116 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-19-18”

  3. Meh. So-so.

    Still feeling blah. My wife says that part and the tiredness and soreness lingers. Mt chest still hurts from coughing and isn’t quite clear yet, especially noticeable when lying down. But definitely better. 🙂

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  6. Peter, I clean forgot.
    So much going on around here right now.
    I had to fix breakfast. Now I need to clean off the car to take Elvera to the Adult Center.
    Thanx for the funnies. I will read them later.

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  7. Where is everyone?
    I was out cleaning snow off the car and looked up.
    Our neighbor has a tree, looks like holly, but I think holly is a bush.
    Anyhow?
    The tree had green leaves, red berries and snow.
    I immediately thought of Cheryl. It would make a terrific picture.

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  8. Thank you for to those who replied to my comment last night. I so very much appreciate the love, support, and encouragement you all give to me.

    It was nice not having to hear Nightingale’s phone alarm this morning. 🙂

    It starts off with some music, then a woman’s voice tells the time, then some more music. If she doesn’t “snooze” it, the music keeps repeating. It goes off every ten minutes. Some mornings, she is so tired, usually from working the night before, that she doesn’t get up until it has gone off three times (or more?).

    The funny thing is when it tells her that it is 7:05 (or 6:05, some mornings). “The time is seven five.”

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  9. Too slippery out there. I have the car clean and free now, but we decided not to go to the Adult Center today. Still too slippery.
    And flu going around. So we will just hunker down another day.

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  13. Kizzie, I understand your loneliness even though mine was of my own making. It had to be sometime between 2010 and 2011 but I felt so alone. No one held me to give me comfort. I even posted on the old blog that no one was allowed to touch me. I cried. I missed a “human touch” but couldn’t allow it.
    I fell asleep one night, praying and crying. I just wanted someone to hold me and let me get a good night’s sleep. I can’t say if it was a dream or if it was real but I felt Jesus holding me in His arms telling me it was OK. Go to sleep. It was the best night’s sleep I had had in as long as I could remember.
    From that I started healing. I even made an appointment with a massage therapist who was a man. I explained to him that I had been through a trauma and I needed to learn what healthy touch was and I needed a SAFE man to provide it. We spoke for a while before he accepted my appointment. His wife was present when I had the massage.
    Now, those who have met me in person know that I have become a hugger. I will hug just about anyone…except creepy men who make my skin crawl.

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  18. Good morning! I just spent a lot of time on the prayer thread thanking God for various things about each of you. Before I finished, the phone froze up. I will still try to post it, but the last part was goofy and scrambled. I am not sure any of it will post. I am on my newer phone now. It is not working well either because the battery is quickly fading.

    Art left late for work. My brother is going in. I am staying home to try and get more cooking and sorting of paperwork done today.

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  19. Oh, I would have smashed that phone lady trying to wake me up, smashed her good. I don’t care how nice her music is.

    Kizzie, much love and tenderness to you. I am so glad Nightingale is there with you, even if she is upstairs.

    I’ve been fortunate and have been able to live without an alarm for many years now. Part of it is that, thanks to evening deadlines, our work schedule is “late” — mid morning to early evening. There was a time when I worked for a paper that was an afternoon paper and then our deadlines were really early. We had to be in the newsroom no later than 8 sharp (but the cop reporter had to be working much earlier than that). And a few years ago, with our new stress on digital and all news, all the time, deadlines throughout the day, an editor decided to make everyone rotate on early shifts (we had to be in by 6 a.m.) in order to do cop calls. That idea fell by the wayside when it didn’t yield much of anything very newsy. It was kind of nice being able to leave by 3:30 (assuming you could), but it wasn’t worth the early wake-up at 4:45 or 5 a.m.

    But I truly hate alarms, no matter how “nice” they’re made to sound. Thankfully, I’m good at waking up on my own, I never sleep past 7 and try to be up closer to 6 or 6:30 (which still gives me plenty of time to get ready and out of here for work).

    I watched the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe from 2005 last night, I hadn’t seen it in some time. Very well done. And I got to see my lamp post right there in Narnia. 🙂 It really does look just like the one I have now in front of the my house.

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  24. I was going to get a solar lamppost and put it out in my pine forest. Or not. Problem being, much as I like the idea, it might not be pleasant to have a light on at night around here.

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  25. I heard back from first paint guy who says he’s just finished up on a movie set (his ‘day’ job) and is “free all next week” to paint my house. But I think it’s too early in the season to paint, even in Southern California. I’m still waiting for the 2nd estimate that should come in today. I’m pretty sure it’ll be higher than the first guy’s price which actually isn’t too bad.

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  26. Well, the newer phone did not hold power so I am on my tablet. The other phone had shut down while charging so I had to take the battery out and lost my long prayer thread post that was on it. It is probably almost time for a new phone. What a throw away world we live in.

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  27. I need to get one of those special $29 replacement batteries for my iPhone 6, but I think you can only get them at the Apple store. My phone isn’t holding a charge for long anymore but the new battery is supposed to fix that.

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  29. The old phone I kept was Art’s malfunctioning phone (G4Smartphone) that we replaced with the Nokia. Since we had an extra line anyway based on our ancient T-mobile plan, I replaced the battery in it for fifty dollars. It was good for when on occasion Art left his Nokia charging at work. And I could use it for calls when my other phone charged and some social media although many functions on it did not work such as the camera, sound for videos or Facebook Live, etc. I think I can just get a new battery to solve my newer phone problem (it is a Go5 Samsung, not as expensive as a Smartphone but similar). I will have to decide what to do for the other line. A flip phone is a possibility, but I would get more use from another type phone. Maybe another Nokia like we got on Prime Day last year at a great price.

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  33. Morning! We are supposed to hit 60 degrees today in the forest….50’s tomorrow then 20 on Sunday accompanied with 3-5 inches of snow…yippee!! ⛄️ I’m going to make an upside down snowman when we get that snow!!!

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  34. In Arizona we had a weatherman who would not refer to weather as “hot” unless it was over 100: “Very warm Thursday, 98 degrees; on Friday and Saturday we should be about 100 degrees, with a hot and dry afternoon Sunday, 103.” It seemed to me at the time a sensible place to start saying “hot” though in the years since it has sometimes felt hot a few degrees cooler, especially in Nashville when heat and humidity were simultaneously above 85.

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  35. Mumsee, the people wo made California an undesirable place to live. (Like “burn, no burn days) are moving to Idaho. They will soon make Idaho an unfit place to live.
    You can’t solve a problem using the same technique that cause the problem.

    I know. It happened in Virginia and Florida. It’s happening in NC.

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  36. Today’s header photo: I liked the repeated design of the branches of greenery scattered with the ice crystals, particularly the snowflake-looking one at the upper right. Later I took multiple photos of two crystals side by side that even to the naked eye looked like tiny flowers, but none of them really turned out well (for that, I needed a camera with better ability to do macro and a tripod), but this one was nice enough that I sent it.

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  37. Actually, Chas, a lot of the ones moving to Idaho are trying to escape the weirdness that is California.

    Kim- To your description of an alarm, you could add “or hungry pets” to the “have children” part.

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  40. They come here saying, “We love Idaho and all the freedoms and beauty and pleasant people, the small town atmosphere…and by the way, if we just tweek a little here and there, it will be even better. Let’s add a rule saying your grass can only be two inches and you are only allowed three dogs and and and and ….”

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  43. The cat is pretty reliable for waking me up, or at least trying to. I’ll hop up to let the animals out by 6 or 6:30 but on Saturdays it’s right back to bed.

    I think Californians were banned from moving to Oregon a while back. You had to change your license plate quickly to avoid being a target of resentful locals.

    But now we all want to come to Idaho.

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  46. Misten wasn’t allowed to look at me until I was already awake. Well, she could look, but she wasn’t allowed to put her head on the bed to attempt eye contact with me. And I fed her at 10 a.m. specifically so that if I happened to oversleep she would leave me alone anyway. Of course, she had a huge bladder and that part wasn’t an issue until the last couple of years. But I really didn’t want her waking me up.

    Once I was awake, if I caught her eye she was allowed to rest her chin on the bed and we’d gaze at each other and I would pet her, and I think it was a sweet waking up for both of us. She wasn’t physically affectionate except early or late, so I took advantage of those moments she did like it.

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  47. Californians have invaded Colorado…our state once more conservative in the 80’s is now rather liberal in the more populated regions…that’s why Hillary carried the state….it’s a slippery slope folks….and I ain’t talking about the skiing…. 🎿 😔

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  49. The same thing happened to Washington. Around 1990 I was in California on the phone with a customer in Washington, and I mentioned how much I loved her area and might like to live there someday. Her previously-warm voice immediately turned cold. I could feel her resentment toward Californian “equity aliens” driving up real estate prices and making the state weird.

    I recently saw a 1976 electoral map and marveled at how all those western states went for Ford and how different it looked from a modern electoral map.

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  53. Kizzie, I did see your reply about not seeking to have Nightingale (as an unbeliever) marry a believer. But you also don’t want her to marry an unbeliever and be more or less “confirmed” in her unbelief. As I imagine it being one of my girls or one of my siblings, I can understand that.

    I have a brother and a friend (my closest friend) whose children were raised in Christian homes and thought to be believers, but in young adulthood they have shown themselves not to be. Both families have had to come to terms with wishing responsible, loving mates for their children but knowing that wishing them Christian mates is wishing for unequal yoking.

    God can bring an unbeliever into a daughter’s life and then bring them both to Himself as easily as He can do it any other way. Not having experienced anything like a close family member who is a professed unbeliever,* I hesitate even to give advice on such matters, but my own inclination is that you pray for your daughters’ salvation, and pray for their possible future mates, but that you pray “Thy will be done” and leave it to God to work out the details of whether He brings believers or unbelievers into their lives.

    * I have a couple of siblings raised with childhood professions of faith who later claimed to have come to saving faith only as adults, in one case in her twenties and one in his forties. But neither ever had a period of saying to me or others “I’m not a Christian.” My late brother-in-law did go through a period of saying he was not a Christian and he did not wish to be one, but he was converted a few years before he died.

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  60. Wish you were here, Cheryl. I have been watching a covey of quail by the sandbox, a flock of pheasants by the goats, and a big hawk up in the willows. I have been wondering what kind it is all winter.

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  62. Oops! Looks like I took 57 without even noticing. I guess all the numbers at work have gone to my head, and a double digit number has lost meaning to me unless it is needed for reconciling two large numbers.

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  64. Thanks, Mumsee, for the timely change of subject. Very kind of you, diplomatic even, to deflect blame from the thief who accidentally and totally unintentionally stole #57.

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  68. I’m with Donna, I never use an alarm unless I have an early morning flight to somewhere. I wake up on my own. School days I am up at 6, but today I slept in until 7. There are yard sales on the top of the hill, where I am, so I will probably go visit them. Nothing I want to buy, but it is fun to look and visit with others. Only happens once or twice a year. We are a small community.

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  69. I have given up on my iphone. The help desk could not get the new sim card to work. I can still use it as I did my itouch or ipad, but no phone. I wonder if it is locked, though they said it was an unlocked phone. Oh, well.

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  70. Well, I was just stepping out to get a picture as there was another hawk in a nearby tree, maybe a redtailed. Anyway, the other one was just going over the house as I opened the door. Pretty sure it is a rough legged. The pheasants were sure in an uproar.

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  71. I am feeling really fatigued today, hoping I’m not getting the flu — it’s the way it all started a year ago when I got it.

    I’m just … moving … thinking … in … slow … motion.

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  73. My sister lived in Seattle back in the early 70s. There was an ad campaign that said, “People in Seattle don’t tan, they rust.” It showed a person on a lounge chair under an umbrella with rain all around.

    In Tucson about that time, the slogan was “Don’t Californicate Arizona!”

    But isn’t it typical human nature to want to change a new place to be more like the old one? Arizona had a major allergy problem because Easterners wanted green plants, so they brought in Bermuda grass and fruitless mulberry trees. Those two plants caused a huge pollen problem, so that in Spring and Fall those with hay fever had as much trouble as they did back East.

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  85. Cheryl – Praying for God’s will to be done despite what I have prayed for is an integral part of my prayers. I have had enough of my own prayers answered in different ways than I had imagined that I am very aware that God can accomplish His will in ways very different from our own ideas.

    But I still believe in praying specifically where possible, but leaving the situation in His hands to do as He pleases, like a child who asks for something of her father, but accepts whatever his answer may be. So yes, I realize that instead of answering my prayer in the way I asked, He may very well send her an unbeliever who will someday, along with her, be a believer. In fact, the same night I posted that prayer request, and was later praying some more as I went to bed, I talked about that to God.

    In praying for Chickadee, my heart wants her to separate (at least somewhat) from the McK daughters, but I also pray that God will do a mighty work in all those young women, doing for YF and her sister what I pray for my own daughters. If He did that, but kept Chickadee with them, I would still miss her being more of a part of our family, but at least she would be with true fellow believers.

    I will admit, as I have also said to God, that there is a selfish element to that particular prayer request for Nightingale. Having one’s child not believing in and following Christ is such a heartache. The thought of watching her become entangled (through dating and then marriage) with an unbeliever, potentially meaning many more years of being outside the Shepherd’s fold, and not knowing for sure that they would both eventually be saved, is painful. It was painful before Hubby’s death, but even more so now, as I am the only believer in my family.

    Something I have learned – It seems that some of my prayers have been answered in quite the opposite way from what I prayed for. My fervent prayer for a long time was that Hubby would live to see The Boy grow up, or at least grow into his teens. When it looked like he might not make that, but still had some time left, I prayed he’d have time to get some things in order before he died. But he died unexpectedly quickly, at only 62, with neither of those things having happened.

    Years ago, I prayed that God would not allow a child to be born to Nightingale and Mr X if they were not going to stay together, not wanting a grandchild to grow up with a “broken home”. Then along came The Boy.

    But I have chosen to bow to and accept His will, even when it hurts. I could choose to be bitter, and yes, with Hubby’s death I have felt the temptation to go in that direction, but I’ve made a conscience choice to reject that option, to keep trusting, and to keep following, although grieving and perplexed.

    Well, maybe this was too long, but I just want to let you know that seeking God’s will despite what my heart yearns for is part of my prayer life, part of who I am. Especially at this time in my life, I am compelled to submit and surrender all my cares, hopes, and desires, for myself and for my family. But I still tell my Father what I would like to happen, even while also praying for His will to be done.

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  86. We can see the short road, what we want done. But we trust Him to put us on the right road. He knows that. And He is making us more like Him all the time. One day our prayers will be just in line. We can tell Him what we want, when we really want His will and His will wins. And so do we, though at times it does not feel like it.

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  89. Kizzie, my parents had their first child nine-and-a-half months into their marriage and their last seventeen years later. They looked forward to their “golden years” when they would have the house to themselves and be able to travel with just the two of them. Yet three of us were still in the nest, not of age, when Dad died.

    My younger sister had few memories of Dad, and my younger brother confessed recently to having been somewhat jealous of me for having a few more years of memories of Dad than he had. So my sister prayed that her husband would live to see their children grow up. (All the grandparents died before we were born, so it wasn’t shocking that both of our parents were gone before my sister even finished bearing children, though it was a bit hard for me that neither was there when I married.) As it turns out, in God’s sovereignty, when my brother-in-law died, the oldest of my sister’s children was roughly the age of the youngest of my siblings when Dad died. She only had 17 married years with her beloved (about what my husband had with his first wife).

    I don’t disbelieve in asking specific things from God. But I know He gives grace when His answer is different from our request.

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  90. I left work a couple hours early, picked up some OJ and chicken soup at the store on the way home. I don’t feel “sick” per se, only deeply tired (even after 8 hours of sleep), a bit light headed, no appetite, some intestinal cramping. Just really fatigued. But no temperature or sore throat at this point. I’ll know by morning if it’s the flu or nothing, but all day today I’ve just been really dragging.

    It’s overcast, gloomy and rainy here. The kind of weather I love.

    There is one thing we Californians can bring to all you in other states — doggie jackets. I spotted a poodle in a red jacket today outside the supermarket. Our dogs are really quite fashionable.

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  105. Seventy-fi… Oh, too late.

    One hundr… Oh, missed that one too. Might have had a chance if someone hadn’t kept hitting post instead of making several one sentence posts. The noive!

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  109. What a sad article. My husband’s youngest brother and his wife do foster care, and recently adopted. Their daughter’s mom can’t get clean, and the girl’s siblings (three of them? or maybe four?) are scattered among various foster homes, it sounds like. Different fathers, maybe some with the dad part of the time. I can’t keep track. There’s so much dysfunction and shuffling around.

    BIL and SIL have a bio son, the adopted daughter, and a fairly new foster placement, all five and under, or maybe all under five — I can’t remember if the oldest is already five, or turning five on his next birthday.

    A lot of sadness and heartbreak with the drug background their daughter came out of. They probably aren’t going to be adopting any more, and when the current foster child leaves, they’re not going to foster anymore. At least they don’t plan to. (Or maybe they can’t — I don’t know the laws in their state.)

    Drugs destroy so many innocent lives.

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  110. DJ, hope you get to feeling better.

    Kizzie, I’ve said it before, and don’t know how to say it eloquently or without sounding like I’m repeating myself (which I am), but I’m glad you’re writing out your thoughts here on life, death, prayer… all of it. Keep talking. We’re listening and praying.

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  112. Got nothing at the yard sales, just got to visit with a few folks.
    Talked to the family from Romania a bit.
    I have my own yard, but am rarely in it.
    No fence, just shrubs as a hedge.

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