Well, Rats!

I am supposed to blog today but my blogger has acted up all morning and wouldn't allow me to publish. And now I have no time to concentrate on a blog. I got up and got all my chores done right away and everything so that I would be free to blog. And now I'm basically out of time. Since I couldn't blog, I ran errands instead, and I had a lot of stops to make. One of the perils of a strip town. You start making stops at one end of town and work your way to the other end. You can't just park and walk to some of the places. I took my nail magazines to the ROP Cosmetology school here in town. They will get some use out of them and it got them out of my hair. I am a licensed manicurist but I'm not working and really never have. I didn't have to work at it very long before I realized I just wasn't strong enough to work. So I took off that hat and put on another but I still get a free subscription to Nails Magazine and I just save them up and then once in awhile I'll drop by the school and drop them off for those who are studying to be manicurists or nailTechs. That way I don't feel like they are wasted on me.

Now I must brag: I went out in the heat to run my errands knowing full well that I would be comfortable the whole time because my new car has A/C. Yea! Haven't had A/C or heater for years. Not since the compressor shut down in my old car. But now it's so nice. I tell you, you feel the heat here really fast out in a car running errands without A/C. I will miss my old car though ... a little bit. I wrote in a comment to the last post how we got the new car and if you're interested you can go there and read it but I don't want to have to go over it all again. Just let me say I have a wonderful son and daughter-in-law and a new car. Yea! I am still walking around in the clouds over it. Tomorrow is our big shopping day and we will see how it fares for that. I'm worried because it doesn't have the space or load capacity the cad had and taking the bus is out now that we have the new car with A/C. The new car is a compact Toyota Corolla. It has a large trunk for a small car but we buy a lot of big items and some of them are quite heavy. Things like boxes of cat litter (at least 3 of those) 2 16-pound bags of dry cat food, 6-8 12-pk cola boxes, 3 cases of canned cat food and one case of canned dog food. That's it for the heavy stuff. Then we have the big bulky stuff like econo-size toilet paper and paper towels. But we can fill the back seat too. In my old car we couldn't put anything in the back seat and go into another store. One of us always had to stay with the car because the locking mechanism was broken and we couldn't lock up the car. Now we can put all the heavy stuff in the trunk and all the big bulky stuff in the back seat. One way or another we'll figure it all out. But for once I am not dreading that monthly jaunt across the river. And we can even make two trips across the river if we need and still not use as much gas as one trip over and back would cost us in the cad or the bus.

My quiet times in the mornings have been somewhat dry lately. I guess we all go through those phases in our walks with the Lord, but I sure miss the ones that come and speak right to your heart. But it is still nice to have those cherished few minutes out on the deck with my Lord before I get busy with my day. Wish they could all be "mountain-top" experiences. But sometimes we are called to just remain faithful to our commitment to the Lord. Although I did finish the Psalms this morning. Tomorrow I will start back with Psalm 1 again. I hope someday to have Psalms 1 and 2 memorized but that desire is going slowly. I have always had such a horrible memory. Add to that the fact that our memories deteriorate with age and you can see my problem. It becomes harder and harder for us to memorize. I am in between studies right now and can't decide what I want to do next. I'd like a really good book to read. Something interesting and fulfilling. I still have Beth Moore's book on David. I've started it a couple times and I've been derailed after the first few pages. Maybe I'll give it another try. One of the books I bought a while back was a book of quotes out of the different works of Watchman Nee. I love his books although I must confess I've failed to read most of them all the way through. They tend to drag near the end. But this book isn't one that you can just sit down and get into and read until your eyes hurt. These are very rich treats of wisdom that must be read and mulled over and over in your mind and heart until their full value soaks in. I am now in Galatians in the New Living Bible and I sure wish I had one that was printed in larger type. This is like 4 or 5 point type. Very small. But at the time I bought it I thought it would be just a reference book in which to check their rendering of a certain passage. I didn't know that I was going to fall in love with it and have the desire to just sit down and read it. With the type as small as it is, I can't read for too long before my eyes start hurting. I will definitely be in the market for a book with normal size type.

I have been wondering what I will do for my quiet time once the colder weather moves in. Most mornings will be too cold and wet to go out on the deck and that's part of what makes my quiet time so special to me. I don't really have a quiet, secluded place inside to read and pray. Maybe I can put together a place either in the bedroom or the extra bedroom that was supposed to be "my" room since M already has the master bedroom as his art studio and then of course his paintings are everywhere in the house. I'm fortunate to have such beautiful art on my walls but it's like living in an art gallery because the paintings cover every square inch of the wall space. I love my hubby's art but I would like to have arranged groups of them and possibly art from other artists, perish the thought.

My house smelled so clean when I walked in after running errands. The different cleaning agents and the dribble of bleach in the cooler made it smell so good. Usually it smells like latent cigarette smoke from when Randy lived here. He always smoked in his room but he smoked so much that it still permeated the entire house. He's been gone for about a year and a half (doesn't seem like it could possibly be that long ago!) and the house still smells of the smoke. He was a very heavy smoker and I think it must be in the carpeting and paint or something. No one else seems to smell it so I don't know. I've either got a really sensitive nose for it or I'm imagining things. I love that smell though when you first walk through the door and you can still smell the cleaning products you used when you cleaned.

Michael is in taking a nap and I need to get the agenda typed up and printed out for my Deacons Meeting tonight. I do that on his computer because he has a printer. I have a printer too but it goes through the ink cartridges so quickly that it's basically useless. These last cartridges I put in dried up on me. I knew it went through the ink really fast so I reserved it for something important I wanted to print and the ink must have dried up because it wouldn't print out right. One way or another, it goes through them. It was just a small, inexpensive printer anyway. A gift from my son. But as soon as M wakes up I'll get to those agendas.

I'm considering doing a word study on the word "light." I don't usually do word studies but I read a Scripture the other day that talked about the light of and in the believers. I can't remember what verse it was but it got me to thinking and wondering just how many times the Bible uses the word light when it talks about believers. I've always thought of Christ as the light but this verse I read implied that we are light to those around us. Not just that we have the light of God but that we are His light in a dark world. It just stood out to me when I read it. That we do not have light so much but that we are light. A subtle difference there that can really make all the difference in the world when I study Scripture.

I never seem to have enough time to do all the things I want to do. I would stay immersed in Scripture if it were possible for me to do that. I can never quite get enough. Well, it's almost time to feed my beasts again. Hopefully Mulder will do more than just pick at his food. I tried to get him to eat something this morning and he wasn't interested. But I have seen him up at the dry cat food a couple times today. He's just lost so much weight and he's still a relatively young cat no more than 10 years old. He was out of the last litter we had when we lived on Summit and that was about 10 years ago. So he's not an old cat by any means. Please pray for Mulder than he would put on a little weight.

My hair is growing back in ... I think. My hubby and son both say it has grown a lot but when I look at it in the mirror all I see is a bald head. I do feel stubble when I run my hand over my head so I'm taking that to mean it's coming back but it's going to take a long, long time. The wig my daughter-in-law bought for me finally came in the mail. In fact there were two of them in the mail. And God bless her sweet little heart for wanting to do something to help me out but it's just awful. It's dark, dark brown (way, way, way darker than my natural color) and is so shaggy that it just sticks out everywhere. I wanted so much for it to work for her sake. She was so sweet to buy that wig for me but I just can't wear it. I keep putting it on and trying to style it but it just sticks out in all directions. It came in a padded envelope all the way from Hong Kong so you can imagine it was pretty flat by the time it got here. I think I might could do something with it if I had a way to putting it somewhere and actually style it with a shampoo and set but I don't have anything to put it on so I can do that. It needs a head, if you know what I mean. I wanted so much for it to work for her sake. She played around with it while she was here but she couldn't get it to do anything either. The directions just say to wash it, rinse it, and just kind of shake the water out of if and it will conform back to the style. Well as you might imagine, that doesn't work. She should have done this with me instead of wanting to surprise me. Number one, I wouldn't have gone with that color. It just makes me look pasty white under all that nearly-black mop on top. And I wouldn't have gone with this style at all. It's way too shaggy and it doesn't look like real hair. Of course it isn't real hair, but it's supposed to look like real hair! I just hope she didn't pay a lot for it and I so wish she would have consulted with me first. If I were to have decided to buy a wig I would have gone down to Lodi and bought one after I'd tried them on and made sure I looked good in them first. I just feel so bad for her and I'll have to think of something nice to do for her to show my appreciation. But to be quite truthful, I look better bald than I do with that wig on. I knew this was going to happen as soon as she handed me that sheet of paper and asked me what I thought of that hairstyle. But I was holding out hope that she hadn't already bought it. You know if you're going to buy a wig you're going to want to try on several and see how you look in them. But this was so misleading by the photograph she had printed out. It was a style I would never have picked for me. I mean, I'm not 24 years old anymore and that's what this style looked like. An old lady trying to stay 24 years old. I don't want an old granny's style either but the way we wear our hair is kind of personal, you know? Well, enough on that. Just know that she did a very wonderful thing for me and I love her so much!!

I guess I better go feed all the animals. They are beginning to swarm around me. That's right, all my animals can tell time. Sorry this wasn't much of a post but after fighting with my blogger all morning I'm just not up to a regular post. Tomorrow will be our shopping day as I've already mentioned so I won't get back with a real post until Friday. But at least I got all my chores and running around done. And if this will publish, I at least got something accomplished. I've got my fingers crossed because earlier this just came up ERROR, blogger can't do what you want it to do. Try again. Hopefully this posts. Until Friday...