63 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-31-17”

  3. Good early morning.
    Kim: I hope you were able to go back to sleep! I awakened at 4:00 with a migraine…..so, I got up to take Imitrex and then couldn’t fall back to sleep. Just got some coffee and took the dog out….it’ll be quiet here for a long time.

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  5. Nobody but Jo is supposed to be up at 5:00!
    Everyone take another nap, along with Jo.

    It’s FRIDAY
    You know what that means?
    It’s the last day in March, that’s what.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Donnna, you need an engineer. He would have secured an alternative bathroom before closing the main one down.

    I’ll bet none of you remember when they didn’t have indoor toilets. We had “slop jars” we used at night and emptied them in the morning.
    I don’t even want to remember those days.

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  8. Good Morning! It is dark outside and the owl is hooting! Ya’ll are up and at ’em early this day…
    When we lived in the duplex next to my great grandparents we had an outside cast iron toilet in the outhouse…and this was “in town”! We had the “chamber pot” which my Mom called the slop jar, sitting on the landing of the stairs.
    Looks like I will be driving to work on dry roads but when I come home at 6 it appears there will be 12 inches of snow to navigate…good thing I have a Subaru! 🙂 Have a blessed day ya’ll…

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  10. Because you recognized the fence and the trees?
    No, I haven’t been back to sleep. I tried but it didn’t work. I got up, made coffee, read, exercised, had breakfast, read, and now I am here with you.
    The above photo is straight out of my kitchen/breakfast room door. I thought the pinks would play off the blue of the hanging thingy and the red stain of the fence. The plants on the far ends are red/purple potato vine. No potatoes but showy and colorful. I have another hanging thingy on the fence so that I can see it out of the sun room door. It has some sort of vine on each end with marigolds inside and basil in the center. Around it we have hung bird houses. I will send a photo of it later when I get it like I want it.
    We are having a discussion around here because I want to put some azaleas in the back for some color but someone else who did not grow up around here read that azaleas are poisonous to dogs. In all my life I have never heard of a dog dying from eating azaleas and I am ashamed to admit this but when I ate them as a child they didn’t make me sick. 😉
    Luckily ex mother in law has told me I can come scavenge in her yard for “volunteers” of some of her plants. What I really want is for her to root a seven sister rose for me. It is an antique rose that blooms in clusters of seven. It is either red or pink.

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  11. KIm, there are millions of azaleas in Charleston, SC, and a million dogs.
    They get along together.
    But I’ve never seen a dog eat an azalea. That might be the reason.
    I wouldn’t eat one either.
    I have azaleas, they are beginning to bud.

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  12. Good morning. Looks like a bunch of you had trouble sleeping last night. My sleep has been poor this past week, but last night was very good. Lights out around 11:20, woke up around 7:10. It’s the rare night I don’t wake up at least once in the middle of the night. I got a lot of physical exercise at the piano yesterday, so maybe that helped.

    I have nineteen — count ’em, nineteen — pieces I’m working on now, LOL. Eleven of them are for only a week, but are challenging. (Contest offerings for my advanced piano student for the 2018 season.) I’m playing them for her at her next week’s lesson. Most of them I have studied before, a couple I have performed, and two of them are brand new to me. Four by Bach, two Beethoven, three Chopin, one Mendelssohn and one Debussy. Some are vigorous physically; all are quite enjoyable.

    Then it’ll be back to my eight pieces I’m performing in the next couple months. I’ve already got my four April pieces about where I want them, so I’m in little more than maintenance mode on those. My other four pieces (by Grieg, for a Syttende Mai concert in May) are going quite well, also, and don’t need a whole lot of extra fine tuning.

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  13. Pretty header, Kim.

    My first piano teacher, a friend of my grandmother’s, did not have a bathroom. I remember the little pot sitting in her hallway.

    I also went to a one-room country school from K-3, which only had an outhouse for facilities. My first church did not have a bathroom, either. Once we built a new church, in the early 70s, I believe, one that of course had the modern convenience of a bathroom, then suddenly a whole lot of people started having to go to the restroom during services. 😉

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  14. Cheryl (and Kizzie), to continue the discussion on yesterday’s News thread on the rule of a man not being alone with a women who isn’t his wife, this is difficult to put in words, but, I think that in having such rules, people are in danger of seeing the sex of a person as their distinguishing factor, rather than their common humanity. I have been thinking about this in relation to several modern issues, including transgenderism. Last semester, one of my teachers, when talking about treating transgendered people, made a slip of the tongue which I thought was telling, she referred to the sexes as being different species – she corrected herself, but I couldn’t help thinking, that is how both the strict patriarchal conservatives, and the progressive gender activists both think, that men and women are two different species. In proof of that point, feminists have rightly pointed out that transgender women (who are men) act in stereotypically feminine ways to the point of offensiveness; while concerned Christians are pointing out that patriarchy wrongly requires women to act in stereotypically feminine ways in order to be truly submissive. They both focus on the differences between the sexes until they cannot see the common humanity of men and women.

    It is one thing to show discretion if a man finds himself accidentally alone with a woman he knows nothing about, as in the case Cheryl gave. It is another thing to make a hard and fast rule to never be alone with a member of the opposite sex. Such a rule implies that not only can you not trust yourself, but also that members of the opposite sex are never to be trusted. It would certainly make my life unbearable. I rent from a family, and the husband and wife work at different times. If I or they were to make a rule that I never be in the house when the wife was at work and the husband at home, I couldn’t live here. Sometimes, the wife works the night shift – it would be terrible if she were to be suspicious of me or I of him. Certainly, discretion should be practiced – for women, that often means listening to our inner caution about the behaviour of certain men – but hard and fast rules only make life harder to live.

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  15. Re: men and women being alone with each other-

    Paul Washer’s advice to young men is never to be alone with a woman who isn’t your mother, aunt, sister or ugly cousin. As for older men, a lot depends on the situation. One small church we attended had no secretary at the building, as they knew of too many (1 is too many) times when the pastor and the secretary had affairs because they gave into temptation. Being the only ones in the building for up to 8 hours a day was more than they could resist.

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  16. I have worked with Guy for a long time. There are times we are alone in the car, office, his house if I run by to pick something up, and sometimes we have gone to lunch together. Believe me neither of us is attracted to the other and there is someone that to this day I will not speak to because he ASKED me if there was more to the relationship. I was offended for me, for Guy, and for Guy’s wife.
    I think of him as a brother and as such I love him and hate him to the same degree. His wife and mother in law find that funny.

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  18. KIm said it well. I often had to be alone with female colleagues. Even went on TDY with them.
    But it wise for pastors, politicians, and other public officials to be wary because there are people who will make something out of nothing and ruin careers.
    That is their objective.
    But problems can occur. Man/Woman together for a time.

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  19. Peter, as I mentioned in an earlier post on the matter, the apostle Paul told Timothy, and thus all of us, to treat the women of the church as mothers and sisters – it would be unthinkable to engage in an affair with such close family members. Paul Washer’s statement about it being safe to be alone with an ugly cousin is actually somewhat degrading. Here is the thing, if the only thing that keeps one from having an affair is an inability to be alone with a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, then there is already something wrong. I remember reading that under the Taliban, a woman could only go out accompanied by a male blood relative – not even the presence of her husband was enough to protect her reputation. The pastor who engages in an affair with his secretary has already sinned in his heart (see Matthew 5:16). The Taliban said it was wrong to look at a woman lustfully, so she had to be completely covered and isolated from other men other than family members; Christ says that it is wrong to look at a woman lustfully, so men need to regard women as beloved family members.

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  20. The pastor who resigned from our little church had a rule to never be alone with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He cited the case of a young pastoral candidate, whom he had overseen for a while, who violated that rule by driving a woman from the church home, started an affair, and finally murdered his wife. In telling that story to prove his rule, I thought he missed the point. The man who could violate all codes of morals and ethics by not only breaking his marriage covenant, but also killing his wife, hadn’t simply made the mistake of not having strong enough rules; rather he had given himself over to work evil. Rules do not take the evil out of man, only repentance and regeneration by the finished work of Christ do that.
    P.S. I have no real opinion about Pence – he isn’t on my radar. It is the wider principle that interests me.

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  21. This is why most church offices have clear glass doors now. People don’t have affairs because they are overcome with lust. They have affairs for many other reasons. Most of them are emotional.
    My dad died just before I went back to work with Guy. For a long time he was the “man” in my life. I knew that at that time I was an emotional wreck and guarded myself against getting emotionally attached to Guy. I found older/father figure men that I could ask questions. I even used Chas on here for some “fatherly” advice. Guy and I do have boundary issues but no attraction.

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  22. What RKessler said. There are women out there who have a plan to entice as many males as they can, to win them over to their way of thinking. There are women out there who will defame a man and it is wise to not make that available. There are women out there who will attempt to get his attention and if they fail, will make accusations against him. There are people who will think the worst, no need to give them unnecessary fodder. And there are men who get involved though they started with the best of intentions. He chooses to put up some boundaries. Wise man.

    It is a personal decision and people should not be taken to task for a personal boundary one puts on his own life. It would be different if he was telling all women to wear burqas or telling all men they should do exactly like him.

    In our family, husband has worked with many females and knows I am very protective of us so he tries to respect that and I try to respect that he will, at times, be alone with females. We try to never have him alone with any of our daughters. It is difficult and an unnatural family in some aspects.

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  23. Ah, what a peaceful, beautiful scene — following my morning hovering over the gaping sewer hole that now is the center of my driveway. 😦 Nasty.

    Plumber Rene should come “within the hour” to clear out the rest of the pipe (still under the lower part of the driveway that we hope can remain intact). Cement dump off truck is nearly full.

    I had to make a mad dash to the neighbors’ at 6:15 a.m. to use the bathroom. Stayed for a cup of coffee (her husband leaves for work at around 6:30, he’s an electrician at the hospital down the street so he just walks to work every morning).

    Now now it’s just me and the open sewer and 2 (soon to be 3) guys. At least it’s cooler today, we’ve had a strong wind all night and a large sail boat apparently tipped over in the harbor. I still need to find a story to work on today, but right now my mind is on the house and who’s coming next to do what.

    It’s been real.

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  24. My grandfather’s house in Iowa had an outhouse and a water pump, no indoor water, when I was little and we’d visit. I still remember the smell of that outhouse …

    My mom saved the old water pump and it’s in my garage, would love to get it out and put it up in the backyard or patio when I’m closer to the end of all this chaos.

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  25. One of the photographers last night, before I left the office, was giving me tips on where the “best” bathrooms were in town since he’s spent so many long days based in his car here.

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  27. DJ, you could get a wine barrel or some other wooden tub and set up your old pump as a water feature in the back yard. Maybe add some koi?

    …..as she runs so DJ won’t hit her…..

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  29. Wait a minute. I am sure, if we look in the archives….remember when Kim thought it was a good idea to run the herd of elephants across the driveway???

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  32. Roscuro – I agree with Mumsee’s post at 11:18.

    To me it’s not so much a matter of a man thinking he can’t control himself around women, but of avoiding the appearance of possible evil. This may not be possible, or even needed, for many working men, but is wise for pastors & politicians.

    And I don’t look at it as a hard-&-fast rule for every man, but a personal standard that is wise for those kinds of men to have.

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  33. When Nightingale & Little Guy moved back in with us, & the McKs were still living upstairs, I asked Hubby to buy one of those bedside commodes to keep in the basement for “emergencies”. And yes, I did need to use it a few times when the bathroom was occupied.

    Here’s a link to one from Amazon, in case you don’t know what I mean, except that ours doesn’t fold. . .

    What started as a joke ended up with my cousin & his wife, who live in Napa, CA, putting an old toilet & an old tub in their yard, as planters. Their young teen daughter is embarrassed by them.

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  35. One of the reasons I hesitate to move to a city. We have four bathrooms here and can use the great outdoors in a pinch.

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  36. Good news: They hooked the sewer back up so I can (gently) use everything again.

    Bad news: Another blockage was found farther down the driveway, underneath the concrete they did not cut away. So that means … Plan B.

    My neighbor has a koi bond.

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  39. Oh! I suspect you were alluding to Kim’s 11:58 and missed the key. Sorry. But you can understand my confusion, of course, as it is California.

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  41. Roscuro, that’s why I said that the guidelines will vary from person to person. I once had a fellow volunteer give me a compliment that compared me favorably to his wife. He also was a bit of a toucher; I was single and I like to be touched. I was not “interested” in him (wouldn’t have been even if he was single), but it seemed wise to be cautious. So if I needed to move a trash can to my area and also needed to ask him a question, I’d combine trips and go grab the trash can and when I stopped by to ask the question, he couldn’t reach me to casually touch my arm since I’d put something between us. It was discreet enough, not insulting to him, and I’m sure no one else would have noticed anything. And I’m sure he didn’t think anything of the casual comment positively comparing me to his wife. But it just seemed like a place to use discretion. Had I felt any attraction to him, I likely would have gone to volunteer somewhere else, but as it was I just avoided letting him touch me, but did it in discreet ways.

    For someone else, it might not be a problem to have a man touch her on the arm. And obviously men and women may sometimes need to be alone together. When I was single, if I had a plumber come in, it meant being “alone” with him. Sometimes there is really no way around it. To me it seems like common-sense wisdom to make that an exception rather than the norm. For someone else it might seem like a non-issue, and that’s OK.

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  42. Yes, we bond easily here in the golden state.

    Plan B (so far): Use a concrete saw to cut a vertical pathway above the length of the rest of the sewer pipe to the sidewalk and fill that in with pavers; would be checking each section of sewer pipe as they went, hoping and praying it’s all clear by the time we hit the sidewalk and it heads out to the middle of the street (since I’m responsible for ALL of it).

    From what we know now, another blockage occurs about 15 feet down from where current cut ends. But there are a couple more driveway cracks lower than that that could indicate trouble (or just surface settling).

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  43. Strategizing ongoing among the men folk. Real Estate Pal is stuck in a seminar in Long Beach today but I’m sure he’ll be weighing in.

    Jerry, dog park guy doing the driveway job, has worked for water companies, gas companies and refineries and now has his own consulting biz (which is how he knows so much about all of this).

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  44. Chas, my parents were born shortly after 1945, and they remember them from their childhood in the early 1950s 🙂

    Kizzie, Timothy, to whom Paul gave the instructions on how to interact with women, was a pastor.
    Cheryl, I don’t like to be touched – for some unknown reason, a light grasp on my upper arm can cause me great pain (the kind of pain you get when you bump your shin) – and if anyone comes at me from behind to touch me, I have to think before striking out with my elbows (a habit acquired due to a younger sibling who liked sneak up to tickle and generally physically torment her older siblings). I use discretion when interacting with people who are not family members – in this day and age, it is entirely possible, at least within my generation, to send the wrong signals to persons of the same sex – and, like most women, I always am monitoring the interpersonal signals I get from other people and modifying my behaviour accordingly. I wouldn’t go out of my way to be alone with a man, yet, I realize, during those times when it is unavoidable for various reasons – hey, sometimes I’ve been the only one on the bus with a male driver – if I acted uncomfortable and as if there was something wrong with the situation, it would actually increase the likelihood of my behavior being misinterpreted. Let me put it this way – I’ve often read that men enjoy the challenge of pursuing a woman; if that is true, then going out of one’s way to avoid encountering a man may actually be more of a turn-on then treating them like a regular human being.

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  46. I think some of you are over thinking it. If a man makes my skin crawl I will climb out a window to get away from him. Not this past Christmas but Christmas of 2015 at our company Christmas party Guy hugged me in front of his wife. He meant nothing but it was out of my comfort zone with him. We work too closely to be on hugging terms. He hasn’t hugged me since or tried. I have no problem hugging his wife or mother in law.
    One of the guys I work with, last Friday when I went into the office, came up beside me and put his arm around me and gave me a big ol’ squeezing kind of hug. I leaned in and put my head on his chest. He did it in front of an older woman whom I was talking to. He meant nothing but comfort when he asked how BG was doing and I took comfort from the hug. He went about his business and I went about mine. I really do think if people would listen to their inner voice they would be all right.
    Hey, I rode from here to Orlando and from God Knows Where, Idaho back to Boise with a strange man. Never once did he give me the creeps.
    Now the man I mentioned above who was dancing around flat out asking me if there was more to Guy’s and my relationship than work was fishing to see if I would entertain being his side piece. I couldn’t wait to get away from him. It was a job interview at that. I declined his offer of a job.

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  49. Kim, that same strange man who drove with you, picked me up from a lonely little airport, took me out to a restaurant to give me a proper meal since I hadn’t eaten anything besides those pretzel sticks they give you on the plane and some chocolate I had with me for nearly 24 hours, and then drove me an hour or so to some isolated spot. I fell asleep in the car as we were driving, I was so tired. I woke up when we were almost to the lonely house. When we got there, I stumbled out of the car and was greeted at the door by… well, you all know who.

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  51. Kim, all my family, who met him when he ended up coming to second sibling’s wedding, liked him a lot. My dear friend and relative spoke in rare glowing terms of approbation about what she thought of his character (she can be pretty biting if she doesn’t think someone is quite right). It was nice that they got to see him in person, as my extended family thought I was nuts for going out to meet these people I ‘met’ on the internet. When he learned of my plans to travel to Idaho, my hermit uncle demanded of my mother how I was to know what kind of people I was going to see. For all we know, he said, they could be serial killers.

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  52. Roscuro, I haven’t ruled it out yet. For all I know, this woman who calls herself “Mumsee” might have invented some other identities on here to tell how nice she is and to lulling us into acceptance that she is a safe person.

    (Except I did meet the woman named Kim. But that still doesn’t prove she is a separate person from “Mumsee.”)

    People on the internet can be scary. (But hey, I married a person I met on the internet.)

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  53. The scariest ones are the ones who don’t use their real names. 😉

    When my mom would get mad at me, she’d use my full name, saying, for example, “Six Arrows! What are you doing complaining again about your lack of a middle name?”

    🙂

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  54. “People on the internet can be scary.” What are you doing here then, Cheryl?! 😉 😛 I cannot definitely attest to the separate identities of Kim and Mumsee, having only met Mumsee – but if the Kim you met resembles the photos she has shared here, then they do not look at all like the same person. However, that is of no real help to you, because you have never met me.

    I cannot work up the courage to go looking for a spouse on the internet. My friendships here happened more by accident. I wanted to comment on topics, and I found friends among my commenters. But to go deliberately seeking a life partner the same way takes more courage, or gall, than I can muster.

    For 6 Arrows: http://digg.com/video/eye-tracking-pianist

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  56. Fascinating video, Roscuro! I will have to go look for more segments in that series.

    That really gets me to thinking about the advantage of teaching some pieces by rote to beginners. I have been using a relatively new beginning-level piano method (out in the last decade or so), Piano Safari, with my youngest daughter, and the method authors have a philosophy that incorporates rote learning along with learning to read music. It has worked very well with my daughter, and has helped her gain tremendous facility using much of the keyboard for her rote pieces, which heavily emphasize patterns. She’s got a much better understanding of keyboard geography than probably any other beginner I’ve ever taught, and I think that’s largely due to often getting outside of that narrow range that students play in when they’re first learning to read notes.

    Rote teaching doesn’t enjoy a good reputation in some musical circles, and I wouldn’t want to teach that way exclusively, but, IMO, it’s highly beneficial to beginners, and I suspect it would decrease some of that score-to-keyboard-to-score bouncing of the eyes like we saw in the video when the student sightread music. Number of years of experience playing, as the professor pointed out, certainly is a factor, but it would be interesting to compare two students who have been playing a similar length of time, one of whom had some experience with rote playing all over the keyboard, in addition to reading music, and the other of whom had only instruction in reading within a narrow range, with limited or no use of the fuller keyboard geography.

    Thanks for sharing that video, Roscuro. Provides great food for thought! 🙂

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  59. Roscuro – I don’t see that the standard we have been discussing, & Paul’s words to Timothy, are mutually exclusive. We are also told to shun even the appearance of evil, which in many ways changes from culture to culture, & age to age.

    And as Mumsee alluded to, there are misguided women who the pastor could be treating like a sister but could misinterpret or twist what is happening. And, tragically, there is sexual abuse of women & children that occurs in churches, from pastors or elders, so avoiding the possibility of a false charge is prudent.

    I am not proposing that that standard (of not being alone with a woman) should be a “rule”, but that it does seem wise for certain men to take it as a personal standard, in a non-legalistic kind of way.

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  61. I tried watching the video, Kizzie, but it kept freezing up for me. When it takes two minutes to get 20 seconds into it, I don’t have a lot of patience. 🙂

    I’ll have to get some laughs another way. 🙂

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  62. Sixth Arrow is studying the last three pieces in her Piano Safari book. She’s been periodically reviewing her previous music, though, so those aren’t the only things on her assignment this week.

    On Monday she sat down at the piano and opened up to the table of contents in the book and started playing the music just by looking at the titles. She’s got almost the whole book memorized. 🙂 Fun to hear her play over 100 pages of music back to back.

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  63. Driveway crew must have returned. Looks like they covered over some of the exposed pipes with more dirt and my city-issued trash cans are (hilariously) now all lined up, centurion-like, in a row, in front of the pit.

    Liked by 2 people

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