81 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-21-17”

  3. But I sure wish I could! Didn’t sleep much last night and we start traveling home in a few hours.

    That involves driving to O’Hare, flying to SFO, driving to Stinson Beach to pick up a car, driving over hill and dale back to Santa Rosa to pick up a skirt, a cat, something to eat and then seeing what our house has been doing for most of the last two weeks.

    I’m tired.

    Wonderful day yesterday, many extraordinary conversations and a list of things I meant to ask a variety of people. Ah, well, I now must turn my sights on cleaning out the refrigerator, going to church, singing and then attending Biddy’s party at church tomorrow.

    Oh, and figuring out my speech . . .

    See why I’d rather be going to bed, too? LOL

    I need to go breathe some clean air first before we leave. I’m not sure when I’ll get that again. 😦

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  4. That photo is a female downy woodpecker leaving the bird feeder with a sunflower seed in her beak.

    It doesn’t apply to this photo, but when I started taking action shots of birds, I was surprised at how often you can’t really take a “take-off” photo if a bird is going down from a branch or a feeder or something. That’s because they usually simply drop from the branch, wings still at their side, and don’t open their wings till they have dropped a couple of feet. So I’ll take an action sequence, say, of a blue jay flying off a branch, and in two or three photos I have a weird sequence of a bird that looks like it is sitting (only it has no branch underneath) and then just as it is dropping out of my camera view, it opens its wings and my last shot shows wing tips but the bird is cropped off.

    It’s a whole lot easier to get shots of flying downy woodpeckers than flying blue jays, partly because like most woodpeckers, downies don’t seem to do anything without careful consideration. So you can tell they are thinking of flying seconds before they actually do. The bigger risk is that you will trip the shutter too early, while it is still making up its mind to fly. If you get the timing right, as in this shot, you get to see some really beautiful markings (though unfortunately her face is in shadow).

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  6. Seems with the latest update on my 2-generation-old iPhone the camera now can take rapid-fire shots.

    So, have I mentioned how much I love my house lately? After the foundation work under the bedroom floor, somehow the ceiling light doesn’t work anymore (though the fan part works, but now the fan turns on when I flip on another unconnected free-standing fan that’s plugged into the wall). Sometimes this house just makes me want to cry! Whenever something gets fixed, something else gets broken as a direct result. 😦

    The wind has died down (but it’ll be back) and now we’re headed for a string of 90+ temp days by Monday. Frustrating after we’ve had such nice, cool weather again for a few days. We always get this bi-polar weather out here in the fall, wild swings in temperatures that require frequent and quick wardrobe changeups.

    Michelle’s going to love being home. 🙂 What a wild ride over the past 2 weeks!

    Tasha the giant kitten, however, will be bored for the first time in a while.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. DJ – Last night you thanked me for sharing my journey with all of you. I thank all of you for letting me share my journey. It has been helpful. I am keeping these comments & emails I’m writing to read again at a later time, maybe after a year or so has passed.

    Here’s something more from my recent thoughts:

    Hubby could be grumpy at times, & that often occurred on holidays. He would gladly have skipped holidays if he could, not because of any bad memories from childhood, but from a sense that holidays never lived up to expectations, particularly on Christmas.

    But last Christmas, which turned out to be his last, was one he actually greatly enjoyed. Nightingale worked Christmas Eve, but had us set up with hot chocolate & microwave popcorn to make, & a Christmas movie to watch (Polar Express) with The Boy. I wasn’t impressed with the movie, but Hubby enjoyed it, & enjoyed having The Boy next to him as they watched together.

    On Christmas day, Hubby uncharacteristically stayed in his pajamas all day, with a comfy red, high-necked (not a turtleneck, though) fleece top thingy. (Not sure what to call it. It’s not a hoodie nor a sweatshirt, but it isn’t just a shirt, either. It is loose-fitting & thick, maybe even for outdoors in autumn-type weather.) I don’t really remember what we did all day, but Hubby enjoyed the day, & made a point of saying so.

    I am so grateful that his last Christmas was a good one for him.

    Liked by 9 people

    Reply

  14. So, late night, I thought I heard the mousetrap outside my door on the landing snap shut. But the rattling didn’t stop and squeaking started. When I woke up this morning, the same noises could be heard. I couldn’t see the trap, though, when I looked for it, and I didn’t want to move the boxes and furniture on the landing, which aren’t mine, to find it. The landlords are away for the day, so there was no one I could get to investigate. I haven’t heard any sound for a while. I hope the poor beastie has stopped suffering. A bit of a grim start to the day.

    Like

    Reply

  15. Oh no roscuro. As much as i hate mice & rats (especially rats) and don’t want them EVER inside my house, it’s still hard for me to kill them. Well, not really, really hard. But I definitely don’t want to hear something thrashing and suffering. Was this an old-fashioned snap trap? I tried using the human live cage trap once, but mouse was too smart. Rats are definitely too smart. I went the electrocution route, quick and sure.

    OK, the 2009 mac laptop is good to go. Because it was still recognizing my old (now disabled) email that I couldn’t seem to get rid of, I have been unable to connect to ‘the cloud.’ Techie expert at the store helped me fix all that in just shy of 15 minutes.

    Like

    Reply

  17. Hmm, well I wouldn’t say that Europe had been without a Bible the people could read for a thousand years at the time of the Reformation. There were translations of portions of the Scriptures into Old English up to the year 1000, the most famous being the beautifully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels, and Middle English translations after that, including the one’s John Wycliffe’s Lollard followers carried about – somewhat like the lingua franca translation the itinerate Waldensians carried about mainland Europe – but handwritten books were necessarily rare. The printing press of Gutenberg was a great part of the reason that the translations of the Reformation period were so successful.

    Like

    Reply

  18. I agree that the main doctrines of the Reformation are still necessary, but I don’t think that the greatest threat to those doctrines comes necessarily from the Catholics. Paul warned the Ephesian church elders of wolves that would rise up from among them, as well as wolves that came from without. A goodly number of prominent Christian leaders are vigilant about the outer wolves and completely ignoring the inner wolves. The recent controversy about the heresy of Eternal Subordination of the Son is one example of where those leaders have steadily refrained from strong condemnation of the prominent teachers who espoused the heresy; but there is another equally concerning heretical teaching that a few concerned people are raising. Have you ever heard of a two part salvation, the first part a justification by faith and the second a sanctification by works? I hadn’t, until someone posted this very concerned rebuttal to the idea which a certain highly popular teacher had raised: https://adaughterofthereformation.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/salvation-by-grace-alone-through-faith-alone-in-christ-alone/

    Like

    Reply

  19. Roscuro, I’ve seen seeing discussions on both. And a few years ago my husband did lots and lots of research and then taught our church about federal vision.

    I think I have posted on here before that 16 or 18 years ago I had a friend who was an evangelical feminist, a strident one. And I remember being in the car with her one day and she was saying something like, “They compare the wife’s submission to her husband to Jesus’s submission to His Father and say that the Son was always subordinate to the Father–but that’s heresy! They can’t make a valid comparison by using heresy!” When this suddenly came up in evangelical circles what, two years ago? I thought “how come the feminists knew well over a decade ago that this was being taught, but the conservatives didn’t?”

    Part of my personality, good or bad, is that in a discussion I like to look at what the other person (outside the discussion) might have been thinking. So let’s say that a friend is upset because her sister was “short” with her in a conversation. I’m inclined to say, “Have you been in an argument with her?” “No, not at all–we get along great.” Then I’ll say, “You know, it’s likely it has nothing to do with you–maybe she hasn’t been getting enough sleep or there is stress at work”–showing that there are often other reasons for someone saying or acting the way they are than our first possibility.

    So I regularly find myself in conversations where a relative or a friend is attacking some mindset with which I don’t agree–patriarchy or women being pastors. And the person will jump right to these people don’t care about Scripture. So I will explain the argument using Scripture, not to show I agree with the argument but just to show that they do have one they believe. Or a person will attack the selfishness of a teenage girl aborting her own child, and I will point out how very helpless a young, unsupported pregnant girl must feel–not because abortion is OK, but because I think we simply must understand the other person’s point of view before we can address it. And we must care about that person, and their reasons, even bad reasons.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  21. I found the two part salvation teaching significantly dangerous precisely because I grew up in an atmosphere dominated by that kind of thinking without ever coming out and stating it quite so plainly. ATI taught we were saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but when it came to sanctification, it was all of our works. It was Pastor A’s preaching on how sanctification was also a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer which slowly brought me to the realization that ATI’s good works orientation was wrong. Memorizing the book of Galatians, especially the section where Paul contrasts the fruit of the dead works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit, confirmed that ATI was dead wrong. My adolescent years spent trying to do ATI’s suggested good works had shown me that Paul’s description of the fruit of the works of the flesh was completely accurate. It is not that I don’t think that good works are not a necessary outgrowth of salvation by faith, but that those good works that I now do are nothing that I can claim as merit, since they are done by the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Like

    Reply

  22. I read several articles about grace alone and faith alone in helping my husband prepare for a special service for Reformation Sunday. One was by a Catholic theologian who said that the Catholic church does teach salvation by grace alone, but that they won’t use the phrase “faith alone” because the one place the Bible uses it is in James 2:24, and there it is clearly used in a negative sense, and because it’s too easily misunderstood. In today’s society, people tend to think of words like belief and faith as having to do with something subjective inside your mind, ideas which may be held apart from any change in behavior. He said, same as evangelicals do, that our faith leads to good works, and we’re not earning salvation by them. But he said that since saving faith always does lead to changed behavior (other than in the case of deathbed conversions), they prefer to see the faith and good works as a unit. He said any evangelical he has talked to (I’m not sure he used the term evangelical but some evangelicals don’t like the term Protestant so I’m not using that, and anyway not all Protestants these days are evangelicals) agrees that if a profession of faith is never followed by a changed life, that it wasn’t saving faith. So as far as he can tell, we’re talking about the same thing, faith that results in a changed life, just using different words.

    I had heard the same thing, pretty much, from a Catholic priest who was invited to speak at a Methodist church I visited for some time for a special series on Sunday evenings about different religions.

    So my take on it is that pushing for either set of words, “faith alone” or “faith and works” can lead to misunderstanding of the truth. In the case of “faith and works,” people may think that salvation is earned by their works (and in my experience there are plenty of people in Protestant churches who think that you get to heaven by being a good person). In the case of “faith alone,” there are people who just hear an evangelistic sermon and think they’re Christians because they prayed a prayer, and that they’re all set to go to heaven and it doesn’t matter what they do now, because all that’s needed is faith.

    So I think I’d want to focus on the “grace alone” phrase rather than “faith alone.” From what I read, I got the impression that the original emphasis on “faith alone” was not about whether good works were required for salvation, but about whether church rituals were required. But whenever I hear it talked about today, “faith alone” seems to be just a restatement of “grace alone” in different words. (Which is why I was reading all those articles to begin with, trying to figure out what there was to say about faith alone that wasn’t a restatement of grace alone.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  23. Interesting discussion (and hi Pauline, always so good to see you 🙂 ). Reminds me of the division (emphasized by Calvary Chapel churches but maybe others as well) between having Jesus as savior vs. Jesus as lord (which is a second step, in that way of thinking).

    Janice, funny. But I did make a stop in Sephora after going through Pottery Barn, asked if they had a ‘natural looking’ mascara that would add volume without necessarily length.

    Young black clerk looks at me and starts out saying “For you … ” I figured right away, ah, there’s an old-person’s makeup line. But she directed me to a line (unknown to me, though I don’t keep up with makeup news these days) out of San Francisco that seemed for younger teens, actually.

    So I’ve come full circle. 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  24. My mom would have loved it, she forced me to buy brown mascara and liner (rather than black) when I was 15 and first began experimenting with makeup.

    My neighbors to the south, with the pristine Craftsman bungalow told me tonight my house looked “beautiful.” Really?

    Not yet, in my mind, but we’re getting there. …

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  25. DJ, I had my hair cut yesterday, in a salon with three employees who all looked about 25-30. The girl who cut my hair had some of those bright red highlights that seem to be really in style this year.

    At the end we were talking about some ways of styling our hair, and she said she didn’t like styling her hair in a certain way because the gray shows. I shrugged and said I don’t care if it shows, I’m 50 and I have some gray hair.

    As she walked away, she said half over her shoulder that she is only about 10% gray, but I am . . . and she paused and then said about 80 percent.

    I came home and looked in the mirror. Had I somehow grayed seriously overnight. No . . . by own estimate I’m about 20%. Some of my hair is lighter than it was when I was 20, but she would have no way of knowing that. My hair has always been a mix of light and dark brown, red, and blonde, but now it has some grays too and not as many of the really dark brown that used to be the majority–though I do still have a lot of that. But I’m most certainly not 80% gray, and it was startling to hear her say that!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  26. 🙂 My stylist said my gray is still blending well, so no need to worry (which I hadn’t been anyway). I think I must have gotten my dad’s genes, I remember relatives always marveling at how his hair just wouldn’t turn gray (though it had lost its red some time ago — and mine also is turning more brown than red, but the red still stands out in the sunlight). Just don’t want to hassle the coloring expense and process, though at some point, depending on how it looks, I may go that route.

    Honestly, this house project should leave me with stark white hair by the time it’s over. 😦

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  34. I’m about 70% grey and stopped dying about 3 years ago. I continually get compliments on my hair colour and am asked if I have it done in a salon. 🙂 Saves a lot of money and I don’t have to put up with the smell of the dyes anymore.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  36. Morning! I have never colored my hair…I was a redhead…now it is all sorts of different colors. I get asked where I get my hair highlighted…well it just sort of happens all on it’s own. (I contend it changed with raising these kids…I earned every white hair on this hea!)

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  39. I stopped coloring my hair about a year & a half ago, & all the colored part is now gone (cut off). I’ve had compliments on how it looks now, with a combination of my natural dark brown & the white streaks in it. The lady who cuts my hair likes it, too. I do, too. 🙂

    Speaking of Sue (the hairdresser), Hubby started going to her over 25 years ago when she was just starting out at a local shop. (When the owner of that shop retired, & Sue went elsewhere, we followed her.) He liked how gentle she was, & that she did a really good job. Soon after, I started going to her, too, but not as often. Eventually, she would cut Nightingale’s & Chickadee’s hair sometimes, too.

    I need to get in touch with her, maybe go in for a hair cut, to tell her about Hubby’s death. She will be shocked.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  40. I’ve decided I can live with my grey. It is progressing very slowly, for which I’m thankful, but I certainly have more grey hairs than I did a year ago. I was hoping that I had my father’s hair colour genes, or even better, his mother’s genes. She still has some black in her hair within a few years of her century, about the same amount as her 70+ year old son. But it seems I have my mother’s genes when it comes to hair colour – she began going grey around the same age as I am now.

    Like

    Reply

  41. Nancyjill, I’ve never colored my hair either & I’ve been told that we redheads “gray” more naturally as it does wind up looking more like highlights. Even my stylist said mine, at this stage away, looked more light there were highlights, it didn’t look “gray.” I’ll take it. 🙂 I don’t think I even noticed any gray at all until about 5 years ago and then it became a little more noticeable in this past year. The house, I’ll tell you. But I’m way past the age when most women start to go gray, so I’ve had a good ride when it comes to that.

    I’d only color it if my hair ‘turns’ and winds up making me look awful or a lot older than I (even!) am. We don’t mind looking our age, but we don’t want to look older, right? But I’ll hold off on coloring as long as I can (hopefully forever) as I also think hair dye, though it’s better now than it was I’m told, can really damage your hair with any frequent or long-term use. Not to mention the expense 😦 At this rate I’m hopeful that I may not ever have to worry about it.

    So this house better shape up fast and quit causing me grief.

    Yes, Sephora is fun. I would have loved that place in my 20s 🙂 As it is now, with the age I am, less is more & understated/natural is best when it comes to makeup, but it still requires knowing what looks right (and what doesn’t anymore).

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  42. I should tell you that the end of the mouse’s tale. There isn’t much to tell. The beastie had stopped squeaking and clattering for several hours before I got a chance to tell the landlord about it. He wasn’t sure whether it was still alive when he removed it from the trap and threw it outside. I have no compunction about mice be killed, but it is painful to hear them suffer. It made me think of the verse in Romans 8, about the whole creation groaning and travailing together in pain.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  43. My dad on began to go gray in his 50s (and he’s the one who had the red hair that I inherited); my mom, on the other hand, began coloring her hair early and never looked back.

    My cousin, who had really gorgeous auburn hair, that deep, dark red-red (mine was more of a strawberry blonde shade), began graying in her 30s and the overall effect made her hair look weirdly pink. So she began coloring her hair in her 30s as pink hair just didn’t suit her.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  44. Well, I could have hoped to get my mom’s aging genetics. She was a vivid redhead (her hair “red” enough that about half of people who call themselves redheads just don’t seem like redheads to me), and as she grayed she basically just looked like a less vibrant redhead. Someone called her “strawberry blonde” and she liked it and kept the term. She didn’t use makeup, didn’t color her hair. She died at 78 and except that she had some trouble getting around (she really should have been using at least a cane, if not a walker), one simply would not have known her age. She could have passed for 60 in photos, unwrinkled and with hair that wasn’t visibly gray.

    But I started getting a few grays in my late 20s and have more and more all the time. But when I was a child, Mom told my sister and me, “Don’t ever color your hair. You have such a lovely mix of colors in it, and you’d lose that.” It’s still true today, with a couple of additional colors. Probably half of it is still the dark brown most of it always was, but whatever color one might want, I have some of it, and i have hair that those who cut it always call “thick,” though it’s just half as much as I had as a child and it doesn’t seem thick to me. But it’s a bit frizzy and it doesn’t have as much curl as I’d like, and it doesn’t style particularly easily–other people have noted that as well–so it has aspects I like and aspects I don’t, and that’s life.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  45. Hope the mouse is OK (now that he’s outside 🙂 ) — roscuro, I agree, the suffering should be always avoided. That’s why those glue traps and poison are so hideous (and poison has other affects as well that can impact other animals).

    For just a random rodent invader as I’ve had through the years here (B.A., Before Annie), I’ve found the Rat Zapper to be best all around, pretty sure catch & instant kill, but they cost a bit of money so it’s not something you’d necessarily use if you had a widespread issue. The snap traps generally are effective and quick, but they can just get a limb or something snapped in those and wind up suffering there as well.

    Cats can be cruel as they toy with their prey and stalk it endlessly before killing it, but I’ve also read where just the scent of a cat can keep rats & mice at bay so they also serve as something of a deterrent, I figure.

    Like

    Reply

  46. One of my mother’s friends, who had naturally brown hair, went snow white by her 60s. She went on a trip to the Mediterranean a couple of years ago and said she was given the male attention that a young blond woman would normally get (her face is the kind that doesn’t show a lot of age), so now she jokes that she just went platinum blonde.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  47. Oh yeah, and as evidence that it wasn’t just me (and my sister) who thought Mom didn’t look anywhere near her age: (1) She had a man at least 15 years younger than her who was interested when she was in her early 70s (before she married my stepfather). She told him she was older than he was and thus not interested, but she didn’t tell him her actual age. 🙂 He was surprised she was older than he was. (2) After she died, we called her pastor to tell him. He just kind of wrote off the news holding any relevance to him, telling my sister that Mom didn’t come to church very often anyway. (No, she didn’t. For a dozen years she’d been going to a church 20 miles away and found that hard to get to as she grew old, so she transferred to a church closer to home, but probably at least two weeks out of three she ended up watching Adrian Rogers instead.) My sister asked did he realize Mom was 78 years old and basically a shut-in, that she had in fact been actively involved in church her entire life, but pretty much didn’t go anywhere anymore? (She pretty much only left the house to go to the store. Her car had 500 miles on it her last year, as I recall, just a few hundred at any rate.) He was shocked and stammered around that he had no idea she was that old. But seriously, even if she didn’t attend very often, if she considered it her church and she was a member there (as I’m sure she was), why didn’t he at least offer to come to the house when we told her she had died or show some concern, not just “well, she didn’t come very often”? It was probably rather a vicious circle as he didn’t consider Mom one of his sheep, and she didn’t see him as very pastoral and found it hard to get up and dressed and off to church when she could simply watch a sermon on TV. But hopefully the reality that this “lazy sheep who doesn’t bother coming to church” was in fact a lonely elderly widow woke him up a little bit to his shepherding responsibilities with others, too.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  48. Kim, fashion question: Can I wear a long-sleeved black velvet dress for an anniversary dinner at a fine restaurant on the 22nd of October? I seem to recall you said something once about Thanksgiving to Easter–is velvet out for tonight? If so, I think I’ll go with the dark green lace, but my husband has never seen me wear that one–it’s my dress, but my sister wore it at our wedding, so he may associate it with her.

    Like

    Reply

  49. Cheryl the “official” rule is Thanksgiving through Valentines, but I have relaxed that rule and being as you are in a cooler climate you may wear your black velvet tonight. Do you have a pair of pearl or diamond studs? Go understated on the jewelry and let the dress draw the attention. Do wear a good color of lipstick. Black needs a little competition. 😉

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  50. Thanks, Kim. Easter didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t think of what was at the other end. I don’t have diamond studs, and I should have pearls (my birthstone), but they must have gotten lost in the move when I married or something, because I haven’t seen them since the day I got them. (We got several pairs, different colors, as a freebie with setting the engagement ring, if he paid for the ring with one particular method of payment. He wasn’t going to, but I’d just gotten my ears pierced for him and had hardly any earrings, so I asked him to pay with that card to get the freebie. Where they went, I have no idea, since I’ve never seen them since the day I took them home!) But I do have opals, and so I put those on.

    Like

    Reply

  51. The new photo is one of my warbler shots, taken from the window of our home library. I don’t know the species, and I don’t know whether when I intensified the color a little I overdid it. (You have to make up for shooting through glass and intensify it a little, but it’s kind of a matter of guessing what looks natural, and when it’s a bird I don’t know well, it’s less certain.) But whatever he is, I think he’s pretty.

    And now I have to finish getting pretty myself!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  53. I got my first grey hair at 17. I was greying by my early 30s, like my dad. My older brothers take after my mom’s side. Her mother still had mostly dark brown, almost black, hair at 60.

    My BIL on the other hand, started going bald at 25. He says grey hair is better than no hair.

    Like

    Reply

  54. My mom had dark straight hair with a bit of gray in her late forties. Then she had chemo and no hair. Then her hair grew back very curly. Then she died so I don’t know if she would have turned gray. I have taught my children from an early age that gray is a sign of wisdom so I won’t change a thing. Some people say I have a lot some say I don’t. I don’t look very closely so don’t know and don’t care. My daughter likes to pluck my hair at church so she can make it into a belt. I have told her to stop. She can have the hair from my brush.

    Like

    Reply

  55. Just got off the phone with daughter. She was quite clear and very talkative. Much more so than usual, except when she is in her down mode. She is enjoying her time there but the medicine they give her to sleep is not working.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  56. Cheryl – The story of that pastor reminds me of when my mom was a baby Christian (although, since she fell away, I’m guessing many wouldn’t consider that she was a real believer). She had come to our church with us for a bit, but decided to try the one that was just down the street from her. She went one Sunday, & after the service spoke with the pastor a little, saying she was wanting to learn more about God. Then she let a couple weeks go by before she attended again.

    That time, after the service, the pastor spoke with her & she made some excuse for why she hadn’t been there those other Sundays (or maybe they were real reasons, not merely excuses), & he said to her, “I guess you weren’t all that interested in learning about God after all.”

    Mom never went back. And a few years later, when we were attending that church under a different pastor, & the church had changed quite a bit, she still refused to go to it. 😦

    Like

    Reply

  62. Kizzie, for my first several years in Chicago I tried that “fashion rebel” thing. (We didn’t have such rules in Phoenix, or if we did I had never noticed them. We wore sandals year round, for instance.) But as hard as I tried to ignore the rules, I couldn’t help but notice I was the only one breaking them, and I finally shrugged and gave up.

    But the idea of only wearing dark colors in the dark, gloomy months still feels wrong to me.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  64. I have a friend at church who wears what I’d consider spring-summer colors year-round — white and pink and lavender, primarily. I love the fall-winter colors, personally (blacks, grays, dark browns, deep burgundies and forest greens) and enjoy this time of year when they reappear.

    I had a burgundy velvet dress, long, when I was in my early 20s and in college. Loved that dress, I remember wearing it for Thanksgiving one year (with boots) when we went to my gay uncle’s gorgeously rustic house in the hills with the ocean view. 🙂 It would have been after my dad had died so we were sort of trying out new traditions with family members. I left kind of early that night (it was raining) to meet up with a friend at The Who concert, we had hard-to-get tickets and wouldn’t have missed that for anything. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  66. Yes, I agree about wearing fabric that is comfortable for the season, for comfort’s sake. Here in the northern states, it should be cool enough for velvet by now.

    However, here in New England, & maybe elsewhere, the weather has been warmer during the day than it is supposed to be. It got up to at least 79 here today (last time I checked). At least the nights have been cool.

    Like

    Reply

  68. My hair is more and more gray this year. It has been the multicolored blonde, brown, and red in the past. It has never been dyed. My brother is a little younger than I, and he still looks blonde/brown. My dad said hair usually turns dark before going gray, and my hair seemed to do that.

    We had another great service today. After church I met with someone who will help with reorganizing the media center. I am feeling more optimistic about church lately.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  69. Janice, I’ve heard the same thing (from my mom) — that hair tends to darken before going gray. It did with her, and I noticed the same with mine.

    My parents, I noticed today when we visited them, still have a fair amount of brown hair. Mom turns 77 next week, and Dad 88 in December. So I guess it’s not too surprising that, at 55, I still have more brown than gray, though I developed a lot more gray in the last year than any previous year.

    Cheryl, interesting that the stylist gave the 80% gray figure. Do you perhaps have a lot more gray underneath, did she say, than on top — more visible areas?

    I ask because my husband, who liked to joke around and tease in years past, told me when I was about 22, “You’ve got a lot of gray underneath” as he held my long hair out from the side of my head. I thought, he’s just kidding around.

    But soon after, at a hair appointment, my stylist, without knowing what my husband had said, told me the very same thing — lots of gray underneath. So then I figured I had inherited my maternal grandmother’s hair genes — she was very gray by 30, and started coloring her hair then and for probably at least the next 50 years.

    But that didn’t happen for me, and my first visible gray didn’t pop out until after I turned 50. My daughter says it looks, from what she can see, like I have a lot less than 50% gray right now.

    Whatever amount, I don’t plan to ever start dyeing my hair. It’s an expense I can’t afford, and even if I could, I don’t think I’d do it, anyway, as I don’t need chemicals soaking into my head. I always wonder what effects there might be from long-term use of dyes and things used for perms and colors and such.

    Like

    Reply

  70. I haven’t worn any makeup for probably at least 20 years now, either, but am considering whether I’ll buy some to apply for my daughter’s wedding next fall.

    Like

    Reply

  71. Well, we’re not hosting Thanksgiving at our house after all. Hubby wasn’t sure he wanted to, and while he was contemplating whether to have extended family here, my brother’s wife, meanwhile, sent out a group email announcing she’d host.

    Hubby was glad to hear that. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  73. Glad it went well, Michelle.

    6 Arrows, the possibility of there being gray I don’t really see is what put me in front of a mirror checking out my hair. Easily the most “gray” part of my hair is actually what I see most readily–the tendrils in front of my ears are nearly all gray. And just like my mom, I have more gray on top and less underneath. Almost none of it is pure white, though; it’s a mix from very pale to very dark, with the light ones being a very pale yellow-red. I think the 80% figure was really just a cynical remark that I’m a has-been older lady who is now gray.

    Like

    Reply

  75. My hair was so dark brown that some people thought it was black, so it would have been hard to tell if mine got any darker before starting to grey. My dad’s hair went from blonde to dark blonde to light brown, but I don’t recall much grey in it before he died at age 70. My mom’s hair was much like mine, a little lighter, & she hadn’t completely greyed before dying at 73, still had a lot of dark brown in her hair, even when it came back after chemo.

    Hubby had gone completely grey by age 60 or so. He was always kind of proud of his full head of hair, since his dad had gone bald (the partial kind, on top) pretty young. In fact, a little while after leaving the room after he had died, I whispered, “And you still had a full head of hair, Honey.” 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  78. I wear black in the summer, too 🙂 Although dark colors absorb heat more so they are, technically, warmer than light colors which reflect.

    Ah, “Blue Velvet.” My memory of that song was when I was in (what was then called) “junior” high and my girlfriend and I, on our walk home from school, topped in at a diner called Little Mo’s for a Coke. They had a juke box there and I remember that song being on and thinking it was very pretty (this was somewhat before I’d begun listening to popular music).

    Stayed late at the dog park as it felt so good when it began to cool down. Supposed to be in the mid- to high 90s tomorrow, ugh. Talked to the owner of a white Russian hound, beautiful dog (tallest and fastest in the dog park), about her work counseling the mentally ill for the county. She told me the new thing is an injection of the more common meds that can be given once a month, thus cutting down (it’s hoped) on the problem of patients not taking their medications daily.

    Tomorrow will be busy here while I’m gone — foundation workers, gardener and the guy who did my driveway/sewer line rebuild & outdoor lights will all be here (decided we should replace the short leg of sewer line under the house as well since it’s such easy access right now).

    I’ll plan to send photos at some point this week or next of the latest house overhaul.

    And maybe a photo to solicit thoughts on external paint colors …

    Like

    Reply

  79. I remember the song made me think that when I became a real teenager I’d probably have to wear blue velvet somewhere (that is was a teen requirement) to a dance or something. 🙂 I had no clue about any of that, not having older siblings. Teenagers seemed foreign and creepy to me and I actually dreaded the whole transition.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  80. I’ve never heard anything about not being “allowed” to wear dark colors in warm months, and I don’t necessarily avoid them then. It’s just that in winter months, which are already dark and dreary, one isn’t supposed to wear white or pink or any of the softer colors, just the dark ones. And I love bold colors–emerald green, dark red, royal blue, black. (Not so much the earth tones, except paired with a brighter color.) I just don’t want to be limited to those colors. Pastel is a nice break in winter months, but a few years in, I gave up on trying to wear them, except maybe in sweaters occasionally, because pink or pale blue blouses or even white ones seemed to be almost a sin in winter months when I actually needed them most.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to rkessler65 Cancel reply