Bye, Bye 2008; Hello 2009!

Finally I am finding time to blog. Christmas and the New Year celebrations have gone by and I'm facing a brand new year with its challenges and disappointments and its successes and surprises. The last of the company left this morning then we did what needed to be done. We bundled up against the cold and wandered out to do our shopping. God has been so good to me lately I just can't tell you of all the times He has stepped in a rescued me from myself. Even today when I backed into another car in the parking lot at CostLess. Not a ding on her car. Thank you, Jesus! And only a little bit of chipped paint on mine. I don't know where she came from. I had just looked and the way was clear. The thing is, I hit her hard enough for damage and there was none. She could have been a very nasty person with grounds to yell at me but she was very nice and simply told me to drive more carefully in the future. This was a blessing from the Lord. A reminder that I should not be looking anywhere else except WHERE MY CAR IS HEADING! I should not have been backing up if I wasn't turned around and watching. That's the key. We all get that way. I watch my husband all the time when he looks and then just turns away and continues to back up. But I was unaware that I too do that at times. But we get lazy and forgetful and try to cut corners, forgetting that those "corners" are put there for our protection. Anyway the Lord was definitely with me this morning. And I made so many MAJOR knitting errors in the last couple days and He stepped in and fixed them. A couple I was able to figure out after awhile (even though one mistake still shows if you look closely enough) and then there were a couple that just disappeared in the process of going back to see what I had done right. With one in particular I know I was visited by the Lord one of those times because I fixed what I didn't even know was wrong. We have an awesome God! And you may think me silly for believing God intervened in my knitting but I don't care. I know He did because He made the problem go away without me doing anything. My God is so big He even cares about my knitting. Everything I knit is for His glory and He knows that I know that. What an awesome God!!! He really does care about anything and everything that happens to us in this life. I am especially thankful that He took care of the "fender bender" in the parking lot this morning. I really did hit her hard enough for some damage (especially considering how our cars are made these days) but there wasn't even a scratch on her car. Thank You, Father! I won't have to explain to my son (who pays for my insurance) how I managed to create another insurance claim against his account. I felt so bad for hitting her. The Lord knew it was an accident and He protected me. She said she honked twice but neither I nor Michael heard her do it. There was no one behind her so she could have shoved it in reverse right quick and saved me from having a heart attack. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not shifting the blame. I BACKED INTO HER, not the other way around. But I couldn't count on both hands the number of times I've backed out of someone's way to avoid a crash.) And truthfully, I don't think she honked. I mean, chances are I wouldn't have heard her honk but Michael has good ears. He would have heard her I'm sure.

It has been cold and dreary for the past couple days. And we got a half an inch of rain yesterday which was a surprise for me. I didn't hear that we had rain coming in. I went to Sonora across the river and into the next county yesterday afternoon with my sister and it was raining when we came out of the SS office building. I don't think we're due for rain again for a few days. The river was really low under the bridge. I sure hope we don't go into another drought problem like we had a few years ago. We stayed in that pattern for several years. Way too long and I'd just as soon not do it again.

Well we have the shopping all done for now so we won't need to worry about that. Although WalMart was out of a lot of things we normally buy and chances are we'll have to make another trip later in the month. I got a $30 gift certificate for the local Christian bookstore and I forgot to take that with me so if we do end up going back, I'll spend that money before it burns a hole in my pocket. I love Christian bookstores, don't you? The only problem I'll have is too many books to choose from. I had thought about buying a new Bible but my son and daughter-in-law bought me the one I was thinking about buying. I still need a good "formal" Bible for Church. Mine is falling apart but those things are like $75!!! Ridiculous prices, if you ask me!

We had to buy a new toaster today. Our old one just almost gave completely out. It only got hot on one side of the bread and it took forever and a day to make a simple piece of toast. We bought that one to replace another one we had that was as slow as molasses on a cold day. This time we bought a Hamilton Beach. The one before the last one that was so slow was a Proctor Silex. When we got tired of waiting all day for toast we bought a Toastmaster toaster. We thought it would be a good one but it was every bit as slow as the old one had been. Then when it died on one side we thought we'd check out a new brand. We thought someone named ToastMaster would make good, quick toast, wouldn't you? Well it was as slow as the 7-year itch and I'm glad the heating elements finally went out on one side so we'd have to get another one. Of course we haven't tried it out yet to see how slow it is. Maybe they're all slow these days. I'll let you know how well it works, if it works well. The thing is, we won't know until we use it and then we can't take it back once we've used it.

Well, I'm going to go to my knitting now and see what kind of shape it's in. I don't remember leaving it a mess to be worked out so hopefully I can just sit down and knit and rest awhile. The sun is coming out!! Here it is after 4:00 and the sun finally sticks its head out. We don't have many dreary days up here in the foothills. Just enough to be bothersome. And it's time for me to feed my cats so I better get on the stick and get them taken care of so that I can knit in peace. We're warming up left-over lasagna for dinner so there's no real cooking required. Just a min or so in the nuker and we'll be set. I hope you had a great New Year's holiday and I hope you also have a great new year! Until next time...