75 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-29-18”

  5. Happy anniversary!

    I had to refill my prescription eyedrops this week which normally cost $1800 for 3 months — yes, that’s right, shocking isn’t it? — because they do not come in a generic formula. Now that my deductible kicked in for this year, I ‘only’ paid $93.

    I’m also learning how to ration the drops to make them last nearly twice as long.

    At some point I may not be able to afford them, though. Crazy drug prices.

    Liked by 4 people

  7. Happy anniversary, AJ! May you be blessed with another wonderful year of marriage that draws you closer together, more understanding of one another and more delighted in each other and with a surer and stronger foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    Liked by 5 people

  11. Morning! What a beautiful butterfly!! And Happy Anniversary AJ and Cheryl….may our bless your day and every day ❤️
    The temps feel a tad bit warmer this morning. We had yet another gathering last night at the neighbor’s “house under concstruction”….it was freezing so we scooted inside the garage area with a propane heater….we ended it all a bit early as we were all still cold but the laughter and fellowship was warming to the soul….
    Well Janice if I were visiting my Mom I would be somewhat close to WV but I am not there yet…not sure when I will be going out…now if you ever travel west let me know! 😊
    Dj I had to look for a “dot” in that number thinking “oh that has to be 18.00” …wow wow wow….

    Liked by 3 people

  15. It’s a butterfly that landed on Cheryl’s arm all by itself. It was while we were at Hershey Gardens in the butterfly atrium. 🙂

    I bought her matching earrings, and maybe a necklace too.

    Liked by 8 people

  16. Meanwhile, back at the Presidio of Monterey army base, they’re playing revile at 7 am on Saturday morning.

    No worries, the seagulls have been squawking since 6.

    I expect the Star Spangled Banner at 8, but maybe not on a weekend?

    I’d forgotten all this! Lol

    Liked by 4 people

  17. Happy anniversary!

    I was living in Ukiah the day you married and had just taken our firstborn to UCLA for his freshman year.

    The world changed for us a lot that fall.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Depending on the direction of the wind, we can hear Taps on some nights coming from the military housing bases in town. They apparently sometimes play (all this is recorded music, unfortunately) revile, too, but I’ve never heard that.

    I need to go out and check to see what was done yesterday on the house. I got home after dark last night so I couldn’t really see much. And they did say it was one of their slower days.

    Guys originally thought they’d be wrapped up by Thursday or Friday (this week). That clearly hasn’t happened, but then again when they make these projections I never take them seriously anymore 🙂 Meanwhile, rain arrives Tuesday-Wednesday …

    From what I can tell, there’s plenty left to do, including ALL the windows and other trim. Because that’ll all be by hand, I suspect it will be time consuming in itself.

    My second awning bid from yesterday came in even higher than the first. And I thought the first one was really high. Maybe I’m being unrealistic. I’m still going to get some more estimates. Considering these prices are for the old-style, simple, fixed canvas-type awnings, I can’t imagine what the new-fangled techno-motorized ones must cost.

    Everything is so expensive!

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  19. When we were in Tucson, we were a couple of miles from Davis-Monthan AFB. We could hear reveille at 7AM if there were no other city noises.

    Spell check didn’t like my spelling of “revelie”, and evidently, Michelle’s changed it to “revile”. I suppose someone who wants to sleep in would revile reveille. Why do we still use French spellings?

    Liked by 2 people

  22. Nineteen years ago? We had just moved here after retiring from the Army. First was in college in Pensacola and coming home for summers to work. Second was finishing high school and working on a ranch. Third was finishing high school as well. Fourth had some ways to go. We had several foster children. Life has moved along.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. Nineteen years ago? I was living in Chicago, still single. My mother, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law were all still alive; my sister had only one of her children; my husband was married with two children in the early years of schooling.

    I have tried several times to say happy anniversary to AJ and the real Cheryl, 🙂 but it won’t let me.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Wow, that time it finally did. Even had a computer reboot in there, and it still didn’t let me. But when I got on here again and saw lots of new comments, I figured it must be working (assuming it was a blog issue).

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  25. Happy Anniversary, AJ and the real Cheryl! And may you have many more to come.
    I love what you did with the blog coloring and the butterfly! It’s striking! And what a sweet idea to give the Mrs. a butterfly necklace and earrings to match. :–)

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Nineteen years ago I was homeschooling, working in the preschool, and caring for my mom. I may have been making designer foot cookies for my brother to use in his pharma sales work for prescription athlete’s foot medicine. And sometime I worked at the voting polls on election days. I am not sure of the years I did what.

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  28. Nineteen years ago, about this time, people were worried about the Y2K problem, when computers and other systems that had been programmed to work on the last two digest would not work, throwing the world into chaos.
    I took $500 out of the bank so I would have that much cash in case everything went haywire. I didn’t much believe it, and it didn’t happen, but I was partly prepared.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Chas, I bought a few extra of protein items I’d eat anyway (chili and peanut butter). I was invited to a New Year’s Eve party with my Bible study, and I said I could go only if someone could host me overnight. It simply was not safe to drive into a Chicago inner-city neighborhood shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve (live gunfire sometimes takes the place of fireworks, and yes, bullets fired in the air do come back down), even on a normal night. Had we had even a power outage with no connection to Y2K on that night, there would have been rioting with fatalities.

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  30. 19 years ago, I was homeschooling 3 daughters, doing daycare in my home, and working part time for home health. My husband worked out of town, coming home every other weekend.

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  33. Hiya, wanderers. Jumping in (I’ll catch up another time on this and previous threads I’ve missed) to THANK YOU for those prayers yesterday. Second Arrow’s wedding day ended up being such a great day in many, many ways. Lots of love and laughter, beauty and joy.

    They didn’t get their outdoor wedding like they’d hoped — the bride and bridesmaids had sleeveless dresses, and the temperature high was low 50s and windy. Even if the weather had been nicer, it still was kind of muddy from the combination of bad flooding the area had experienced a month ago and further subsequent rains in the ensuing weeks.

    The indoor accommodations on site were quite lovely, though, with one building for the ceremony and another for the reception. Sort of a rustic, shabby-chic look with gorgeous chandeliers in the reception hall, and pretty wooden benches in the ceremony building, painted/distressed white.

    I’ll fill in little details of the day and evening here and there over the next several weeks, I suppose. There’s so much to tell! 🙂 Just not much time right now.

    I am going to tell this, though, because it’s on my mind today, and is a testimony to God’s provision, and how His protective hand is on us so much when we don’t realize it.

    After the dance ended (in the reception hall), and we were clearing our stuff out and packing up vehicles to head back to the motel, my husband told me that at one point that evening, he had gone back down to the building in which daughter and son-in-law had been married so that he could retrieve something left behind, or check to make sure nothing had been forgotten in there, or something.

    When he stepped into the building where the wedding had been, he could smell gas. Someone called authorities, they came and checked out the building, and a gas leak was discovered.

    When we left the reception hall at the end of the night, the doors to the building where the wedding had occurred were open to air it out. That was the first I knew of the problem that had developed there while most of us, dancing the night away, had been blissfully unaware of the gas leak where we all, about 175 people, had been gathered only a few hours before.

    Someone later remarked it’s a good thing the bride and groom did not include candle lighting as part of their ceremony…

    Praising God for His loving protection.

    Liked by 5 people

  35. Glad the wedding went so well, 6 arrows. Now you can collapse ! lol

    I had a somewhat eventful day with Carol. Maybe more on that later.

    But I we did look up one of my old childhood addresses & the church we went to when I was little. The apartment was a quaint Spanish style, probably built around the same time as my house was is my guess, on a narrow residential street just below Hollywood Blvd.

    It’s a strong Orthodox Jewish neighborhood so there also were quite a few folks walking in full garb to and from Temple, this being the Sabbath. (Christmas tree lots were scarce there, my mom told me later as I was growing up.)

    There are 2 more addresses where we lived we lived that are in the same neighborhood, I’ll look those up next time. 🙂 Fun to see that what appears to be the original building we lived in is still there. The entire street, very narrow, is filled with quaint, old Spanish stucco homes. Charming. And I can see where my mom and dad, both recently transplanted Iowa natives, would have been smitten with the ambiance and distinct “California” architecture.

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  39. Home!

    It’s raining!

    Cat is totally miffed. She’s been stuck in the house for nearly 60 hours and now it’s wet outside.

    Except, she just jumped on the suitcase and it fell over, so she’s run off!

    Fun day. We ate breakfast with a guy I knew in the UCLA band and whom I’ve not seen in 40 years. He’s a retired air traffic controller and confirmed Sully IS how it goes. 🙂

    The other was my husband’s college roommate. We stopped there for lunch and had a wonderful 3 hour lunch. Haven’t seen them in 15 years.

    It’s always interesting to drive through Silicon Valley. The buildings look like something from Sci-Fi movies and you can see all sorts of exotic cars. Our friend drives a Volt.

    A wonderful, nostalgic, trip.

    Liked by 3 people

  40. Sadly, I know one family that moved to AZ after the husband left a good job due to all the Y2K stuff. They never really recovered financially or in any other way for that matter. Lots of people made money sensationalizing the possibilities.

    We had our youngest in her last year of high school. One was in college and one was married with a baby under one. Our youngest grandbaby just turned one a few days ago. That is a pretty good spread.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. 19 years ago was a very dark time in my life. I was just beginning my teens, and my mental problems were beginning, so that large portions of that time and the following years is blanked out because my obsessive fears about not being able to be saved consumed everything, causing me to spend hours repeating the same prayers to try to stop the paralyzing panic. I do remember the Y2K programming fiasco because ATI picked up on it and offered a survival package to its families, containing kerosene lanterns and burners, and even a small generator, for a substantial fee of course. My parents got it and never used it. It would have been unsafe to use in the house in any case as both gas powered generators and kerosene burners produce significant amounts of carbon monoxide. But on New Year’s Eve, when the rest of the family were downstairs having a Y2K party and my father flipped the main breaker at midnight as a joke, I was upstairs with my fears, begging God to save me. I laughed less then. I was too sad and afraid to enjoy things and usually ended up begging for forgiveness if I forgot myself and had a good time.

    That was a dark place to go in my memory. I no longer walk in that fear, although sometimes it tries to rear its ugly head when I am worn out and a little depressed. But never has it become as bad as it was in those years. I still carry the scars and they will always ache a little, but the deadly wounds have been healed in the hope of Jesus Christ.

    Liked by 4 people

  42. Nineteen years ago I was in my 2nd year of grad school. We lived in Iowa then. And I remember Y2K and all the hype. A computer programming friend told us not to worry, and we believed him.

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  43. Well, I’m behind on reading comments, so I had better jump in here now to say. . .

    Happy 19th Anniversary, AJ and Cheryl!

    Are ya gonna party like it’s 1999? (Excuse me if someone else has said that already.)

    Nineteen years ago we were living in a different town, but beginning to make plans to buy a house so we could take care of my MIL. We had no idea we would end up here in Stafford.

    *******
    Nightingale got a little special recognition at the Cub Scout pack meeting this afternoon for her creative work in making the scarecrow. She did most of the work herself. She was embarrassed by the attention, but pleased.

    Liked by 2 people

  44. Yay for Nightingale.

    I don’t remember making much preparation for Y2K, guess I was the optimist. I spent NY Eve that year at the Port of LA where there was an outdoor, dockside “drumming” festival. The city boasted that they’d have 2,000 drummers in the circle. But only about 60 showed up.

    Heavy security, though, that I also remember.

    It was a strange night in that we had powerful Santa Ana winds that swept through the harbor, just kind of gave everything an eerie feeling. My friends and I didn’t stay too long.

    Liked by 1 person

  45. I may have mentioned that Carol is having increasing problems with mobility (and with things like just getting her legs and feet in and out of my Jeep, I now have to push and shove her feet into the space in front of the passenger seat once she’s seated). Today was to be a simple outing, just lunch, basically, and she wanted to go to Jersey Mike’s on Hollywood Boulevard.

    First, because I picked her up at 10:30 a.m. and neither of us was hungry yet, she indulged me with a little nostalgia tour to see my first family ‘home’ after I was born and the church my parents began taking me to when I was little. They’re both in the general neighborhood where she stays.

    She rather suddenly announced afterward that she “had” to go to the bathroom, like now. She’s had growing problems with incontinence, partly due to a powerful diuretic she needs to be on, so she wears ‘pull-ups’ all the time now, just in case.

    So off we go to the sandwich shop but by the time we found a parking space, got her and her walker unloaded, and made our way into the restaurant, they said their restroom was “being cleaned” so we’d have to wait about 3 minutes.

    We ordered our sandwiches and got a table. That must have taken 10 minutes. By that time Carol’s bathroom needs were pretty urgent, so I asked again how much longer, they said “1 minute.” I said it was urgent.

    Carol made her way back there, knocked on the door, cleaning guy told her no, not ready yet, she’d have to wait.

    Well, too late by then. We ate and later made do with putting a newspaper and plastic bag on my car seat for protection when it was time to leave.

    But before that …

    As we were eating our sandwiches, I noticed a young African American girl and what appeared to be her grandmother (who said she was her mom) walk in the “back” door that leads off of Hollywood Boulevard. The door was in my direct line of sight.

    As soon as they got inside the door, the older (52) woman falls against the wall and slides down to the floor. I leaped up and ran back there, asking if she needed help, to which she nodded.

    I called 911 and went back and forth with LAFD for a while (the woman at first was ambivalent about having someone come out, said she felt just “overheated” and maybe dizzy, but she was not getting up from her sitting position from the floor which told me something was clearly amiss); I finally put her on the phone with the Fire Dept as I got her a cup of water which she’d requested, and they arrived about 10 minutes later, checked her out and took her to the hospital.

    By that time Carol had taken her pain and “stress” medications so she felt well enough to request a ride before I took her home. We went through Griffith Park, cruised Hollywood and Sunset, went a ways into Beverly Hills and took a trip down Rodeo Drive’s fancy shopping district, came back to Hollywood proper by way of Santa Monica Blvd. when I finally dropped her off.

    (Then, getting gas before hopping on the Hollywood Fwy, an Asian man with a Colorado plate approached me asking how he could get closer to the Hollywood sign which loomed over us; I gave him some instructions to the road that would get him into pretty good view and off he went.) Finally I made it home by around 4.

    House progress: Cream trim put on the front porch, front door and front windows stripped of their plastic (sorry mumsee) so they are usable again but those still need painting. Meanwhile, neighbor kid (30-something) came over to talk, his brother (again) is in jail, this time for back-to-back DUIs. Could be serious, but they’ve been through so much with him and his drug and alcohol problems that maybe this will somewhat keep him “safe” and off the streets).

    After all that I walked the dogs. And decided I was DONE for the night.

    Oh, except rain is coming Tuesday, thanks to a hurricane in Mexico, so maybe a halt in painting? Of course.

    Liked by 1 person

  48. I took a walk this evening and had some good conversations with those I met along the way. I was able to tell several that I had been praying for them. As I walk and go by homes here, especially if I know that someone is gone, I pray for them. I met a few that had returned and was able to tell them what I had been praying. God is good. One gal that I had prayed for, we walked briskly for a while, I hadn’t even known that she was gone, but God knew.

    Liked by 1 person

  54. It ain’t morning no more.
    I watched the Gamecock/Wildcat game until sometime in the third quarter. Then I went to bed. Don’t know what the final score was.
    The Gamecocks can move the ball. But they can’t stop the other team.

    Boilermakers were ticked about being called a “Pillow fight”. So they beat Cornhuskers 42-28. I suspect their problem is defense too.

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  66. 19 years ago I had a two-year-old and was a size 2/4. I weighed 114 pounds.
    Today I have a 21-year-old.
    I spent New Year’s Eve at home with the 2-year-old and a husband with the flu.

    The other night in my class we were talking about our Big Why. Mine is outside of myself. I don’t have anything I really want or really want to do. I have a couple of things others would like to do that I would like to be able to provide, but finally, I am fairly happy just where I am.

    Liked by 4 people

  68. Responding to comments from Friday (2nd Arrow’s wedding day):

    First of all, to Roscuro, RKessler, NancyJill, Kizzie, Cheryl, Janice, Michelle, Kare, DJ, Jo, and everyone else who prayed, thank you again so much. I thought of you all — the whole blog family — a time or two over the course of the day, knowing without a doubt that prayers would be going up after my prayer request, and seeing how the day got better and better as it went on. I don’t know if saying “I could feel your prayers” is the right way to express it, but I knew God was certainly hearing those prayers, and was bringing about beautiful things.

    Some additional comments:

    Cheryl: But she will blossom into her beauty as she prepares for her groom, and moments of today will be lovely ones you will remember forever.

    Definitely true. So many sweet moments that I’ll share with y’all sometime. 🙂

    Chas: There ain’t no wrong thread for a prayer request.

    I’m smiling at that comment. 🙂 You are so right.

    DJ: 6 Arrows, blessings to you and your daughter today. And Janice: Blessings for a sweet time despite the obstacles.

    Thank you both. Indeed we were blessed.

    RKessler: Having been through 4 [weddings] with my daughters, after the first I begged them all to elope, and even offered a cash incentive. And NancyJill: …and like RK…I offered them money to run off and get married…

    LOL! I’m going to file away that good advice for future use. 😉

    Kim: Eventually, it was time for us to leave in a horse-drawn carriage to the Grand Hotel. I threw up in the flower bed at the reception and ripped the zipper out of the dress.

    ROFL!! Your whole post was funny, but I just about split a gut picturing the flower bed scene and the zipper-ripping. 😀 Not fun for you the day of, but thank you for the hilarious after-the-fact share. 😉

    Thanks, friends. It was a blessing to come home and read that thread. 🙂

    Liked by 4 people

  69. Y2K: We didn’t do anything to prepare for it. Just didn’t think anything bad would really happen.

    As far as September 29, 1999, not sure what I was doing on that exact day, but we would have been at the start of our second year of homeschooling at that point. (We weren’t homeschooling year-round at that point like we do now.)

    If I had been online in those years, my moniker might have been “3 arrows.” Those arrows were ages 9, 6, and 2, and we were thinking that those would be the only ones.

    June 2000 we changed our minds about only having three. God graciously gave us three more after that.

    We are blessed.

    Liked by 2 people

  70. Reading about Y2K made me think back that it was while we were away for our timeshare. I was concerned that we mght have trouble getting groceries, but felt I had to trust in God. My brother had a really big stash of canned foods. I was relieved when the drama fizzled.

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  72. I didn’t think Y2K would come to anything, either. I did a little bit of planning “just in case.” But one of my brothers was really obsessed with it and had all sorts of horror stories, and he prepared obsessively (but then, I found out in recent years he follows Gothard–connection?). He named all sorts of far-out-there possibilities, including that gas stations would be unable to operate, and people would use what little gas they already had in their cars, and so gas wouldn’t be available for lawn mowers . . . and grass would grow tall and rats would have more places to hide and might take over whole neighborhoods. So he bought a push mower so his own property could stay rat-free. (Roscuro, please tell me that was a Gothard idea, if it was.)

    This brother bought “raw food” and such for himself, for Mom, and for a missionary or two. (And one wonders if things will really be in such dismal shape, how are 20-centurt spoiled Americans going to be able to make grain edible? Wouldn’t cereals and canned foods and a manual can opener be way more practical?) Or at least he ordered the foodstuffs . . . everything ended up being back ordered, and I don’t know if it ever arrived.

    A couple of years later, my publisher had published a missionary biography, and the missionary was meeting the editors, and somehow (maybe because of my last name, or maybe because of his home city, I don’t remember) it came out that he knew this brother. And he told me, “He helped me prepare for Y2K.” It was all I could do not to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

    We have some “conspiracy theory” folks in my family, too.

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  73. Y2k, husband was in computers and he heard both sides with the weight of it that the potential was there. We were ready to retire anyway, with a desire to be back in Idaho. We figured we would be here with our wood stove and our large pantry filled and available to help neighbors if it came to anything and the ability to eat our food if it didn’t. Figuring God used Joseph, He could use us if needed. We knew people who prepared a lot more than we did and people who though it all foolishness. Everybody seems to have gotten through just fine. We were not hurt by preparing and learned a lot of interesting things in the process. I did not even know there were stores of food available like that. We bought ours from the Mormons. All things we have used with relish.

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