67 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-8-18”

  1. Morning all, welcome to my Saturday. I was able to Skype or Facetime with two of my children. I actually saw little Lucy and she looked at me. Our first conversation.

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  2. Hi, Jo. What a blessing!

    That group of four ducks is a wood duck summer family. I’m guessing two ducklings survived. Ducklings have a high mortality rate since they are out and about as soon as they hatch, and they are very tasty. Having seen four in the pond repeatedly, it would seem to be a family of four. They are now in eclipse plumage, not beautiful as they are most of the year. They only molt their wing feathers once a year (so their wings look the same year round), but they molt their body feathers twice, and they are colorful from October to June. The male has a red eye, and the female has white feathers around her eye, so it would seem that the bird next to last in this line is the adult male, and the two birds in front are females, probably an adult female and a juvenile female, and the bird last in line would then be a juvenile male.

    Wood ducks nest in tree holes, and you will sometimes see adult birds up in trees. (I have seen them only on low branches, but I have seen them there.) Their feet are webbed like other duck’s, but they also are equipped for branches, which isn’t true of most ducks. When the babies are about a day old, they tumble out of their nest hole (which might be up to 100 feet up), and then they follow their mother to water, never returning to the nest.

    I haven’t seen these birds for a few weeks, but I hope I can see them on the pond next month, in color, and no longer camouflaged!

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  4. Good morning!

    6 Arrows, I saw an article on Facebook and the author’s bio shows she does a lot with music such as teaching children. I think you might want to look her up. Laura

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  5. Con’t. . .
    Laura Vosika
    It looks like she may have done a practice book for young learners. I have thought you might so something like that. She wrote an article about Finding Time for south

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  6. Con’t. . .my phone is having troubles as you can tell. . .

    Southern Writers online blog. Maybe you can find that to see her bio.

    I hope everyone has a good day. It looks like good weather for Atlanta. I will stay home and try to do some chores and Bible lesson reviews.

    Hurry up and make your selections on Pigskin Picks this a.m. The stakes are high and the winner’s bragging rights are golden.

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  10. It’s Saturday but I have to cover a 10 a.m. protest (against a coming homeless shelter in town) so between going out there for that and then writing the story at home, Saturday will come and go pretty quickly. I’m hoping it won’t take long, but it’ll at least take 4 maybe 5 hours total.

    I’ll get some overtime for working today but then plan to ask for Thursday & Friday off for prior Saturday shifts I never got paid for. So I am hoping for a short week ahead followed by a long, 4-day weekend.

    I have no idea where the house painting stands, the guys apparently arrived late and took off very early yesterday and I haven’t heard if they’ll be back today or not. Probably not, is my guess, they seem to be hitting a burn-out phase. Hoping a couple days off will revive them because … I really don’t want to live too long with plastic sheeting over all my windows and the front door.

    I finished watching the new Jack Ryan series last night and have to say it was really well done. I was one of those who never read enough of the Clancy books to develop a hard-and-fast impression of the Ryan character so I wasn’t always comparing this new version of the character on screen with the one in the books or even in previous movies (which seemed to be the main criticism of the show I kept seeing).

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  11. I’ve read the list of species that eat small ducklings, and it’s a long one. Obviously predators will vary by the area where they live, but raccoons, house cats, alligators, large fish, owls, snakes, and several more made the list. Basically anything with a large enough mouth to swallow it or the ability to dismember prey. Mother ducks aren’t notably fierce, and the ducklings might range rather widely because they search for their own food from the beginning. Really, the ducks’ best defense against predation is for the mother to lay lots of eggs so that some survive, and for the ducklings to grow large quickly and decrease the number of predators able to eat them. I would guess that they might learn wariness from seeing a brother or sister eaten in front of them, too. If you see your sister eaten by a snapping turtle that you didn’t see until it got her, you now know a little something about snapping turtles and it’s that much less likely to get you.

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  16. Do any of you call your spouse Baby or Babe?

    Hubby and I never did that. We were Honey or Sweetheart to each other, and at some point in the last few years he had started calling me Dear at times.

    It sounds strange to me to hear ladies calling their husbands or boyfriends Babe or Baby. Do any of you ladies here use that name for your sweetheart?

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  18. My son and his wife use babe for each other quite a bit.

    We just bathed the cat. He got sprayed by a skunk last night. We slept with Vick’s Vaporub under our noses. We needed to wash him so that he doesn’t rub the smell all over the shop and get it on our stuff. He’s such a good cat. Meowed a few times, but basically let us put him in the water and scrub him down. Once he was out and wrapped in a towel, he was purring away. Now he’s just drying off in the bathroom until it’s warm enough or he’s dry enough to go back outside.

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  19. Kizzie, to me, calling the man in one’s life “Babe” or “Baby” would be insulting. Vice versa not necessarily so, and my husband occasionally calls me that. (It’s not really my thing, though. Even as a child, I never went in for “cute.”) My dad called Mom “Sweetheart” and she called him “Honey.” But in my husband’s family, everyone uses “Honey.” And the children get called that occasionally, too. (I called the girls “Sweetie” a few times, but then one of them said she didn’t like it much, so I stopped. But it seems kind of funny to call the kids the same endearment as one uses for one’s spouse.)

    When we had been in contact a while, I don’t really remember at what portion of our courtship, my husband-to-be started calling me Honey in his e-mails. I’d never had a boyfriend and I was 43, and it sounded fake to use the term, but I knew I’d get used to it, and so I just went ahead and started using the term for him, too (though not as quickly as he did). He actually calls me that more often–far more often, I think–than he calls me by name. I probably use his name more than I use endearments.

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  20. Elvera and I only call each other by our names, except maybe “No dear” or some such.
    And I’ve never shortened to “Vera”.

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  23. DJ, I’m reading (and mostly enjoying), View from the Top of the Mast. With all the mentions of San Pedro, it must have been you who mentioned/recommended it when I bought it a few years back.

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  24. Ah, yes, the book by Bungy 🙂

    Giving a cat a bath is really risky, I’ve heard. I’ve never yet attempted it.

    It’s been an interesting morning, I had to cover a sidewalk protest (over the local of a proposed homeless shelter in town). It was loud and lively, lots of motorists adding to the din as they honked going by (maybe 300 people there?).

    At one point I’d crossed the street to talk to a handful of counter protesters and during that interview, all of a sudden I hear my name (first and last) being YELLED through a bullhorn as a woman challenged me to COME COVER THE REAL STORY (on their side). Well, I’d been over there since before it began, for more than an hour interviewing numerous people, and had only just crossed over to get another opinion or two. Odd to hear your name yelled through a bullhorn on a busy street.

    Earlier I’d heard that I’d been mentioned on a local talk radio show that has been covering the same story so this morning I listened to a recording of yesterday’s show. (These are 2 guys who are like Rush on steroids; let’s just say you never want to get on their radar.) Nothing too awful, but the one host, talking about the story I’d written earlier, reads the headline and then my byline: “by XXX XXXX (my name), whoever SHE is” with a dismissive snarl. Actually kind of funny, I laughed.

    Indeed. Move along, please pay no attention to me, I’m nobody, not important enough to chew up and spit out like they’re doing to our councilman. Their worst fury, though, is always saved for the mayor of LA whom they refer to as Mayor Yoga Pants.

    It’s a crazy environment we live in anymore.

    OK, now to write the protest story …

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  25. Cheryl – I kind of feel the same way about using Baby or Babe for a man. But I guess the younger generation who tend to do that don’t think of it in the same way.

    As for calling children Honey – yup, I do that, too (so did Hubby, IIRC). Sometimes that would get a reply of “Which Honey?” I tend to call Chickadee Sweetie, especially in my texts and emails to her. (And that’s what she often calls The Boy.)

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  26. One year ago from yesterday was the day Hubby came home from the first hospital, and we thought he was on the mend, although he was still feeling very weak.

    One year ago today, he had the stroke and ended up in another hospital.

    It still amazes me that he had that stroke but recovered so quickly. It was the bleeding from the bladder that kept him in the hospital.

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  27. I got you babe. I think it’s been a pretty common term of endearment for both men and women, at least where I’ve grown up ? I don’t think it’s generational, in other words, but has been around a while.

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  28. My friend calls her daughters “luv,” always has.

    “mama” is another popular term out here for everyone from animals to humans 🙂

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  29. I spent yesterday reading and finished Poppy. Michelle, I am deeply moved. Oswald and Biddy came alive. In this book you showed us OC’s legacy. How their simple ministry bore fruit. This book truly is the companion book to Biddy in many ways. So much grief, yet there is always hope. All of those hours of work were worth it.

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  30. Art calls me Babe sometimes. Down here many people refer to ladies as Dear whether the woman is a waitress in a restaurant, a woman in a doctor’s office, or even some tax clients. My parents never called each other Dear, Honey, or Sugar, etc. so that has always seemed awkward to me. It is funny that sometimes out of habit, Karen will call me Honey and then laugh realizing she was talking to me and not her husband. When son was little I called him Cuddlebug. Husband called him Dude. Later I called him SonOne or as a Spanish teacher called him, Weslesla or some such. Maybe Peter knows if that is Spanish for Wesley? I call people by their names because that was how I grew up referring to people.

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  32. I call Cowboy “Mr. Cows” or “Vaquero!”

    It’s “Miss Tess” or “Purdy (her name before I adopted her) Tess”

    I don’t think my parents ever used those nickname/terms of endearment either, come to think of it.

    “Dear” sounds very formal, very early to mid-1900s, and sort of southern-y too, I suppose.

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  35. I don’t think Mr P and I don’t call each other cutesy names. Now that Miss Maddie is around we call each other Mimi and Grandpa.
    My dad called me Baby Doll and a bunch of other names I won’t repeat. My mother called me Angel Baby. I despise that. Ex husband called me sweetness and hon.
    Oh. Mr. P might call me wifey. Hmmmm. I am going to have to give this some thought
    I called him in here to ask. He said he calls me hey babe or hey you. He doesn’t know.

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  37. More plastic is going up on my house and even on the side gate this afternoon. Plastic and blue tape everywhere. Not many windows I can even see out of now. Front door is sealed shut.

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  39. DJ, I guess you could call this your ‘blue period.’ You are making an artistic statement. Oh, well, could be interpreted that you have gone from red to blue during an election season.

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  42. Come to think of it, I think Hubby only called me Dear when he was being serious about something. I thought it odd that he started occasionally calling me that after so many years of not calling me that.

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  43. Catching up with ya’ll on this late Sat evening….hoping everything is smelling better at Kare’s house. We had to de skunk our dog a few years ago. I had that stench in my nose for days!! And then there was the time my husband was on an early morning run on Cheyenne Mountain. He rounded a corner of the trail and was met with a furry black and white critter….shoes, socks, shorts and shirt were all thrown in the trash and he soaked in the tub of Dawn/Peroxide/baking soda for an hour…what a day that was!
    My dear husband usually just calls me NancyJill….no nicknames….
    And I just call him “Smith”…. 😊

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  45. I’ve had dogs sprayed by skunks but cats are *usually* too smart to get that close to the critters.

    Dogs always want to chase them. And that never ends well.

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  46. Speaking of critters, know what that one is in the header? It’s a swimming beaver. I was pleased to watch it doing laps (partly underwater) in my little pond.

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  47. Keva has touched noses with a skunk once. No one got hurt or smelly 🙂 Husband was quite worried as he was on the other end of the leash 🙂

    Zeke is a weird cat. More dog like than cat like. He’ll even try to go on runs with husband and the dogs. Husband often ends up carrying him because the cat got too far from home to be trusted to return. Cat still smells skunky this morning, but much better than yesterday. At least he’s not an inside cat.

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  48. Bruchko was nose to nose with a skunk, the skunk sprayed. I thought we would be washing the dog, but the skunk only got my nylon jacket. We threw it out and the smell was gone. They can target and I suppose my jacket looked more like a threat than an eighty pound Airedale did.

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  49. I never knew that a skunk could target.
    Elvera started singing, “I’m saving my coupons to get one of those.” I wonder if any of you know what that means?

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  51. We have a black cat named black cat.

    Honey, Babe, and other terms if endearment.

    We had the funeral for my aunt yesterday. I got to see the new little one again. She has grow from 5 lbs to just over 9 in almost 2 months.

    We went to Albuquerque the day before to pick up her ashes, and spent the rest of the day at the state fair. It is safe to say that a good time was had by all, although Miguel is still trying to recover from all the walking.

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  52. Morning…what in the world is that photo up there? Anyone else see a pig swimming in the water ‘cause that is what I see!! 😊
    There are times when I walk into the room and my husband looks at me and says “how are you this morning my love”….and it does it quite often…so I suppose he does call me something other than my name…I quite like it 💕

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  53. Oh brother…and “he” does it quite often….don’t hire me as a proof reader Michelle!! 😳
    And now I see Cheryl identified that critter as a beaver….what big nostrils they have!! Yikes!

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  55. I have not had a chance to read today’s comments yet. We are at the office where I am working on Bible study lesson reviews for inmates.

    We just had a call that one of our office mates had a stroke. We don’t know much so far. It means I will probably have to do her job for awhile. Everytime I think I may find time to write. . .something goes haywire. I am trying to keep a positive spirit. If you have a moment to pray for Ginger that would be appreciated.

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  56. For those interested — and who can bear it — Rod Dreher has posted (on twitter, you can find it under his account if you’re interested) a YouTube video with interviews of victims detailing priest sex abuse that occurred at a school for deaf-mute children some years ago. Horrifying, I actually had to stop watching after about a minute or two (it’s 12 minutes long).

    ______________________

    The text w/the video: Allegations of sexual abuse at the Provolo Institute School for the Deaf in northwestern Mendoza province. At least 20 children say they were abused by priest Nicola Corradi, priest Horacio Corbacho and three other men, who were arrested in 2016. Dozens of students of the institute in Italy say they were similarly abused for decades, some allegedly by Corradi.
    ________________________

    I’m getting a sickening feeling that this abuse within the Catholic church is entirely more widespread than anyone even could imagine. Evil.

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  59. My father always said, “You can call me anything but late for dinner.” The endearments I grew up hearing my parents occasionally use were dear, honey, and sweetie, and those are the ones I hear my siblings use. My recent landlords, who were my age, called each other babe.

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  60. I’ve used Babe with my kids since the first one was born–it just slipped out of my mouth and has stayed. Without any kids around, I’ve actually called my husband that a few times–which surprised us both. #WatchedSonnyandCheras a kid

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  65. I’d come up with endearments for the children I babysat, like Kiddo or Cuddlebug. I’m sure the prettiest baby in the world will get some as she grows up.

    I had all sorts of nicknames for Misten, like Sweetiepup and Girl Dog.

    My sister, who didn’t like dogs much (Misten would stay in her backyard when I visited) once heard me saying Good night to Misten.

    “Did you just call Misten Honey?”

    “No,” I said truthfully (knowing she wouldn’t approve if she had heard that).

    “Oh.” (Relief on her face.) “What did you call her?”

    “Hon.”

    Her husband started laughing. “You know, like Attila the Hun? Misten the Hun.”

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  66. There was some saying I heard long ago, but can’t remember the exact words to, with the gist being that a child called many little endearments is a well-loved child.

    Cheryl – I call Heidi Girl Dog, too. That started when we also had Kane, a boy dog (although I did not call him Boy Dog, I don’t think, but maybe I did).

    Too bad your sister wouldn’t have approved of your calling Misten Honey. (Wouldn’t it be funny if some day some stray dog comes along and wins her heart? I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening.)

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