53 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-12-19”

  1. Morning all. Well I was looking forward to a peaceful Monday as the class would be spending half of their time doing the MAP test. Then I got a last minute notice that we would not be doing the test today. Turns out, like any good business, they were updating their web site in the middle of the night and it was unavailable. They did not realize that some of us are on a middle of the night time zone.

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  2. At lunch I told the first grade teacher about the little girl who had such a horrible time with the practice test and was in tears. Her first question: “Is she left-handed?” Why yes she is, and I had forgotten. No wonder she could not use the mouse with her right hand. We will take care of that problem.

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  6. I am left-handed. By that, I mean that I write and eat (I am VERY ambidextrous when it comes to eating). Everything else I am right-hand dominant. I even found out a few months ago that I am right eye dominant too.
    Some people think it was AWFUL what my third-grade teacher did to me. I am thankful. She made me learn to use a REAL fountain pen. You know, the kind with the split point and the ink cartridge. I do not write like most lefties. I place my hand underneath the line of writing.
    We have a guy at work that is very left-handed. He uses a mouse on the left side. It is foreign to me.

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  7. Chas, what Cheryl says. Daughter is very confused in her thoughts right now. They are going in all directions and she can’t stop them. We tried talking about border collie puppies, it helped for as long as I was there to remind her.

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  8. I use the mouse in my left hand when my right hand tires. Works for me.

    I started taking piano lessons at 6 years old. Sometimes I think training my brain to work two hands at the same time in different ways has been very helpful. I also think it’s the reason I type so fast ( along with a gazillion hours of practice, of course).

    My fingers move to type words even when I’m listening to others talk!

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  9. Mumsee, She had my prayers. That’s about all you can do with a person whose mind is out like that. If it’s a Spiritual battle, the Spirit has to settle it.
    I know it’s rough.

    I have some of the same situation, to a much smaller extern, and it’s mental, not spiritual.
    Every night, she expects me to take her home. Then, when I put her to bed, she’s up again doing something she thinks needs to be done. She needs to have something she needs to do. But she is not needed.
    Can you imagine how it feels not to be needed?
    I put her to bed three times last night, counting the time we went together.
    But she has maintained her sweet disposition.

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  11. When I injured my right hand I used the mouse on the left side of the computer. I got used to doing it. But then, I am a little bit ambidextrous anyway.

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  14. Twenty two daughter likes to point out that when she broke her right arm falling off a horse, I made her do her schoolwork with her left hand so now she can use both.

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  15. Morning! Pretty turtle.
    I am not a left person anything. Broke my left foot three times, amblyopia condition in left eye, had tumor removed over my left eye when I was 7, have varicose veins in my left leg, greater hearing loss in my left ear, not scientific/mathematical thinking by any stretch of the imagination and I do not have one left leaning political view in my body! 😕

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  16. I am jumping in here before catching up on comments to post this link to some great photos of our town. The lady who took them posted them as “Public” on Facebook, as have I, but I don’t know if you will be able to see them all or even just the one I link to. Please let me know if you can see anything from the link. There are about 30 photos.

    https://scontent.fzty1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/68894354_10221193079365367_4340203313195646976_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_oc=AQnZMhFBA8K8AR-pbQ9RVu26BN87MmQeuo42ANVzItBIH1mluTqV0OfOR6u0zHxt3FE&_nc_ht=scontent.fzty1-1.fna&oh=38cc9d8b8d1cfbca9600588807c8ad85&oe=5DCEF0B7

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  17. It looks like it just goes to the one photo, without being able to click through the others. That photo is of the little park in the downtown area. I guess I will pick a few to share one by one.

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  21. Peter,

    We couldn’t remember what kind of turtle it was. A Mata Mata turtle is on the aquariums list, and it looks like the second one on this list, so that’s what I think it is.

    It has camouflage features which let it look like a rock and some leaves in it’s natural habitat, and that turtle above certainly looks like it’s trying camouflage itself to it’s surroundings. So Mata Mata, final answer. 🙂

    https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/19-weird-and-wonderful-turtle-and-tortoise-species

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  25. Such a charming town Kizzie! The one shot (2nd you posted?) showing the buildings in a row on an incline reminds me of our town’s downtown. Sadly, we lost many of our historic waterfront buildings in the 1970s when the city of LA decided to do “Urban Renewal” (they don’t tear things out ‘just because’ anymore, thankfully). But we still have many of our old structures intact. I guess the city ran out of money and never got around to bulldozing those.

    I do some things left handed and some right handed. And I frequently type as people talk, it’s the fastest way to take notes on a phone interview or at a meeting.

    A friend and I were FB messaging yesterday (she grew up in the Methodist church, left because they’re “all” hypocrites in church, you know, and now has her “own” rather uninformed, biblically speaking, definition of God with whom she seems to feel she is on excellent terms with, thank you). Anyway, she often goes off on little rants about her neighbors whom she refuses to speak to (so she stays locked in her house — this is in a mobile home park — until she knows none of them is out before she ventures outside). Yesterday she went on about how the one neighbor, who’s taking care of her infirm father and sister, has a used car that now won’t start. Well, she said, “I’ve” worked 42 years, saved my money and I can buy brand-new cars, I know they’re jealous. Serves them right, losers, seems to be her attitude. (She also landed a million dollar-plus inheritance from her family that is the source of most of her financial security through no doing of her own.)

    The attitude that comes out when she goes on these little “my awful” neighbors tirades just makes me crazy, it’s so prideful and judgmental and I don’t see how she doesn’t see it once it’s written out like that. I refrained from responding and will just let it go without comment unless she persists in her complaints about them. I thought of all kinds of things I could say to her last night after reading that but am glad I didn’t. 😦 She’s just very quick to “see” everyone’s sin (real or assumed on her part) but she seemingly has none, at least I’ve never heard her lament of any. She’s done everything right and that’s why she has money and others don’t.

    I’ve invited her to church through the years (she simply ignores the invites) and sometimes strikes me as simply immune to the gospel message. Her brother is a Methodist minister (now retired) — so my guess is he’s struggled with some of it as well with her. But who knows, maybe not. She continues to subscribe to a Religious Science daily “devotional” that her mom originally gifted to her and figures that’s her ‘Bible,’ I suppose. Her go-to “verse” is “Let go and let God.” But she’s just always so hard on everyone else, not ever on herself (which is our very human tendency, I realize).

    She has some health issues now and I’m praying for those — she seems to appreciate that — but I think I need to go back to praying that her heart will be softened, a much more important prayer really. I just don’t have a lot of hope I’ll ever see that, she’s so dug-in.

    And now I’m ranting about her, I fully realize. 😦

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  33. Your main street looks like a nice ace to amble along, Kizzie. It also reminds me a bit of our small town atmosphere where the office is. I will see if I can find a photo to post. It has an old railway depot building.

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  35. Kizzie’s downtown might be the downtown of any small town in Ontario, including the two towns closest to my parents’ place, and even of a few large ones, including several downtown centres found in the city where I was.

    DJ, your friend sounds like the epitome of natural religion (developed by human nature) – if you have success it is because you have done everything right, and if you do not have success, you must have done or be doing something wrong. Hindu karma is well known, but every natural religion has a form of it.

    I tried to learn to write with my left hand. I had to gain quite a lot of dexterity with it in order to play the piano and violin, especially the violin, since the left hand forms the notes and adds effects like vibrato and harmonics. But writing with it is a different matter. My violin teacher was left handed, and she explained the difficulty by the fact that the natural human impulse when doing anything is to begin at the centre of the body and move outward. Writing from left to right with the left hand makes that very difficult.

    My music teacher wrote ‘upside down’, with her hand curved over the line she was writing. My mother said she taught her left handed students to write with their hands in normal position from left to right. That is the way my grandmother, who was left handed wrote – she had been a school teacher and had to learn to write again after having a brain tumour removed in middle age. It is also the way Eldest nephew, who is left handed and taught himself at age three 3 to read and write, writes. An elderly woman from England used to attend the tiny church, and she was left handed but had been made to use her right hand when she learned to write – a couple of people we met from the era said the same thing, one saying that his left hand was tied behind his back to keep him from using it. In West Africa, as in many parts of the world, the left hand is unclean because it is used in washing oneself after using the washroom, so one cannot use the left hand to eat, but one of the clinic employees was left handed and wrote very well with his left hand, so that prohibition does not extend to writing.

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  37. My mom was left-handed, and also wrote “under” the words, like right-handed people do. She taught herself to do that, and had beautiful handwriting.

    All those flowers in the photos are thanks to the Stafford Garden Club. They do lovely work all over town.

    Janice – Stafford is not as big as Jonesboro.

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  38. As Main St. turns into East Main St., coming towards where we live, there is a line of old Victorian homes that have been kept in nice shape. Some of the side streets also have some of those old Victorian homes.

    Nightingale was visiting a lady who lives in one of those on a side street. She was appalled that the lady who had owned the house before this couple had squared off the arched doorways, and overly modernized some of the house.

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  39. Kizzie, I mostly drive (when I could) on Main St. in Jonesboro and was thinking the old downtown looks a bit like your old downtown. I have seen Stately Oaks, plantation house, from the outside but never toured it. Jonesboro has a small town feel compared to where we live which daily grows more congested.

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  40. Roscuro (3:40, graph 2), yes, that nicely sums it up. This neighbor she’s so critical of (only 1 of a couple) was attending a Calvary Chapel church for a while so I suggested that if she’s a believer she’ll understand that God will provide all her need, not necessarily her wants. I said it sound like what she most needs now is prayer as she’s clearly under some stress and the ‘dead’ car topped it all off, probably. Been there.

    Her response was that she only went to church to try to find a husband and she certainly “doesn’t live by the Bible because she gossips and lies.” Oy.

    Could be some teachable moments here but we’ve been through similar discussions before and she seems hardened in her own view of how it all “works.” She’s been rewarded for being basically a “good person” who saved money.

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  41. Feeling grateful and relieved today. Our church is putting on “Super Fun Day” for the community in a couple weeks, with a bounce house, carnival games, food, and the like – all absolutely free. Pastor Billy has been asking for volunteers, and as of a couple weeks ago, didn’t have enough to cover all the goings on. I felt pulled between feeling like I “should” volunteer, since I am available, but also really not wanting to, and feeling very anxious about it.

    So finally, last Tuesday, I thought the best thing would be to send Pastor Billy an email explaining just what I was feeling and why (people sometimes don’t understand me, I have trouble hearing others well enough, especially in noisy places, I have no idea what needs to be done, etc). It was kind of a “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” kind of thing. I made it clear that I was not asking to be let out of it, but looking for more information, or to see if there was something else I could do to help that was not dealing directly with the public.

    Then I nervously awaited his reply. Unfortunately for me, at the end of the week I learned that they were on a small family vacation to celebrate their tenth anniversary, and to further bond with their foster son (whom they very much hope to adopt someday), so I wouldn’t be hearing back until this week.

    At some point in the service yesterday, I felt a sense of peace about it, knowing that Pastor Billy would understand and have a good answer for me.

    A little after noon today, I checked my email, and saw that he had replied. His reply was compassionate and reassuring. In the past couple weeks, many more people have volunteered, so he thought the more important thing was for me to simply come along with Nightingale and Boy (who are planning to go), and not to worry about anything else. I was relieved, and also touched by his understanding and compassion.

    So I donated some money towards the various outreaches we’re doing, and said I am praying for a nice day, with lower-than-usual temps and a nice breeze. 🙂

    Btw, please pray that he and Renee will be able to adopt their foster son (who turns one year old this month). Renee was telling me yesterday that there is no guarantee right now that they will be able to keep him, that even it will take a year and a half or two years before they’ll know for sure.

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  42. Daughter is being sent to a behavioral hospital. Because she only focuses on remembering and using the bad stuff, it is kind of scary, but we are hopeful she will benefit from this. Hopefully, they will get her meds figured out at least. Last time, at a different hospital, she learned a lot about how to kill herself. She does not need more of that info. The hospital is transporting her the three hours. Last time we transported and it was ten hours each way.

    We also have to decide whether or not to pursue guardianship. We probably will. We have an appt for Wednesday which she was supposed to attend with us. I don’t know how it works without her there.

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  44. Kizzie, it’s good that you got settled with what to do about the fun day at church. I use to help with things like that, but have not helped in recent years. There are many jobs for all different kinds of people. We had a fishing game where someone had to hide behind the blue sheet of water and put prizes on the fishing lines of children. Sometimes they might need a cook or someone to clean up afterwards. And usually there is a person needed to order prizes or make them and sometimes there is a cakewalk with home baked items needed. For the next time you could probably think of something you’d be comfortable doing and offer that service to help instead of having to fit into what someone else thought of.

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  45. Oh, now I received a letter saying my insurance agent of many, many years has died. Sigh.

    I posted an op-ed on the news thread that contends belief in God does not coincide with less violence seen in specific countries. Interested in your thoughts about that argument and how they support it …

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  47. I had one of those mornings.

    After waiting 10 months, I finally got the phone call for a shingles immunization.

    So, after the gym, I shipped a few boxes and stopped at Safeway, a grocery store with a pharmacy attached.

    But, when I got out of the car, it didn’t beep.

    I’d lost the fob.

    These key fobs . . . I started the car to make sure I hadn’t left the key fob–but of course not. It would not have started at the post office if I didn’t have it.

    I went through the bag with the library books, the bag I’d just put my wallet in, the back seat in case I left it with the package (flowers delivered to the mailbox on Thursday and which they didn’t give to my colleague on Friday when she picked up packages????? I hated to see what we’d find when I dropped them off at work).

    I went through the grocery bags in the back. Under all the seats, in the glove compartment, in the pooka between the front seats, under the front seats, between the front seats.

    Nothing.

    I had no choice. I couldn’t leave a “live” car in the parking lot at the grocery store.

    So, I took the flowers to work–which is in a residential area and safe to leave a “live” car.

    Searched while there. Nothing.

    I’m not sure how many times I looked in the bag with my wallet.

    Nothing.

    Flowers weren’t quite dead, but still! We marveled and tried to think of some way that wouldn’t happen again.

    Drove home. Garage door didn’t want to go up.

    By this point I’m laughing. “Okay God, who do you want me to meet that I’m being rerouted so badly?”

    Went through the car again, every bag, under ever seat, etc. Caught a glimpse of the red shiny carabiner between the driver seat and the pooka.

    It took a lot to pry it out, but I was safe!

    Drove back to grocery store.

    Halfway down the blog, realized I’d take my wallet into the house.

    REturned home, got the wallet and decided to swing by the library.

    Then to Safeway where I waited another 1/2 hour for my shot.

    I never saw anyone, had any interesting conversations and have no idea why I wasted the entire morning.

    Oh, I need a second shingles shot. They’re not available. Good luck getting it within six months.

    Phamacist told me I’d go back on their follow-up list, but suggested I put myself on a list at other stores.

    Is this irresponsible medicine or am I confused?

    Frustrating, but I did get things done this afternoon.

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  48. To clarify – The church is putting on the event, but it will be held in a park near downtown (but not the little downtown one I mentioned), not at the church.

    My old church once put on a free car wash – no strings attached. But there were people who were too suspicious of it, even after being assured there were no strings attached. Hoping that kind of thing doesn’t happen with this.

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  49. Then again, there are other churches in town that put on various events, like pancake breakfasts or craft sales, that people go to, so hopefully we’ll have a good turnout.

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