80 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-10-18”

  3. Morning…everything in this forest is frosted white…11 degrees and snow coming around noon…this is going to be a long day….
    Is there a coyote in the brush up there?!

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  4. Good Morning. I am already in Pensacola today. I will teach until 12 then head back home. Tomorrow I will break one of my “rules”. I try not to work on Sunday, but I will most likely be showing homes tomorrow afternoon. Because today was a day I had to be somewhere at a specific time, I could have lain in the bed for hours. It was hard to dray myself up and at ’em. The dogs know their morning routine and wouldn’t let me deviate from it. Amos is now used to getting some wet food mixed in with his dry food so he will take his medicine in the morning. He goes and sits by the refrigerator waiting on me to get the can out. Lulabelle knows she gets to lick the spoon when I am done. Yeah, it grosses me out too, but what are ya’ gonna do?

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  5. It will come as no surprise to Michelle that The Navy Wives have cleaned the main house, cleaned the cottage, fixed the broken toilet, washed all the windows (inside and out), and generally done what needed to be done. I am now an honorary “Ya-Ya”. It all started in 1997 in Monterey.
    They really appreciated the blog that Michelle wrote and shared.

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  8. I don’t have a trail of material following behind my gown, nor do I have a gown. Are you talking about a train? Like the fancy wedding or queens have?

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  9. In reply to yesterday’s comments on the music discussion:
    Kevin, there have been other times in the Church’s history where only that which was new was used. Calvinists in Switzerland and France as well as the Puritans and Dissenters in England removed all traces of Catholic liturgical music from worship. That was a sudden change, and to be honest, the Psalm settings that replaced the Catholic Gregorian chants were often of very low quality, with very poor metre and unmelodious tunes – I read one example of a terrible versification of Psalm 98:7, in which the phrase, “Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof”, versified “and the fullness thereof” as “and the polliwogs wag their tails”. The few of those early Psalm settings that have survived the test of time are generally from the higher quality French Protestant settings, such as that of Psalm 100, now sung in English to ‘All people that on Earth do dwell’ and often called ‘Old One Hundredth’. The poor quality of the English Psalm settings is what drove Isaak Watts to start writing his hymns.

    Watts didn’t reject metrical psalms; he simply wanted to see them more impassioned. “They ought to be translated in such a manner as we have reason to believe David would have composed them if he had lived in our day,” he wrote. Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament followed in 1719.

    Many of his English colleagues couldn’t recognize these translations. How could “Joy to the World” really be Psalm 98? Or “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” be Psalm 72, or “O God Our Help in Ages Past” be Psalm 90?

    Watts was unapologetic, arguing that he deliberately omitted several psalms and large parts of others, keeping portions “as might easily and naturally be accommodated to the various occasions of Christian life, or at least might afford us some beautiful allusions to Christian affairs.” Furthermore, where the psalmist fought with personal enemies, Watts turned the biblical invective against spiritual adversaries: sin, Satan, and temptation. Finally, he said, “Where the flights of his faith and love are sublime, I have often sunk the expressions within the reach of an ordinary Christian.”

    Such looseness brought criticism. “Christian congregations have shut out divinely inspired psalms and taken in Watts’s flights of fancy,” protested one detractor. Others dubbed the new songs “Watts’s whims.”

    But after church splits, pastor firings, and other arguments, Watts’s paraphrases won out. “He was the first who taught the Dissenters to write and speak like other men, by showing them that elegance might consist with piety,” wrote the famed lexicographer (and Watts’s contemporary) Samuel Johnson.[Link: http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/poets/isaac-watts.html%5D

    As Peter has pointed out, there has already been a response to the poor quality contemporary music, by singer/songwriters like the Gettys and their colleague Stuart Townend – who are best known for ‘In Christ Alone’ but have written or reset many other hymns, such as Townend’s “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us’ (I first sang this hymn in West Africa):

    How deep the Father’s love for us
    How vast beyond all measure
    That He should give His only Son
    To make a wretch His treasure

    How great the pain of searing loss
    The Father turns His face away
    As wounds which mar the Chosen One
    Bring many sons to glory

    Behold the man upon a cross
    My sin upon His shoulders
    Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
    Call out among the scoffers

    It was my sin that held Him there
    Until it was accomplished
    His dying breath has brought me life
    I know that it is finished

    I will not boast in anything
    No gifts, no power, no wisdom
    But I will boast in Jesus Christ
    His death and resurrection

    Why should I gain from His reward?
    I cannot give an answer
    But this I know with all my heart
    His wounds have paid my ransom

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  10. But with a train, don’t you have some of the little people walking behind you and carrying it up off the floor? Like Mumsee, I haven’t a clue.

    I’m off to deliver the dogs to the groomer this morning.

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  11. Others have taken old lyric poems, such as the one by Charles Wesley that I put up on yesterday’s thread, and have set them to more singable melodies. I deliberately shared the contemporary instrumental setting of “Jesus, the name high over all” yesterday, but noted the melody could be sung in any genre, as demonstrated here. It is the same contemporary melody – composed by Chris Eaton, John Hartley, and Gareth Robinson – but with completely different instruments:

    Jesus, the Name high over all,
    in hell or earth or sky;
    angels and mortals prostrate fall,
    and devils fear and fly.
    Jesus, the Name to sinners dear,
    the Name to sinners giv’n;
    it scatters all their guilty fear,
    it turns their hell to heav’n.

    O that the world might taste and see
    the riches of His grace!
    The arms of love that compass me
    would all the world embrace.
    Thee I shall constantly proclaim,
    though earth and hell oppose;
    bold to confess Thy glorious Name
    before a world of foes.

    His only righteousness I show,
    His saving truth proclaim;
    ’tis all my business here below
    to cry, “Behold the Lamb!”
    Happy, if with my latest breath
    I may but gasp His Name,
    preach Him to all, and cry in death,
    “Behold, behold the Lamb!”

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  12. Another very popular example of an old poem set to a contemporary melody is this one, written in the 1860s by a minister’s daughter from Ireland, Charitie Lees Bancroft, and now reset by an American songwriter, Vicki Cook – once again, I first heard this sung with electric guitars and a drum set (and was able to recognize its quality), but is here performed in a more traditional setting:

    Before the throne of God above
    I have a strong, a perfect plea,
    a great High Priest, whose name is Love
    who ever lives and pleads for me.
    My name is graven on His hands,
    my name is written on His heart;
    I know that while in heav’n He stands
    no tongue can bid me thence depart.

    When Satan tempts me to despair
    and tells me of the guilt within,
    upward I look, and see Him there
    who made an end of all my sin.
    Because the sinless Savior died,
    my sinful soul is counted free,
    for God the just is satisfied
    to look on Him and pardon me.

    Behold Him there! the risen Lamb!
    my perfect, spotless righteousness,
    the great unchangeable I AM”
    the King of glory and of grace!
    One with Himself, I cannot die;
    my soul is purchased by His blood;
    my life is hid with Christ on high,
    with Christ my Savior and my God.

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  13. On Chas’ question about trains on a gown, trains were a sign of wealth and status. Material was expensive, so if you could afford to have superfluous material dragging after you, you were very rich indeed. The length of one’s train indicated your social status; the longer your train, the closer you were to the top tier of society. There is a similar tradition among other cultures – in West Africa, for example, the longer the hem of one’s shirt, the more respected was one’s place in society, and thus elderly men and women both wear shirts whose hems come to their ankles. Incidentally, that reminds me of this verse in Isaiah 6: “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.” Trains were not only worn by women; the capes of kings and lords, and the vestments of high churchmen could trail after them. Of course, the lower echelons of society imitated the upper echelons in whatever they could, so if you could afford a train on your wedding gown, that was something special. The tradition has remained, as one’s wedding day is really an opportunity to play ‘dress up’ one last time.

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  17. Michelle, that’s a nice marketing post from DuckDuckGo. The thing is, they must have some way to make a profit – so what’s the catch? There are a great many services out there which offer to keep one’s personal information private while surfing the web – AVAST for example, offers a tracking free experience. It is ostensible free, but that is only for limited service, and if you want the full service, there is a fee to have all that information kept private. It always makes me wonder what happens when one no longer pays the fee, as in order to keep one’s information free, the service must themselves have access to that information.

    There is a certain benefit to using the biggest, most widely used search engine. High volume of traffic means that it is humanly impossible to keep track of everything that goes on. For example CCTV in Britain has not stopped crime, because even though those cameras are everywhere, no one can possibly keep track of all the footage. Besides, there are ways to make oneself a lot more invisible to services like Google. For example, I have a Google account, but I do not sign into it when I am simply looking up information. I provide internet service providers with no more information than is absolutely necessary (I have no need for Google to know my credit card information for example), and I do not remain signed into the service for longer than necessary. I also do not cross link services, i.e. when Amazon suggests notifying Facebook of a purchase. That leaves my IP address as the common internet tracking device, but even there, I can confuse Facebook and Google both simply by moving between locations. Although the algorithms can make some use of one’s searches, with millions of users and trillions of searches, the odds of actually being noticed by any sinister humans are slim – to quote from G.K. Chesterton, “Where does one hide a leaf? In a forest of leaves.”

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  18. My new plan is to not shop on line. At all. I have shopped online for years. The only thing I am considering is a set of books from CBD, which I could order through the mail, now that I think about it. I don’t know why, but it seemed the thing to do this year. No more going to Amazon for everything. I am constantly amazed that they send a UPS truck all the way out here for the tiniest little thing. Somebody is paying for that and it is not me. Of course, then the UPS drivers get paid.

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  20. I see griping posts about how Facebook is manipulating the narrative… on Facebook. The same with complaints of how Google doesn’t prioritize Christian content on its search results – but I used Google’s services to find the above posted hymns, as I have done with many other topics related to Christianity, and I almost never have to look beyond the first few results.

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  21. Except that they say, they as in the guys running the company, that they are deliberately doing things to influence the public. I take them at their word. And that they don’t give their children, or wouldn’t give their children, very much access to devices at all because of it and the deliberately psychologically addictive additions they have made.

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  24. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2018/02/spiritual-but-not-religious-but-actually-hindu/

    From Veith

    _______________________________

    Spiritual but Not Religious, but actually Hindu?

    … She (Vasudha Narayanan, religion professor at the University of Florida) goes on to cite the presence of Hindu ideas in American pop culture, such as the Star Wars concept of “The Force” and the illusory nature of reality that is the theme of “The Matrix.”

    … And we are hearing more and more about “karma,” either with the actual Hindu term or in sayings like “what goes around comes around,” or “pay it forward.”

    There are these popular manifestations of Hindu ideas …

    … I know that many actual Hindus from India pour scorn upon the sanitized, pop Hinduism that has taken hold in America. Such teachings as Karma and reincarnation are properly terrifying teachings, as is the illusory nature of the universe and the necessity of harsh self-discipline to escape from the meaningless cycles of rebirth. (See the book Karma Cola.)

    But it may be that if America continues to abandon Christianity, Hinduism will rush into the void.

    It’s hard to be “spiritual” without being “religious.” And many who claim to be “spiritual but not religious” are actually religious without realizing it. And that religion is Hinduism.
    ____________________________________

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  25. Just got back from a church workday, so I haven’t read the comments except that I did see some asked what is hidden in the weeds. Nothing that I know of, but I just think it’s an interesting mix of subtle colors. It’s just fall/winter weeds, but it has purples and greens, yellows and browns.

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  26. Capitalism, the prevalent economic theory of the West, holds that owners of companies should be able to do what they please with their company. These internet providers are private companies, so if they want to alter their algorithms according to their ideology, they wouldn’t be doing anything different than Hobby Lobby or Chick Fil A. Nevertheless, is very clear from the feed that goes by me on Facebook that Facebook allows its clients to post and share almost anything – I see plenty of conservative and right wing viewpoints shared by people whom I know, and get the feed of several well known Christians, such as Al Mohler, etc. It clearly isn’t within their economic interest to severely limit such traffic. After all, Christians make up the largest religious group in the world (2.5 billion), and the income from Christian giving to parachurch organizations (apologetics ministeries, gospel coalitions, etc.) and institutions (bible schools, etc.) numbers some 720 billion dollars a year – that is excluding churches, which actually receive only about 360 billion a year, while foreign mission agencies only receive 53 billion a year. So parachurch organizations are very lucrative. Secular companies realize that and want a piece of the pie, whether it is Amazon selling popular Christian books or Facebook allowing popular Christian figureheads to share their content.

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  29. DJ, the honour code is also deeply embedded within Hinduism. The concept of karma is deeply intertwined with the idea of the family honour. I don’t think that Hinduism per say would rush into the spiritual void, as it has many distinctive cultural elements from India which those who live in other places would not readily understand or relate to (one of the popular gods, Ghanesh, has the head of an elephant, for example), but rather, a religion resembling Hinduism, with a pantheon of gods or spiritual forces, an honour code, and a retributive idea of some kind of afterlife would appear. In other words, a return to the systems such as pagan Europe had, whether it was the Germanic panoply of Thor, Freya, Odin, and their relatives, the heroic code of honour, and the idea of a frozen hell and a Valhalla for heroes; or the Greco-Roman panoply headed by Jupiter/Zeus, a patriarchal system where the father could decide if his offspring lived or died, and an underworld where there were the torments of Tartarus for the unworthy and the delights of Elysium for the worthy.

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  30. I mostly hear references to “karma” in terms of exacting sweet revenge — usually declared by people wishing it on others so they can get what’s coming to them. Interesting.

    And no, this is not official Hinduism, only the Hindu-light applications borrowed by the pop culture in search of something to believe. I’m sure practicing Hindus would not recognize or approve of much of it.

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  31. Incidentally, there is a resurgence in interest in the Norse/Germanic gods among the younger generation – a sort of ‘angry young man’ response to multiculturalism. Its proponents bemoan how Christianity weakened the Norse and Germanic people, and made them pushovers, and yearn for a return to the time when Teutons and Vikings were feared. It crops up in comments in many different forums under many different topics.

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  32. Kizzie, “Whatsoever a man sows, that will he also reap” occurs in the context of Galatians – the letter written against legalism – as a warning that depending on our own fleshly strength, rather than walking in the Spirit of Christ, will get us precisely nowhere: “He that sows to the flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he that sows to the Spirit will reap life everlasting.” Karma, requires that one must labour to be good with all one’s strength in order to get anywhere. So, in fact, the Christian statement is a warning against the very idea of karma.

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  34. Roscuro – I am familiar with the difference between the biblical view of reaping-sowing and karma. I was not saying that they are the same.

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  35. Roscuro – What you wrote about the “angry young man” interest in the Norse and Germanic gods reminds me of the rise of the alt-right, along with white nationalists/supremacists.

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  36. And speaking of angry young men, that reminds me to update you all on the latest with Mr X.

    You may remember that Nightingale had me inform him that I would not be the third party person anymore, which leaves him to come up with someone. (Looks like his mom is helping again.) He threatened to pick up The Boy from the bus stop the next day and keep him overnight, but then we had two snow days in a row, so he wasn’t able to do that.

    Yesterday, through his mom, plans were made for him to pick The Boy up from the bus stop and have him overnight. I had to go up the lane ahead of time, and leave a bag with clothes by our mailbox for him. It felt strange, like I was participating in some secret exchange. He would pick up The Boy and the clothes, and I got the mail.

    This morning, with The Boy at his dad’s, Nightingale babysat the four young children of a close friend, ranging in age from eight years down to 13 months. She said watching the four of them is easier than watching The Boy. 😀

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  38. Friend and I dashed out to see 15:17 Train to Paris. A study in Providence. It didn’t get many favorable reviews, but I’d recommend it.

    Of course, I kept getting vibrating phone messages, 2 from Carol and 1 from the editor demanding that I need to do a copy block for a photo we’re taking late today. So I’m off to take care of that now.

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  41. And I just barely made it in time (before my stylist was leaving for the day) for a much-needed bangs trim. What a whirlwind day.

    Tess has pink ribbons on her ears from the groomer’s. 🙂 They both feel and smell much nicer now.

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  43. Hmmm. Interesting.

    The Boy’s dad gave him a Catholic medal. You know, the little metal things that look like they go on a necklace. It is an oval with a cross on it, but I didn’t get a good enough look at what else may be on it.

    What are those medals for? And is that what they’re called – medals? I think that’s what I’ve heard them called.

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  44. A recent discussion on here was about baptism. This brief piece mentions a couple reasons for believing in credo-baptism (believer baptism) that I’m not sure were mentioned.

    One is that the two sacraments of the church are baptism and the Lord’s supper, and that they should both be for those who already believe. Another is from Jesus’ words in the Great Commission to make disciples and then baptize them. Anyway, read the piece for the full explanations, and a little more. . .

    https://stephenkneale.com/2018/02/08/why-do-i-believe-in-credobaptism/

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  45. Anyone remember the popularity of St. Christopher medals? A boy gave me one in 7th grade (my mom was in Iowa taking care of my grandfather’s estate and my dad didn’t know what to do when I told him; my parents decided that since I already had it, I just had to make it clear to the boy that I could not date). The medal was lost when it went down the bathroom sink drain. My girlfriend told the boy and that was that. Too bad, he was cute & a child actor, had a role on some TV show which didn’t last long.

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  47. As I recall, it all unfolded in 7th grade math class. He whispered across the table:

    “Do you want to go steady?”

    “Huh?”

    “Do you want to go steady?”

    “Huh? Study?”

    “STEAD-Y”

    “Oh. Ok. I guess so. Ok.”

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  52. Beautiful picture, Cheryl. Is that a sunset or sunrise?

    Church cancelled since there is a glaze of ice on an inch of snow. The farm house where we meet is on a little traveled, one lane road, so the owners decided we shouldn’t attempt the trip.

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  53. Today’s photo, I didn’t send to AJ when I first took it a few months ago, since that sunset looked too much like fire in the trees and I was thinking of Michelle and didn’t want to be insensitive. (One or two others really looked like fire!) Recently harvested cornfield in the foreground. This was taken down the street from me, during an evening walk.

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  54. We’re cancelled here, too. We had a church workday yesterday, and the street was already iffy, and we had freezing rain overnight.

    I was just standing at our kitchen window taking photos of birds when they all scattered except one dove on the ground looking around saying, “What?! Where’d everyone go?” In came a Cooper’s hawk to the tree. I glanced down and somehow the dove was gone; it had a close call! Well, I have seen a Cooper’s (probably the same one) in that three twice this winter, but as soon as I get to the kitchen doorway it spooks and flies–no photos allowed. So it was great to be already standing at the sink and able to get some good shots. It then flew to a different tree, but the blinds were closed and it didn’t choose the best spot for my visibility, so I don’t know if I got good shots or not. (In the bird feeder tree it gave me shots from its back–but with its head showing–and in the other tree of its front, so I hope they both turn out well, but shooting between blinds can put shadows on pictures.) It was an adult, steely gray and handsome. Past years we have mainly gotten juveniles, but I’m guessing this is one that learned about our bird feeder as a young bird, caught himself a few sparrows in years gone by, and is trying again as an adult. We have removed some of the bushes that gave sparrows cover and also gave hawks a great place to catch one, but raptors don’t make a catch on every pass at a possible breakfast site, so that won’t discourage him, and it’s sweet to be that close to a large, handsome bird with camera in hand. It actually is likely a female–it’s a big bird and female raptors are the larger ones. At any rate it’s definitely a Cooper’s and not a sharp-shinned, based on size.

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  55. A little while ago, I wrote on the secret room thread that our private lane was pure ice for a couple days or so, after a snow that was immediately followed by freezing rain, and then temps dipped for a few days, causing it all to completely freeze. I had to walk up that slick and slippery lane when I dropped off the bag of clothes at the mailbox. Scary! (The lane is lined with bushes on each side, so I couldn’t just try to walk in the snow. Then again, the snow was icy and slick, too.)

    Our lane is really like a long driveway for four homes. (The houses are a bit down the lane, not starting right at the top of it, except for one.) It is only one lane, so if a car is coming down the lane, anyone wanting to drive up and out of the lane has to wait. That doesn’t happen very often, though. And when I say “up the lane” or “down the lane”, there is a literal meaning, as the lane inclines up to the main street. (It is a dead end lane, not going anywhere else.)

    I love our private little lane, 🙂

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  57. I’ve been driving on ice since late November. A portion of the highway I drive on is the scenic route through the national park and they don’t seem to sand or salt, ever! I should be able to go 60mph but lately I’ve only been able to drive 30mph and it’s still very sketchy. It’s even more dangerous because if I do hit the ditch, it’s extremely cold outside (-30C windchill) and cell phone coverage is sporadic and there is very little traffic with no homes for miles.

    One must always have winter gear, blankets, candle and matches, and shovel in their car all winter, along with winter tires. I also make sure my car is fully warm before I leave and wear appropriate winter clothing, even though I peal it of as I drive because I get too warm.

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  58. The weather is beautiful here but I just plain overslept this morning after my non-stop whirlwind day yesterday. I was going to try to make it to church but there just wasn’t enough time after I showered and had to feed all the animals. I had a dream that the paper was closing down, an old editor was in the dream as was my childhood backyard that somehow was part of the paper’s property that had to be sold (hedge fund owners already unloaded all the real estate all our papers had and I guess that money is now long gone, too; everyone leases space these days).

    Kizzie, I’m glad your neighbor is plowing your lane again, I’d wondered about that.

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  59. The icy rain hadn’t arrived yet when church started, so there were a decent number of people at church. I played the organ. It wasn’t a smashing success, but I didn’t play terribly either. I think I am finally gaining back my coordination for organ playing (it is like adding in a third hand, since you play notes with your feet too), as it had been years since the organ at my family church had stopped working, causing me to have to stop playing organ. It was raining when we left the church, actual rain, not freezing rain, but on top of all the snow that fell yesterday, the rain was only making things more slippery.

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  60. Phos, it’s been so long that I don’t remember specifically, but a man once, in a demonstration at church, played a song with his feet only.
    Can you really do that?

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  61. I practice Good Karma Closing Day in Real Estate. I buy the office staff lunch after I have a closing.
    I never really gave it a thought, just that the word worked in the sentence and I mean to show appreciation to them for all the help they give me.

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  62. We made it to church just fine…the County Line rd is funny….it is all plowed until you reach the trees….no plow goes there and it is solid ice and snow…the hilliest part of the rd and the steepest downhill in that section of rd….El Paso County must have that job to clear it…they aren’t very reliable in reputation!
    And now I am watching the Masters Agility completion at Westminster…those little dogs can fly…amazing!!

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  66. I too had wondered whether the neighbors were clearing the lane again. I’d imagined it as more of a cul-de-sac. We have a long country driveway, and fortunately our neighbor with a tractor often plows it.

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  67. Surprise, surprise, Nancy Jill. My husband and I were joking about what the border collies were saying to the other dogs as to why they were allowed to compete in the same event even though they really had no chance to win it.

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  68. Janice, this is every day life up here in the winter. No need to be anxious, just prepared, and I am. People also know to check with work or families if someone isn’t on time.

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  70. This morning photo’s lovely, Cheryl. Kind of you to think of us, too!

    We saw The 5:17 to Paris also. We didn’t care for it. Except for the last 10 minutes on the train, it dragged for us. 😦

    Bummer, too, because I gave my husband a choice between it and The Greatest Showman– whose music I’ve been singing for weeks!

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  71. Well, there you go. And I wasn’t impressed by “Greatest Showman.”

    Yes, 15:17 was slow but I guess I saw it as a slice of (real) life — not always fast-paced, right? — and I appreciated traveling with these guys, from middle school to young adulthood. It seems real to me, not contrived or overblown. Refreshing in my mind.

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  72. I read a positive review of it a few days ago, and one that appeared in a very secular publication, but I haven’t been able to find it again.

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  73. Chas, yes, it is possible to play a song just with your feet as the pedals of the organ are set up like exactly a keyboard. I have played the hymn melody using my feet before. It requires some flexibility to move your feet quickly enough between the notes; organists generally go from heel to toe or vice versa when moving from note to note, in order make the transition sound smooth. Organ playing also requires strength, as you cannot support your balance on the organ bench with either your hands or feet, since they must both be free to play. I always feel in need of a rest after practicing or playing the organ, and when I’m sick, I do not have enough energy to play it.

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  74. Going to see films in a theatre is always a doubtful proposition. Of the six films I have seen in the theatre, I enjoyed four of them (Wall-E, Tangled, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the live action Cinderella), one was rightfully a box office bomb as it was a confused mess (that dreadful flop of Where the Wild Things Are – it was dear friend’s favorite childhood book and she was so disappointed with the film), and the sixth and last I watched in a theatre nearly bored me to tears. I spent the last two thirds of the film wondering when it would end. It was the live production of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with all of the hit songs of the animated version, but as Eldest Niece said when she reviewed it, it lacked any heart or real feeling. It had a star studded cast and beautiful optics, and it was like watching paint dry. I keep thinking I should go see another film, but the offerings at the only accessible film theatre are not to my taste, since they only go for those they think will make money, meaning horror films at Halloween, seasonal films at Christmas, sappy romances at Valentines, and always the unfunny comedies and predictable action/adventure films.

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  75. Cataract surgery went well. That eye now sees 20-25 without glasses, so I can go without them for driving. Because the glasses were made for my pre-surgery eye, I could actually see slightly better without them when they checked my eyes the day after surgery. But without an eye chart to check, I can’t really tell the difference between with glasses and without for distance. I need them for reading, and frankly I’m so used to wearing them, it feels weird without them. Outside, I like the protection they provide from the wind.

    Three more days until I’m allowed to wash my hair in the shower again (it’s really a pain doing it in the sink), I think I have to wait another week to wear eye makeup. And daily eye drops continue for another two weeks after that. Compared to post-op care for most kinds of surgery, it’s a breeze. But I will be glad when I don’t have to keep reminding myself not to touch or rub my eye.

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  76. Quite a bit of snow here, but not enough at one time to cancel school or church (though attendance was pretty sparse at both churches this morning). I hope there is no more until after my husband gets back from Chicago Wednesday evening, because this morning he asked me to free the wipers, which were iced up against the windshield, and when I lifted one of them, part of the rubber of the blade stuck to the windshield instead. Fortunately it was the passenger side, so not nearly as bad as if it were the driver’s side. But there was no time to fix it before he left for Chicago.

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  77. Kizzie–I wonder if your neighbor had a twinge of conscience after what your husband went through and his passing? Sometimes we can be so petty. I am happy he is plowing again for you.

    Liked by 2 people

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