Monday, November 24, 2008

Totally Off Topic

I've been super busy and haven't had time to blog but I have a wonderful blessing for you. If you will go to http://thebigpicturelawyman.blogspot.com you will see Gretta's Funeral in the side bar. Click on that and wait until Lesley gets up to talk. This was obviously a very difficult time for Lesley but she countered the darkness with the light of God by giving her testimony at her daughter, Gretta's, funeral. Gretta was just two years old when she got tangled up in the pull cords of the window blinds and strangled to death. This woman's testimony is incredible. You will be blessed just by hearing it. I feel so bad for her but you definitely need to hear her testimony. What a heart for the Lord this woman has! It was especially painful to hear for me since I just went over to Stagecoach Nevada to a memorial service for my nephew who died accidentally of a drug overdose on this past Saturday. Although there was a world of difference between my nephew's death and Gretta's, they both deal with the ultimate truth. All living things eventually die and even though, as Christians, we know the dead aren't really dead, they are, nonetheless, taken from us. Some at 2 years of age and some at 18 or older. Although the Christian knows this life isn't the real life, it is still the only life we've ever known so what do we do when we face a hardship that is bigger than ourselves? What do we do when God doesn't make sense? What are we to think and what are we to believe? Tough questions but we will all ask one or all of them at least once in life. At least once in life, God's will will not make sense to any of us. So even the strongest Christians mourn when death makes a housecall. Even the strongest Christians are left wondering how all this makes sense in God's will. Psalm 139 talks about God knowing the number of days we have to live even before we're born. What an awesome God! He formed us in the belly of our mothers and foreordained our entire lives before we'd yet taken our first breath. What Lesley does is show us that God is in control and that everything that happens, happens because of His good and perfect will. We will be left with questions and God may not give us the answers but His will for us, for each of us, is good and perfect. Death doesn't change that. She deals with facts; not feelings. The fact is that Gretta lived and the fact is that Gretta died and yet the greatest fact of all is that Gretta still lives. She now lives with God. She has a physical place to live. Heaven. What does all that mean? It means that Gretta lives on in our memories but, even more, she lives on in God's sight.

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Things have been hectic for me the past week or so. I'm up to my nose in knitting and can't seem to squeeze out enough time in the day to knit all I want to knit. I have two things going on at the same time. I have a baby blanket that I may end up ripping out if it looks like I don't have enough yarn to finish it. I had 7 or 8 skeins of yarn left from years and years ago when I used to knit all the time and I wanted to use it up and thought there'd be enough yarn to do a blanket but I'm beginning to think I won't have enough to finish the project. So I've put that on the back burner until I can get to WalMart to see if by some miracle I can find the same shade of yellow (a very soft, very muted yellow) so I can buy more. And we all know the shade has to be a perfect match or it will show in the blanket. It's from a "no dye lot" color but who's to say the color is still around after 20 years? But I don't feel like knitting on it anymore and risk just having to rip it out. So yesterday when we were shopping I bought a book about a Prayer Shawl Ministry and there was a shawl in there that I decided I wanted to knit so I bought the yarn to do it too. Now I don't have the correct needle size and this yarn isn't the easiest to knit with because your needles (or mine anyway) keep picking up a few strands of yarn from other stitches and you (I) have to keep fighting the yarn so the question is: Do I want to invest all my time and energy to do something this big just to have to fight with the yarn all the way through??? That would be enough to turn anybody away from knitting. So while I think on that I'll investigate the idea of knitting myself a hat. I bought a couple skeins last month of some yarn that I think will make a cute hat and there may be enough of it to do a scarf to match. Knitting, knitting, knitting. That's all that's in my head lately. But this is the type of person I am. I'm always gung ho until I tire of it and get it out of my system. I'm that way with writing too. I know I need to sit down and write some devotionals but I just can't seem to get myself to sit down and do anything other than knit.

We've got company coming in this weekend and I am not in the least prepared for them. My house is a mess and here I sit at the computer! Gee! I wonder why the house is such a mess. Go figure! I also bought the yarn for a scarf for my daughter-in-law. She has misplaced the one I made her two years ago for Christmas so I thought I'd make her another one. Now look!! I'm back to knitting! But this is Tuesday, my knitting day so maybe it's okay. [Just had to stop and do something mundane and domestic. I got the trash out of the garage for tomorrow morning's pick up. I have to do that earlier in the day because when feeding time comes (4:00pm) I like to be able to close down the garage door while the cats are eating and get them in for the night. So I got that taken care of.]

I now have 3 hours before prayer meeting and 4 hours until my knitting group meets. The only problem with the knitting group is that it's only an hour long. I'd like to go until 8:00 and make it a two-hour event. But Friday I'm going to take the time to go to a private knitting lesson with my dear friend Kathleen. She's so good to be willing to work with me individually. There's so much I need to learn. I mean, I want to know how to do everything. And I want to learn it all now!! I'll take my books over Friday and get a lesson in how to read the patterns. The one I picked out in the shawl book was easy enough that even I figured it out. It's just a simple repeated design: yo k2 tog, yo k2 tog, etc. It gives a nice open weave to the shawl and should go pretty fast. The only problem I may have is that I've already dropped two needle sizes and I'm still too big on my gauge swatch. I will find out tonight if I need to drop down even further. It's a very open weave but I don't want it to be too open. And I'll continue to work with this sample yarn until I've decided whether I want to invest my time in fighting this yarn. The yarn I've worked with before but I didn't seem to struggle so much when I knitted all the scarves two years ago. The k2 tog is a very tight fit and I end up taking yarn from other stitches and getting them mixed up with the stitch I'm trying to make. Neither of these negatives are enough to make me cast my vote outside of the project but the two together may just be telling me that I'd hate knitting this shawl and I don't want to have that experience. The thing is, I want to be knitting something. As long as I can keep something going at all times I'm okay. I just don't want this to be another project I start and then don't finish because it's stressful. Knitting is not supposed to be stressful.

Our weather is overcast and dreary. Not really cold though. Cold enough for a sweater or over shirt but not cold enough for a coat. We may get a few scattered showers tonight and tomorrow but they really aren't expecting much. On our drive over Carson Pass on Saturday there was no snow in the mountains at all. You could see remnants of a snowfall in the shadows of the rocks and things but you could tell it had been a long time since it had snowed. Here it is almost Thanksgiving and no snow for skiers. It's going to be a lean year for the resorts I guess. The weather over the pass was overcast and the wind was cold.

Once we got into Carson City we drove past the Ormsby House Hotel where M and I stayed on our wedding night. A little ways up the street was the old courthouse where M and I got married 36 years ago last week. It was good to get out in the world. I can't remember the last time I took a trip of over 30 miles. It would have been years and years ago. We made it to Stagecoach in good time and in fact, ended up waiting for some people who called and said they'd be a little late. His memorial was well attended. There were quite a few young people there. Hopefully facing the reality of what drugs can do, will be a deterrent to any of them considering that way of life. Merle had so much talent. His music. His art. His writings. So much incredible talent and it is no more. Merle lived too short a life, anyway you look at it.

After the service we all (my sisters, my son and his wife, my nephew and his family) drove to Tahoe and met up at the Monte Bleu (or however it's spelled) and had dinner. Then everyone played for a little while. I didn't play because I think gambling is very boring. You just sit there and feed the money into the machine, hit the spin button, and watch your money disappear. What kind of fun is that? My brother-in-law, son, and sister actually took a little money home with them. My other sister lost. I don't know how my nephew and his wife did. But that seemed to brighten everybody's day a little. We left Tahoe and headed home and I thought it was probably going to be midnight before I could get home but as it turned out we made record time from Tahoe and I was able to get to my car parked at my sister's house before 10:00. I made it to my house by 10:30 so all in all it was a long day but was an opportunity to get out. I don't know why I am so uncomfortable being away from home. It's just the way I am.

Guess this will have to do for today. Hopefully this will publish. It's failed every time it's attempted an autosave so I don't know if the entire blogger is down or if it's just the autosave. Guess I'll find out when I hit the publish post button. So until next time...

1 comment:

Nicole said...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!