but it was important to me, personally.

    To each his/her own. 🙂

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  24. I am already cynical of higher education, no need to reinforce that. I am also very cynical of public school, but you knew that. But after all of these years of putting interesting people into their care for a time, they are finally trying to work with me at helping these children succeed.

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  28. As a parent who footed the bill for college, I at least wanted to see first hand what I would be paying for at college. It was not that son needed me there, but it helped me to be better informed. All the locations were in state so it also gave me opportunity to see some areas I had never seen before. Also, if I talked about colleges with other parents, I would have a bit more knowledge to share. The students in public and private schools might get such information from guidance counselors. Homeschoolers talk among themselves to learn how accepting a ccollege is of homeschool students, etc.

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  29. I think it is wonderful when parents help their children get settled into college, just not something I would prefer to do. Nor would I want to foot the bill, though I might be willing to help.

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  30. Michelle, if she were younger or applying closer, we’d probably go with her. When she attended the Georgia school, we drove with her for the visit, we drove with her (and took her sister) to take her to school, and we drove to get her and bring her home. We also paid the plane fare for her to come home for Christmas, and we sent her several care packages. She surprised us by making her own way home for Thanksgiving, and for spring break she stayed on campus (her sister was in Ireland that semester, so we had the house to ourselves for that one semester, the only one of our marriage–it was largely to ourselves in the fall semester, except that the older sister came home for several weekends and both were here for Thanksgiving). We planned to do the round-trip thing twice a year and fly her home for Christmas each year, but she ended up choosing to come home after one year.

    Before we went down there to take her to college, I got hold of her campus address and sent a card that would be sitting in her mailbox the first time she checked it. I’ll do the same again.So far she hasn’t decided which school to accept, but it would be expensive to travel to any of the ones that have accepted her. No final decision has been made on anything, but she’ll be 23 and she has an adventurous spirit (she once took a couple of weeks to drive across New England and Canada with a friend she made in her year at college and, for part of the trip, that friend’s cousin; both had been her roommates), and I don’t think she will feel abandoned if we don’t go with her. She spent a semester of high school in Costa Rica (her father and I got to know each other when he found himself lonely that semester) and no one traveled to visit her then, though her father made sure she had good people to live with and he got a passport just in case he needed to go there in an emergency. So I think she’ll do fine with this being her own adult endeavor.

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  32. We went on a college tour with D1. She was going to the same university where Mrs L and I went and graduated. I also had been a janitor in the dorms there, so when we toured the one D1 was going to live in, the guide couldn’t answer some questions. So I helped her out, having been in almost every dorm room on that campus during the 5 years I was a janitor.

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  35. I had the kids make a list of where they’d possibly like to attend school in California, Chas, and we visited potential campuses. It was helpful for them to get a feel for whether they wanted to go to a large state school (which all my kids did, in part for financial reasons), or a smaller private school (which several liked but didn’t feel justified the cost).

    We went over spring break their junior years and visited family as well.

    Funny story, I took the oldest and the youngest on the first tour. When we stopped at UC Santa Barbara, we caught the organized tour and my daughter, the youngest child, was much smitten with the campus, raising her hand appropriately when asked questions like, “who likes sports?”

    She was the only child in her kindergarten class who toured college campuses at Spring break–and of course ended up at UCSB! LOL

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  36. People get impressions when they are young and sometimes never lose interest.
    My dad lived in North Charleston and, for some unknown reason, hated The Citadel.
    He once said, “if you go to The Citadel, I’m going to disown you.” I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. My friends were at USC, so I went there.
    Much later, dad and mom attended a graduation ceremony at The Citadel. Chuck got a MBA there. He made no comments. I often wondered what he thought. Though it didn’t matter.

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  38. I toured colleges with my oldest. Her junior year we went with a group from out church and toured colleges in California. The youth pastor led the tour and he knew folks at every stop. I was one of the drivers and enjoyed the group in my van.

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  39. Then, her senior year, she was interested in schools more far flung. So… We took the train and little sister and a friend. We went from northern CA up to Seattle and toured a school there and then had to take a bus to Spokane to visit a school. At that one all of the students were eating cereal for dinner, so it didn’t say much for the dining hall. Then we continued on to Chicago to visit Wheaton, where she decided to attend. She was feverishly finishing her application in Spokane to apply to Wheaton and meet the deadline. Lovely campus to visit. Then we boarded the train again and returned the southern route through Denver and the Rockies. There was a special family deal where you paid 3/4 fare, 1/2 fare and then 1/4 fare for the youngest. The train on the way to Chicago goes along the southern border of Glacier National Park. Beautiful.

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  40. I knew we would miss the oldest and, actually, found that her leaving changed all the sibling relationships. So, she flew off to college to attend an early Outward Bound type program near the Great Lakes, but we drove her things to college. Me and three children and lots of books on tape. Once they did not even want me to stop for the night as they wanted to finish the book. We had a week back there. I did make the mistake of driving into Chicago in a large van, worse driving day of my life.
    On the way home, once it got dark and she couldn’t read, the youngest just started to cry for big sis. We were in the midst of a city and a construction zone so I couldn’t stop. Oh, my.
    Then the others decided they wanted to be home for Sunday school and youth group so asked if we could drive straight through. Made it at 2am Sunday morning. I didn’t go to church, but they did.

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  41. I picked the program and applied to the college when I first went to school, and, being homeschooled, that was a big learning curve. My mother went with me to the open house for my college program. During the program I stayed at home and got a ride to school with my father, who worked out of the same town that the college was in; but everything to do with the actual program I dealt with pretty much on my own – my parents paid for my first semester’s tuition, but I had to figure out financial aid from then on. When I went to the city for the first time for more study, it was actually second sibling who took me to find an apartment. She had never rented before either. That was another big learning curve. I should have felt more experienced this time around, but I still found it hard looking for an apartment. This one has turned out pretty well.

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  43. Here I am Jo.
    I’ve been up, shaved and partly dressed for church.
    I just stopped by to say Hi to you befor bedtime.

    🙂

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  45. I seem to be the only one on here. We went to church today. First time in a long time. I am concerned for the Southeast in those storms. Where is California today?

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  46. I’ve been around Mumsee. But I’m reading most of the time.
    Not much else going on.
    This part of the southeast is damp, not wet, and the temperature is 54 degrees. We can handle that.

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  50. Glad to hear you did not experience much of the earthquake. Did the SE have a power outage? Somewhere south of Chas and Debra? No word from son who just moved to Pensacola, no sign of Kim or Janice.

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  52. California is under water — overflowing streets, my backyard is flooded in some areas. It’s been a daylong downpour so far and not letting up.

    Felt so good to be back in church today, but I was very sleepy by the end of SS. Good day for a nap, I think. I got the dogs to the dog park yesterday (it wasn’t raining but had rained the day before) — the parking lot there was flooded for the most part, but there was a higher area where we could all park. Today’s definitely not a day to go there.

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  54. Chas, what was your high yesterday? We were up into the 60s (!), so it’s likely we beat you. We’ve had enough rain we’re soggy, but so far almost no snow this month, and when we see 63 we have to double-check what month is on the calendar. Some years we don’t get days that warm until May, and not predictably even then!

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  55. It stopped raining here at dawn and I’m just in for the first walk in a long time. We’re meeting friends at the movies in half an hour, Hidden Figures.

    EMT in LA just posted a photo of herself in substantial foul weather gear, noting people should stay safe.

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  56. Michelle, let me know what you think. I’ve already told my husband I want to see that one, and we may go this week.

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  60. I want to see that movie too

    Just got a flash flood warning alert on my phone for our area and we’re having brief power outages. It’s still pouring.

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  61. Just learned that a young lady, the daughter of my friend Jenn, the lady with the severe health problems, has to hand her twin boys (only five months old now) over to their dad every other weekend. These babies are far too young to understand such a thing!

    Nightingale said she thought that family court judges will not allow infants to be away from their mothers for that long, but it was a judge who ordered this arrangement. Those poor babies! That is just nuts.

    The judge also ordered the father to pay only 20% of the daycare cost, so, as her mom says, K cannot afford to work. (Daycare is very expensive for only one baby, & even more so with twins.)

    The sexual revolution has been horrible for children. Sometimes I want to post on Facebook: “Young ladies, keep your knees together! Wait until you have a wedding ring on your finger!” But I don’t think that would go over well. They would just think I’m some old-fashioned, religious fuddy-duddy.

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  62. Kizzie, young women feel that the only way to get a man to stay is to give him what he wants. With the amount of sexual fantasy that is indulged by various media alternatives, men are less and less interested in going through all that is necessary to have a relationship with a real woman. This isn’t just a problem here in North America – Japan’s marriage rates have plummeted: http://theweek.com/articles/453219/everything-need-know-about-japans-population-crisis. Having a baby with a man may be yet one more pull to keep him. It is a terrible way to find a husband. I was just thinking today about a young nurse I got to know during my college training. She was pregnant and unmarried. She had a restraining order against the father of her child. Once she told me that he would tell her that he fantasized about beating her until she lost her child. But women are desperate. I remember over a decade ago, when I was taking some night courses, listening to two young women in my class discuss how few men were interested in marriage. Things have not got better since then.

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  64. So many things play into men’s disinterest in marriage. One is simply that today a large percentage of divorces are initiated by women, and men hear about how married women often aren’t that interested in sex . . . it seems like a big gamble to get married. Plus they haven’t seen the role models of happy homes consistently enough to yearn for that. I think the picture of two people going to work all day every day, eating microwaved meals, and then getting divorced isn’t all that attractive to anyone. Men aren’t seeing women interested in really making a home–nor do they see themselves able to afford such a place.

    My husband and I had a young man tell us, though, that his generation “isn’t marrying.” He wants to marry, but isn’t finding interested women, either.

    I’ve been glad to see a whole lot of weddings in our small church this last year. In two cases, both spouses were in our church and courted there; in other cases one attended here and one didn’t. But we currently have three newlywed couples within our church (weddings since last July) and two couples where the groom was attending a year ago but got married last summer and is now attending his bride’s church, plus one more couple that married last summer but the family was attending a different church at the time and is now at ours (the adult couple doesn’t come with them, but the husband of the pair attended this church as a teenager). We have others of marrying age and I can’t help but hope we will see a few more weddings in the next three or four years, and children born to those who are now newlyweds. I think it is really a good place for us to be, and not one I’ve seen in the last 20 years of church attendance. Oh, and all the brides were under 25, and all but two of the grooms were, so these aren’t 35-year-olds finally getting around to settling down.

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  65. Donna- Even though you have a high profile SUV, don’t EVER drive into water if you cannot see the road. It doesn’t take much to lift a vehicle off its wheels in high water. We don’t want to see you on the news sitting on top of you car waiting for rescue.

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  66. Peter, I realize that. I’ve covered a few of these local flood episodes where cars have become stranded. I remember seeing one guy going around other cars that had stopped at a massive pool and getting stuck right in the middle of it. And there he sat.

    Today, I was following other cars through intersections, traffic was flowing through fine, but the water was high and would get higher, I’m sure, later in the day.

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  68. Just took a 2-hour nap and had that odd sensation when I woke up at 5:10 that it was really 5:10 A.M. and I was thinking it was Monday and I had to get up to let the dogs out and … Then I figured it out. I must have really been sleeping deeply.

    It’s still raining.

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  69. From our latest story online:

    LOS ANGELES >> Freeways flooded in the Long Beach and Carson area, trees fell onto cars and houses, and more than three inches of rain fell in the South Bay area Sunday.

    The southern end of the 710 Freeway flooded, south of Willow Street, and the 110 Freeway was underwater at 223rd Street, according to CHP reports.

    Miles of stopped cars clogged the 110 Freeway heading towards San Pedro. County weather gauges measured 3.4 inches of rain at Lomita, 2.9 inches at Signal Hill and 2.6 inches on the Palos Verdes peninsula.

    Fire crews were dispatched to reports of people trapped in flooded vehicles on Vermont Avenue, and people were reported to be in need of rescue at a homeless encampment in a park was flooded on Pacific Coast Highway west of the 110 Freeway.

    The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the Long Beach and South Bay area and said its radar and gauges detected rain falling at the rate of 3/4-inch per hour.

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  70. But Chas, it isn’t just our culture that has this problem, it seems to be any culture that has advanced to the level of technological skill and comfort.

    Cheryl, the man is the one, still, who has to make the first move. Second sibling did tell her future husband that she liked him, before he ever asked her out, but it took about a year and a half for him to decide that he also liked her. Also, when I hear men complain that women aren’t interested in marriage I wonder whether there is something wrong with the man – I once saw a facebook comment by a young man who complained in the bitterest terms about young women’s lack of interest and I thought, “No woman would want to marry a man with so much anger.” I suppose I could be accused of just being a bitter spinster, but I observe young men repeatedly go after the girl that is stereotypically pretty, while many other girls who don’t meet that description are ignored. When I attended the college and career group that two of my siblings found their spouses in, I saw it happen again and again. There were some very wonderful young women, with good character, but in order of amount of male attention received it was first, blond, second, petite, third, attractive figure. Those who didn’t fall within those categories were treated as just good buddies, if they were outgoing, or, if they were quiet, ignored. My youngest sibling happens to be blond, and I remember one evening seeing a circle of young men around her. Now, she isn’t the flirting kind, so she was just being friendly to them, but her future spouse said something about speaking before anyone else when he asked her out for the first time. This was all among Christian twenty-somethings. I could cite story after story just from that group to illustrate my point.

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  71. My Facebook feed is full of newly engaged couples – most in their early twenties. Now that’s mostly because I work with young adults at camp. But they are getting married. I wonder if it’s parents who want young people to wait. One young man says his fiancee’s parents don’t understand why they’re getting married – they should just live together. But the parents are not Christians and the young couple both are and he wouldn’t date her without the clear understanding that it was going to work towards marriage, not just for hanging out together.

    I’m loving watching these young people making commitments to each other before God.

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  72. Roscuro, I get it. I was 44 before I married–and until I met my husband I had never had a date in my life that wasn’t “going out as friends.” When I was doing the online dating, I only met one man in person (before my husband), and for our first “date” we met at a coffee house . . . and he got there before I did, bought his own drink, didn’t pay for mine. I was quietly thinking, “Man, how cheap can you be?!” He was definitely not the one for me (multiple reasons), but he said let’s be friends until we find someone, and I said sure, why not. Beyond that coffee-house date we went for two walks, and one evening he was going out on a bike ride the next day and needed a filling dinner the night before his ride, so he asked me to meet him for pizza, and he paid for it. Four dates, and he finally paid for one.

    I had only one date in my four years at a Bible college that had a reputation as being a marriage factory, and that one was to my Junior/Senior Banquet when I was a senior. Not only did my date make clear he wanted to go as “friends,” but we went in his car, which had to have been the most beat-up vehicle on campus (it even had writing all over the little bit of paint left on the car) . . . and he was the only man in the banquet room with nothing resembling a suit (he wore a turtleneck and a sport jacket) and I may have been the only woman in the room without a corsage.

    My sister once told me that my intelligence wasn’t going to snag me a man, like I was going around pretending to be smart so that it would land some besotted man. I told her I wasn’t trying to wow any man with my intelligence, but neither was I willing to hide it and hope to fool a man into marrying me. So I waited, and ended up with a man who values who I am.

    My husband will tell anyone who listens that I am an excellent wife. He isn’t for a moment sorry he married me. In all my years of singleness, I consciously made some choices that would prepare me for marriage if I ever got the chance (e.g., learning to cook a bit, staying out of debt, learning to care for children). But no man even took me on the first date, let alone showed solid interest in me. (By the way, my husband definitely prefers brunettes, and my sister pointed out years ago that nearly all the state winners in any Miss America pageant are brunettes. In the real world it isn’t all a blonde thing, though it can seem that way when everyone is young.)

    I do know young women who have little or no interest in marriage, and I’ve read several women who have been married for several years but still debating whether they ever want to have a child. So while I too tend to think, “OK, you’re a man–quit complaining and go find a wife, because there are lots of good single women out there for every good single man,” I know it is somehow more complicated than that to the men in question. (In fact, somewhere I saw a question asked seriously whether there were more solid single men or single women, and I was like “Seriously? Anyone asks that?” but then, I’m seeing the women up close and not the men.)

    In pretty much every life circle, I’ve been someone who is easily overlooked. It isn’t that people are rude–they simply do not see me. It took online dating, where the first contacts are made with words (with a photo attached) for me to get any male attention at all . . . and online dating carries so many pitfalls I can’t even recommend it without some pretty strong caution!

    So, yeah, I get it, and I wish I could change it. I know quite a few eligible women I’d recommend highly for marriage . . . and I also can think of at least two I would have recommended highly until they married, and married men who would seem not to be the ideal for them. (Where I’m like “Wait, you of all people shouldn’t need to settle! You’re a catch!” In one case it was most definitely “settling” and in the other I don’t know but it was in some ways at least.)

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