94 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-18-18”

  3. Morning all. No ice here and no morning.
    My little class is doing well. I think that I have four girls and ten boys. They come from the states, Canada, Romania, PNG and not sure where else.

    Not pleased about the four cockroaches I have found in my place in the last week. But, I have new baits out and I think they are coming under the back door. One of my missing neighbors is going to come home to more than I am seeing.

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  4. Well, the ice kept me from church Sunday, but I went out to get the mail Tuesday and found that much of the blue spruce had pellets of ice wedged solidly between the needles. This frozen droplet, held between needles as though held by fingertip, struck me as quite pretty.

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  6. 1-18-18. This year is moving right along. As a kid, I always loved writing dates with 19: April 19, 1976. Well, we will soon be writing 2020. (I have long predicted that some advertiser will claim it as “the year or the eye.” Like M & M’s claimed 2000, MM.)

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  8. That’s a pretty picture in the header for those of you who live where it is cold to share with me. I can appreciate the beauty of it…I don’t necessarily need to experience it for myself.
    Last night on the news they reported that yesterday there were 81 ice related accidents in the greater Mobile area. They gave a warning for black ice today.
    Considering I drive 50 miles each way to work on I-10 between 18-wheelers and people who really shouldn’t be driving in the best of conditions (what is so hard about slower traffic keep right? If I use my turn signal to switch lanes that is not code for “You should speed up”), I decided it is best if I work from home again today.

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  9. It is easier to see pretty when you are not out and about forced to deal with the trouble it can cause. 🙂

    I must have squished the 70’s all together in my mind. Good thing we have other resources to look at to know the history. :O

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  10. It has zoomed up to 16 degrees in Greensboro.
    The sun is bright, the wind is calm. Surprising how warm you can be in the sun in thos conditions. I know that the cold would soke in after a while, but you can be comfortable for a few minutes.

    Chuck, on my advice, is leaving for work late today. I told you, about ten years ago, I was driving to Greensboro from H’ville. Sun was out, mid thirties. I turned oof I-26 onto I-40 and passed a shady spot. Suddenly I was spinning off. I hit the side of a cliff about 20 yards off the road. Soon another car joined me.
    Black Ice.
    I went to inspect the road that spun me off. I still couldn’t see anything.
    You can’t see black ice.

    i.e. Stay home Kim.

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  11. Don’t worry ’bout me Chas. My mama didn’t raise no fool.
    I drove in snow and ice conditions in Maryland. I was so proud of myself. I called home to tell my dad not to worry about me. I followed the salt truck all the way up I-95. He accused me of my mama raising a fool and guess who was out in the snow and ice the next day washing her car?
    We don’t have salt trucks here. No real need for them. ALDOT put out sand, but that is about worthless. I have a computer and a cell phone. I have already spoken to an agent this morning. I can do this broker thing from home. I should attend a luncheon at noon today at the Pensacola Board of Realtors but no one will die if I don’t. My work attire very much resembles what I described to you yesterday, including the much too large sweat shirt. I would definitely fit in with the “People of Wal-Mart”

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  13. We have a place for black ice. I used to always tell my brother to watch for ice when he left here, even in the summer. Husband found it the other day as he was heading off to truck driving but he knows about it so was prepared. There is a marker there where a deputy died after hitting it and crashing, leaving a girl friend and brand new baby.

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  14. It’s just a little rainy here today.

    Day 11 of the back seige. I’ll call the doctor today for muscle relaxants. My guy is staying home from work to help–he just went off to do the Adorable duty, made beds last night for our weekend guests (Speakers at church this weekend for a seminar on discipleship) and will grocery shop today. I’m, as always, very thankful for him.

    I have to start on the 1099s tomorrow at work; I need to be able to function with a clear mind!

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  15. We are to be hovering towards the 60’s today…a tad bit of snow remains in the meadow and the deer were enjoying the frozen taste of it this morning. Sunday is predicted to be in the 20’s with 1-3 inches of snow…oh let it be!!! ⛄️
    CDOT puts an abundance of magnesium chloride on our roads along with sand, which insurance companies declare is truly rocks, not sand. Oh the windshields that are replaced around these parts every year…we replace ours about once a year…sometimes twice…it all depends on how many semi trucks we encounter as they sneak around the weigh station on the interstate and travel our rural hwy……humfff!!!

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  17. Beautiful photo (uttered from Southern California where it’s currently 56 and going up to a high of 69, “mostly sunny” today).

    I’ve been enjoying my fireplace a bit during the past couple weeks. But I noticed the busy-bodies on NextDoor yesterday were saying that today has been deemed a NO-BURN day, finger wagging implied. So I’ll avoid using it until that’s lifted again. Honestly, people on NextDoor seem to have nothing better to do than the keep their neighbors in line. It’s their calling in life, apparently.

    It’s Thursday already. That’s good.

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  18. Good news East Coasters: Warmth is on the way. I say that because you get the weather a day or two after we do. It’s going up to the 30s today, after being below 20° for a week. The sunshine looks good, too.

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  21. It is sunny and very cold here. We have not even been on the driveway. I did walk a few steps on the snow/ice to put the kitchen trash bag in the outdoor garbage can at the entrance to the carport. A few cars have made it up or down our hill out on the street. This is our second time to be snowed in within a month. First time in my life I can say that.

    I hear our neighbor venturing out. I am praying for safety as the car slowly moves. They have no accumulation of snow/ice on their driveway. Our driveway is solid white. Ours is usually the last to melt and clear. We are uphill from them and more in the shade.

    The mail truck is stuck on the hill by our mail box. It is backing up trying to get traction over and over with no success. We have A VIEW during such times as these. Art just said, “That tells me all I need to know.” Again, and again it tries. I am praying for their frustration. It sounds miserable.

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  22. The mail truck backed further down the hill and tried again with a bit more speed. Still it could not pass. Maybe it will give up for now. But dare I go out and try to retrieve the mail?

    The last time was the charm! It finally made it! Not by a charm, but on a prayer. ❤

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  28. I’ve told you I don’t do ice. One Christmas my sister and I (both single) were driving from the house of our brother in N.C. to the house of our brother in Georgia (near Chattanooga). Well, the Chattanooga area has a lot of places where water trickles down the rocks along the road (the cut-out mountains that the road runs through) after a rain, forming temporary waterfalls, and in winter they can be truly lovely ice waterfalls. My sister was driving; I’d never seen anything like it (nor, I think, had she), so I asked her to pull over at a rest stop so I could get some photos. It was maybe a half mile of ice waterfall at that point, glistening and really lovely, and I walked across the snow in front of it to get photos.

    Then I realized that I could hear water running. That it was not solidly frozen. And I realized that if a big block of the stuff were to fall, I could be in real danger.

    In Chicago, freezing rain was predicted about three times for any one time we actually got it, but I was allowed to work at home up top one day a week (I rarely did it that often) and on days that it was predicted, I used that privilege. One day I looked out on a truly beautiful world, even the telephone lines encased in ice and gorgeous. I didn’t have a camera with a zoom lens yet and I got not one photo, because I was not moving outside my door, was it was lovely from the window.

    One day I didn’t know it was supposed to freeze, and I tried to leave to go to work. The walk outside my front door had perhaps half an inch of ice on it, maybe just a quarter inch, but it was thick and solid. I tentatively put one foot on it, confirmed what I suspected (that I couldn’t begin to walk on it), and thus physically couldn’t get to my car. Not that I really wanted to at that point–I lived on a one-way street, parking both sides of the street, and it was simply too big a risk. I quickly checked the weather and it was supposed to be way above freezing within 90 minutes or so, and so I called my workplace and told my boss I was solid ice and would come in as soon as I could safely do so. He seemed surprised, and apparently everyone else made it to work safely (most of my co-workers chose flex time and went to work an hour earlier than I did), so I don’t know how the rest of the region got spared or if those in the suburbs had attached garages and they just dealt with it.

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  29. In Nashville, the winter I picked up puppy Misten, I was combining two trips into one. My brother in North Carolina was too big a road trip away for my driving comfort BUT if I went to visit him for Christmas I could pick up Misten on the way home two days after Christmas and not drive much farther than if I were just going to get her.

    I was supposed to go to my brother’s house two or three days before Christmas, but we kept having ice for the first few hours of the day, and by the time it melted it was too late to get through the mountains before dark. By about the third day (Christmas Eve) I hit on a plan I should have thought of earlier–I waited until the ice melted, then drove to the house of another brother (the one near Chattanooga), and then on Christmas Day I was able to drive the rest of the way. (Locking my keys in the car in Georgia with the engine running, and being delayed an hour and having to call AAA on Christmas Day, and then finding out that gas stations aren’t open on Christmas when I didn’t have enough gas to get all the way to my N.C. brother, but that’s another story. Happily, Pilot was open on Christmas Day, or I really don’t know what I would have done.)

    I say all that as background to this: When I called my N.C. brother, a brother who is 14 years older than me and might conceivably be a protective big brother to a single little sister, he simply could not understand why ice kept me from coming to him the day we had planned. He told me he was looking at the map, and the ice only extended 50 miles out of Nashville, so I’d be fine. At that point he drove many miles a year, and he drove a Mercedes (a car that I understand gives the driver incredible control), so maybe the thought of driving 50 miles on ice was truly no big deal to him. To me, sorry, I’m not doing that, especially on the hills of Nashville! Now, if he had suggested what I thought of two days later, that I could wait till it melted and then go to our second brother’s house, I’d have done that–but neither of us thought of it at that point, and I thought the roads would be clear the next day.

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  33. We’re to get above freezing today again (we did yesterday as well) It is a welcome respite from the bitterly cold we’d been having. The branches up there look like my spruce trees did when I got home from work yesterday.

    I’m feeling a little blue today. I haven’t seen my dad for over a year and didn’t realize how much he had gone down hill. Of course, my sister who sees him weekly didn’t realize either. Stepmom shared with her that dad can’t even set a table anymore – he doesn’t remember what all is needed for a place setting. We will be going down for a visit in March, but it’s hard. I think stepmom was covering for a lot of stuff, even when we talked to them on the phone each week.

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  34. I drive on ice and snow every day in the winter 🙂 Yesterday it was actually warm enough for the salt and sand/gravel to start working. It sure helps to have good winter tires, but I don’t think it would be worth it if one lived down south.

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  38. Amusingly: Husband parked his truck (not the semi kind, the pickup) in his usual spot last week. So it was dry under the truck. He put it in park, engaged the brake, and turned it off. It has snow tires. When we went outside a little while later, it had slid down the driveway, not a steep one, about twenty feet. All we could figure was that it was jealous of the other vehicles free ranging and wanted to join in. Over the past couple of years, son had parked the monster truck, a Ranger, on a slope and it had run away three times. He knows he has to block the tires or park it flat. Our drive way is not very steep and God looks out for us. The first time the truck rolled all the way down and up the other side, came back and took out a fence post. The second time it had run away and took out a different fence post and a raised flower bed. The third time, he was outside and took off after it and jumped in before it hit the railroad tie corner post of a different pasture. I told him he was more important than the fence post, so he stopped and then took off and still got to it in time. Oh, and another time, he parked his sister’s car and it slid down ten feet to take out a burn barrel. I don’t know what it is with the cars and driveway but they seem to think they can just wander around. Mine stays on the flat basketball court and has never run away. However, all of them have laughed at me when I said it was too slick for me to go anywhere.

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  39. Walmart, there have been pictures posted of people in ludicrous attire shopping at Walmart. I have never seen them and have shopped at Walmart quite a bit in the past. But then, maybe I am one of them.

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  41. Does coffee have a flavor to you? The other day, husband was telling me about a dream he had, very realistic, where he drank a cup of coffee and could even taste it. I commented that coffee did not have a taste and we realized that though some people taste coffee, not all do. Do you?

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  43. NOTICE
    There is a scam that has been around for several years.
    I was taken in once because I wasn’t paying attention.

    You may receive in the mail a bill from “PMB” or Pacific Magazine Billing for magazine renewal. It has been going on for years. They don’t represent the real magazine.

    I got one today to renew my subscription to “TV Guide” for $75/05.
    I have never subscribed to TV Guide.
    Into the trash. Don’t reply to this. i.e. don’t sent the “No thanks) option.

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  46. I shop at WalMart, too. I think it depends on where the Walmart is as to the type of clothes that may be seen there. We live nearest to the new downtown Decatur store. Decatur is very progressive with a large same sex/gay population. As you may imagine, the Decatur store would have its own uniqueness. We have Walmarts not far in two other suburban locations, one really close to the home where I grew up. That area is all international now with a lot of Hispanic so it has that flavor. The other is more country suburban. Sometimes I drive to that one because it is more “me.”

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  49. Oddest outfit I ever saw wasn’t in Wal-Mart. I was behind an older woman, I think I’d figured she was in her sixties but I don’t remember all the details. What I remember vividly was that she had easily the most jewelry I’ve seen on one person, not even close. Multiple ear piercings with large dangly earrings, several thick necklaces, multiple bracelets, I think a few ankle bracelets, and each finger was covered with rings. It had to have been very heavy, and assuming she took most of it off when she went to sleep, it would have taken a long time to get dressed in the morning. She was in a wheelchair and had one artificial leg, so I wondered if all the jewelry was somehow telling people to look at the jewelry and not at her.

    As I recall she had written a check, or maybe it was just a credit card slip, but at any rate she chose to stand up when it was time to sign for it. And when she stood . . . I realized it was probably a man and not a woman, though no one thing said “man.” I realized then that none of the jewelry, even the dangly earrings, was overtly feminine. It was all heavy weight the way a man’s necklace or bracelet is, if he wears one. But assuming it was really a man, it was a man studded in more jewelry than I have ever seen on any woman, probably three times as much as the next contender, and far more than I have ever seen on anyone over fifty. I have seen photos of American Indians wearing lots of jewelry, but this didn’t look like such styles.

    As I left after checking out myself, I saw the customer coming out of the men’s room, so it confirmed the person was really a man. But a very highly unusual one who must have had quite an interesting life story.

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  51. Of course in this day and age the fact that you saw him coming out of the men’s room by no means confirms he was really a man.

    Kim, I made the mistake of clicking on your People of Wal-Mart link. After scrolling down a bit I got to a place where I had to switch to a different window abruptly lest any of my co-workers see the ghastly sight on my screen.

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  52. Chas, you are wise not to click on any of those links, even “No thanks” or “Unsubscribe”. Some of those emails are easy to spot as scams because of mis-spellings and poor grammar, but some of them are very nicely done and tricky.

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  56. Kare, I’m sorry about the blues you’re feeling today. It’s hard, isn’t it, when parents decline? Praying for you and your dad and stepmom.

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  58. Men should only wear a watch and a wedding ring if they are married. Any more than that alerts me that they are spending too much of their money on their own jewelry and will not spend enough on mine. My husband does quite well picking out my jewelry. He deserves extra points for once exclaiming that a pair of earrings he bought for me were not big enough. We are both quite happy with the replacements. I wear them most days.

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  63. Well, mine better be wearing more than that.

    I saw Cheryl’s person once, in a flower shop in Italy near my apartment. I stopped in and was visiting with the store keeper. Another person was behind the counter also and she said something. When I left, I thought, “what was it about that person?” She had on some fairly modern attire, with the blouse open to her belly button, lots of jewelry and more make up than was needed, in my view (but then, in my view, any is more than is needed). Then I realized, she did not have what should have been obvious with her blouse open that way. She was a he.

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  66. Mumsee, you asked for it. I was already thinking about the weirdest “shoppers at Wal-Mart” photo I ever saw. It was a woman, and she was wearing only pants. But those pants had an elastic top and they were pulled up nearly to her armpits.

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  71. Just back from market and my vegetables are soaking in bleach water. I bought mangoes again as the season is almost past and I thought I would try to cut them up and freeze them. Hopefully then I can have mango chicken one more time. I also found asparagus! a treasure. Got zucchini to make zucchini pizza for next week.

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  72. Just had another guy do a once-over of the house exterior for painting. He may be too expensive for me, he’s clearly something of a perfectionist. Ten hours prep per window? Hmmm.

    I think he figured out pretty quickly I might be a “budget” type customer (scrape, fill and go in 2 hours maybe), so he’s going to work up a couple different estimates for me.

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  83. Um, I didn’t say “old” or “elderly.”

    I remember when I was in my late twenties reading some classic novel, maybe something by one of the Bronte sisters, in which a woman of 27 or 28 was described as “elderly.” It was like whoa, has that word changed meaning a bit!

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  84. I used to describe my 30 year old neighbors stuck in 60 year old bodies until Rose Marie informed me they were in their 70’s
    Whatever your age it beats the alternative

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  85. Doctor finally got around to my meds. I really wanted them because I’m supposed to start working on taxes tomorrow at my job.

    Turns out you’re not supposed to drive while on this med, “which some people say makes them feel like they’re drunk.”

    I’ll have to choose, or probably not, between taking the meds or working, driving Adorables, attending church functions or even singing.

    Fortunately, after a day of staying home, laying on the floor, icing and hot pad using, I’m feeling like I may survive.

    So the meds may turn out to be all for nothing. 😦

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  86. It is a very strange process, I’ll admit, this growing older. I think big changes for women seem to take place between 55 & 65 (and that’s according to a Discovery Channel special on aging I once watched as well). You somehow emerge from that period as an “older” person. What!? When and how did that even happen?

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  89. I will be going to bed very soon. It feels strange, though, because since a few days after Hubby’s death, Nightingale and The Boy have been sleeping downstairs. (So that would mean for about three months.) Even Janie’s crate was moved into my room a couple weeks ago, when the extreme cold weather started.

    This evening, Nightingale moved their stuff back upstairs where they will sleep again. It is the right thing for them, and even for me, and I’ve even been wanting them to do this for a bit, but it still leaves me feeling sad and with a strange feeling inside. (I am finding that changes, large or small, affect me more since Hubby died.)

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  90. Kizzie, it will likely feel strange for a while, as it is natural for all changes to be felt more now. But you are close to Jesus’ heart, and to ours as well. And you do have people who love you just upstairs–and your own dog with you downstairs.

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  91. Kizzie, that isn’t meant to make light of your situation, but hopefully to help you feel a little less “alone.” My sister had her daughter sleep in the bed with her for a while (though she realized pretty soon that was not working well for their family) and my mother-in-law has our daughter living upstairs. The desire not to “be alone” is a natural one, and I care as you experience that transition that it is a hard one.

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  94. Kizzie, when my youngest went off to college leaving me totally alone in the house it was very hard. I actually started working at JCPenney nights and weekends, which gave me a little more income, but also filled my time.

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