47 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-14-18”

  1. Good morning everyone, including Jo.
    I don’t have time to listen to the band now.
    My phone says it’s raining in Greensboro,
    But it isn’t raining here. If it isn’t raining, I will take Elvera to the Adult Center.
    I need to get out and go to the store. I stocked up for the storm, but it’s been a week and we are running out of something to eat.
    Except Cheerios.
    😆

    Liked by 3 people

  4. I love Cheerios and oatmeal, but can no longer eat them. Turns out they were contributing to my stomach challenges (as well as my foray into coffee being a problem) so they are off the table now.

    Jo should be here. Is she sleeping the day away?

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I like a live Christmas tree, or should I say dying? And never could have imagined not having one until, suddenly, it is where we are. We used to go into the mountains to find one. I could not have imagined going to a lot to get one. But there again, it happened. So now I am fine with my little fake tree and going outside to put a few lights on outdoor trees. I miss the fragrance, but that can be managed with a branch or two from outside. I don’t miss the concern of the dry tree and the lights.

    We did have a few live trees so all of these children could experience that, both going to the wilds to get one or two, and to the store to pick up a precut one. It has been fun.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. My environmental side goes both directions. I feel bad about cutting down a tree for such a short time in the house But tree farms grow them for that purpose. I wonder about the waste that goes into making an artificial one, but if I never buy another, that does not continue to be an issue. And I could grow my own, but then I am hesitant to cut them as I see that they have become a home to so many different things.

    That really came home this last summer when we had a very large spruce cut down as it was too close to the power lines for my comfort. Quite a few birds were flying around the next few days as if saying, What? Where is our tree? There are not that many trees on the prairie and we grow them specifically to give the birds and other things a place to rest and eat.

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  7. I can’t seem to smell Christmas trees this year–perhaps my nose is getting older? We’ll buy ours tonight or tomorrow.

    I’ve worked through the same ideas about formerly live trees, Mumsee, and reached the same conclusion: they’re crops.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I can’t eat Cheerios, Life, or oatmeal anymore, either. I’d have a really bad stomachache that lasted most of the day, and it took me a while to figure out it was caused by oats. I had it one day I’d had an extra-large serving of oatmeal and went “Aha!” If I needed confirmation, I had it again a couple weeks later when I ate a bowl of Life cereal without remembering it’s made with oats, too.

    The bird is a Carolina wren. Up north we had the plainer, more aggressive house wren, but we didn’t have this pretty little one. Well, I’m guessing all wrens can get aggressive sometimes, or at least I got this photo because two wrens were chasing each other around (and this was just weeks ago, not nesting season). I got several shots of wrens popping briefly into the open during the chase (but none of the “action” of the chase–that’s hard to catch with erratically flying birds). And then I got a photo of one hiding in the leaves about where yesterday’s yellow-rumped warbler was posed, with just its head and beak showing. 🙂 I don’t know if it was the chaser or the chasee or if they were taking turns, but it stayed in there for sometime.

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  9. We gave up our real Christmas trees the year my allergies made me go into the clinic. Artificial ones have dust and that can be a short-lived issue. I have a pine candle I can light for scent. I seldom do so, since those candles give me a headache. We have a very skinny tree now and it is not as real looking as our last one. We see that one when we go to one of our daughter’s home. It is appropriately huge enough to shelter the gifts one has with four children. The joy for me is the placing and seeing of the ornaments, which have meaning to me. Many were gifts, made by loved ones or bought during vacations or for special occasions.

    We have no shortage of pines were we live. Many boughs are gathered for wreaths and other decorations. We used to just go into the woods to get our trees. One year someone was thinning some beautiful pines that they had planted too close together. We benefitted from their mistake. That may have been the year our first tree (a true Charlie Brown one) flew out of the back of our truck and was driven over several times before we could circle back to get it off the road. That is still a much enjoyed family story. Stories last much longer than the trees that are cut.

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  10. I can’t use candles either, but lots of people think I need them so I get lots of them as gifts. Gradually downsizing through them. Maybe I should light them out on the porch.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Kathaleena, I have a different “driven over” Christmas-tree story.

    My first Christmas living out of my mom’s house, my sister and I were living with a friend, and my sister said she had always wanted a “flocked” tree. (Remember those? You’d buy a live tree and the attendant would, for an extra fee, spray it with a substance that was supposed to look like snow.) We went to a lot owned by a friend of our roommate, and if I recall correctly he ended up not charging us for the tree, which was a real blessing for three young women in entry-level jobs.

    We decided with our younger brother that when Christmas was over, we would take that tree, dump it in our youth pastor’s front yard, and TP his truck. (Pretty much every household in Phoenix owns a pickup truck, especially in those days.)

    Only we couldn’t find a day all three of us siblings could get together until February. So that tree sat (by now undecorated) in a corner of our living room getting more and more dry. Finally the day came, and we put this brittle thing into my brother’s pickup and drove toward the house.

    We hadn’t tied down the tree, and it flew out. A van ran over it. We picked up what was left of the tree, threw it back in the truck, and drove on.

    At our youth pastor’s house we had success in decorating the pickup,and we tossed the tree onto the lawn for good measure. I took a quick photo of our masterpiece, and we drove home without their even coming out and seeing what was going on.

    My sister and I had been back home about two minutes when we heard a “thump” against our front door. (We were in an apartment, and we lived at the top of a set of stairs.) One of us opened the door, and in fell that beat-up tree and handfuls of wadded toilet paper.

    Our youth pastor told us later we would have gotten away with it except I made the mistake of taking a flash photo from the street side, and the flash showed in the house. He looked out the window to see the decorated pickup and to recognize the culprits as we jumped back into my brother’s vehicle.

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  12. Tree stories: skiing in the mountains with one ski to bring home a tree (I guess that we were the original snowboarders). The goat eating one in the garage and dad replacing the boughs with cut ones from different areas. The tree falling off the car in Germany when I was driving with three children and nine months pregnant. The tree tipping over as I was videotaping eldest son as he explained how we had set it up and decorated it with his back to the disaster as it fell. How we learned to tie trees to the ceiling. The immense trees of my childhood compared to the little one we now have. The little one probably has more branches than the immense one.

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  13. My laptop seems to be dying so former photo editors going to see about putting a new hard drive on it for some new life. Massively cheaper than replacing it. I’m typing this on my phone

    Poor tree that got run over! That’s a sad story treeo

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  15. We cut our tree in the national park!!!! They have a fire guard around the town and with a permit one is able to go and cut one tree per family. This gives us a live tree and the park no longer has to cut so many trees and burn them to keep the town safe.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. I got Elvera to the Adult Center and I went to the store.
    My phone says it is raining, but it’s just a fine mist. You have to stay in It a long time to get wet.
    I was praying abut that. Elvera hadn’t been out of the house for a week. She needs to be out some.
    And I am well stocked with cookies, and other stuff, again.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Our National Forest also has tree cutting, but I think each family can get three permits at five dollars per tree. It is a good thing but we live quite some distance from the Forest so have to consider our public school child and his limitations. We used to camp there all the time in the summer, but that is done for now. Maybe in a couple of years we can get back to it but by then the youngers will be old enough to have things to do in town. I suspect they will prefer camping. They always have.

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  19. “The tree tipping over as I was videotaping eldest son as he explained how we had set it up and decorated it with his back to the disaster as it fell.” That’s hilarious – I’d love to see that video!

    Liked by 5 people

  21. Work has been really busy so I got behind reading the views here.

    On the discussion of being in oceans, I’ve been in the Pacific quite a few times, but in the Atlantic only once, at Myrtle Beach. I was amazed at how warm the water was there. The ocean currents are circulating clockwise, so on the Atlantic coast you get warm water in the Gulf Stream, but on the Pacific coast you get cold water in the Alaska Current.

    The water was also calmer at Myrtle Beach. I suppose that’s because it’s shallower. The ocean floor drops off a lot more steeply in California. Floating on my back was a fun experience. I could never do that in California because of the waves.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. On the topic of counting states and countries visited, I don’t count it if I was only in an airport. So I didn’t count New York from 1982 when I changed planes there until 1984 when I actually drove through. Nor Georgia from 1985 to 1988. And I don’t count Germany, though I changed planes there ten years ago on the way to India.

    I’ve traveled pretty widely within the US, lacking only 9 states visited, but not so much beyond. I’ve gone over the border from California into Mexico for a weekend and from Washington into Canada for a day trip, all back in the 80s. Work took me to India once. That’s it.

    Oddly, I’ve lived close to Ontario for over 20 years, seen it across the rivers from Detroit and Sault Ste Marie, but never crossed over to it.

    Did you know that if you travel due south from downtown Detroit, the first foreign country you come to is Canada?

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  25. I enjoyed teasing my dad with that once. Cuba is plausible though it’s not the first country you come to. You’d miss Mexico entirely going due south from Detroit.

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  28. What day is this? I hit the wall, or got too tired to move about 5:30 and fell into bed. I must have gotten up five times in the night and was up for an hour in the middle of the night. I got up at 8 with a terrible headache. It is gone now and I had a great visit with my friend.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. My daughters were wonderful yesterday. Came to the airport with both little ones and were waiting at the end of the tram with Archie enjoying watching the trams or trains. I sang to him and to Lucy. So sweet. We stopped for lunch on the way and then took the little ones home as they had fallen asleep. We went by the store, or coffee shop, and found the other two grands. I am still taller, but only by a bit. Thirteen year old boy didn’t want a hug, but he got a big one.

    Liked by 5 people

  30. On the subject of trees, the Seconds got a new artificial tree this year, to replace the one I bought over a decade ago. The one they got looks more like a real evergreen, and is very tall – Second In-law is over 6 feet tall and Second is within three inches of 6 feet, so everything they get or build is made for big people. Tiny Niece enjoyed decorating so much that she keeps asking if we can hang more ornaments on the tree – she helped me when I hung up my ornaments after I got home. The artificial tree not only looks like an evergreen, its branches also feel prickly like one, which acts as a deterrent for Sixth Nephew, who likes to pull himself up on anything he can hang on to and also seems to think ornaments are fruit for picking (we only hang the less breakable/hazardous ornaments on the lowest branches, having long experience with small relatives at Christmas).

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  31. Jo, I didn’t even change time zones, and I still feel disoriented even though I have been home almost a week.

    Well, I have my marching orders for next semester, as I have just found out where my clinical training area will be. I will be helping with births in the same hospital where I trained in the operating room. Now that I know where I’ll be, I need to find a place to live, among other things that need to be done before the semester starts.

    Liked by 5 people

  32. DJ, your 12:59: my husband is the one who wants all the matching decorative pillows. Our new bed ensemble has two huge ones, two pillow shams for king-sized pillows to go in front of our pillows, and three or four more. I would not have bought all the pieces, though I agree it does look nice.

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  33. We don’t do a tree at all in this little house. When my girls were young, I was out in the national forest with one of the permits getting a tree for the church. It was big. I had to open the tailgate to get it in. The only problem was that the tailgate was broken. You had to climb up and pry one side of the latch open, and then other. I had pried one side open (hubby forgot to tell me he fixed it), with one foot on the bumper and the other in the back of the truck. It knocked me out into a cactus and tore my ACL among other things. I had 3 little girls in the woods with me. I had to have someone else come back and get the tree. It took me 15 years to get the knee fixed.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Beautiful header, Cheryl. I love those colors.

    Art is still in recovery. I am in the room he should soon be transported to. He did okay but is discouraged that they only did one side. I think that was wise since it took a long time due to Art’s weight. He is suppose to use a C-Pap machine which he is unaccustomed to wearing so he is not happy about that. His oxygen is low. We are in the new tower so the overnight facility is nice. Thanks to all who are praying for us.

    Liked by 8 people

  37. Janice, continued prayers for you and Art…and yes…keep us updated…. ❤️
    Oh RK…that sounds painful!! Ouch!
    Dj my husband hates the pillows (and quilts) on our bed…every night I hear him throwing them against the wall…but then he turns on my side of the electric blanket and I forgive him! 😜

    Liked by 2 people

  38. The new photo was taken a few days ago, when we went to a nearby town for lunch and to buy something for our granddaughter for Christmas from a shop her mother loved as a little girl. Before we could duck into the shop, we saw this warbler flitting around in the tree outside. Seeing a warbler this far north in December was surprising but fun. It seems to be a first-year male Cape May warbler. As an adult its yellow will be even more vivid and more of it, it will have bolder black markings as contrast to the yellow, the white wing patch you can barely see in this photo will be more pronounced, and it will have a chestnut patch on its face, just in front of that yellow stripe that wraps around its head.

    Nearly all warblers are lovely birds, but they vary a bit in color and in how many colors each has on it. Males are usually much prettier than females, and they’re prettier in spring than in fall. But this species is (in my opinion) probably in the loveliest third in terms of beauty.

    Two or three years ago I photographed a plain looking bird in the neighbor’s apple trees in fall. By its size, shape, and actions I knew it to be a warbler, but it wasn’t at all colorful. I laughed out loud when I identified it, since it turned out to be a young female Cape May–about as plain a bird as birds come, but a member of one of the most beautiful species. It almost seemed like cheating to say I’d seen the species. Watching this pretty young male flitting in and out for about ten minutes and getting some good shots of him was “more like it” in terms of seeing warblers, though definitely an unexpected sighting in December.

    Including this bird, I saw at least ten species of warblers this fall, and almost certainly a couple more. (I’ve also seen at least six species previously that I didn’t see this fall, but of course I didn’t see those here. About half of the species I saw this fall are repeats I’ve seen before.) Not being a warbler expert, and warblers being super tricky, and fall warblers especially hard to identify, I had several more sightings that even with photos, I just don’t know what species the bird is. But a minimum of ten fall species, nine of them in one smallish region of trees and shrubs, tells me that potentially I could have excellent chances at them in the spring. (We have a forest fairly near us that is supposed to be great for warblers, and I definitely plan to visit it in spring, plus checking out other areas I didn’t visit in warbler season this fall.)

    Halfway through the fall I actually gave up on warbler photos, deciding that with my own personal limitations–a camera with a limited zoom as birding camera go and limited skill at zooming in on birds high in the foliage–I was just going to have to be content to get a rare warbler shot and not expect much in the way of good ones. After that I discovered two patches of undergrowth where small birds, including warblers, tended to hang out, and that gave me some really good chances. A lot of warblers prefer hanging out really high in trees, and they’re small enough birds that flitting between branches high in a tree makes it almost impossible for someone like me to get a photo at all, let alone a good one. I did not get a single decent photo from attempts to photograph higher in trees than eight or ten feet up, and only yellow-rumped warblers gave me decent shots even that high off the ground. Most of the time I didn’t even get the bird at all, and when I did get it, it was moving and blurry or only its tail was facing me. But finding lower warblers gave me a chance at them again, and I’m very pleased to have ten identified species and probably two or three others.

    I even got one shot that has the Nashville warbler and the Tennessee warbler in the same frame, which is cool for someone who lived in Nashville for eight years.

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  39. So far, I have heard some Christmas music, but no carols But now there’s a program on RFD TV where they’re singing real carols. First time this year.

    Liked by 2 people

  41. I was listening to Christmas music on my phone on the car radio today (isn’t technology wonderful?) and heard “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” one of my favorites.

    Janice, I’m so sorry they weren’t able to do both ‘sides,’ does that mean he’ll need another surgery? Groan. How frustrating.

    RKessler, oh my, that’s a “tree” event you wouldn’t forget (and you understandably haven’t!).

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