65 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-2-19”

  3. It counts as long as it shows on the date-time indicator.
    Good Monday morning everyone.
    Everyone but Jo enjoy the holiday.
    Mary, middle GD, and family are still in Jacksonville. I wouldn’t doubt that Mary would want to stay for the adventure of a Category 5 hurricane. But she now has 3 kids.
    She is a smart kid. Smart and wise are two different things.

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  4. Morning, Chas. Time for some sleep here. My new little boy enjoyed himself in class today. I have been rereading the blog telling about his life. What a sweetie.

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  5. Ironic we call this “Labor Day” since most people have the day off. Not I. I’ll be selling tickets to tours today.

    “Who’s ready for the cave?”

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  6. We enjoyed our tour of that cave many, many years ago. My older children are in their forties and they didn’t exist then, except in God’s mind.

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  7. Good Morning. I slept until 8. It is either a blessing or a curse. I will know tonight. I had woken up about 2 and at 3:30 still had not gotten back to sleep. I was so tired my head hurt so I took something. Now I feel as if I could conquer the world but I won’t. I am going to rest today. Tomorrow starts my long run up to Thanksgiving. I will be teaching in September and promoting another event that will start in October. I am in my element

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  8. Good morning. Daughter was going to commit suicide yesterday. She said she had a knife We were sitting outside watching the stars and she headed out into the dark. A while later, she came back and repeated that she was going to commit suicide. I told her she had already said that and asked if she had prayed about it. She said no and she was not going to and turned and started out into the dark again. I asked her to show me the knife, she could stand in a sliver of light near me but not so close she might think I would grab it . She showed me a serrated kitchen knife. I asked her if she had fun at the Catholic church this morning, she said she did. I told her, if she committed suicide, she would not be able to go back to the Catholic church. She appeared astonished and said she had not thought of that. Then I asked her to show me the knife again. She did. In an astonished tone, I told her that kind of knife would not work. She said, Oh, I did not know that. I told her to set the knife down. She did. Then she told me about her dream the night before, something about her and me and the sheep and I was teaching her to be a shepherd and the sheep followed her and it was the best dream ever, She agreed not to kill herself until after we can talk with her doctor in a couple of days.

    Does my life seem strange to you? Sometimes it does to me.

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  9. Tired and sore after three 12 hour days. Why the soreness? Nobody has a wound that needs dressing in exactly the same area of the body and nobody uses the same wound care products as the last person. I have a wheeled stool, upon which to sit, that I am constantly shifting to the best position for doing a different kind of dressing or getting up from to get more supplies. Also, wrapping pressure dressings around legs is a whole workout in itself. But, wound care is something I like and find interesting. The things that make me nervous in my new job are taking care of IV sites, PICC lines, and implanted ports.

    Tiny Niece story: The Seconds were preparing to go to the zoo this morning. My father was teasing Tiny Niece and said: “You better not act like a monkey. If you do, they might put you in a cage.”
    Tiny Niece: “I’ll act like a lion!”

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  11. I think today starts when most people get up in the morning, around 6 a.m. or later (not including rkessler on the alternative schedule). But literally, you are right, Cheryl. However, practically, most people think of waking up to the new day. Speaking of that, it is a new day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

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  12. Mumsee, you certainly lead an interesting life. You amaze me with your calmness. Since I am about a third of the way through The Deeper Well, you amaze me even more. I am thankful that you and Mike do what you do.
    Love you.

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  13. Mumsee, I know it is completely different, but I find myself having to bring my friend, Karen, up from the pit of despair where she finds herself considering the extent of her afflictions. She speaks of everyone being better off if she were not alive. She sometimes says I am one of the main reasons she hangs on. I really need to be able to drive to help her more. She is not crazy at all. Her feelings are logical and rational, but not God’s plan. I am called to help her keep hanging on. It is not an easy thing to deal with though. I can’t imagine; though, having to deal with getting a knife away from someone so they won’t take their life or harm their body. You always have the right words thanks to God! He helps me, too, in having the words that help Karen.

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  15. Some on here have seen on Facebook that I cut my hair yesterday. I cut about 15 inches off. While it was wet I parted it down the middle from my forehead to the back of my neck. I pulled it to each side and cut the long pigtails off in two big whacks. After that I cut a few bits off near the face to even it. I spent probably ten minutes overall on it. Somehow it looks presentable. I use to cut it myself in this manner in the past. The hardest part was just braving up to do it. I remember seeing some salons charge more to cut long hair. I never understood that.

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  18. Mumsee, I was going to say what Kim said about how amazing your calmness is. I’d be an emotional wreck with having to live with that.

    I’ll have to look at Janice’s new ‘do. I used to just cut mine, too, when it was long (in my late teens and all the way through my 20s and maybe first couple years of my 30s?). I’d get tired of it from time to time and cut it to maybe up to a few inches below the shoulders or even close to shoulder length so it would have more body and give me a change. Then I’d let it grow out really long again. I wore in in a blunt cut with no bangs so it was easy to do. But at some point I gave in after my mom offered to treat me to a salon cut for my birthday one year. I came out with my hair still quite long but with some layers and much nicer looking, really.

    I used to work almost every Labor Day for years. It was an easy shift for what was a lot of extra money. But the new owners don’t pay extra for holidays so I’ve decided now to just take the the days off. 🙂

    I’ll need to do a lot of watering later today, both the front and back are overdue by a couple days.

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  19. Oh, good job, Janice. Very cute, I’m impressed! How does it feel? I’m always amazed by how quick hair washings are after I go even from long/medium to shorter/medium. And how quickly my hair dries on its own.

    Lots of military jets overhead this morning, today is the last day of LA Fleet Week. Today’s highlight is/was (it started at 7 a.m. and should be over in about 45 minutes) the “conquer-the-bridge run” where they close off the bridge and several thousand people can run/walk over it. It’s 5.3 miles but not easy with the bridge incline. It’s the last event we’re covering (I’ve covered it before but not for a few years now).

    Everything — ship tours, music, exhibits, events — wraps up at around 4 p.m. I believe. Then I have to figure out when the ships start heading back out to sea and find a way to schedule a photo to go with my wrap-up story I’ll have to write tomorrow.

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  20. Morning! We are predicted to have record level heat today…air conditioning is on!
    Mumsee…you amaze me. We serve an amazing God and I am ever thankful for your reliance upon His protection and wisdom with your kiddos….as we pray along with you.
    We have a chipmunk hanging around the house…he was looking in the dining room window this morning and is quite entertaining. We have never seen chipmunks in this forest before, neither have any of our neighbors who have been here for 20 years! 🐿

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  22. Kim – I prayed that you would have a relaxing and refreshing day today.

    Roscuro – Nightingale also likes dealing with wounds. She says it is interesting, and also satisfying to see a wound eventually be healed.

    re: when a new day begins – As you may remember, Hubby would get up for a workday day at around midnight. Chickadee would still be up. It amused me that she would still be on one day while he was beginning the next.

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  23. In a comment last night, explaining some about the protective order, I mentioned that X’s contact with me (via text) can only be about when he will pick up or drop off Boy. It cannot be harassing in any way, or in some way cause stress to Nightingale. (I also mentioned that he had strayed from that a few times, which ended up with us cutting off my contact with him, but that contact was reinstated in the agreement when they went to court.)

    Anyway. . .that had me thinking about Nightingale’s stress over things with X. Those times he “strayed” seemed to me like they would cause annoyance or aggravation, but Nightingale was quite stressed over them. I think she may have some sort of post traumatic stress from that attack, as well as from the events that led up to her leaving him in the first place. It makes sense, with what she went through with him.

    One time a man she was dating casually had his hand on her shoulder, but the side of his hand rested against her neck. That caused her to tense up and feel fear rising in her. She asked him – or more likely, told him – to move his hand.

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  25. Hi all.

    Mumsee, I don’t think my heart could take that. What a blessing God gifted you with the calmness needed for a situation like that.

    Janice, I’m getting my haircut, too — tomorrow. First time in a year. Before that one, many years had gone by, and not much was trimmed off last year (just enough to get rid of split ends before 2nd Arrow’s wedding).

    This year I want to get a lot more cut off, to sport a more businesslike look. I’m going to update my photo on my website when my new grand piano is delivered next week, and I figure it would be better to have a do with more lift and bounce than my current, rather limp, straggly hair that goes more than halfway down my back.

    I wish I were on Facebook to see your new style, Janice! 🙂

    Days and nights: When 1st Arrow lived at home and worked the night shift at a local convenience store, he frequently talked about his “regulars” — customers who came in at usual times either before their work shifts started for the day, or those who came in after their workday had ended. There may have been a few whose days were starting before others’ workdays were ending. If not, the start of the day people trickling in wasn’t much later than the last stragglers of the previous day’s shift work.

    Speaking of days and nights, Dear Grandbaby (how about I just call her DG?) had her days and nights mixed up for a while. Fortunately, she’s on a normal schedule now, and generally sleeps pretty well. (Up briefly once or twice a night.) Daughter was really tired the first two weeks, but is now much more rested and feeling good.

    Can’t believe DG is one month old already today! We went to visit them yesterday again, our second time since her birth. She was only two days old when we last saw her and, of course, has changed a lot. Her hair is looking more red, and she’s got quite the personality. Daughter said yesterday that they went to a wedding when baby was two weeks old, and she cried when they stepped outside to leave. She had been so super happy at the dance, with all the lights and music and conversation, she didn’t want to leave!

    And speaking of weddings (sorry this is such a run-on post, lol), hubby and I did go together to my best friend’s daughter’s wedding Saturday. We also stayed for the reception, and then went home when the dance started. I had a good time, and he seemed to, also.

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  26. I heard a sound on my computer and came in to check. There was a notice from my high school graduating class FB page. My Senior English teacher died this morning. She and her husband were a scandal. She was a cheerleader and he was a (young) Football Coach. The school system moved him to a different school. She graduated, they married and he put her through college. They were never able to have children, but she made the difference in so many children’s lives including mine.
    She had us read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Job, JB, Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern Are Dead, Waiting For Godot, and I can’t remember what else. About 25 or so years ago, there was a cartoon of a man on stage with a telephone. He was saying, “I don’t know why we have this feature. They never answer”. The caption read, “Call waiting for Godot”. I cut it out and mailed it to her with a note thanking her for helping me get the joke.
    Somewhere in my jewelry box, I have a white and pink cloisonne bracelet she gave me as a graduation present.
    I have a friend in whose life she also made a difference. My friend’s home life was difficult in a different way than mine. One day on the way out of class this teacher stopped her and said, “It gets better”. Mrs. U. helped her into college.
    I really am not sure why I feel teary-eyed.

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  27. From the daily thread weekend conversation about weddings:

    Our former neighbor’s parents divorced at some point. I’m not sure if either of them married someone else after that, but, if so, those marriages are past and now they are married to each other again!

    Interesting thing with the wedding we attended Saturday: The couple had 10 attendants; 5 bridesmaids, 3 groomsmen, and 2 groomswomen. Several people remarked they’d never heard of having groomswomen in a wedding party. I hadn’t heard of it, either.

    The groomswomen (one was the sister of the groom, his only sibling; the other was a friend of the couple, whom they’d met at the campus ministry when they were all university students) wore dresses of a different color than the bridesmaids’ — a color (for the former) that matched the groomsmens’ suits.

    Interestingly, the groomswoman who is the friend of the couple is also the granddaughter of my late, beloved high school piano teacher!

    There was something else I was going to say about the wedding, but it’s escaped me at the moment. Time for lunch here. Maybe I’ll think of it after my tummy is full. 🙂

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  29. Because I work from my home, I’m an insomniac, sometimes I get up more than once during the night, and sometimes it simply makes more sense to work into the nights (like if I’m not sleepy anyway), the question of when a day starts or ends is irrelevant to me. Midnight is the official start of a new day, and so I go with that. I have had times that my husband gets up for an hour or two after most of a night of sleep, and I have not yet managed to fall asleep. Rare, but it has happened a few times. At the other end of the day, I’m only up (and on here) before other people if I’m really having a bad night of sleep. A normal night of sleep is not going to see me up before 7:00, and usually not that early.

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  30. Oh, I remember what I was going to say:

    A friend I saw at the wedding asked me, “Did you hear that ____________ got married?” (Daughter of a deceased mutual friend of ours.)

    I hadn’t heard.

    She told me that, with that marriage, the groom took the bride’s last name as his own!

    His biological dad had been killed when the groom was very young — I think as an infant, IIRC — and his mom had remarried some time after that. His mom’s new husband adopted the boy, so his last name was the same then as his step-dad.

    Well, step-father and step-son never really bonded, and when the groom-to-be met his bride-to-be and her family, they apparently developed a connection, and he wanted to take their (her) last name when he married her.

    And so he did.

    I had never heard of a groom taking his bride’s last name, but it makes sense in this situation. I pray that his bond continues to grow with the family into which he married. His bride’s dad and her step-mom are both Christians, as was the bride’s bio mom, my friend who is now home with the Lord.

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  31. I offered to let Mr. P change his name when we married. He asked why he would take my ex-husband’s last name. I replied, “So people will KNOW who we are”. There are still circles in which I am known as Kim-Cotten. It’s sort of like Mary Ellen, Mary Margaret, Ellie Grace, it’s just my Southern name. Kim-Cotten pause Hrlbrt. Middle son said I must really love his father if I was going to change my name to THAT! It’s all in good fun.

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  32. 6 Arrows, I had heard that weddings aren’t making so strong a distinction of “men on his side, women on hers,” that a woman who wants a guy friend or a man who wants his sister might well have the person on his/her own side, but I hadn’t actually seen it till the wedding I attended a week ago. In that wedding, the bride was black and the groom white, and the attendants were a mix of black and white. But the attendants were nearly all male. They had a flower girl but only one woman attendant (who was white; not knowing the groom, I don’t know if she was his sister, but she was on the bride’s side, and I know the bride has two sisters and they weren’t in the wedding), but the groom’s side had several men and the bride’s side also did. It made me rather sad, actually, though I know there can be multiple reasons a bride has a hard time getting attendants.

    In my case, I had fewer attendants than the groom did because I asked the girls and one was afraid she’d cry and her sister didn’t want to do it if she didn’t; I chose not to replace them but simply to have fewer attendants. The girls did the guest book, and I had them in the program as “guest book attendants” and my sister and friend as “bride’s attendants” or something of that sort, and the girls wore the same dress as my best friend. It worked.

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  33. I made the final photo assignment for Fleet Week (ship departures). It’ll be for a story I’m doing tomorrow, but we were hanging on getting word from the port about when the ships would actually be ‘pulling out’ of port.

    My stylist mentioned to me last time that I had “really good” hair. I used to hear that from stylists all the time (probably because I’ve never colored or otherwise processed my hair), but hadn’t heard it in a while, so it was a little mini-boost to my mood. At least there’s that, i thought. 🙂

    A friend just sent a photo of the neighborhood “corner store” where we grew up — you can see a bit of my house and hers as we were next to it on the corner. Kind of sad, our lawn is so brown (my mom always had the greenest grass). I haven’t been by there in ages (it can make me melancholy) but the corner now looks so quaint and old-fashioned to me. Our house was built in the 1940s, the two on either side were older, 1920s or so, I believe.

    And the “corner store” (which is what we always called it) looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

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  34. We have an acquaintance who took his wife’s last name. He would perform music sometimes and even used his wife’s last name to make a stage name for himself. She past away a few years ago and he has a new girlfriend, but still has kept the same name.

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  35. A man at our church married a widow with three daughters–the mom and girls all had the name Johnson.

    He had no family left and was delighted to join the Johnson clan, so after checking with his fiance’s late husband’s father, he changed his name to Johnson.

    I don’t remember his original name now, it’s been five years, but it was a common one and he really wanted at sixtyish, to be part of a family.

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  36. Then we had Navy friends, who took each other’s names and hyphenated them–which made a three-syllable name. Unfortunately, the marriage only lasted 3-4 years. He dropped her name and returned to his hyphen-less original.

    She married someone else and I don’t know what she did.

    That was in 1977. The Navy had trouble with their sailor changing his last name!

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  37. I had completely forgotten.
    When we first married , Elvera used to complain.
    She used to have to spell her first name. Elvera. Collins was easy.
    Now she has to spell both. Elvera Shull. Both are unusual.
    But she has handled it well for 62 years now.

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  38. But youngest GD goes by her maiden name.
    Jennifer’s last name is now “Smith”. She still goes by “Shull” at work. She says that when the school speaker calls “Jennifer Smith”, a dozen people answer.

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  39. My mom always used her maiden name (Carson) as her middle name (no hyphens).

    The hyphen stage that became so popular seemed destined for all kinds of complications as children were born and then they married …

    For women who want to do it, just keeping their maiden name as their middle name, optional to use or not use, seems like the best solution.

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  42. Paint the cat a color that matches the bench, DJ. 🙂

    Cheryl, 2:28pm, I’ve wondered about the role social media has played in what appears to me to be more girl-guy “just friends, not dating partners” relationships these days. Maybe that’s some of what is behind the groomswomen, etc. “trend,” if that’s what it is? Some girls might have as many guy friends as girl friends these days, which wasn’t really the case when I was growing up, in my area, anyway, it seems to me.

    My son has Facebook friends from the old homeschool crowd, some of whom are married women now. I thought, hmmm, how does that work? Social media seems to expand the friends connections beyond the traditional female-female and male-male friends pairings or groupings.

    There’s also a lot more mixed groups of roommates I’m hearing about these days — several women and men living together in the same apartment, none of them boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. But that’s probably another topic entirely.

    On keeping or changing last names upon marriage:

    Kare or Roscuro, what’s the tradition in Canada regarding name changes, if any, when marrying?

    Long ago I had two piano students (brother and sister) who had lived in Quebec before moving here. (Their mom had originally been from a community near mine.) The students’ parents each retained their own last names, and the children’s last name was that of their father’s. The mom said that in Canada (I think, but maybe it was provincial — Quebec — rather than national), women didn’t take the last names of their husbands (nor vice versa, I presume).

    Is that the case to this day? Was that a legal ruling, or simply a custom followed by most/all, or something else?

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  43. 6, it is a legal rule in the province of Quebec that women do not change their names upon marriage, a law that has been in effect since 1981. In Ontario, most married women I have encountered, of any generation, use their husband’s surname.

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  44. Ah, interesting. Thanks, Roscuro.

    I wonder what year those people got married? Must have been after that. Their kids are similar ages to my first two arrows, born in the early 90s.

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  45. My friend Cindy’s son recently changed his last name to his mom’s maiden name. His own dad hadn’t been much of a dad to him (and died several years ago), and it was his maternal grandparents who had a great effect on his life, so he chose to honor them by taking their last name.

    6 Arrows – I have a little quibble with something you wrote above, concerning the young man who took his wife’s last name. If his mother’s husband legally adopted him, then the man was his father, not merely a step-father. Although I realize that if they were not close, the relationship could have felt more like step-father/step-son rather than father/son.

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  46. From what I understand, it used to be traditional for the bride to use her maiden name as her middle name, or at least her middle initial in her signature. That’s what I do.

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  47. Remember last Sunday night (or maybe it was Monday) I mentioned that Gabby’s Mom had helped Nightingale with mowing and weed-whacking our overgrown lawn? Well, she was around this past Saturday afternoon, too, and suggested they mow the lawn again, which they did.

    Then yesterday, while Nightingale was at work, GM showed up and started some serious clearing out work in our backyard. The back edge and one side area on a rocky incline were very much overgrown, but Nightingale had plans to get to it eventually. Or maybe she was going to let it be?

    GM was back there weed-whacking, mowing, and lopping some branches down, too, with a long tool for that purpose. She and our neighbor (the husband) even took out a couple small trees that were growing. I was a little nervous, wondering if Nightingale wanted all that done, but she is fine with it.

    It is amazing the amount of work GM got done yesterday. Those areas of the yard look better than they have in at least a couple years. I am so grateful, as is Nightingale. She whipped up some Chicken Curry and shared it with GM and the children (Boy and Gabby).

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  48. Chas @ 3;18….I feel Jennifer’s pain with that last name!! 😂
    When I obtained my CO driver’s license after moving here from FL the clerk insisted I had to use my maiden name as my middle name. I had never done that before as my legal name has always been NancyJill. When I signed up for Medicare the agent told me to insist upon deleting my maiden name on my license because my Medicare is now different than that…it should be fun next year trying to get that changed!

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  49. Kizzie, 4:30, you’re right. That was a slip of the tongue — well, slip of the brain, or fingertips, or something 😉 — to call his adoptive father his step-father. I knew that.

    My husband has a brother who went on to adopt his wife’s daughters she’d had previously. He’s certainly not their “step-dad,” and I’ve never thought of him that way.

    Faux pas. [Embarrassed emoji here.]

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  52. 6, I believe it was considered the edge of progressive thinking in 1981. Quebec has a unique culture – well, every province has its unique culture, but Quebec’s is somewhat more distinctive due to the beginning of the history of Canada – and one of those features of uniqueness is how Quebec has followed in France’s footsteps of moving from an intensely Catholic society to an intensely secular society. As recently as the 1970s, Baptist missionaries in Quebec could be arrested for spreading material that the Catholic church disapproved of, but within a decade, that Catholic preeminence had been wiped out and replaced with an equally aggressive secularism. For example, under a recent Quebec law, public servants may not wear any religious symbols. The ostensible target was the hijab – Quebec is very like France in thinking that women should not be allowed to choose to wear conservative religious garb – but the Catholic rosary, the Sikh turban, and the Jewish kippah are equally forbidden (needless to say, the provincial law is being challenged in court using the federal Bill of Rights). The 1981 marriage law was emblematic of that intense secularism, but women in more recent years have pointed out that a law forbidding them to change their name is as repressive as a law compelling them to change their name: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/stop-funding-catholic-schools-restore-trust-in-the-neb-and-let-me-change-my-name-1.4162978/hey-quebec-it-s-2017-let-me-choose-my-name-1.4163025.

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  53. I have continued to use my maiden name as part of my writing name, though it is not legally part of my name anymore. But I can’t imagine hyphenating names (that’s just way too complicated and unnecessary) or the husband changing to the wife’s name. I have heard a few last names that are so bad that I thought if a man came along with a name like that, I would ask if we can find a new last name together–but I would not have wanted him to choose mine. (At one place I worked in Arizona, for instance, we had a customer with the last name of Fagg. I’m talking about a name with that level of “badness,” not just a difficult one.)

    When my mom married for the second time, she took her new husband’s name. But they had agreed that when they died, each would be buried next to the first spouse, co-parent of their children. (They married quite late in life and were only married about two years, maybe three, before he died in his early eighties.) He died first and was buried next to his first wife. But then Mom died, and we realized we had never talked to her about what name to put on her tombstone, and her second husband wasn’t around to give input. If we used both last names, it would look like we were saying the first married name was a maiden name, and thus that she was Dad’s daughter (which then wouldn’t make sense with the dates; he was eight years older). If we used only her second married name, the connection with Dad would be lost, and the point of burying her in the plot she already owned. Ultimately we kids all agreed just to bury her with Dad’s last name and hoped that that didn’t dishonor her late, brief second marriage.

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  55. I had a terrible time trying to get her to eat dinner.’
    In fact, she never did. She wanted to take it home.
    She often talks about “going home”. I would like to know where that is in her mind.
    We have lived in two much better places than this. But this is more than sufficient for our present condition.
    But I wonder where that is in her mind.
    She never did eat dinner. I gave her some cookies. She will eat them, one at a time.
    Just something to get into her. .

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  60. Names: I have mentioned on here before that I got a visit from the polizei while in Italy. They marched up the stairs to my apartment to see who was living there because nobody shares a name with their married partner. I had to explain in my form of Italian, that in America we often take our husband’s name. Cultural and it is okay. We were not harboring anybody. He did not appear convinced but left and never came back.

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  61. It is certainly not the custom in many places for the wife to take the husband’s surname. In West Africa, in a society so conservative that it in many ways resembled the culture of Bible times, women retained their own surnames. I recall more than one of my Spanish instructors, who were all from South America, saying that women retained their surnames on marriage in their culture. The difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada is that Quebec was originally a French colony, rather than a British one, and managed to retain the French culture long after it was taken over by the British. Nova Scotia was also a French colony, Acadia, but did not retain the predominant French culture in the same way after British conquest, although Acadian communities still exist in the province and the neighbouring provinces of PEI and New Brunswick. In France, while a woman’s surname remains legally unchanged, she can use her husband’s surname in practice (e.g. being introduced as Madame A, wife of Monsieur A). That was also the care in Quebec, until the 1981 law forbade even the practical use of the husband’s surname.

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  62. Roscuro, 5;53 and 9:26, thanks. That’s all very interesting — fascinating.

    Today was a breather of a day — tomorrow I’ll wake up and hit the ground running. Oh so much to fit in the rest of this week.

    School tomorrow; daughter’s piano lesson; haircut at 2:00 in the community north of us; pick up 4th Arrow in the community south of us when she gets done with work at 4:00, so we can head to the community east of that one for a 4:30 appointment to look at her graduation pics and choose which ones to order; drive her back to pick up her car and then go home for supper and a 7:00 piano lesson.

    Wednesday is school again and piano lesson 1 / supper / piano lesson 2 / piano lesson 3 / 30 minutes to get out the door and down to church (20 minutes away) for 7:45 string ensemble practice for playing in church on Sunday.

    Thursday, more school, pay the rental fee and pick up the key to the venue we’ve reserved for 4th Arrow’s graduation party on Saturday; not to mention get everything ready for that!!!

    Friday Bible study and school, and more party prep, as I’m sure I won’t be finishing it all on Thursday.

    Pray I don’t run out of steam? 🙂

    Next week will be, Lord willing, a bit less hectic!

    See you then, wanderers.

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  63. Actually, in Spanish tradition the woman keeps her maiden name and adds “de” plus the husband’s name. Before marriage, she has her father’s surname followed by her mother’s. SO, Marta Garcia Lopez marries Juan Santos Gomez and becomes Marta Garcia de Santos. My stepmother did that when she married my dad. She joked that they do that so if the husband leaves her then her father has to take her back.

    As for spelling names: My last name is an uncommon Spanish one, so we’ve always had to spell it for people. Now a certain NBA player has a variant spelling of it for a first name. So we still have to spell it so people get it correct, but at least now they know how to pronounce it. (That is, the English pronunciation, not Spanish. I don’t expect anyone to get that right unless they are Spanish.)

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  64. Peter, when I was single I once told a conservative relative of mine that if I married, I might well keep my maiden name as part of my writing name, for the very practical reason that I have already published a couple of books and a bunch of smaller stuff under that name. She thought that was a “feminist” thing to do. I pointed out the Spanish system, and she started to say that was a feminist thing to do–until I reminded her that Hispanics aren’t really known as the most feminist culture around.

    Cultures vary, and that’s OK. In our culture, it is accepted practice for a married woman formally or informally to use her maiden name as her middle name to help others connect her to her family of origin or to things she accomplished under that name. Hillary Rodham Clinton may have used her maiden name because she preferred it to her married name (or she might have had other reasons), but that doesn’t mean that every woman who uses her name in such a way has feminist motives.

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  65. I use the name R____ Kessler R____. Kessler is not my maiden name, but my first husbands name. When you’ve been known as Kessler for 30+ years people won’t know who you are if you go only by R. That is probably only a problem in rural areas where people know all the relatives for several generations.

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