41 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-4-19”

  5. So I have been awake since the last check in. I have Googled my numbers from yesterday. You will all be relieved to know that my oxygen saturation is good as is my BMI. My resting heart rate is almost perfect.

    Amos has been out, decided to skip breakfast and go back to bed. Now it’s just the cat and me.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Chas here
    Kim @ 5:01
    Me too. I just decided that it was too late go back to sleep and rolled out.
    Good morning anyhow.
    Good night Jo.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I posted yesterday that the male red-winged blackbird wasn’t just calling to assert territorial rights, but looking down at a female and calling. Females don’t choose males; they choose a spot to nest, and they get whatever male has that territory (or so the experts say). If he chooses a good enough spot, he may have several females choose to nest in it. He doesn’t usually help with nesting or feeding the young (and he’d lead predators to the nest if he did–she nests low among the grasses, and she is camouflaged for them, but he isn’t), but he is on high alert for any danger coming into the territory. He gives alert calls (which cautions her not to give away the nest) and then he chases the danger, even if it is much bigger than he is. So a good male is a valuable mate, even without providing food.

    I suspect this female is still deciding on the territory, or has only recently chosen it, because not only did the male look at her while he called, but after he flew away she seemed troubled and she herself started calling, as though to call him back. Maybe she saw me and thought he should be chasing me away, I don’t know. But it’s the first time I’ve seen a female red-winged blackbird calling out to the male. I always think a shot is a little more interesting if the bird is doing something other than just sitting on the branch.

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  8. Oh, the last few nights I’ve gone to sleep pretty easily without any special tricks, and if I’ve gotten up during the night, gone back to sleep too. That’s highly unusual for me. I remember insomnia dating back to when I was 10–my sister and I had a dispute about whether to close the bedroom door like she wanted, or leave it open like I wanted, because I wanted the night of the nightlight into the room so I could see around the room while I lay awake, and she wanted the light shut out. Mom “ruled” in my favor, but I think her reasoning was wise–she pointed out that my sister got to sleep nearly immediately (as soon as she and I stopped talking), and I lay awake for an hour, so my desire was more relevant.

    I’ve wondered at times if my lifelong insomnia had anything to do with going to bed too early all those childhood years; my body clock wasn’t yet ready for bed. Had I been allowed to read quietly for another half hour once the house was quiet, I might have done better than with a scramble at bedtime and an early bedtime. (Even at 20, when I moved out, I still had a 10:30 bedtime, which is a bit too early for me.)

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  9. Off to explore a state forest I haven’t visited yet, with my hubby. 🙂 We intended to go yesterday, but he got a notice his laptop was “out for delivery.” (It had been scheduled for tomorrow.) It’s early spring here, and flowers are starting to bloom and green is on a large percentage of the branches. I want to see my first warblers of the season. (Saw my first towhees of the season yesterday.)

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  11. Good morning! I may be Anon#2 since I am on my tablet and unable to like anything again.(Janice)

    Art took me to Publix this a.m. I try to hurry so he can get to the office and not have a client waiting in the parking lot. I saw all the dogwoods are blooming. It was my thirty minute outing for the week.

    I see the Fed Ex truck delivering the Pampered Chef items I ordered to give to the ladies in the office. I hope it will encourage them as the heaviest work push is now. I did order the manual food chopper to speed up my soup making.

    I have been praying for Roscuro and others who have posted needs lately. I just got a new book on prayer, Seek, by Jennifer Kennedy Dean.

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  12. One recent day, the thought occurred to me that my experience of having been a good helpmate to my husband has come in handy even now. Or maybe doing this kind of thing is just a part of who I am.

    Nightingale texted me from work, towards the end of her shift, that she needed a pot of hot tea, because she was very tired. (The caffeine in coffee makes her feel nervous, but the caffeine in tea, which is less than in coffee, doesn’t do that.) She hadn’t asked me to make her tea, but I put the kettle on, and got the rest of the things ready for a pot of tea for when she came home. She appreciated that.

    That got me to thinking about the little things I would do for Hubby, to make his life a little easier and more pleasant, and to bless him. I find myself doing similar-ish things for Nightingale at times. And she blesses me in other ways. Sometimes the way we work things out together, and depend upon one another, does feel a bit like a marriage. 😀

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  13. Karen, I totally understand. I have a similar relationship with my DIL (who lives upstairs and it totally like a daughter)). While both have husbands, it feels like there’s a special bond between us and we can usually read each other’s minds.

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  15. Husband had an interesting thing happen to him yesterday. You know he writes letters to the editor with some regularity. He wrote one last week and got some feedback online which he responded to in the newspaper online edition. Last night he got a notice from FB telling him his comment was blocked as hate speech. He had no idea his comment to an online newspaper could be banned by FB. He has an active account with them, I do not, or at least not one I have checked in a very long time. Interesting to see the pervasiveness of the thought police.

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  16. The ‘hate’ speech movement is very disconcerting. It’s a serious free speech issue. As someone pointed out, Trump has been called a traitor to the U.S. Is that hate speech? Who defines hate speech? If I don’t like what you’r saying, can I call it hate speech?

    Well, at any rate I’m with Kim this morning: I am awake and don’t want to be.

    But there it is and here I am, hustling to go back to work, which I dreamed about, btw.

    Nancyjill, thank you for that encouragement yesterday regarding your friends’ cast iron pipes lasting so long with regular cleanouts. T

    he crazy thing is that the roter guy — whom I called for their $44 drain cleaning special — charged me nothing, apparently banking on my saying ‘yes’ to new pipes at the end of it all. So he spent 2 hours here clearing my pipes as a ‘courtesy’ and I paid nothing. Well, I guess I paid in my time with having to listen to his pitch for new pipes. Said he could start the job the next day. Maybe Real Estate Guy was right about this one.

    OK, off to work. I can do this. Only two days to get through. This, too, shall pass.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Not only that, Chas, but the Marine Corp hymn has to go: to the shores of Tripoli? Forget about the first US Navy war with the Barbary pirates, that is hate speech.

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  19. Linda – I knew that was you before I saw your second comment. 🙂

    It is so wonderful that you have such a good and close relationship with your DIL.

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  20. Since writing what I did the other night about letting Chickadee take Rudy to the McKs after their male cat passes away, I have decided that I am going to try to dissuade her from that, and let her know that I feel that Rudy is as much mine as hers. But I think I will wait on that, maybe until (or unless) the matter comes up. I’m hoping that something else will keep her from wanting to take him, such as her moving back home (a girl can hope) or the McKs saying they didn’t want to take on another cat.

    To be honest, at this point I feel that Rudy is really more my cat than hers, but saying so would greatly hurt her feelings, and maybe push her away more, so I will refrain from saying that.

    As for my mentioning the hope that she may move back home someday, that is a hope that is being held lightly these days. God knows what my heart wants, but I continually commit her and her living situation into His hands, and ask that above all, His will be done.

    Nightingale believes that it is merely a matter of time before Chickadee does indeed move back. She doesn’t think that the McKs or the McK sisters will be willing to support Chickadee for years to come, and she is prepared to take her in. I think that there is a possibility that the younger sister CBF (Chickadee’s Best Friend) would be willing to have Chickadee stay with her for life, but I could be wrong. (I am hoping I am wrong about that, unless God saves CBF and transforms her heart and life.)

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  21. Chas here
    Mumsee when Trump made his famous speech. I said “Mexico will pay for the wall when the Marines get back to the Halls of Montezuma.” ,

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  22. Well, now I can like things, again. Funny how that cuts off and on.

    Kizzie, I was just thinking about how Chickadee seems bent toward the other family for the moment, I prayed God would bend her back to you like a flower turning toward the sunshine. I want that so much for your family. You are right not to discuss the cat prematurely. God has His plans for the cat.

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  23. That turtle header reminds me how I use to feel climbing to the top of our local Stone Mountain. When you get real close to the top it is just like that. Then you get to the top and can walk all around and go to a snack place by the skylight. It may all be different now, but that is how it use to be. It was my favorite place to spend time because it was so nearby and yet seemed quite distant from the regular city/suburban life.

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  25. The new photo: basking turtles are very skittish creatures, and I have seen them dive into the water many times at the approach of a human. It makes them quite tricky to photograph! But this was the first time I’d been able to watch a turtle crawl out of the water and onto the log. At least one turtle seems to have gotten used to my presence, because lately on more than one occasion three or four turtles have dove in and one has stayed–and the last one stays even when I move around to a better position. I don’t know if this is that same turtle or if this one just didn’t see me, but it was fun to finally watch one come out. (It got about halfway out then fell back in, but then it climbed the rest of the way.)

    If any of you are on Flickr, you can check me out on there. I won’t link to my account on here, but it’s under my married name and I also have my maiden name in it; if you don’t remember those names but have my e-mail, you can e-mail me. So far no one is following me, though people seem to like my turtles and my swimming muskrats. I have a “pyramid of turtles” shot that isn’t really a very good shot by technical standards (again, one cannot set up the pose, but you just have to snap it quickly) that has had 199 views. How I can get 200 views in a week without any followers, I don’t know, but I’m hoping the followers come soon so I can get numbers up. (I see shots that make it well into the thousands; most are clearly taken by professionals with costlier cameras than mine, but I’ve seen some that aren’t that still make it up there.) Interesting to me is that in technical quality, my insect photos rival other insect photos on there, yet my bird ones aren’t as good as other bird shots. My camera must do exceptionally well at macro for a “cheap” camera.

    Oh, and we had some really good sightings in the state forest. One new bird species, and some sightings of favorite species I haven’t often seen. I can’t wait to see how pretty it is when spring is in full force, and again in fall. But wildflowers are starting to bloom (spring beauty is out) and it’s greening up, so it is definitely really spring. I need new glasses; these are going on three years and that’s generally my limit. But somehow I still managed to see two exceptionally well camouflaged species (brown creeper and American woodcock), including my first sighting of a woodcock. And the towhees are back in town! Saw two on my local trail yesterday and a pair in the forest today.

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  26. Janice – Thank you! Your 2:39 comment really blessed me, and brought tears of gratitude to my eyes. I love your comparison to “a flower turning toward the sunshine.” (I immediately thought of “Sonshine.”) And I smiled at “God has His plans for the cat.” 🙂

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  28. Chas, the jam group my husband is part of, does “Dixie” regularly. It is done as an instrumental and as soon as it ends “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is started. Everyone sings the chorus of that and it ends after the first chorus. It is always quite popular and “Dixie” is sung by many of the senior citizens when it is played. I know we learned that song in grade school and suspect many others did as well.

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  29. Well with a line like “I wish I was in the land of cotton…” how could it be anything but hate speech.
    I have always liked the sentiment of this song.

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  30. Poor quality photos snapped of the warblers we saw today (I take warbler photos “just in case” I can get a shot I can identify and on the off chance I can get a good photo) says they were probably cerulean warblers, a very pretty blue and white warbler that’s not very common, feeds high in tree tops, and was a quite unlikely find. Add that to the birds we saw for sure (including American woodcock, brown creeper, eastern towhee, and pileated woodpecker) and the “maybe” cuckoo sighting, and it was really an amazing day for birds by this amateur birder’s standards.

    We only saw two other people, we were less than half an hour from home, it was in the lower 50s and just the right amount of cloudy . . . one of those walks with one’s beloved that is rare and perfect and savorable. (We had a similar one in May a few years ago; the sightings of that day included orioles and trilliums. More was in bloom that day than today, but like that day, it was our first time to hike a particular trail, and a perfect day to do so, with no one else doing so with us.) The state park we hiked up north, if you went on a weekend or in summer (a non-school day) in pretty weather, there could be people everywhere, so hiking a more remote trail on a perfect day was extra sweet. This was our first time hiking this spot at all, not just this particular trail, so we have no idea whether it gets busy in summer, but it just might. It has camping, and it’s close enough to a touristy area, that it just might have lots of people on some days. But today we had it to ourselves, just us and some wildlife, and no snakes yet (that was important to my husband).

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  31. Cute turtle.

    Today is #WorldRatDay according to the coyote researcher I sometimes interview (she studies all kinds of critters).

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  32. I’m trying to decide whether to hang the large, vertical print of the Red Car next to the roll-top desk with bookcase hutch) or the smaller, framed AP certificate (1930s) from our old paper that closed down.

    The print was given to me by a local artist years ago — she signed the bottom of it to me personally as a ‘great’ journalist or some such silly thing, but very sweet. She wasn’t old, but died a couple years ago from cancer. I’d had the print framed but hadn’t decided where to ever hang it, but now I think it should go in the home/office area.

    The yellowed AP certificate is very cool, hand scroll writing and signatures from 1934, I believe, certifying that the paper was a member of the AP association. It was one of those things that hung on the walls of the old newspaper and was up for grabs when the place closed down 20 years ago.

    There’s another blank wall available for hanging as well, so they’ll both get hung somewhere.

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  33. Whichever I hang next to the desk is what will show from the front of the room as you enter. The Red Car print is striking, large and bright. I’m leaning toward that.

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  36. And I am happy to report no dead owls flying at me today. Or dead mice. My life is interesting but nothing like I would have imagined. I am grateful for the many directions it has gone so far.

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  39. Discouraging… I think the constant rain is getting to me and others. Gardens can’t take this much rain.
    Both my mechanic and I thought that I would get my car back today. However, this is the not that I got:
    Jo,
    I am sorry. Your car is not fixed. I put the oil filter on and road tested it. The gauge showed OK, but when I checked it, it was so full of pressure that It was pushing rad hoses off. I can see a large bubble continue to rise out of the coolant regularly over and over again. I’m going to have to pull it apart again to determine what we can do.

    Doesn’t sound good at all. Time to do some walking. Others need the singles van all of next week.

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