A Fresh Start

I know it's been a long while since I've posted on my blog but I wanted to give it another try. I don't know how often I'll post or exactly what I'll write about but I'm going to try again. I have been asked to give the congregational prayer at church on Sundays about every two and a half or three months and since I write them out beforehand so that I will have a record of these prayers, I thought I might copy those, if nothing else. I do want my blog to slant toward Christian topics and Christian living as that's what my life is wrapped around. Also there's the fact that we don't really do interesting things very often. We rarely go anywhere to speak of or do anything really exciting to write about. I did figure out how to put pics in my blog before taking my sabbatical but I've since forgotten how I did it. I have the instructions written down somewhere and maybe I can dig those out and send pics once in awhile. Yesterday, my granddaughter gave me a couple beautiful pics of her and her new hubby at their wedding back in August. When I figure out how to do that again I'll have hubby scan the pictures into his computer and then send them to me. (I don't have a scanner on my computer and he does.) Then I can post those on my blog.

Speaking of computers, mine has been down for a couple months. I really missed it. The first few days without it was awful. I don't think we realize just how much time we spend sitting at the computer! I know I didn't. Turned out my video card was bad. My son had a spare one in his drawer at home that worked on my computer and so he came over yesterday and installed it. Now I am up and running again. He is so good with computers and so gracious to offer to fix mine on his day off.

I went to a jewelry party yesterday afternoon after church. It was at my granddaughter's house out in the middle of nowhere. She's only about 35 miles away, maybe 20 as the crow flies, but the last 30 miles seem to take forever. She actually lives in Ione or Lake Comanche but it is desolate out there. It took me about 45 mins each way so I put a few miles on the car and time on my bottom end. This is the fourth jewelry party I've been to (counting my own) and I have spent entirely too much money on jewelry. But the jewelry is so beautiful and I do love my jewelry. I never get dressed in the morning without putting on my jewelry for the day. I just feel naked without it. But I really did get carried away especially considering it's very expensive jewelry. And it's costume jewelry at that! But I got several beautiful necklaces and 3 or 4 pairs of earring. Yesterday I bought a simple pair of pearl posts or studs and a turquoise and silver necklace. I really go in for the bling. I like lots and lots of beads and shells and stones and chains and anything else they can sting into a necklace. And I love multiple strands! It's lia sophia jewelry I've been buying and I had no business buying so much of it. But I got it at such great deals. $128 necklaces for only $20! Can't beat that. So before I knew it, I'd gone completely overboard and now I'm having the worst case of guilt!!! I bought like I was a glutton sitting down to an 8-course dinner affair. Shame on me!

Michael (usually referred to here as "hubby") had surgery on his neck in late August and things just haven't quite picked up for him yet. I actually think the surgery itself did a lot of good. It's just that he has so many other problems that have surfaced since the surgery that he finds it difficult to think of many positives in his life right now. He's still wearing his neck brace and I think he's getting very tired of it. He sees his surgeon in a couple weeks and I'm hoping he'll tell him that he doesn't need to wear it any longer because I think a lot of his pains are caused by him adjusting and guarding for the brace. He takes it off occasionally but he still compensates for it by keeping his neck and shoulders very rigid and tight. I think he's afraid his head is going to fall off and that's what the plate is in there to prevent. They implanted a 3-1/2 inch plate in his neck to stabilize those three or four vertebrae so he shouldn't need to "protect" or guard his neck as much as he does.

Fall is happening around us. I can't believe it's almost November. Thanksgiving! Then December and Christmas. Where have the months gone??? Trees are turning all over town and when I drive around to go to the store or the Post Office, there are always leaves blowing across the road in front of my car. The nights are cooler but the afternoons still get a tad bit too warm. I'm sure hoping for a wet winter this year to end the drought. Halloween is this coming weekend. It's usually raining lightly on Halloween night. Pepper and I will stay in the back of the house while hubby stays in the front to hand out candy to any trick-or-treaters who come calling. I don't think we had any come last year at all. If we did it wouldn't have been more than just a couple.

The curl is coming out of my hair. You'll remember that all my hair fell out over a year ago and when it came in, it came in curly and I absolutely loved it. It was a breeze to keep looking nice and was very easy to take care of. Everyone loved it, especially me!! Now it is almost as straight as a board. I am devastated to lose the curl I waited my entire life to have. When it came in curly, I really thought it was worth all those months of growing it back. In fact, I would have shaved my head if I'd known it would come back curly but now? Now I'm totally disappointed. I really am!

I'm still knitting but I'm knitting at a more relaxed pace. Lately I've been knitting neckwarmers (officially called neck cuffs but everyone says neckwarmers). I knitted several. Gave away5 or 6 to family members and then knitted 5 or 6 more to have on hand to sell should any of my sisters' golfing buddies want to buy one to wear on those cold, early morning tee offs. I figured I could sell them at $10 each and make a little money so that I could buy more yarn from KnitPicks. I've started a vest (really just a sleeveless sweater, not your typical vest) but I had to put it aside for the neckwarmers. I also needed to order more yarn as I didn't order quite enough the first time. I order most of my yarn from KnitPicks. They have great yarn and the very best knitting needles on the market today! If you're a knitter and you haven't checked them out, please go online (http://www.knitpicks.com/, I think) and check them out. I bought a double set of the wooden harmony needles and a variety of interchangeable cable sizes. And then they came out with the clear Zephyr needle points and I fell head over heels in love with them. I have a complete set now and will probably buy double needles of the most popular sizes. That should permit me to knit without having to move my points around so much. And when I knit in the round I'll use both the Zephyr and harmony needle points to make it easier to differentiate between the two needles. I still have the yarn for several more scarves that I want to do this winter. I'm also going to buy a few skeins from my friend Kathleen to use to make another scarf. She ordered it and didn't like the color and I'm crazy about the color. So rather than her sending it back, she'll sell it to me. I know just what pattern I want to use too. I actually have the yarn to do at least 3 of them. I'm not sure what I'll do with all of these scarves but knitting them will be fun. Kathleen and I are also going to knit ourselves matching hoods (not that we really wanted to match each other it's just that we both liked the same pattern and we both liked the same color yarn). The pattern was in a book I bought from KnitPicks which was just packed with wonderful patterns (so unlike the latest book I bought on scarves). I didn't find a single scarf in that book that I would want to knit. The blurb about the book said they were new and "original" designs. But it failed to mention that they were all ugly at the same time! Guess that's the risk you take when you buy books online. The first book I bought was titled Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders and apart from the fact that I haven't yet found one of them that could be knit with just one skein, all 40 designs were worth knitting. Of course, I didn't buy the luxury yarn. I simply substituted one of KnitPicks wonderful yarns and knitted away. That's what I like so much about knitting. It is so versatile. [For some reason that spelling bothers me but spell checker says there's nothing wrong with it. I apologize if my checker is in error.]

I think I have you about caught up with the things that are going on in our lives at the current time. I was going to post a prayer today too but I think I'll save that for tomorrow or the next day. There's no hurry. I wanted to catch you up with what we're doing and I don't want to write a really long blog. I do plan on continuing my blog in a more routine manner but I'm simply not planning on posting it nearly as often as I have in the past. If you check back every week or so, chances are you'll catch them all as they come out. When I was writing them every day, it was not only time consuming for me to write them but was equally time consuming for my readers to read them. Then as you well know, I took a sabbatical for a few months and now here I am, ready to go at it again but at a much slower pace. So I will leave you with this: May God bless you and keep you. May His face shine upon you and may He guide your steps toward godly living. May He shower His grace upon you and may you learn to trust Him in all things and may everything you do bring glory to Him and Him alone.