72 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-3-18”

  5. Leslie was awake for a little while yesterday afternoon. I stopped by the hospital in hopes of seeing her mother or someone else in the family. I saw her brother in the lobby. He was sobbing, but told me she was awake and to go on up. I knocked on the door, she heard my voice and asked me in. I put on a happy face and worked hard to make her laugh. I asked if she would rather have bourbon or vodka in the IV bag. She laughed and chose bourbon. She got teary eyed and told me it was bad. I told her “I know, but you have always handled everything with grace and this is no different”. She told me she loved me and I told her I loved her. I tickled her feet and told her she needed a pedicure. As I turned to leave she told me she loved me one more time. “I know dahlink and I love you too.”

    She comes home today on hospice. Her “Navy Wife” friend should be in sometime today. She drove all day yesterday and sent me a message last night that she was in a hotel for the night but would see me today.

    Liked by 10 people

  8. I’m exhausted from all the work stress, it’s been taking a toll on me physically. I want to just walk away from it, volunteer to be laid off, but I need to get a couple financial pieces of the puzzle in place first. Until then, I just can’t blithely do that. My editor told me yesterday that’s his issue as well, otherwise he’d be gone voluntarily in a heartbeat.

    Truth is, it will be much harder to stay than to leave under these conditions, there’s no realistic way to do any decent journalism with all our resources so depleted. (The company was busy slashing jobs at our Northern California papers last week, but now our 11 SoCal papers are back in the crosshairs for the February newsroom layoff rounds, putting everyone on pins and needles.)

    And the fact that the two layoff editors spent most of the day at our paper, locked in the conference room, leading us (of course) to think this was “the day” for us as it is February, after all — until finally another editor says to us Oh, today’s not the “the day.” Sheesh. Yeah, silly us. They’d better not ever do that to us again, everyone was stressed to the max for hours.

    Toward the end of the day, the one layoff editor asked our city editor how we were all doing and he said “Seriously? Not good, not when you’re sitting in the conference room here all morning. How are they supposed to be doing?”

    One good piece of news — one of the younger reporters who’s been with us a while has nailed the job she was after at a newspaper in Tennessee. Yay, good for her. She’s from the east coast that that puts her back closer to her family as well. She said she’s “done” with L.A. where she can barely afford to live as a single on the paper’s salary. I’m guessing she’ll get a nice boost in pay there, plus the cost of living will be lower.

    OK, I’m going to try not to think about this over the weekend. I have plenty to do at the house and the guys from the dog park are coming again today to hopefully finish up the driveway pavers where the foundation work was done.

    Liked by 6 people

  10. Seems to me all the attacks that occurred on camera in that film were by sea gulls – it was supposed to be on the California coast, after all (most of it was shot in a sound studio, with glass paintings making up the landscape and most of the more disturbing shots).

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  12. Re: 10:21 & 10:27

    53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”[g]

    55 “O Death, where is your sting?[h]
    O Hades, where is your victory?”[i]

    56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    At a certain age, this matters.

    Liked by 3 people

  14. The Executioners might be more appropriate. (They’ve also been referred to as the Angels of Death and The Death Squad.) All I know is they’re the most dreaded pair of guys you ever want to see stalking around your newsroom on a given day.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. It would be hard to have that job–knowing what you’re doing to a newsroom and having to face all those people.

    Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed twenty miles from here at Bodega Bay, but based on a novella by Daphne DuMaurier, who was of course from Cornwall, England.

    Saw the movie as a child but am still spooked everytime I see a lot of birds in one place . . . especially when traveling through Bodega Bay!

    (Yes, it was gulls in the movie).

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Grandpa has worn me down. The smallest bedroom in my house is the one with the queen sized bed. It is also the one with the closet that I use for my office.
    This afternoon we are moving the queen bed into the other bedroom. We may or may not set up the double bed in here, but this room will become a nursery.
    I really have only seen one other man to love babies this much…my father in law.
    The other day we passed some cows. Mr P/Grandpa can’t wait to take his baby girl to see the cows. He is also going to teach her to swim, she can become a marine biologist. She can’t be baby sat with TV and movies. She can only watch them as a treat….. He’s got plans. Big plans….

    Liked by 5 people

  18. Bodega Bay was the setting, but most of the town portrayed in the film does not exist, and was painted in glass shots:

    The Tides Wharf & Restaurant, in which the assorted locals shelter from the bird attacks, has expanded into an unrecognisable hotel complex since the film was made. The big surprise is that there is no town. No post office, no gas station, little more than a cluster of holiday accommodation.
    The aerial view of Bodega Bay is largely a painting. In fact, many of the Bodega Bay scenes, including the post office itself, were shot on a set back at the Universal lot, where Hitchcock felt more in control of the elements.

    Link: http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/b/birds.html#.WnX78KinGm4
    Hitchcock’s films are mostly a combination of sets with glass paintings. There was a film he did, Torn Curtain, which has a suspenseful sequence set in a museum which at that time was in East Germany – all done by glass painting based on photographs of the museum. The mansion in the Parradine Case is another setting that was all glass painting.

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  21. Michelle, you’re right, I’m sure it’s very hard for them.

    Our last editor was undone after he had to lay off just one long-time photographer. He left the business as a result, never wanted to do that ever again (and he knew he’d have to the way things were going).

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  22. One of the guys doing the layoffs now wound up in the hospital with chest pains about 6 months ago (before all this started) so we’re especially concerned this can’t be good for him.

    I guess what they were doing Friday was trying to figure out how to pare down (or eliminated?) the weeklies that we own. Sad business.

    We have wondered if they had the option to take the high road and refuse to be the hatchet men, but I suppose everyone’s got mortgages and rent and families to support …

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  23. Chas, I am very much looking forward to the other side. Not because this life is so difficult, which it is not to me, but because of the Glory to come! I am not looking forward to the challenges left to those left behind. Though I am not critical, I am important. But every day, my eyes are on what is coming as my hands are busy about, I hope, His business.

    Liked by 2 people

  24. We had crab cakes at The Tides Restaurant last month–delicious with the view of the bay that is semi-depicted in the movie. Honestly, every time we drive out there we think of The Birds!

    Yes, it looks completely different now, except for the views. They have a lot of memorabilia from the movie hanging on the walls in the restaurant. Food was delicious.

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  26. The shot that I found most interesting from the link @1:30 was the painting of the docked ship in the busy wharf in Disney’s live action Treasure Island. I saw that film many times as a child, and it never occurred to me that shot was a painting. Most of those classic Disney live action films from the 60s era were awash with matte paintings. There is a scene in 20 Leagues Under the Sea, where the Nautilus goes to the secret island lair which looks like a circular island with a lagoon in the middle of it. The island is a painting, and the Nautilus surfacing in the lagoon is a toy in a tub of water. Watching those old films is like visiting an art gallery of pictures.
    Now, of course, what was once done by brush strokes on a pane of glass is done by computer. I sometimes find the computer generated imagery less convincing that the paintings were – the artist’s eye was better at knowing where the viewer would look than a computer algorithm is.

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  27. It has been a long day. Daughter wanted me to tell her a dirty word she could use. I told her, “mud”. She said, ” I am mud.” We laughed, not having known what she wanted the dirty word for. She said it was not funny. But she laughed.

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  28. When my students want me to teach them Spanish dirty words, I tell them I’ll write the dirtiest Spanish word on the board. They get out pencil ready to write it down. I write sucísimo on the board. Then they want it pronounced, so I do. Then I tell them it means “dirtiest, or extremely dirty.” They groan and class goes on.

    Liked by 4 people

  31. I’ve read that Hitchcock had some real birds attacking Tippi Hedren, From Wikipedia:

    “During the six months of principal photography, Hedren’s schedule was tight, as she was only given one afternoon off a week.[18] At first, she found the shooting “wonderful”.[21] Hitchcock told a reporter, after a few weeks of filming, that she was remarkable, and said, “She’s already reaching the lows and highs of terror.”[22] Nonetheless, Hedren recalled the week she did the final bird attack scene in a second-floor bedroom as the worst of her life.[17] Before filming it, she asked Hitchcock about her character’s motivations to go upstairs, and his response was, “Because I tell you to.” She was then assured that the crew would use mechanical birds.[23] Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying.[24][25] A physician ordered a week’s rest. Hitchcock protested, according to Hedren, saying there was nobody but her to film. The doctor’s reply was, “Are you trying to kill her?”[23] She said the week also appeared to be an ordeal for the director.”

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  32. Tippi Hedren’s daughter is actress Melanie Griffith, and her granddaughter is the daughter of Melanie and actor Don Johnson, Dakota Johnson. Dakota is also an actress, most notably for playing Ana in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies.

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  33. Re: yesterday’s discussion about ATI and their materials on sexual abuse. The thing that made me shudder, and I’ve seen it before, is the part about if the abuse was not the fault of the victim.

    Victims often already feel shame, as if it was somehow their fault, they don’t need to be told that it was their fault in some way. That is a form of abuse in itself, it seems to me.

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  37. All of this is beyond me. I’m not smart enough to understand all this.
    We should be on our way to church by now. But early activities are cancelled due to weather forecast of snow and ice.
    Nothing falling yet, but my Iphone says 79% by 8 a.m. That is ten minutes from now.

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  38. Good morning. I am able to have the back for open for Their Highnesses to go outside. I am listening to birds chirp.
    Who likes Chicken a’ la King? I spied a can in the store the other day. I think I shall have it on toast for breakfast. If I think about it I think it is disgusting but when I taste it. It is a comforting treat from childhood.

    Liked by 2 people

  39. Our church got cancelled because of illness. The pastor and his wife are both ill, and since we meet in their home, we don’t meet. So Mrs l and I will visit our second church, which is made up of younger families who left us to start a work in Hannibal. It is actually closer to us, in the city where we live instead of across the river and through the woods. We go there on Wednesday evenings since our church doesn’t meet then.

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  40. Oh, and I like the banner photo. Ice on the window often is very artistic, showing what a great God we serve, who makes even simple things beautiful.

    Liked by 3 people

  41. We are having the after church dinner here. Daughter was wailing to go Catholic yesterday. I told her she could go for a walk after we get home for church. Then she realized it would be during our dinner so she changed her mind. But current plans do not involve her eating with anybody so we will see. She was being exceptionally gross yesterday and everybody lost their appetites.

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  42. Good Morning….we are having weird weather this morning with thick freezing fog over the Palmer Divide…and the husband is the caretaker at Barr Camp on the Peak this weekend…he sent photos this morning and he is in sunshine and blue skies!! Lulah decided she heard something at 2 in the morning and went running through the house whining….couldn’t get back to sleep…so with this fog, drizzle, freezing cold outdoors today….I’m going to try to get some lost sleep back!!! 🐶 😴 (she is sleeping soundly this morning!)

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  43. More drama with Mr X over transportation for The Boy. He didn’t mention that he thought that Nightingale should pick up The Boy from Nana B’s until after he’d had him for a while. But Nightingale is at work today.

    After a bunch of texts back and forth, with me relaying messages to each of them, she was going to leave work early to pick up The Boy, and then X said he could bring him back after all.

    Nightingale has warned me not to give any more information than absolutely necessary, not to give him the benefit of the doubt (as I usually do with people), and to remember that he will try to twist things against us. Sad to see him slipping back into (not-so-) old behavior. I also figure he is vocal to The Boy about his frustrations with Nightingale, whereas we all try not to let him hear our own side of things. But he picks up on things anyway at times, even when nothing has been said outright.

    I remember one time, when seemingly out of the blue, The Boy forcefully averred that his mommy was indeed a good mommy, not a bad mommy. It was shortly after a visit with his dad, so we could guess what he was referring to.

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  44. Nightingale just texted me that she is so stressed by all this that she was crying at work. She is not one to cry easily at all, either. 😦

    When he finally said that he would bring The Boy back, she said, “See? It’s a game!” He thrives on creating drama and problems.

    Liked by 2 people

  45. Just think of him as an emotional vampire
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-freedom/201101/the-5-types-emotional-vampires-in-your-life

    Emotional vampires are called emotional vampires because they have a tendency to drain the emotional energy out of everyone they come in contact with. … They’re experts at eliciting emotional reactions out of others and then feeding off those emotions, regardless of whether they’re positive emotions or negative emotions.Mar 28, 2012

    Liked by 3 people

  46. Nightingale got home from work a little while ago. She told me that Mr X and The Boy were here in town at his mom’s house, about five minutes away. (She knows this because of a text she got from his mom.) He then drove The Boy out to the town he lives in, half an hour away, to insist that Nightingale come pick up The Boy at his grandmother’s apartment. Yup. Playing games.

    Nightingale wants me to inform him that I will no longer be the third party go-between. She is going to contact her lawyer about options. She strongly suspects he is off the wagon again, which makes him potentially dangerous.

    I’m sure that if it weren’t for the fact that it would erase The Boy’s existence, she wishes she never got involved with him.

    Liked by 1 person

  47. I think taxes, deadlines, and Grim Reapers roaming journalism offices are emotional vampires.

    We had a nice service at Bridgepoint Church at Toco Hills. It was our first service as the new church. Some older people are still not happy with the name. One person insists it needs to be Cornerstone Church, and I fear her anger over the name could be detrimental to her health. I am adjusted to accepting the new name with joy.

    After the service I attended a surprise birthday luncheon for an eighty year old woman. It was a treat to not have to cook, but I did find out how I have lost any skill I once had with eating spaghetti when it is not made with angel hair pasta. Little plastic forks and thick spaghetti noodles do not engage well with me. Slurp, slurp…

    I have been feeling the long hours lately. Maybe I need some B-12 shots. That is what people use to take long before energy drinks like Red Bull or whatever hit the shelves of stores. I have some vertical ridges on my nails and read that can mean a need for B-12.

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  48. Church was wonderful this morning. First Sunday School in our class studying different Bible characters. Today’s was on Naomi and her bitterness at God which turned to blessing in the birth of her grandchild. Then the singing portion of the worship service was beautiful and then the pastor gave his message from Mark on the Last Supper and how/what Jesus was saying related to the Passover Seder and then we had communion.

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  50. I remember my grandmother on my father’s side getting B12 shots — and I think my doctor gave me one once when I was on a partial liquid protein diet under his supervision.

    We also had an excellent day at church, we’re still in the opening weeks of our sermon series on the 10 Commandments and today was the first commandment (Part B).

    The pastor spoke about:

    * how unbelief and the denial of God is a violation of the 1st Commandment (as no man has excuse, the knowledge of God is implanted in all of us but we can suppress the truth).

    * “You shall have no other gods before me” — it is impossible to avoid having a god; we create our own as the Israelites did with the golden calf. They made a god that was strong enough to do what they wanted but wouldn’t tell them what to do, they told it what to do. “It is our nature to worship things as gods.” These can even be good things, the seeds of our affections: family, health, politics, our passions, work. (see the Screwtape Letters)

    Who is your God? you can tell by asking yourself the reason you get up in the morning — and it will determine the next thing you say or think.

    * It is inevitable that man will bow to false gods — kings, money, power. The world “wants” us, but that is adultery.

    * God is sovereign, nothing is outside of that — he’s ordained whatsoever comes to pass, from the day we’re born to the day we die and how we die.

    * We are to meditate on God and delight in his law, day and night. Our investments of money, time, what we watch on our various “screens” — are we loving God? Think on these things and we’ll know ‘how bad we are.’ Who then can be saved?’ We realize in following that we can’t catch up, we can’t keep it, we don’t have what it takes, we can’t do this. No commandment reminds us so much of how desperately we need a savior. Who is your master? I may not be good at serving my master, but I know who my master is.

    * If Jesus is not our master he is not our savior.

    Liked by 3 people

  51. One of our church members posted this yesterday which made me smile and say ‘yup’:

    “One little joy that I have had since joining Branch of Hope is that I have never heard ‘The Gospel reading for this Superbowl Sunday is…’ “

    Liked by 1 person

  52. Janice, “Grim Reapers,” I like that.

    When someone spotted one of the editors sitting in a different office, he said “How did he get there??”

    “He walked,” I said.

    Guess we think they may don capes and turn into bats to fly from office to office as they plot our fates.

    Liked by 1 person

  53. I don’t know what we learned in church today, I was dealing with the runaway daughter. Watched her head off, barefoot through the rain, to the Catholic Church, from where we stopped to go to our church. Reported her to the sheriff office. The deputy went to check on her and tell her it was not a good idea. We picked her up after church though had debated letting her walk the five miles home, barefoot. She has been very unpleasant ever since, even with the twenty guests we had milling around. They all said they were praying for her, I am glad.

    Liked by 4 people

  54. My poor boy has a cold, and his ear is hurting. His mommy has left for a Super Bowl get-together, and Chickadee is back at the McK’s for their Super Bowl thing. So it is just me and my sick little grandson together for our own little Super Bowl thingie. I’m not even interested in it, so I’ll be reading online and off, while he watches it. I’ll probably watch the commercials.

    Most probably he is going to fall asleep on the couch, where we will have him set up with a pillow and afghan. That would happen even if he weren’t sick, but is even more likely now.

    Nightingale bought us pizza for dinner, and bought the two snacks he requested – Doritos and Goldfish crackers. That’s what Papa had bought for him last year. 🙂 But I’m not sure he has the appetite for much of anything this evening.

    Liked by 1 person

  61. I am soooo tired…..she threw a large rock at me, threw a can of egg shells at husband and covered the dining room floor with them, threw a bucket of mud at the living room window…I guess being a Catholic is not working for her.

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  62. I’m catching up with my online life while the rest of the fam watches the game. I turn my attention to the TV when the commercials come on. Oops, here comes a commercial break now…

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  63. False alarm – no commercial. Almost halftime. I was thinking of going out and clearing snow, but it hasn’t stopped falling yet.

    Some of the commercials have so much context behind them I don’t get them at all. The Crocodile Dundee commercial got me laughing, though.

    Liked by 1 person

  64. The Boy never did finish his dinner, and didn’t even finish his dessert. He fell asleep almost as soon as he snuggled down on the couch next to me.

    Liked by 2 people

  65. The Patriots have come from behind again, as they did last year. Will they take it all the way to win their sixth Super Bowl?

    Not that I’m actually paying attention, of course. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  68. DJ – Thanks for sharing that article the other day about the 48 Hours story about Natalie Wood’s death. I recorded it last night and watched it today. Very interesting, and sad.

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  69. I missed the 48 Hours show, will have to find it – I still remember when that happened, really shocking news and always a mystery

    Good game!

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  71. I rooted for the Eagles for a few reasons:
    1- They’re not the Patriots;
    2- They hadn’t won an NFL championship since 1960; and
    3- I like what I have read/heard about Nick Foles, the QB. Besides, he played for the Univ. of Arizona.

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  72. And the ads? Several seemed to have a liberal “tolerate everybody” theme, including those with sexual deviations from the norm. Only two or three were really any good. The Doritos/Mt. Dew Ice combined ad was funny. So were the ads for Tide and Australia tourism. The best, though, was a local ad for a community college, in which Mom puts a light on her son, similar to an interrogation, to convince him that a cc education is a good start.

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