35 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-28-19”

  3. Jo has it partly right. I went to sleep easily, but woke at about 2:00 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
    Bu the thing this morning has nothing to do with that.
    Sabrina, the lady who comes on Thursday mornings to stay with Elvera, brought breakfast from one of the fast food places. So? We’ve already had breakfast and I am just getting here.
    So? Good night Jo.
    Good morning everyone else.
    The day has started differently, but it is underway now.

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  4. Good morning, all! The roosters are crowing. Well, the ones that were not in the stewpot, yesterday are crowing. And soon it will be light enough to go about the chores. For now, I am here to pester folk.

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  5. Good morning all. Just getting off shift and ready for a nap before class. I am going to a baby shower for a coworker who became grandma the same day Michelle did. The babies are the same gestational age, so hers is in the NICU also.

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  7. My chores are done. Every morning I get to slaughter mice. They congregate in the goat concentrate garbage can. But then they cannot get out. I dispatched twelve of them this morning. My least favorite part of the day intruding on my favorite part of the day.

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  9. We have. I have one right next to the laying mash can and it gets several. I suspect there were mice in the concentrate the children put into the can because I pulled out teeny tiny babies a couple of times.

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  10. I even tried setting one of the cats in the can with them one day. He just stood there watching them leap toward the rim. Then he daintily stepped out. He is such a Garfield. But he catches birds and weasels.

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  11. I had a spell of vertigo turning over in bed last night, I hadn’t had that in years. I seem OK this morning but it really had the room spinning.

    No roosters or mice to kill. I only have the laundry to run through the dryer and el gato y dos perros to feed. (My cubby mate’s first language is Spanish so she calls everyone muchacha or muchacho or Jefe and says Vaya con Dios a lot.)

    Cheryl, were you up late or did you get up early?

    Which reminds me, a while back I read an article on night owls vs. early birds — it said while there are the extremes on either end, the most common and natural cycle of sleep for most people is somewhere between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

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  12. or maybe it was 9 or 10 and 7

    It might depend on whether you have to get up to kill mice or roosters. Is killing a rooster like throwing the alarm clock across the room?

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  13. Mumsee, how much goat concentrate to how much water?

    DJ, sorry about the vertigo–that is no fun at all. I think I was in bed by about 11:00, though I don’t remember for sure.

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  14. Good late morning, Wanderers!

    The header is a photo of the azalea bud I have been watching all week thinking it would be our first bloom this season. Then I went deeper into our woodsy island and discovered another azalea had big blossoms already which are hidden away.

    This morning my friend, Karen, called. She had passed out last night and fell on the bathroom floor but managed to call 911. Her husband had not gotten home from work when it happened. The paramedics were with her when he got home. She hit her head hard and thinks her nose may be broken. She also thought she may have broken her hip but now thinks not. At least she sounded good when I spoke with her but then she started having a hot flash, and we got off the phone because she might throw up. Her husband needs to retire but feels that he can’t. She needs someone with her today, but she is by herself. In the past I dealt with this with two sets of elderly parents. I never expected to deal with it with a younger friend.

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  16. DJ – I get that kind of vertigo from time to time, too. (And yes, it was me who mentioned the word “digs” the other day. Or was that only yesterday?)

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  17. Because we have discussed Lent, this is from one of the priests of my church

    We’re about halfway through Lent, and chances are whatever enthusiasm you may have had for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving has all but dissipated. It’s so easy to hit the snooze button rather than pray and it’s as if the food or drink that we have given up knows our name and cries out to us from the kitchen counter. In our moments of weakness, we might feel discouraged.

    The good news is that Lent was never meant to show us how strong we are. Lent reminds us that we are weak and that we must rely on God and one another in the body of Christ. Fr. Aaron, the author of our Lenten book, has this to say about prayer:

    “So how should we pray in Lent? For starters, we go to church. We prioritize being present every Sunday possible, singing heartily in worship, engaging in the prayers, confessing our sins and our faith, listening receptively to the reading of Scripture and to the sermon, and partaking in the communion meal…you’re not at church only to receive and consume. Your presence and prayers might seem weak to you, but they strengthen everyone else. When we show up to the weekly assembly of saints, we stir up the faith of our fellow pilgrims in Lent.” (112-113)

    Let’s continue to be a community that seeks after God through both individual devotion and corporate gathering and worship!

    Liked by 3 people

  18. While trying to catch up on comments over the past few days, I read with interest the comments on parents and their adult children living together, and the submission in marriage matter.

    As you know, Nightingale and I have our own private living spaces, but essentially live together. For instance, she does not use her own kitchen for most things, but uses mine. In fact, we are planning to “officially” combine our kitchen stuff in my kitchen, weeding out what we don’t need, and consolidating what we do.

    Just the other day, Nightingale kind of sheepishly admitted that she feels kind of like “the boss” of the house, but doesn’t want to take advantage of that. I admitted that in many ways, I have willingly relinquished that role to her, but I don’t feel like I am under her authority. It’s hard to explain.

    There are matters, such as in decorating or how to celebrate holidays, that she cares about more deeply than I do, and I have no problem letting her do things her way, with some input from me. As for the matter of moving someday, I figure that she is the one who is going to end up with whatever home we have, so am willing to acquiesce to her plans. But again, with my own input, and knowing that she is keeping my best interests in mind. (And – God bless her – even though she is not thrilled about it, she also plans on taking in Chickadee someday, and helping to provide for her if she can’t provide for herself.)

    What helps in all this, and makes me willing to let her have the “lead”, is that we are in agreement in so much, and we are sensitive to each other’s needs and desires. And yet, even in saying that she is “kind of like the boss of the house,” it’s really not something that would be apparent to others, I don’t think.

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  20. (Part 1 of 2) Speaking of Chickadee, whom I mentioned above. . .Nightingale and I were talking about the situation a couple days ago.

    As I’ve said before, one of the things that concerns me greatly is related to the concept that bad company corrupts good character, that a companion of fools with be destroyed. Chickadee loves, respects, and admires YA as well as CBF (Chickadee’s Best Friend, YA’s younger sister). (I think I give a different name to CBF every time I mention her. I’ll try to stick with CBF, if I remember.) CBF was an “activist” for LGBT causes in high school and during the brief time she was in community college, and you all know about YA.

    When I see YA’s attitudes – immature, contemptuous of those she disagrees with, often illogical in her posts and comments, but seeming to think she is the smartest person in the room – I often cringe, knowing that Chickadee is at great risk of picking up those attitudes. Not to mention the more concerning matter of YA’s unbiblical, and even ungodly, view of Jesus and the Bible, or anything else. It is evident that she has indeed picked up some of YA’s attitudes and views.

    There was time a while back when Chickadee was visiting, and Nightingale and I started talking about a certain issue. Nightingale and I were both saying that although we could understand why the left was so upset about it, we also could see that there were nuances to it that were not being acknowledged. Chickadee looked at us in disbelief, amazed that we didn’t think (as many on the left, including YA, did) that those on the right of this particular issue were not hateful bigots.

    Later that day, after Chickadee had gone back to the McKs, YA posted something on Facebook that doubled down on that issue, and that made me think that Chickadee must have told her about what we’d said. Something like that happened again recently.

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  21. (Part 2 of 2) Now this part is something that I have suspected, but then thought maybe I was merely being too critical. But Nightingale, who is less likely to imagine things that “might” be happening, brought this up herself in our conversation the other day.

    What Nightingale said was that the McK daughters have convinced Chickadee that they accept her for who she is, but that we do not. I believe it was at the instigation of CBF, who happens to be very strong-willed, that Chickadee moved with them, and that it was she or her sister, or both, who decided that we would not be told that Chickadee was moving with them until almost the last minute (two weeks before they finally started moving out, almost a year since we’d first asked them to). Mrs. McK and I were friends, and I believe that she probably wanted to give me a heads up, but was dissuaded from doing so by her daughters. (But I also think that that was a promise she should not have made. I feel betrayed by that.)

    So we did not have a chance to discuss Chickadee’s feelings, and to try to work things out.

    What I wish Chickadee could understand is that it is easy to accept someone with whom you have a lot in common. She and YA and CBF are all into anime, Pokemon, cosplay, the Marvel Comics superhero movies, etc. Nightingale has no interest in that stuff. Add to that that Chickadee already felt different from us in certain ways, and it seems to her that they accept her and we don’t.

    (She once shocked me when she said that she had felt like a “second-class granddaughter” to my parents. She said it was mostly because Nightingale and their cousin – who were older than she, and only eight months apart from each other – got the cooler stuff at Christmas. Of course they did! They were three and almost-four years older than she was.

    Mom and Dad would have been devastated to hear that Chickadee felt that way. They loved her as much as the older girls. She was precious to them. I told her that, and I hope that it helped change her mind.)

    She calls Mr. and Mrs. McK Mom and Dad. YA once referred to her on Facebook as her adopted sister. YA has often shared posts on Facebook that blood doesn’t make family (and there is a point to that, of course, but not exactly in the way she means it), and that if your family doesn’t accept you (“accept” as in “approve of everything you do”) the way you are, you can cut them out of your life. I fear she has delivered that message to Chickadee.

    I would like to tell Chickadee, and am waiting for the right opportunity to do so, that families are made up of people who have different interests, temperaments, and personalities, but they love each other, and learn to accept each other and get along (as well as possible). That it is rare (I think) for all the family members to have the same interests.

    Besides the influences I mentioned above, there are other areas in her life where I have seen the McK sisters’ detrimental influence.

    (Not that this example is important, but there used to be a couple TV shows that she enjoyed until they told her why they disapproved of those shows, and she stopped watching them.)

    Liked by 2 people

  24. That is a heartbreaking situation, Kizzie. It is not right. It is not fair. I would be equally concerned as you are. I would know of nothing to do except to pray often and long for however many years until a breakthrough came. I think I prayed for my friend, Karen, for fourteen years until she had a breakthrough in understanding who Jesus is.

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  26. There was sunshine this morning. I even wore a hat to market. Now, less than an hour later, it looks like it is going to rain. We have had so much rain! There have been mudslides.

    Not sure how it got started, but they ended the VBS with a mud slide for the kids. On the school grounds. Even some of my students went down it. Did not look like a good idea to me.

    We do have a water slide nearby on centre. They have very thick plastic that they line it with and then keep the water running. There is a small pool at the bottom. Very safe compared to what I saw yesterday.

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  28. I’ve already traded up to another, even better new chair. We found the 4th floor storage room … we were wheeling chairs up and down those hallways. These are SO much more comfortable.

    Liked by 7 people

  29. Lovely azaleas! Nashville used to have those all over the place, but one year we had a hard freeze while they were blooming that killed most of them all over the city. My last few years in Nashville we had hardly any, and I missed them. I hope in the years I have been gone that many have been replanted!

    My editing schedule continues to stay busy, which is a good thing, so you may not see me around a lot the next month or two.

    Liked by 4 people

  30. Thanks, Kim. I bought many of our azaleas at the end of the season when they were not flowering and had no labels. They were inexpensive leftovers that I salvaged when I worked in accounting for the headquarters at a local family owned nursery chain years ago. We have a real hodge podge. I did try to grow the smaller Fashion azaleas in a grouping,, but a neighbor planted a fast growing maple that put them in the shadows and most of them died. We still have one or two of those.

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  31. Cheryl, that is sad about the Nashville azaleas. We have lost many of the beautiful dogwood trees in Atlanta to the blight. My brother recently cut down what was remaining but dead of our pink dogwood purchased back when I got our now huge Birthday Tree. I also have had no luck with gardenias.

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  32. There was something I meant to add to my last comment. After writing all that I did, I was going to end by saying that I continually surrender Chickadee into God’s hands. I pray not only for her and Nightingale, and The Boy, but also for YA and CBF, that God would move by His Holy Spirit in a wonderful and deep way in each of their hearts.

    I tell God that although my heart aches for her to come home, more than anything I want His will to be done in her life, and in theirs.

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