75 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-13-18”

  3. Morning! At first I thought that poor little bird was stuck inside the feeder!
    A young deer ate all the petunias yesterday…I opened the window and asked her what she thought she was doing…she looked at me and went back to eating her “breakfast”! What was I going to do….chase her? Nope…damage was done…no use crying over spilt milk..or eaten petooties! 😊

    Liked by 3 people

  5. When I turned on FoxNews this morning. I saw, immediately, this beautiful young woman surrounded, two on each side, by huge, ugly, men.
    Made a fascinating frame. I doubt they meant it that way.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. We’re back from a busy retreat on the edge of mandatory fire evacuations (2.5 miles–my husband ran to the checkpoint) on the Eel River in the Mendocino National Forest.

    Despite my concerns (I bought a dozen respirator masks before we left), the Lord sent the wind blowing from the northwest which cleared the skies above us. They were blue the whole time except for when we exited the windowless meeting hall after yesterday’s church service.

    Smoke was to the ground and I had to temper myself not to demand we flee immediately.

    We ate lunch and then we left.

    Lots of good ministry, many old friends, terrific conversations and, surprise surprise, little sleep for me.

    But we’re so thankful we got to go.

    Please continue to pray–rain, whatever–that God would end the fires. This is terrible.

    Liked by 3 people

  7. Right before we left, my printer’s proofs came fro Poppy. I did not have Internet access at Hartstone Bible Camp, so I asked a former English teacher friend who has recently had knee replacement surgery and is going stir crazy, to read for me.

    She found it very clean (!–that means few, if any errors), except on the final page–where her last name was misspelled in the acknowledgements. What are the odds of that?

    When I reviewed, I found a few other minor corrections, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s done and the non-English speaking typesetters who work for Amazon in India are back on the job. I hope to have a publish date soon.

    That will help as marketing and publicity need to get moving.

    Liked by 5 people

  8. As I was lying in bed this morning, listening to the roosters crow and talking with God, it occurred to me that just about yesterday, Kare had three feet of snow and now is in the finishing up period of summer camp. Did summer just fly by?

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  10. Yes, summer flew by. Instead of three feet of snow, we have a garden full of produce (we continue to be amazed at what that plot of ground gives us each year with minimal care) and less than 2 weeks of camp left.

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  11. Okay, here is a QoD:

    What is your favorite summer memory from your pre-teen year?

    Mine is when our friends would come over to our house and we’d make a town in the backyard dirt (in Arizona, grass was hard to grow) for our Matchbox® cars. Or else we would go to one boy’s house and play WW2 using his step-father’s military surplus Jeep as a prop.

    Fun days.

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  12. Good morning. I am enjoying my clothes dryer again this a.m. It plays a little song when a load is finished drying. Isn’t that thoughtful? No more jarring buzzer sounds. Now it is all warm fuzzies. Did a man or woman think of that?

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  14. Favorite memories: playing in the nearby creek, playing under the bridge that went over the railroad track, doing the library summer reading programs, VBS at several churches, camping in the backyard, and all day Monopoly games on a neighbor’s porch. It is too hard to choose only one thing. All of this was neighborhood fun. We did not travel much except to see relatives. Needless to say, I was at a great loss when my friends took their vacations in the summer. I did go and stay a week with my cousins at times.

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  16. It’s strange. I do have childhood memories but none specific to Summer although Summer is my favorite season. I am in Houston waiting for my flight to Austin.

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  17. In “Prophet with Honor”, I almost read past an important concept I have never heard before. But it is important for Christians to understand this.
    In discussing Ruth Grahamps marital problems and divorce, it reports that Ruth concluded that “God is not depending on us to protect His reputation.”
    Some things need to be done, no matter how it looks to others.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I pondered and pondered.
    But I don’t have any favorite pre-teen summer memories.]
    Nor any teen summer memories either, except a two-week trip to Camp kanga, an Episcopal children’s camp in Hendersonville. I went with Bobby Murray.
    I was thirteen, if that counts. I danced with a beautiful black haired girl from Indiana. . That’s all I remember.

    In those days, they hooked up another engine to the trail to help pull it up the mountains.

    Liked by 4 people

  19. When we moved to H’ville, I drove out to Camp kanuga once. Didn’t stop, just drove through. (This spelling, BTW, is correct, spell check made me make the incorrect spelling above.)

    Like

  20. In response to Mumsee’s comment on the weekend Prayer Thread:
    To dwell above, with saints, in love
    Oh, that will be glory.
    To live below, with saints we know
    Well that’s a different story.

    Donna, dead people can’t cry.

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Favorite summer memories, so many, but probably playing baseball in the backyard & going to Dodger/Angel games with my dad, long meandering bike rides to nowhere (“we’re bored!”), sprinkler running to cool off, campfires at the beach, camping one year at Sequoia where my dad had to rescue me when I climbed on top of a bolder and “got stuck” and couldn’t get down, horseback riding …

    Summer was always a treasured time of no school, mostly for us a stay-close-to-home time where the days drifted by sweetly.

    Now, summer is far from my favorite season. 🙂 Probably it’s my least favorite, in fact, but there you go. Things change.

    Have a good trip Kim.

    Janice, I loved the cute sing-song bells on my new washer/dryer. I also lived for years with the ugly BUZZZZZZ. And yes, I’m quite sure that was designed by a man and the melodious bells we have now were created by a woman. 🙂

    Liked by 4 people

  24. This is the way our world is now. I have towing service through AARP/Statefarm. I just called for towing. First I spoke with a woman who transferred me to a man to arrange towing. Based on his accent, I asked where he was. He said India. That is going around the world for a five mile tow.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Wow Janice…did he use a GPS to find your location and that of the tire shop?! 🚘
    I do not recall a specific preteen summer memory…although my BF Judy and I would walk with Billy and Mike over to the Putt Putt miniature golf course and play a couple of games…50 cents for two games. We would climb up over the railroad tracks, cross Dixie Hwy and after playing mini golf we would stop in at Woolworths if we had any money leftover ….lazy days of summer in Ohio……😊 🏌️‍♀️

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  28. Ah, well, another memory (or two) — my mom teaching me how to skip along the sidewalk when we were in Iowa one summer; and sitting on my grandfather’s old wooden front porch as my mom pointed out to me the dark summer storm clouds racing across the sky above, I was mesmerized!

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  30. Favorite pre-teen summer memories? I have several.

    The first one that pops into mind is that my dad would wait till watermelon got down to four cents a pound, and then one day he would lug in this huge watermelon and everyone would yell “Watermelon!” and he would put it on the table and slice huge hunks, and then we would put whatever remained in the fridge. The next week and the next, he’d bring one home and the family would be happy. But at some point he would bring one home, expecting to be met with excitement, and I’d be the only one who obliged him. But with it down to two people eating, he’d cut it into even bigger slices. For the rest of the summer, I’d continue to greet the watermelon with pleasure, he’d continue to be surprised (or feign surprise?) that the rest of the family was no longer excited, and he and I would enjoy our huge hunks of heat-busting, sweet, juicy watermelon.

    We lived just down the street, half a block, from a very large city pool, complete with I think three diving boards (it at least had low dive and high dive, but I’m pretty sure it had two low dives), ten feet deep at the deep end, and a separate in-ground wading pool for mothers and toddlers that kept them out of our pool. Several times a summer when I was little we would go as a family.

    We always had plenty of ice cream in the freezer, multiple flavors. We kids learned early not to ask about dessert, because sometimes Mom had made something and sometimes she hadn’t (and she’d remember even if no one asked if she had). If she hadn’t planned anything, and one of us kids asked about dessert, she would say, “There isn’t any tonight.” However, if we waited for Dad to ask (and he always did, if we didn’t spoil it by asking first), then she would say, “Well, there’s ice cream, I guess.” But then, a few times a summer, we would be sitting around the living room reading or petting the dog, and my parents would look at each other, and one of them would say, “How about if we go to Dairy Queen?” and we would all run to the car and go and get cones. And one of us would always ask, “Mom, can I get a dipped cone?” And we’d watch Mom ponder and think about it, and usually she said no. But once in a while she said yes (letting it remain a special treat and not an everyday thing). I think maybe we sometimes went there for my birthday, or some special occasion, and then we were allowed to have banana splits or other really special treats–but those weren’t even every-year events, but eye-popping “wow” occasions.

    And multiple times I went to summer camp for a week. BMA camp (Bible Memory Association), two years a collie was there, and that was when I decided I wanted one of those one day. I think I went to BMA camp three times and a church camp at least once by the time I was 13. Our whole small church went camping once, setting up trailers or tents in close proximity to one another, when I was 13 or 14. We only attended that church a year or two, but it was a re-start-up from a church my parents had attended many years before (before I was born) and they knew quite a few of the people from “back then,” and it was the first church in which I taught Sunday school.

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  31. Playing baseball in the front yard with wiffle ball and bat. Staying up late playing games and working jigsaw puzzles. Traveling anywhere–across the country to New England the summer I was 10–camping in Zion, visiting ancient kinfolk in Utah, going to the beach. I had a great childhood.

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  32. Ah, th taking the illustration perhaps too far? It wasn’t a theology argument, but since you brought it up …

    I’d say those whose hearts have been regenerated — who are alive to the knowledge that they have a father — do, indeed cry; and believers as well when we find ourselves in a mess of course also cry out to our Father.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. When he said we are ‘all’ those children, he was addressing us, the congregation — with the reference back to Isaiah, of course, and his realization of his own helplessness and, yes, wickedness, in standing before a holy God.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Favorite preteen summer memories – Swimming in our above-ground pool in Centerville, Ohio, until someone put a pickax through the side of it late one night. (After that, Mom turned the round grassless area into a beautiful garden.) And playing into the late evening with my next-door neighbors. They had five children, the fourth was my age, but we all played together.

    Ohio is on the western edge of the eastern time zone, so it stayed pretty light late into the evening. That was great for us.

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  36. The car is up on the truck and about to depart. I woke up around 7 a.m. and decided to wait in calling for a tow. I wanted them to be able to take care of stranded motorists during rush hour. That is the Christian heart at work because I knew I could get quicker service if I got it in early. Now it may be tomorrow before it is ready. But someone else needed a tow more than I did.

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  37. Last night, on the weekend thread, I wrote about our experience buying the CRV. I added this:

    “I keep thinking that Hubby would be so proud of us for doing this on our own (primarily Nightingale), and he would be happy that we are getting such a good vehicle. I so wish I could tell him about it and see him smile. (Crying now.)”

    Later, I mentioned that to Nightingale, and she said she had had the same thought, but didn’t mention it because she didn’t think it was her place, that it was more my place to say things like that. I told that she is free to share those thoughts with me.

    It has been touching to me how often we find ourselves having similar thoughts and reactions while missing Hubby and grieving his loss.

    The first one I remember was when it came time to turn over the wall calendar page from October (he had died on October 2) to November. Turning that page was kind of painful, because it was physical evidence of the march of time, that our time with Hubby was a bit further in the past. I had mentioned that feeling to Nightingale and found that she was thinking the same thing.

    I’m so happy that Hubby and Nightingale drew so close in the last few years before his death. They were very much alike.

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  38. Cheryl – Nightingale learned that if there was something she wanted, she should get Chickadee to ask. Nightingale’s strong will often caused her to sound like she was demanding something, which resulted in a no. But Chickadee had a genuinely endearing and sweet way of asking (without being too sweet or manipulative) that often resulted in a yes. 🙂

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  39. In my comment about the car last night, I forgot to mention this: As Nightingale and I were talking about how wonderfully our search turned out (finding a popular, good-quality car relatively new with lower mileage than we’d expected), I casually mentioned (yes, really casually, not trying to fake sounding casual) that it was an answer to prayer. She didn’t react one way or the other, but later I prayed that God would “quicken” that truth to her heart.

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  40. Summer childhood memories:

    Going to my grandpa’s farm and playing with all my cousins – running on the haystacks, building forts, making mud pies (raiding the grain bin for ingredients), swimming in the irrigation canal where the water was running over the sluice gate so that there were fewer leeches, shelling grandma’s peas under the huge tree and just being hot all the time.

    Also camping with those same cousins, swimming in the lake, make forts in the woods, playing Barbies in the tent, walking in the dark to the local dump to see the bears!! (what were our parent thinking?!!)

    Liked by 5 people

  41. Well, since most of us can’t narrow it down to one, I’ll add one memory: Hiking in the mountains around Tucson. Sometimes we would do a two day hike and sleep under the stars.

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  44. I could easily revisit most of those places that we had summer fun. It’s all about twenty minutes from where I am. The library has changed location, and I still visit it several times a year. I do not know if the creeks are still running, but I expect they are. The other fun thing we did was to walk to the Krystal for those ten or twenty-five cent hamburgers, and when we were real ambitious, we walked to the Dairy Queen for chocolate dipped cones. It was about twice as far and without any shade. The cool ice cream was well earned. It was neat to do this with a small group of friends without any fear like people know today. We had such freedom. I don’t think helicopter parenting is a natural thing, but it has become necessary in this world of today.

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  45. The man in India was trying to get me to use Tires Plus because it would be closer. I told him the name of the family-owned shop I wanted to use. I need to call to make sure the car arrived. As the guys were hooking everything up I noticed the last thing done with the webbed belts was to tie off with square knots. I told the guy I knew what that was because my son had been a Boy Scout.

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  46. Not sure it is necessary so much as we hear more about what goes on so become more fearful. People have been killing people and doing other things since early in the Bible. Nothing new here.

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  47. Son says they don’t expect phone service for a week as their tower was completely burned in the fire.

    Interestingly, son called me yesterday. He has Verizon. It turns out (he looked at my phone and told me) that I also have Verizon. It was Inland Cellular’s tower that burned and they are the ones with the outage. But, because husband wanted me to have more complete coverage, my Verizon phone goes through Inland Cellular. A lot of folk around here keep their landlines because they don’t have access in their homes but their cell phones work elsewhere. So, because of that precaution, I am without service. But generally, it has been a very good thing so I am fine with it.

    Liked by 1 person

  48. Ooh, and the big field of wildflowers right next to my grandfather’s house. I used to play hide-n-seek with the neighborhood kids there when we’d be visiting.

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  49. The old Newberry’s store in downtown Spencer, IA, where the wood floors creaked and they had a mechanical horse I could sit on. Seems like I can still smell that store, it had a very unique, old-time ambiance.

    Liked by 2 people

  51. Ah, sounds like DJ has been in the area to check out Winchester and stopped by the Kamiah hardware store. The squeaky wood floors, the old but not musty smell….the ambiance. Reminds me of the five and dime back in the day.

    Like

  52. Ok since the rule has already been broken:
    Swimming at the neighborhood swimming pool and taking swim lessons. I went from a tadpole to a shark in one summer!
    Neighborhood park program. We played games, learned songs, and the last night of the program we had a bonfire and made s’mores!
    Catching fireflies in an old pickle jar
    Swimming in our pool in the backyard at night…bats would swoop over our heads!
    Camping trips with cousins
    Trips to my great uncle’s farm in Sidney OH….oh the joy of homemade ice cream on a hot summer evening…Uncle Bud even let us take turns cranking the handle!
    Cooking out on the charcoal grill in the back yard and the neighbors all gathering together for an impromptu supper….

    Liked by 3 people

  54. Another thing that we loved to do as kids was to climb the apple tree by my father’s chicken house. We could get up on the roof that way and then jump off of it. It was jarring to the feet, but no one ever broke anything. It seems like a crazy thing to do, now. I think the last big spanking I got was one time I was up on that little structure involved in a pine cone battle. I had been told not to throw pine cones, and should have done as told. My pine cone hit a younger girl in the eye. That was not good.

    Does anyone else recall their last spanking?

    Liked by 1 person

  56. For me it was always going to the Fair. We lived 20 miles from town, but I was in 4h and would raise a steer to sell at the fair. They had a small girls dorm, so I could stay all four days. I would show my steer and then sell it on the last day, sad.

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  57. I’ll stick to Peter’s original QoD wording — using the word “memory”; singular — and say that though I have several things I fondly remember from my childhood summers, one fave was going into town as a family to frequent “the rootbeer stand.” (Although not too frequently that its specialness wore off. ) We’d get rootbeer in mugs, or ice cream cones, or that old standby, the rootbeer float. Yum. 🙂 They’d have good deals on ice cream and floats during “June Dairy Days.”

    Liked by 2 people

  58. Backtracking to a few items from the weekend thread:

    Castilian Spanish. That seems vaguely familiar, now that I think of it. I’d probably heard it before, but could only think of the terminology for what is called “Latin Spanish.”

    Castilian reminds me of a piece of sheet music I have in my intermediate piano student files. A composer I once met, Carol Klose, who is now deceased, wrote a piece entitled “Castilian Dreamer.” It’s got a cool cover; see here: https://www.jwpepper.com/Castilian-Dreamer/5852009.item#.W3IJyvlKi70

    There’s a part in the music that sounds a lot like guitar harmonics. Pretty cool piece, but in a summer sultry kind of way, if that makes sense. Slow and contemplative overall, but with some interesting tempo changes in a couple places.

    Most of the recordings I found of the piece on YouTube are too fast and too heavy in the right hand accompaniment. This is the best version I found on YT that matches the composer’s intentions and brings out the left hand melody nicely against the understated harmony.

    Liked by 1 person

  59. Kizzie, I’m glad you and Nightingale got that CRV. Well done! I’ve never purchased a vehicle without either my dad’s or husband’s help. You made a wise choice.

    Liked by 1 person

  60. Hubby wasn’t able to go walking up on our neighbor’s pasture (something he has a standing invitation to do) while he was having his hip trouble, but he is able to again now.

    This morning was quite foggy, and when he came back from his walk up there (where he walks up our hilly land to the south of our house, then gets to the fence line and steps over it into our neighbor’s pasture), he told us about an intriguing encounter he had up there today.

    After he stepped over the fence, he could see something looming up ahead in the fog. He stopped, trying to figure out what it was, and discovered it was a lone fawn standing there eating grass. It was something like 20 or 30 feet from husband.

    Then the fawn noticed hubby, stared, went back to eating, looked up again, started slowly moving closer to hubby…

    Hubby stood — almost breathlessly, I imagine; I was spellbound and probably nearly breathless hearing him tell the story — and kept watch the fawn inch closer.

    It got to a distance where hubby, if he would only step maybe two steps toward the fawn, would be able to touch it.

    But he didn’t move, and the fawn decided at that point that he’d checked out the strange creature from a close-enough distance; it turned then and headed back into the foggy shroud.

    Fascinating to hear that story as the sun’s rays were just beginning to pierce through the fog. We live in such a beautiful area, and to get to experience wildlife like that (not all of it is so neat like that, though 😉 ) is one of the blessings we get in the rural Midwest.

    Liked by 7 people

  61. I had a productive day yesterday, though I try not to do too much on Sundays. I got some ideas for music to compose for my newest student, and when inspiration strikes, I like to go to it so I don’t forget what I had in mind.

    I composed two 16-measure pieces, one for just right hand with syncopated rhythms and jazzy eighth notes, and one for just left hand with quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. Easy intervals with more advanced rhythms to support his strengths and build his areas of weakness.

    Then I composed a 32-measure piece on the grand staff, in which he uses both hands, but usually only one note at a time.

    I was excited to be able to get these ideas down on paper in one afternoon. Composing is getting easier to do in shorter periods now than it once was.

    Liked by 3 people

  64. Oh root beer stands! We could get a hot dog and a frosty mug of root beer…that was fun. The one closest to our house was Dog n Suds…..I can still recall the heady smells sitting there in the backseat with my sisters!
    Husband’s flight is delayed…I have to drive with daughter to DIA late this evening….how I hope it doesn’t get delayed more than it is now…it is going to be a late night…ugh! ✈️

    Like

  65. My husband and I were coming back from church yesterday, and going through a residential neighborhood (we’d gone through a drive-thru and thus gone a slightly different route than our usual one), and I looked over and saw a fenced backyard with two bucks in it. The far one looked like it was wandering out again, through an open portion of the far fence (a gate? a path between yards?), but the one nearest us looked like it was watching us. They weren’t huge animals, just yearlings or two-year-olds, but they had several tines on each antler and were a pretty sight, and unexpected in a backyard. I wondered what the homeowner thought!

    Today we found the last two boxes of things we had been “missing” since the move. They were among my husband’s tools, as I had decided they must be, having looked everywhere else. But my favorite bowl (green and blue glass, fluted) was among the missing items, and so I did hope they would show up. And he couldn’t find his small stereo, which was also found today, in the second box. (He never did find the tool he was looking for, so he can’t put together the thing he was going to assemble for me.)

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  66. Nancy Jill, my husband remembers going to Dogs n Suds as a little boy, in his pajamas, with his parents and his sister . . . and their schnauzer. They would order an “arf and arf” for the dog.

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  67. We didn’t have Sonic or anything like that near us, probably because in Phoenix no one wants to sit in a car and order. On vacation one year we went to an A & W’s, but elected to go through the drive-thru window. Dad ordered slushies for all of us, and then we had this exchange:

    Mom: Remember, no ice.
    Dad (to window): No ice.
    Cashier: Got it. No ice. (A minute later.) Sir, was that slushies with no ice?

    We all had a huge laugh about that one. We all drank water or soda straight from the faucet or the can, and didn’t want ice in our sodas. But we sure did want it in our slushies!

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  69. Mumsee, we threw out the rocks and other debris we found. I did hear crying from the trash can later, and was a bit puzzled but thought I imagined it.

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  73. Nancyjill, I am an expert now at reading the bus from the Denver airport. Used to be that I could ride the bus nd then walk to their home, though they usually met me at the bus stop. Their new home though, they have to pick me up at the bus stop.

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