godlover

It's Always Something

2010-08-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

We spent 5 hours in the emergency room of our local hospital here in town. Long story but he wasn't admitted. He will see his primary care physian in the morning for further tests.

I've been busy, busy, busy lately. Taking care of my girlfriend's cat and garden while she's in Alaska visiting her daughter and grandchildren. She's been gone a week but will be home on Friday but I don't know what time. She didn't say and I didn't think to ask. So guess I'll still go over on Friday to do the chores unless she calls or emails that she's home.

And I've been knitting up a storm. I started my first pair of legwarmers a few days ago and I have one completed and I started the other warmer last night. I'm using Andean Silk from www.KnitPicks.com and that's a very soft wool and silk blend. I also have a wool and cashmere blend from the same yarn source that I am turning into a beautiful scarf. I love the pattern. Very sophisticated and expense looking. I wish the blend had more cashmere. I would gladly pay more for more cashmere. Anyway I'm just finishing up my first ball of yarn and it's time to start the second ball. I thought for sure that I could get a scarf out of 2 balls of yarn but it's going to come out quite short if I don't order more balls. I could make it short and give it to my hubby. Men's scarves are most often shorter than those for women. But I was so hoping to claim it for myself. My #1 granddaughter has asked for a pair of legwarmers to use when she goes snow boarding with her husband. So it looks like I'm going to have to buy more yarn. What is it with knitters in that almost everything we make goes to those we know and love and rarely to us???

I've just about got Christmas projects finished. Had to ask #1 GD if her hubby would wear a particular item if I knitted it for him and she at first said no and then she saw the photo of it and she said that he would indeed wear it if I made it for him. [I am being very vague because my family checks my blog occasionally and I don't want to give the Christmas gifts away.] Then I have a few more things to do to finish up some of the gifts like sewing on a button, etc. Feels good to have almost everything done. I still need something for my nephew and his wife and my niece. Oh, my goodness I just realized that I haven't done anything for my son yet! Now I've got to figure out a gift for him and get busy with it. Seems like the projects never end. Now that I think about it, I do have my nephew & wife, and niece taken care of. But I sure haven't taken care of my son yet. Oh boy! Guess I'll need to get busy and look through some books and come up with a gift idea.

We got a real shock in the mail the other day. Our health insurance changed our deductible (share of cost) from $158 to $832 a month. The $158 we were managing but there's no way we can come up with $832 every month. This is crazy! Pure insanity!!! That's 50% of our monthly income. I had no share of cost until last year when I went on Social Security. That's when I went from no chare of cost to $158. All this is as of Sept 1st. My meds have been on automatic refills and I've had to go down to my pharmacy and tell them that as of Sept 1st I won't be taking any of my meds. Which is absolutely insane. I saw my doctor last week and told him that I won't be taking my meds and he said I had to do something. But what can I do. I'd love to continue with my meds but I will have to pay full price for them until I've paid out the $832. One prescription alone is worth twice that and then I have one for $458 and another for $375. Rationally and honestly there is now way in the world that we can come up with that kind of money. We are both on limitied-fixed income. My SS check is only $500 a month as it is. Now how am I supposed to pay that money every month when it's over $300 more than my total income???
We have asked for a hearing. Now we are just waiting to hear when and where the hearing will be. But it's true: it's always something.

We are slowly bringing mama cat indoors. She came with the house when we moved in 7 years ago and she's always been an outside cat. But we love her so much we've decided we don't want to risk losing her to a cayote or fox or hawk or an automobile for that matter. Our other two cats have accepted Mama but I'm not too sure about my little dog, Pepper. He's very jealous and that will take time.

Guess I'll go ahead and post this and try to get some sleep tonight. Hubby is still up waiting for the medicine they gave him at the ER tonight to kick in. But I think I'm going to go in and go to bed and see if I can't get some sleep. It is already after 2:00 in the morning. I'm tired and I've run out of things to talk about. I thought I had a lot of ideas but when I sat down here at my computer, the ideas just evaporated. It's always something! Until next time...

Mikey's Home!

2010-08-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, Mikey's home on leave and how wonderful it is to see him again! A lot of things have been going on but none of them worth writing about for the most part. He got home last Saturday evening looking ever so spiffy in his dress blues. We had a party at the lake for him yesterday and was that ever fun! Of course boys being boys got him an eyeful of mud that required a little medical attention but other than that everything went smoothly. We stayed until after 4:00 which made for a long day for us but it was just so good to see Michael again. What a great kid he is. He'll be home for the better part of a month and then it will be off to Alaska for him. I've got my fingers crossed really tightly that he will like Elmendorf. He should. Everything I've read about the base and the area has been highly recommended. He enjoys snowboarding and that's the perfect place to snowboard. I think just going to a new place has him a bit worried. But I think he'll find out that he likes it up there and yet he'll be able to catch a flight down to Sacramento fairly often. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

My blog create page is still in Aramaic (or whatever it is) so I had to set up in the blind for this post. And I was about to give up on getting to the correct page when I happened to (almost by accident) find the create page. I had tried several times to open it that way and it had refused to let me in. But I think I was entering my addy as a dot com rather than a dot net because it just opened after I changed to dot net. I'm so upset that everything for me is in a foreign language and I can't even see how to enter my blog site and must rely on my memory for that. Like my memory is dependable!!! I wish I could read enough to get it back to English. I had 5 comments on my last entry and I couldn't read any of them because of the language problem.

I helped my son and his wife move back up to the foothills. He liked being closer to work but neither of them liked being so far away from family and friends. They lived in Cameron Park for a year and that was a year too long as far as I'm concerned. This is much nicer having them so close. It's a nice duplex that they rented in Jackson. I spent all day Sat. babysitting their sick dog while they drove in to SFO to pick up Mikey. They hit traffic like they'd never seen before but they got back before it was completely dark and I had daylight to drive back home for at least part of the way. Then Mon I met them at their new house and we all unloaded the h-u-g-e U-Haul truck. Lots of work but it's nice getting them up here again. I plan to go back over on Fri to help Tam unpack a few boxes. I'm just happy to have them so close now.

I finished another scarf. In fact I've knitted several in the past week or two. I'm also about mid way on GD#2's Christmas present. I hope to finish it before the weekend. I've ordered really nice yarn for a pair of legwarmers for me and some nice soft cotton yarn for a shopping bag I'm going to try to knit as soon as I can squeeze it in. I started a new baby afghan but I don't care for the pattern. It's one of those that has a stitch that looks like an error. I figure I make enough mistakes on my own. I don't need to be intentionally entering them! I also have yarn for a pair of slippers so I've got several projects in the making. I will rip out the afghan and start another one in it's place. It would be nice if I could find a new pattern with the exact number of stitches but that's sort of asking a lot. I like to have several projects going at the same time. That way if I get bored with one I can just switch to another one and eventually finish them all up.

I purchased more fabric Monday so I have things to sew too. I'm going to finish up my DIL's gift and then start on another apron. (I have fabric for 4 new ones I think.) And that should give me enough aprons to go around come Christmas. I love being able to sew when I'm resting my fingers from knitting. And I'm hoping to make everybody something picked out just for them in mind. I wanted to make different style aprons but patterns are expensive these days so I decided to make them all the same, save for the choice of fabric. I found some really nice heavy weight material at WalMart that I sooooo wish I'd seen before. I like my aprons to be a bit heavier-duty than the regular cotton fabric and of course I didn't see this material when I was buying all the other apron material. But they had it stuck in the end of an aisle 2 aisles away from the rest of the fabrics.

I know this is very short but I just have enough time to get ready for my hair appt. I'm glad I thought to call on check on the time because she wrote my appt down for 11:00 but gave me her card with 12:00 written on it. I called because I almost always go in at 11:00 and not 12:00. So I best get on the stick and get ready to go. I also have errands to run and chores to do so I'm keeping this really short for today. I will do my best to enter when I have more time and can write a decent blog but I wanted to enter quickly that Mikey is home! See you all soon...

2010-07-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Here's another attemp to write a post using everything in a strange but beautiful foreign language of which I sadly do not understand. Hopefully everything will work.

I got up early and decided to spend a liittle time reading. But that put me promptly back to sleep sitting up on the couch. I slept until after 9:00. Not good. Then I got out my sewing machine and stitched the last of GD #1's Christmas present. I managed to get it all done except for the top stitching (quilting) before my machine got sick on me. It kept balling up on the underside every time I tried to sew. Kathleen says it probably needs cleaning because the smallest little thing like a piece of fabric or thread will cause that to happen. So that's at the top of my to do list tomorrow morning. Clean my machine. Hopefully that will take care of the problem. It was very frustrating this morning when I couldn't get my machine to work right. I was so close to having her set done and out of the way. Oh well, tomorrow's a better day I'm sure.

I finished the scarf I've been working on for the last couple days. I washed and soaked it in cold water. Then blocked it. Hubby help me carry the mounting boards into the spare room. It would have fallen apart if I'd tried to do it by myself. It looks very nice. Kinda flattened from rolling it in a towel to extract as much water as possible. But I roughed it up with my fingers and hopefully it will look okay when it's dry. The pattern for it is called Gossamer Shell Scarf. It's very light and open. Very nice. Since it had so many holes in it I thought to use my wires for blocking. I don't know that they made it any easier. In fact they may have required more work than using the pins. But the sides are nice and straight. Now I need to decide tomorrow what I'm going to knit next. There are a couple more scarves in the latest book I bought that I might try. Thing is I've got scarves coming out my ears. I told GD#1 that I'd be happy to give her some scarves that she could use as thank you gifts for her hostesses if she wanted to. She is selling Mary Kay cosmetics now. She's just getting started. I'm hosting a party for her on the 14th of August. Now all I have to do is round up people to come. And I want people to come who might really like the product and buy the skincare line. I really don't want the people to just come for the party and not be interested in purchasing really great skincare products. So I am being selective with prospective guests.

I have knit so much getting ready for Christmas but I'm hoping to get all the gifts made and maybe even wrapped as soon as possible so I won't have to worry about them anymore. The gift I've picked out to make for GD#2 will take a little time but is should turn out to be something really nice for her. Something besides scarves and slippers. I still need to find other things to make for her though as everyone else has multiple gifts. GS will be coming home on leave from the Air Force on the 31st of July. Just a little over a week from now. I haven't seen him since he left back in February. That's 5 months!!! That's a long time!!! Too long. I'm hoping my yarn comes in tomorrow. I'll start the slippers as soon as it gets here. Or maybe I should start on GD#2's gift. I don't know probably one or the other. And I still need to think of what I can do for my GS and my son. Guys are hard to make things for. I have an extra pair of slippers (gray) knitted up in case he says he's wear them. He's the only one in my family that didn't get slippers last year for Christmas. I'm hoping he'll say he'll wear them. But I do need to decide on some guy gifts. Maybe I should go look through patterns again at WalMart. Maybe I'd find something that I could sew for them. I'm thinking like a poncho. GS is being stationed in Alaska when his leave is over so he will need lots of warm things. I could knit him a hat to go with the slippers. And I might even knit him a "sleeve" for his hand to go in when he's using an ice scraper. I imagine he'll probably have lots of times he'll have to scrape the ice off his vehicle. This pattern has an ice scraper sewn into the end of the sleeve. He'll stick his hand in one end and grab the handle of the scraper inside and then scrape away. The sleeve will protect his hand from the ice shavings that come off when scraped.

Well gang it's late so I think I'll bow out for tonight. One of these days I'll have something interesting to write about. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants? Okay I'm going to see now if I remember how to publish this post. I can't read any of the instructions and have no idea what I'm clicking on. Sure wish I knew how to get back to that formatting page and put this thing back into English. Frustrating! Until next time... P.S. I just discovered I can no longer spell check. RATS!

Oops!

2010-07-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, so the font didn't change. I thought it had. Good. Something is right on this blog at least.

As It Now Stands

2010-07-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I can continue my blog but I have to turn in circles and dance a jig to do so. This is very frustrating because I did click on English. The problem was that somehow the font on my comments box got changed to a foreign language that presented itself in an open box for each character typed. I wanted to get it back to English so I clicked on English and I got a very pretty but absolutely impossible language to translate. Everything on my end is in that foreign language. So I can't tell what I'm doing. I haven't been able to read comments for quite some time and I just got fed up and decided to see if I could put things right. However, as you now know, I succeeded in making it worse on my end. I can't read any of the instructions on my create blog site. I'm basically doing it by memory. The only drawback is that the elements I used to click on have been moved around on the page so most of the time even my memory isn't enough because things aren't where they used to be. I don't know whether to continue to fix things myself or leave things the heck alone. I have however gone to a different fon't for the text I think. It's different on my end anyway. This is very disheartening to say the least. I think I'll leave things as they are and not play with things anymore. I think that's the best options I have.

Blogger Problems

2010-07-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

I see that that did eventually post however I don't know what I clicked on to get it to post. Everything on my end is written in this foreign language. But I can at least work through the problem, I just don't know how to fix the problem. I'm going to see if I can edit this post. Don't know what you'll see on your end. Bear with me as I try to fix this frustrating problem. I am now attempting to edit this note. Let me see if it is going to let me edit. I can't be sure what I clicked on since everything is in this other language. Again I'm going to attempt to edit. It did edit the last time. I just want to check something. I realize this is going to be confusing to anyone other than me but it's something I have to do. So please stay with me.

2010-07-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, I have really done it t his time. I was attempting to change the font for my comments and I clicked on English but got a weird Aramaic type font. So I don't know what I'm doing when I try to create a post. I'm just now attempting to see whether I can still post or not. Hopefully this will go through as written. I'm going to post this now and see what happens. Well nothing happened so I'll try again.

Just Another Week Around Here

2010-07-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe it's been a week since I last posted my blog. We've stayed quite busy but I can't really tell you much of what we did because I don't think we did a lot. Michael seems to spend an awful lot of time tending his garden. And the tomatoes are producing. We had BLTs for dinner tonight. Our first ripe tomato! And it was delicious!! It was my first BLT in a couple years I believe. But bless his heart he's down there just whispering his little heart out to those jewels of tomatoes. There is nothing quite like a freshly picked, bright red tomato that sets our hearts aflutter. They have so much more flavor than store bought ones. Even the "on the vine" tomatoes that you pay an arm and a leg for can't hold a candle to home grown. I'm glad we tried one more year.

I got only 48 inches done on the charity afghan before I had to take it back to her. I felt bad that I couldn't finish it. Maybe if my attitude had been better early on, but it wasn't. But that just leaves her 20 inches to do on her own. And she was happy. I mean, she had thought that she had to knit the entire afghan by herself until we offered to help her out. But I do wish I had finished the panel I worked on.

I finished the scarf I was working on for my hair stylist's Christmas present. I think she will be really pleased. I used the light blue mohair yarn that came in all that yarn Charlene gave to our group. (I skimmed the good stuff for myself, before taking it down to the group. I know, shame on me, except that I think that's what Charlene intended for me to do. That was my understanding and I know that if it had been me, I would have wanted her to take all the yarn she needed before taking it to group.) Speaking of the group. We're just knitting our little hearts out. We've sort of moved beyond the helmet liners that everyone made for the Marines in Afghanistan. I think we got over 20 made up before people began dropping from the task. I admit I only knitted 1 liner. Others have knitted 2, 3, 4 or more. I felt I was lucky to get even 1 made as my heart wasn't in multiple liners. I mean, when Ani asked me to help with knitting the helmet liners I told her that I would knit one and so I lived up to my promise.

Then I began another scarf (good thing they make wonderful gifts!). I've had a ball of Palette "Iris Lavender" for over a year and I think I've finally found a use for it. The new book of 101 Designs for one-skein projects had a scarf in it that I thought would look really great for that yarn. So when I finished Linda's Christmas scarf I dug out my Palette yarn and went about making yet another scarf. Don't know who this one will be for. It's turning out really pretty although not as pretty as it would have been had I done it with the last of my mohair yarn. Only thing is that the yardage was way off. I'll need another full skein to finish it. According to the book, I should have been able to do the entire scarf using this one skein. I did change the weight and needle size so maybe that's what put it off. I should have had 50 yards left over after finishing the scarf according to their directions. But it isn't expensive yarn so I don't really mind. And I know there's no way a new skein would come from the same die lot as the old skein I've had for so long but I think if there's a difference I'll be able to live with it. LOL. So I broke down and placed a yarn order from KnitPicks. While I really only needed to order that one skein I couldn't resist the temptation to order more yarn for the other projects I've got lined up to knit. But they too are Christmas gifts so I try and justify my behavior with thoughts like "it's not for me!" Oh, I love to knit. Can you tell? LOL!!!

I sewed a few things last week. I got GD #1's placemat set half done now. And yesterday I sewed up another apron out of the left over fabric I had from her set. I don't think I'm going to give that one to her. I've already made her apron, it's the black one with hot pink pockets that she requested. So I'll use the last one as a gift for someone else.

I praise God that I have been able to make all these gifts for Christmas. I still have a ways to go before I have them all made but I've certainly made a significant dent in my lengthy list! God is so good. He gives me the talent, the time, and the money to do this. And the really neat thing about it is that he's provided for everything I make. What a great God we have!!!

It's been hot lately but not as hot as we got last year. Of course this year's heat isn't over with yet so we could still match (or top) last year's horrible high. So far 108 is as high as it's gotten this year.

I know this is short and I've done nothing but talk about knitting and sewing. Isn't it wonderful!! I think it's great that I'm so blessed and can share my blessings with you. For so many years I had no way to express myself. Now, thanks to God and my best friend Kathleen, I have things to do. I can be creative and express myself. I can do things that are fun. For the first time in my life I am really enjoying myself. So anyway, just me being me here for you and on that note I'll say goodnight until my next post. Good Night all.

It's Me Again

2010-07-12T23:52:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to church yesterday. I missed 5 weeks because of this last bout with pneumonia. I still feel like if I were to cough really hard it would flare up all over again. That's been my history with pneumonia. But maybe aspiration pneumonia is different. I don't know. Anyway it sure felt good to be in church again. I felt extra righteous when I dropped 6 donation envelopes in the plate as it was passed around. I have to confess I was tempted to keep the money for the weeks that I didn't attend. With the added expense of hubby's teeth that was a very real temptation. And unlike one other time I didn't get the green light for keeping my donations so I had no choice but to drop it in the collection plate. But that money belongs to the Lord whether I attend or not. God is certainly due His fair share. (Actually His fair share is 100% of everything I have.) And the one time I did keep the money when I'd been absent the green light was bright and clear. I had no qualms about keeping the money and using it that time.

I had a good day knitting today. The charity afghan I volunteered to help make is coming along quite nicely. I went into the endeavor with the wrong attitude. God gave me this very task to do a little pruning in yours truly. Once I got the chip off my shoulder and realized that it is a privilege to be able to do something for charity, something without getting something back in return, things really began to turn around for me. For several days it seemed that every time I picked up the afghan to try and knit my portion of the piece I almost immediately messed up and couldn't find my way out of the mistake. I had to drive over to Kathleen's 3 times I think so that she could correct my mistakes so I could give it yet another try. But with the new attitude this morning of finding joy in giving without getting anything in return started my day off right. I knit for several hours (5 or 6) and only made one little mistake that I caught almost immediately so there was no major mess to clean up. I made big progress on it. And it was really a blessing to have had the opportunity to work on it. It still seems that it should be going faster but I keep plugging along. I have to take my panel to knitting class tomorrow night and give it back to the woman who initiated the project and she will have to finish it because I doubt I'll get it completely done by tomorrow night. But I will give up several more hours tomorrow. I've decided the entire project was a character building-exercise for me. Hopefully tomorrow will go faster.

I took some time this evening to work on my own project. A scarf for Christmas. And it's coming right on along too. But sad to say that I'm not going to have 3 skeins of mohair left after making this scarf. I had hoped to have 3 full skeins left over from the scarf so that I could use it for a Christmas present for GD (granddaughter) number 2. But I may have to buy yarn for what I thought I'd make her. I just don't know if 2 skeins will be enough to knit the shrug I picked out. Kayla would look so cute in it. And I want so much to think 2 skeins would be enough but I just don't know. Guess I could try and see what happens as I go along. But that would waste the yarn if it weren't enough for the entire piece. More thinking will be required on this note.

I had the Deacons' Meeting tonight at 5:00. I missed last month's meeting but they managed okay without me, lol. I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the agenda and I felt like I should have prepared something to share. But I got wrapped up in that afghan and before I knew it it was 5:00 and I had to hurry. So I just apologized for that. (Seems like I do a lot of apologizing lately.)

I'd like to get back to sewing tomorrow and I might squeeze in a couple hours. I haven't sewed since Thursday or Friday. Thursday I think. I still have two more placemats to make for DIL's Christmas present. Which just goes to remind me when we do our shopping next month to look for that focus fabric for her set. I have the other 2 cut out and ready for sewing as soon as I can find that fabric so I can buy 1/4 yard. I need just that little bit more, 9 inches, and hubby tried to get that fabric for me when he went over last week to see his dentist. But he couldn't find it. The thing is I know it's there. It probably got returned to the shelves and was stuck in an area other than where I suggested he look. Hubby can't find the remote when it's in his lap, either that or he's sitting on it so it was silly of me to ask him to go look at WalMart. It was a full bolt so I'm sure there will be plenty left next month. If not, then I guess DIL's will be a set for 4 instead of 6. But, hey, I think I told you this in my last post. Sorry. It gets to the point that I don't know who I told what to. Good thing I don't lie very often (almost never) or I'd never be able to keep my stories straight.

My book came in that I ordered from KnitPicks and it doesn't have all that many things in it that I'm going to want to try. I'm really disappointed. There were 101 items to knit and crochet and I will probably only make 4 or 5 things. The rest of them are either silly or ugly or beyond my expertise. And some of them I may make just for the fun of it. But I have absolutely no use for things like a teapot cozy or knitted barrette. Seems like someone could come up with more good ideas. I mean some of the things in that book aren't just ugly. They are ridiculous!

It's getting closer and closer to the time my GS (grandson) comes home on leave. I have really missed that little boy. Well, gee, I guess he's not so much a little boy any longer. But I am so proud of him for joining the Air Force. He wanted to be a firefighter and it was smart of him to take advantage of the education he would get in the military. I have his picture all ready to go down to the bulletin board at church. I just need to get his information typed up so they'll know who that handsome young man is in his dress blues. Can't wait for him to come home.

It was hot today but a few degrees cooler than a few days ago. But so far we haven't had the solid week of 110+ degree days we usually get every summer. Of course there's a lot of summer left to reach those highs. Hope we don't have them. Hubby and I just get miserable when it gets that hot. The evaporative cooler doesn't seem to do anything but circulate the air around on days when it gets that hot.

I am anxious to send Ginny (a blogging friend back in Virginia) her apron. I just need to pick up a padded envelope. But she's always sewing things for the kids but never anything for herself so I thought a little surprise in the mailbox might just make her day when it gets there. I just love her and her family. She's faithful to post a blog almost every day. And they're always wonderful. Lots and lots of pictures and great writing. I don't know how she manages to find the time to blog with her 5 children. Sewing too. She's going to go on a trip with a friend this week so there will be days when she doesn't post.

Well, I still hope to get more knitting done before I head to bed. But if I don't end this post I won't have time for it. I've run out of things to talk about tonight anyway. I just wanted to close by encouraging you to find some time alone with our Lord this week. Get out your Bible and read a chapter (or two) in your favorite book or epistle. Close your eyes and think on what you've just read. Does it up build you? Condemn you? Convict you? Bless you? Educate you? I could go on and on. But this is what is meant when we are told to meditate on God's Word. We are to take in nourishment from God's Word and dwell on how it applies to our individual lives. How blessed we are to have a Bible. Many people in this world don't have (or aren't allowed) to own a Bible. Make good use of your copy not just once in a while but every single day. God is so good to us. He takes such good care of us. He promises us things and then goes about bring them to fruition. What a glorious God we have. He asks so little of us. Basically the only thing He requires of us is our love and devotion. We see ourselves as we are. God sees us as we were meant to be. Remember to find the time to talk to Him often throughout your day. I really mean that. Talk to Him. When you're in the shower, talk to Him. When you're driving in your car, talk to Him. There are thousands of times every single day that we could and should talk to Him. We don't have to carry on a long conversation. One or two words is often enough. Just so we keep Him involved in our lives. When I knit and correct a mistake I always say "Thank You, Lord." There are quite literally thousands of bits of time in our day that we can (and should) commune with our God. Think of that. We get to actually speak to our God! And we can be assured that He hears our every utterance. Other gods can't hear or see or bless. Other gods aren't worthy of our time. But our God is worthy. In a million ways He is worthy. Let us praise Him and give Him thanks for all that he does for us. Thank Him for the mere fact that He wants us to communicate with Him. He longs to hear our voices. Be it requests, praise, or thanksgiving; He desires to have that kind of off-the-cuff fellowship with Him. The God of the universe is the God of all universes. And He is our God. Yours and mine. Praise Him now.

I've Been Busy

2010-07-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

I know I've been busy but I didn't think I'd been gone that long! Lot's of things have been going on. I finished placemats for both sisters and am now sewing a set for my DIL (daughter-in-law) and I've got the fabric for my GD (granddaughter) all ready to cut out. These placemats are so easy I'm having a ball. Oh, I also got aprons matching their placemats done for them. DIL and GD will not have matching aprons.

Thanks to all 9 of you who chose to comment on my blog. I always feel good when people comment.

A couple months ago my DIL's mother gave me several big lawn bags full of yarn. I culled through and pulled out what I wanted and then I took the rest down to our knitting group's cupboards for other to choose from. There was a bag of Mohair yarn inside. Eight balls of Mohair yarn! But it looked just horrible. I would have guessed that it was older than I am (and I'm older than the hills) and the labels inside the bag were super old-fashioned labels. It looked horrible. There was even a dead wasp in with the balls of yarn. Finally, the other day I decided I'd check out the yarn and I started a scarf to see what happened. All that horrible looking yarn is knitting up into something quite exquisite. The shade of blue is airy and open like spun glass. It is quite possibly the most beautiful scarf I've ever seen. Just goes to show you that looks can be deceiving. I decided before I started knitting it that if it turned out okay I would give the scarf to my hair stylist for Christmas. She will appreciate it and give it a good home. I'm coming down to the home stretch and I'm getting antsy to get it finished. Hopefully by tomorrow. Wish I could post a picture of it. It's very, very nice.

I've not been too healthy the past 3 weeks. I started out with an infected jaw with my face all bloated and swollen. The doctor started me on antibiotics. About 4 days into that I choked taking a Tylenol and aspirated water and Tylenol into my right lung. Gave me aspiration pneumonia and the doctor immediately started me on an additional antibiotic. Which promptly gave me a yeast infection so I was put on yet another antibiotic making three for the total. I didn't do anything but knit for about 2 1/2 weeks. And knit I did! I made a baby afghan, a scarf for Christmas, and 5 pairs of slippers also for Christmas. Like I said, all I did was knit! But now that I'm better I have to squeeze in a few other things. Like cooking, cleaning, etc., etc.

My GS (grand son) will soon be coming home on leave. He'll finish up his firefighter training and then will get to come home on leave in late July/early August. This has really been hard on all of us. On my GS because he'd never been away from home. On my son and DIL because they'd never not had him around and on grandma because she's used to seeing him all the time and has a history as grandkids' babysitter. I can't wait to see him! He will be stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. He doesn't like cold so he'll need to do some adapting when he gets up there. He's going to come home so different. He left as grandma's little boy. Now he's going to come home all grown up. We're having a big party for him out at the lake when he comes home on leave.

We have been inundated with hummingbirds!! We had to buy another feeder to give them more spaces from which to drink. They're going to drive me to the poor house mixing up their food for the feeders twice a day. I hadn't realized sugar was so expensive until I started buying it for the birds. They go through 5 pounds of sugar in about 2-1/2 days!! But we love to watch them.

I'm so far behind in my reading. I didn't feel like reading while I was sick. I couldn't concentrate. Knitting doesn't take much thought. You just do it. Reading you have to retain it. I've gotten several new books to read. My latest one (it came in today's mail) is, A Better Country: Preparing for Heaven by Dan Schaeffer. The title appealed to me. I can't remember the names of the other books but there are at least 3 others that I just haven't had the time to read. It's difficult for me to read anyway because hubby always has the TV on. There's no quiet place to read. I used to go outside on the deck and read before the heat turned to SCORCHING. I do wish I had a little quiet once in awhile!

I missed two weeks of my knitting group while out with pneumonia. The past Tuesday being my first time back. I was given a couple skeins of yarn for an afghan that is charity work. It will be auctioned off raising money for a good cause. Only thing is, I don't really want to do that. I have other things I'm working on. I don't usually mind but for some reason I just do not (read that: DO NOT) want to do it. I was asked if I'd participate in the making of that afghan while I was out sick and I don't think I was thinking too clearly when I said yes because I have so many other irons in the fire as it is. Any time I spend on that afghan is time away from the things I want to be knitting. After I finish this scarf, I have one more to make, and then I'm going to take the 8 skeins of brown 100% Alpaca yarn that I was given and knit up something. Don't know what. If I weren't so fat I'd knit me a sweater with it. But all my bulges will show in a sweater!
So many things to knit and so little time!!!

I started this with all kinds of new things to write about and they've all but disappeared in my brain. I know they're there somewhere. I just can't locate them right now and it is very, very late and I better get to bed. Until next time...

We've Been Scammed

2010-05-30T19:31:00.003-07:00

What a mess! Someone lifted my Debit Card and used it to drain my checking account and causing my bank to charge me overdraft fees on top of all my money the thief stole. Before it was all over I had to borrow to settle in the black with my bank. I have to say that I feel I was victimized by the thief and then victimized again by my own bank. This was ridiculous and it's still not settled. I'm awaiting a form to fill out (when it finally gets here) and then I will return it to them on the same day, and then hopefully I'll have all this money put back into my account within 2 business days of their receipt of the form. Did I say that right? Hopefully you'll know what I mean if I didn't say it the way it should have been said. This has been such a nightmare for me. I simply do not have extra funds laying around. I am on a very low fixed income and there's rarely anything left over at the end of the month. The bank sent me an email informing me that I was overdrawn and I immediately rushed down there to find out the problem. That's when we discovered the bogus charges to my debit card. And my local bank did absolutely nothing to help me out with this problem other than giving me the corporate number to call and they said they'd send out the form immediately. That was almost a week ago and still no form! Of course happening over the holiday only complicates matters. I can't believe my bank couldn't have held the overdraft fees in a "pending" situation until the fraud was investigated and settled. I don't like having to borrow money for my own bank fees. That's ridiculous. Has anyone out there had this problem or anyone know of anyone whose debit card was used fraudulently and been shafted by their local bank? My account is so messed up right now that I don't know which end it up. All I know is the money I had to borrow is in the bank rather than being in my hands! This world is full of dishonest people. I expect that. But I also expect my bank to handle things better. To be a little more helpful toward a customer. Making me borrow to pay the bank fees (or risk getting charged for every day my account is in arrears) is not the way to treat a fraud victim and a good customer. I've never had an overdraft before on my account, in all these years. And everyone I've talked with about this, totally agrees with me. One friend checked with her bank to see how they would have handled the situation if it had been her and was told that as soon as they are informed of fraudulent actions regarding debit cards, they immediately "pend" the amount of the fraud and all bank fees. Guess who's seriously thinking about changing banks!! Okay settle down, girl.

I was hoping to purchase the fabric I need for my other sister's placemats for Christmas this coming week when we drive across the river to do our shopping. But with my money and bank mess still hovering overhead (if it's not settled by then and it probably won't be) I won't have the money freed to pay for the fabric I planned to buy. I've already gotten 6 placemats sewn for my oldest sister. I have one more to sew up as a sample for me to put in next year's fair and then I'm out of fabric if I don't buy the fabric as originally planned. I will hopefully figure something out when my monthly allotment comes in. I'd hate to make two trips across the river this month if it can be avoided. Enough on this. I've tried to be a bit vague (seems you can't trust anyone these days) and I've probably succeeded in only making no sense at all. Forgive me.

I finally finished my green socks. Yippee!! And as I've said, I have 6 placemats sewn for my older sister's Christmas present and it isn't even June. I feel good about that. Still need to purchase the fabric for both sister's aprons (and BJ's placemats) and then I'll be done with their gifts. But that will also mean I have nothing to sew if I don't pick up more fabric.

Thank goodness I have my vest to work on. (I started this vest over a year ago and I'm just now getting back around to it.) I finished off the rest of the back I needed to do and then I've got the front knit almost to the armholes (going bottom up). So I'm making progress. I will need to pick up stitches around the armholes and neck and knit 6 rows allowing the work to roll. That will give my vest its finished look. I'm not too good at picking up stitches but I bet I improve greatly before this vest is finished. I will be glad to get it finished. Then I will work on the baby afghan I started and never finished. (I'm definitely in the mood to finish abandoned projects.) If you remember (and if I told you) my projects got hi-jacked when I decided to knit a pair of socks and ended up knitting 8 pairs!! But now I'm tired of socks and I'm ready to knit other things for awhile. I still have the yarn for projects I haven't even started yet. So it's not like I'll run out of things to do if I can't buy my fabric when I want next week. It's just that I had my plans all made out and I didn't do anything wrong with my money to be in this mess. I was robbed!!! That's not my fault. And I'll tell you, when this is all over, there better not be any mention of an overdraft on my account or I definitely will change banks!

We had a few cold and rainy days last week. In fact we got an inch of rain Thurs. night and things were so sloppy we decided not to walk Fri. morning. But it has since warmed up and it's suddenly shorts weather again. I'm tired of the rain but I'm not looking forward to the heat of summer. I hate our hot summers. We get a few days close to 120 degrees in the summer and that's not fun for anyone. I get so grouchy and naggy. I'm a horrible person when the temp goes that high in July and August. Of course one year we hit those high records in late June so it may not be very far off in the future before I'll be praying for rain again. I do like being able to wear shorts and T-shirts again instead of having to bundle up in coats and scarves. And I like to go barefoot too.

I know this hasn't been much of a blog this time. (As if it ever is!!) But I will promise to try to do better with the next post. I've been promising myself that I would write to my sponsor child too and I keep putting that off. I really do need to get that done though. I shouldn't let it go so long between letters. She's a doll in India; a jewel in my crown. And I love her greatly. It's just that I've gotten behind. My computer doesn't have a printer so I have to borrow hubby's computer and printer and that is hard to do. He's usually busy on his computer. But I'll try my best to get some time in the next week or so to write that letter. I can definitely says my life hasn't been boring lately. Not with having so many projects to do and then having been robbed! You just never know what's going to happen in my life. Until next time...

We've

2010-05-30T19:31:00.001-07:00

Didn't I Just Write?

2010-05-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

Seems like I just wrote on Friday or Saturday but there's nothing on my blog (that I can find) since Frog Jump. I know I wrote so where did it go? I even remember that I picked green for my color. Hmmmm. Something's fishy here. But I will write just a little of what I think I wrote so you can stay informed and I won't overburden you with a full repeat in the event that the mysterious blog (that I know I wrote) should suddenly appear out of thin air.

Let's see... I sewed more aprons (2 or 3) and one of these days I will master the art of sewing straight seams! Then Friday was the big day with my sewing. I took my sewing machine over to Kathleen's and she helped me make sense of the instructions and illustrations, and yippee! I made one of the placemats!!! It took me roughly 2.5 hours to make it. That's just about my limit of sewing per day. If I sew longer than that my back really acts up on me. Anyway, these placemats are going to look beautiful around my sister's table. These will be for my oldest sister. My other sister will get a set using the green fabrics I picked out when I picked out and bought these that I'm working on now. I was going to go ahead and buy the fabric for the green set at the same time but then I thought about the expense and I also questioned my ability to sew something so pretty and complicated looking. They really do look quite difficult to make. And they are so elegant looking. But the secret I'll take to my grave is that it was the easiest thing in the world to do. (Okay, almost that easy.) And now that I've made one I shouldn't have any problem making the rest of them. The pattern instructions even make sense to me now that Kathleen went over them with me. The only thing even somewhat difficult is paying attention to what step I'm doing and which fabric I'm using at any given time. (I alternate between the two.) My sisters will never guess that they were easy to make. They look so complicated and so beautiful. You just have to keep track of what step you're on. Last week I had used a ruler, cutting board, and rotary cutter to cut both fabrics into 2" strips and rectangles. And what you do is you sew a layer and press out the seam, then sew the next layer and press out the seam, and you do that until you use up all the fabric strips and rectangles for each placemat. Nothing hard about it. I think the most difficult part was cutting the fabric into all the little pieces. They look so elegant. I have the placemat I made Friday stashed away in the spare room and I keep going in there just to look at it. I just can't believe I sewed something that beautiful. Lots of nice clean, geometric shapes that are quilted as you sew on each layer and then when you've got it all put together, you do a little more quilting and then front and back both look beautiful.

Hubby's kids came up Friday and stayed until today. It was so nice of them to come since they came up to help hubby with a few chores that he can no longer do. Over the course of our marriage (38 years this year) Michael and I have done everything together. He did the most and then I was there to assist him and to fetch and carry for him. But now that he's just weeks away from being 79 he can't do many of the things we used to do together. We started out with him doing the heavy stuff. Then as he got older, I started doing more of the heavy stuff that he couldn't do (and I still could). But then a strange thing happened. I started getting older too. It's become very difficult for me to do what I used to be able to do. My mind still thinks I'm 30 but my body is screaming 63! How could I possibly have gotten that old all of a sudden? And the sad part for me is that I just started finding things more difficult. I've got a lot more deterioration to go!. Anyway John got my car fixed and he and Chris also worked on the fence that was sagging in the back yard. It was a fun weekend. They left this morning about 9:00 to return to their home in San Francisco. Hubby hasn't been sleeping well the past few days so he went back to bed after they left and slept for several hours. I crashed on the couch for about an hour myself. Then I remembered the apron I had cut out Thursday evening. So I got up and sewed it together. It looks pretty good. Don't know how I'll possibly make all those hot pads (pot holders) for each one. I'm thinking now that I might just give away the aprons without the hot pads. They are so hard to make and all that I've made so far are embarrassing. Not good at all. Granted the last 2 I did was a big improvement over those I did in the beginning. But I still don't feel that they are good enough to give away as a Christmas gift. And since my aprons and placemats, really all the sewing I am doing right now are for Christmas gifts. (Although I'm thinking that I have enough fabric left over to make myself 2 placemats.)

I finished my green socks on Saturday. Yea!!! Now all I have to do is seal the toes with the Kitchener stitch. Yes, that pain-in-the-rear Kitchener stitch. Don't know when I'll attempt that because I intend on working solely on these placemats until I have them done. And by then I will have gone shopping and purchased the fabric for the other placemats (the green ones) and more fabric for more aprons!!! I figure 4 more aprons and I will have enough. I want to make one for my blogging friend Ginny and surprise her with one in the mail. I figure any aprons I have left over after Christmas can either be stored and given away in the future as gifts of some kind, or I can keep a couple and take the rest down to church and donate them to the kitchen.

I guess this is going to be it for tonight. It is already after 1:00AM. Where did the time go? So, well, I'll post this and head on in to bed. I'd sure like to know what happened to the other blog I wrote. I know it was there. I saw it. I remember making it green. Am I losing my mind? No, I don't think I have enough mind left to lose. Until next time...

Frog Jump & County Fair Ribbons

2010-05-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

The 2010 County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee has come to an end. It opened last Thursday, May 13 and ended yesterday at 8:00PM (I believe, not positive about the closing time). Kathleen and I attended on Friday and we gave a 2-hr knitting demonstration and then had the rest of the day to roam the exhibits and eat. I had entered 7 of my knitting projects and they all won ribbons. Two of them won 2 ribbons each (First prize and Best of Division). My burgundy shawl won 2nd Place, my mint Baby Afghan won 1st Prize and Best of Division, my white Baby Afghan won 3rd Place, my blue and green Baby Hat won 1st Prize, my grape Neck Ring won a 2nd Prize, my green Scarf won 3rd Place, and my lace Shawl with Wooden Beads won 1st and Best of Division. And that's really an accomplishment. I'm very proud of the ribbons I won as it reflects the hard work I put into my knitting. I love to knit but it is still work and it's nice to have that recognition. Along with the ribbons I won $10 for each Best of Division. So altogether I won 9 ribbons and $20. It's just a small county fair but it was fun.

My granddaughters happened upon the comedian, Larry the Cable Guy, walking through the crowd. Now mind you, this is a very small county fair in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains in the Gold Country of Northern California and for reasons probably known only to Larry, he pulled himself away from his television and Hollywood connections and came up to our Jumping Frog Jubilee. Now the really cool part of this story is that he's my grandson's favorite comedian and so my granddaughters yelled to him that their little brother is in the Air Force and would love to hear him say, "Git'er Done!" (If that doesn't make sense to you it's because you don't watch Larry's act on television.) He asked what their brother's name was and of course they yelled Michael. Then Larry said, "Michael, Git'er Done. I'm proud of ya!" And the really, really cool part of this story is that Kayla, my youngest granddaughter, had her video camera with her and caught it all on tape. Then they submitted it to You Tube and emailed the website address to Mikey so he could watch it. I talked to him on MSN later the next day and asked him what he thought and he said it was awesome. It is untitled on You Tube but I'll give you the addy in case you want to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= cTAxY-4qXc. Now hopefully that will get you into the very quick video. It's only a matter of a few seconds long so you've got to be quick. You can hear Jamie, my oldest granddaughter, yell that her little brother's in the Air Force and then go from there. It is only a very few seconds and you can't google or search for it. You have to go in by address to access it. Anyway I think that's just about the coolest thing they could have done for Mikey.

Kathleen and I went back to the fairgrounds today to pick up our entries and bring them home. She won 25 ribbons a gift basket and $65 on baked entries. It rained today on us a little bit but nothing worth noting really. On the way out of Angels Camp we stopped at the Country Cloth and I bought some flannel to go between the front and back of the placemats I'm making my sister for Christmas. They are going to be so pretty! The pattern is just wonderful and I picked out some really nice fabric for them. The focus fabric (the center and corners) is a pretty bed of roses (upclose) and the accent fabric is a pretty mauve pattern. They look great together. I'm planning to use the same pattern to make my other sister a set of placemats only hers are going to be with green fabrics. I'm also in the process of making aprons and pot holders for all the female family members who are on my Christmas list. I've got most of those made except for the pot holders. I will work on them this week. Friday I will take my sewing machine over to Kathleen's house and she will show me how to sew together all the pieces of each placemat. Keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't prove too complicated for me, the novice seamstress. I've only been sewing a couple weeks. But my aprons are coming out so professional looking that I'm hoping I can do the placemats too. If not, I've wasted a lot of money buying and cutting up fabric.

I am continuing with my daily study of the book Know the Words of Jesus in 30 Days. I started the study on the 1st of May and I've read and studied a chapter a day. There are 30 chapters in the book so I should finish it up on the 30th of this month. It's been an interesting study. I hadn't realized Jesus had so much to say in the Bible. I mean, I've read the Bible and have read everything He said, but taking it by itself and going over it all it seems like there's so much that is new to me even though I know that I've read it all before. But then that's why the Bible is called the Living Word; because it just keeps seeming new to you almost every time you read it. And God keeps teaching you new things out of it. There are parts of the Bible that I've read dozens of times and still it seems fresh and new to me. There's always something new to learn. A new insight. A new understanding. And that's why I love the Bible so much. I could study the Bible 24 hours a day for the rest of my life and it would never get old to me. There would always be something new to learn.

I plan to attempt a pot holder (or hot pad) tomorrow and I hope to have better luck with it than I had with the last ones I made. I just really have to pay attention and think things through before I sew. The hardest part is the binding around the edges. And it's especially difficult because I'm sewing it blind. I sew on the front side and I can't see what it's doing on the back until I've already sewn it and and can turn it over. Wish me luck.

I have my knitting group again tomorrow night. That's always fun every week. We're making helmet liners out of 100% wool for the Marines in Afghanistan. I guess I should say, others are making liners. I made one. Others are making several each. I've been working on my green socks and since I'm not knitting all day, every day the way I used to it's taking me longer to knit them. But these socks have been the socks from hell. They have so many mistakes in them and you know what. I don't even care. They're for me and I don't care if they've got mistakes. I just want to get them done. I've knitted and ripped out so many times that I'm to the point where I just want to be done with them. My next pair of socks will be without mistakes. I will care with them.

Well, this is going to be it for this time. I know my blog is boring but it's all I have to write about. My grandson, Michael, is getting all A's in his schooling at Goodfellows Air Force Base in Texas. He's studying to be a firefighter. He says the physical aspect of it is difficult but the rest is mostly just memorization and he's doing great on it. I sure hope he passes his schooling. He is due to be stationed in Alaska after he finishes his training in August. But he'll be coming home on leave before going to Alaska. It will be so good to see him and hug him again. I haven't seen him or hugged him since February 15th. He did so good in Basic. He graduated with honors. Of course, if you've been keeping up with this blog you already know that. Okay this is it for now. Stay close to the Lord and remember that He died so that we might live forever. That makes me tingle all over when I think about living forever. That when I die and leave this life, I will just instantly and effortlessly slip into eternal life. No that's not it. I already have eternal life. I will never die. I will someday shed this human flesh the way a snake sheds it's skin, but I, all that makes me me, will never die. There won't be so much as a momentary blip. A blink of the eye. A snap of the fingers. I will just keep on living. I will be in a new form but I will be alive and I will be me. Isn't that a marvelous hope we have. And this hope is an assured, a guaranteed, future. And I have the Holy Spirit living in me as that guarantee. And I know the Holy Spirit lives in me because I can feel Him. I don't need to take anyone's word for it. I feel Him living in me. What a great God we have. Go in the assurance of His love and the faithfulness of His promise.

Blog Problem

2010-05-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Can anyone help me? I have a problem with my blog comments. The type doesn't come through on my comments. All I get are little blue boxes. Sometimes there are a few words before it goes to little blue boxes. I would love to be able to read your comments but I can't. Surely someone knows how to correct this problem. Please. Send me an email at:
mah2006@comcast.net and help me solve this mystery that's driving me crazy. Thanks so much!!

Mother's Day 2010

2010-05-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

The following is the congregational prayer I gave at church this morning, May 9th:

We come before You today, Lord just as we are with all out faults, shortcomings and sins. We always desire to come before You in righteousness this morning but we are bankrupt in our righteousness department. We fully recognize that any righteousness we may have is not of ourselves, it is Christ's. We calm all our worries and come settle ourselves before You this morning bathed in Christ's holiness, Christ's righteousness. We need only to calm ourselves and be thankful for Your provisions to enter into Your very throne room. We have so much to be thankful for, Lord. We thank You for making it possible for the unclean to stand before You, clean. For making us acceptable in Your sight. We thank You for Your care and keeping. We thank You for Your love and forgiveness. And with grateful hearts we ask for You to continually forgive us because we are always falling short on our end no matter how hard we try. Thank you for making us clean and holy. And than You for loving us.

We praise You, Father, for all that You are and we love You with renewed hearts and minds. You are everything we need, Lord. Your holiness and majesty dwarf that of our own and because of that we thank You. All that we strive to be -- You already are. Your glory shines forth into this world; a beacon of light in the darkness where we stumble and fall. Help us to remember that You always give us everything we need. You are everything we need. If we have nothing less than Your love and kindness it will be abundantly enough.

Open our eyes, Lord, so that we might see more of You and grown in our love and faith in You. Our faith seems so scrawny, Lord. Sometimes we muster everything we are and have and we know it's not enough, not really. You deserve so much more and yet, with grace, You accept us as if we were Christ Himself. Oh, Lord, we have so much to be thankful for! Make us fully aware of this incredible gift You've given us in Christ.

Be with us this day. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit and make us sensitive to the fact that He is always with us. Through turmoil and pain, through failures and short comings, through doubts and through frailties, He is always here.

Bless all the mothers today, Lord, on this special day set aside to recognize them. You hold them in the palm of You hand every day and You pour out Your blessings upon them. In awe we affirm that You saw fit to bless the entire world through just on mother so many years ago. It is with a submissive faith like hers that we pray before You today.

Amen

*********

It rained this afternoon after we planted the Portulaca in the deck railing planters. Small, green, immature little plants that will grow and produce a showplace of colorful blossoms to attract the bees and hummingbirds. I took a very nice nap this afternoon on the couch. (I figured I could do that since it is after all Mothers' Day.) The rain woke me up once and I got up and walked to the door to look out and see. Rainwater was pouring off the roof and it was raining hard. Then I went back to my couch and fell asleep again.

My son and daughter-in-law came over and brought me a nice present. Ken also fixed my computer problem I woke up to today. I couldn't send. I don't know what the problem was. It worked just as I went to bed last night but when I got up this morning it wouldn't send. Hubby could send and both of us could receive. I was the only one who couldn't send. It took him about 8 minutes and everything worked fine. I don't know what he did. I don't understand computers. He does.

My friend Kathleen and I are planning to walk tomorrow morning and Tuesday morning. But we might need to cancel tomorrow's plans as it may be raining in the morning. Tuesday is not threatened but tomorrow is. There are so many things going on this next week that I may not be able to get in my walk every day. We'll just have to wait and see.

Nothing else to really report. I just thought you might enjoy the prayer I gave this morning. I'm asked to give the congregational prayer about every 3 months. And I get so nervous!! I didn't do a very good job of writing it but it was the best I could do. I waited until yesterday to write it so I didn't have the opportunity to mull it over for a few days and edit it or change it making it sound more fluid here and there.

Until next time...

The First Week of May

2010-05-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

My how time keeps marching by. Grandson Michael graduated BMT with honors and has been at Goodfellow AFB in Texas at school for the past 3 weeks learning to become a firefighter. The physical training is hard, he says. He's tall but thin. He is strong, though, I'll give him that. He's got a dorm mate that is messy though and it's driving him crazy and getting him in trouble for a messy dorm. Why is it the military always seems to punish the innocent along with the guilty? Michael graduated BMT with Dorm Excellence. They should look at his record and go from there. But that's not the military's way of doing things I guess.

I've taken up sewing believe it or not. I got a nice sewing machine for Christmas 3 or 4 years ago and I'd never taken it out of the box until a couple weeks ago when my friend, Kathleen, offered to help me learn how to sew. I have discovered that sewing is fun. So far all I've made are "shop" aprons and pot holders. I'm not too good on the pot holders though. Yesterday I made an apron out of blue lightweight denim and it looks very good. I'm proud of the worksmanship. I'm finally getting the hang in sewing straight lines. I've learned how to steer the material. But I just can't seem to make a decent hot pad. Thursday I made an apron for my grand daughter for Christmas and wanted to make two pot holders to go with it. I made one and it is so horrible looking that I took the other one I'd cut out and prepared (just needs the quilting and binding) and put it away to do later in the year when (hopefully) I'll be a better seamstress. Jamie's was black with hot pink pockets (her request). She heard I was making aprons and she sent me an email requesting that color combination for her apron if I were planning on making some as Christmas gifts. Sure can't sneak one over on her. My sisters are each going to get a set of 6 handmade placemats that I haven't even started yet.

Hubby has spent most of today out doing yard work. He's going to be really tired tonight! But it really looks nice where he's used the weedeater and raked. I helped him haul the leaves and clippings out to the burn pile. I had to run out to the store to pick up a couple things for dinner and I dropped by the nursery and bought a couple 6-packs of Portulaca to plant in the deck-rail planters tomorrow after church. I wanted to plant them today but I wanted hubby's help to plant them all and he's got to be too tired to do it today. So after church tomorrow will be fine. They are quite immature plants. Not a single flower on them yet. Portulaca tends to get a bit leggy as the summer progresses but we love it for the constant supply of flowers it produces. It makes the deck seems so colorful and pretty.

I really am walking again. Kathleen and I have been walking together on Tues. and Thurs. but we're going to change it to Mon., Weds., and Fri. next week to get in one more day. I set my alarm for 7:30 and head out to Kathleen's and that gives us an early start to our days. Then I've been walking my 30 minutes every evening for the days I don't walk with her. I'm also watching my fat grams, calories, and fiber intake along with the exercise. Maybe, just maybe I can lose a few pounds. Well quite a few, actually! I've put on so much in the last couple years. I'm able to wear the same clothes I wore last summer with the exception of my favorite cropped pants. Those just don't want to button around my waist. So I've not put on all that much weight over the winter but every little gain comes on for eternity unless I walk it off. I used to enjoy walking but I find it incredibly boring these days. My mornings with Kathleen aren't boring. I really enjoy those days. It's the walk around my neighborhood in the evenings that's as boring as all get out.

I recently bought a 500+ page book from Guideposts called Know the Words of Jesus in 30 Days and I've been reading through it. But truthfully, I've fallen a couple days behind. But each day is independent from all the other days and stands on its own so I can just pick up where I left off without loss of continuity. I bought a book last year from them called Know the Bible in 30 Days (same author) and I really enjoyed that one. And I was better last year. I didn't fall behind. I did my day each and every day. I'm going to try to do better. Anyway I really like the books. Last year's book just sort of walked me through each books of the Bible and this year's book is kind of doing the same thing with the sayings of Jesus. I like to read good books and it's really great when I can combine that with my love of the Lord. I love to study the Bible anyway. And I really like how this book is taking me through the sayings of Jesus, even the hard ones to understand. Maybe especially the hard ones to understand.

Kathleen, Kathy, and I took our fair entries to the fairgrounds on Weds. of this week. They both entered quilts. Kathleen also entered her placemats (like the ones I'm going to sew for my sisters for Christmas). They are very pretty and look incredibly difficult to do. But I will be determined. I entered 7 items. All knits. Speaking of knits, I've kind of fallen off my knitting. I decided that I had other things I wanted to do and not just sit and knit all day every day. That's where the sewing comes in. Don't get me wrong, I still knit, just not every waking moment. I have that compulsive personality anyway to where when I do something I do it with my whole soul and entire life. I'm now working to find a balance in my life. I'm working on a pair of green socks for myself right now. I have one sock finished and this last one is about 1/3 done. In fact I plan to knit after I finish this blog.

I truly wasn't spending much time with my hubby either when I was knitting like a woman possessed. I was always counting stitches and secretly wishing he'd quit talking to me so much and then I realized how lucky I am to have a man who wants to converse with me and I became ashamed and decided to take it a bit slower. Like I said, I need to find balance. I seem to have so many things going at once. I have all my church activities, knitting, sewing, walking, and reading. Now I am trying to assign time to my hubby. He likes to watch TV so I'm trying to put my stuff away for part of the time and watch with him. The only place I can see where I still fail is with the news. He can't live without the news and I get really, really bored with the news. So I try to do my knitting during those 2 hours the news is on and then put it away when the shows come on. I just want to be a better wife for my hubby and I'm working on that in small but hopefully productive ways.

I'm dying to have chickens. That's right. I want chickens. They made lovely pets and they produce eggs on top of that. I know I can't have chickens. But I still want to have them. And I wish we had a big garden too. Hubby planted our 3 tomato plants last week and we're hoping for more than the scarce handful we got last year. But there's no place to plant anything else. I'd love to have vegetables of all kinds. And fresh spices too. I had to spend $2.19 for a tiny package of basil when I went to the store earlier. I still have dry in my freezer from our garden we had before we moved here but it's just not the same as fresh basil. Maybe next year I can grow spices in some pots. I guess I could still do that this year if I put my mind to it. Ginny, my blogging friend has a wonderfully huge garden every year. I'm green with envy.

We went to the fabric store on our way back from the fairgrounds Wed. where I intended to purchase the fabric I needed to start on the placemats I intend to give for Christmas. Only thing was that their prices were out of this world. Ten dollars a yard!! Can you believe that? For just simple cotton cloth? I was figuring on maybe paying $5 a yard, but $10? No way. I can't afford that. So I'll need to make another trip to Walmart this month (next week hopefully) and get my fabric there. Of course, they may be high too for all I know. The last time I bought fabric it was only about $3 a yard. What happened? Which makes me think of Walmart's pricing. We went over on the first to do our monthly shopping and every single thing I bought was more expensive than it was last month. And I don't mean just a few pennies. The dog treats jumped from $2.97 to $4.00! The dry cat food went from $9.97 to $12.97. Has anyone else noticed this increase? I spent $95 when last month I spend about $70 for the same things. These are items I buy every month. I was honestly getting angry and the longer I shopped the angrier I got. And the price of gas? $3.12 a gallon. But speaking of prices. There is one medication that I have to have that costs $1627.50 a month! That's not a typo. That's the accurate price on 60 pills. That's a house payment! and maybe a car payment too!!! That's over $27 for every pill. No medication should cost that amount of money. Lucky for me I have insurance but I still have to pay $158 a month for those pills. I thank God that I don't have to pay the full amount because the $158 is a real burden for us. Well, I guess I'm through spouting off. I just get upset when things are so expensive and are going up all the time. Hubby and I are fixed income and we didn't even get a cost of living increase this year. And we won't next year either and maybe not even the next year. Our cost of living increases are going to help congress get a computer system that will determine how much increase they're going to get in payments each year. Something is sorely amiss here. Especially when you consider they retire on full benefits, full pay.

I plan to be better about blogging. Of course I always say that but I actually mean it this time. Of course I meant it last time too. But I do intend on writing more often even if this does happen to be the most boring blog on record. I'm going to shoot for weekly. But we'll need to wait and see how everything works out.

I'm going to make pasta salad for dinner tonight. I'll warm some sourdough bread to go with it and we'll have a great dinner. We want and need to have more salads in our diet. Wish we grew our own lettuce. I've subscribed to First Magazine for Women and it is jammed packed with recipes. In fact the latest issue has a centerspread showing 12 different salads. Each with it's own dressing so it won't be just Ranch on everything. Don't get me wrong, I really like Ranch. It's just that I like variety too. I plan to make every one of those salads, spread out of course. But they are all meant to be the entire meal and not just a side of salad.

Well, I guess this will be it for today. If you've just read this blog, I give you thanks (or should it be sympathy?) LOL. These are just the things on my mind. I'm 63 and retired and I don't have a very active life. We don't go places or do exciting things to write about. It's just my mundane life. The life I've been given and the life I try to live unto the Lord. He is my master and the love of my life. I hope He's yours too. Until next time...

It's Been a While

2010-04-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

Things are about the same in my personal life. I've meant to post so many times but I always got distracted or questioned whether or not I had anything to write about. Tonight I still have those questions but I'm going to write anyway.

My grandson, Michael, is graduating this weekend from the Air Force Basic Military Training at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, TX. His entire family went back for the celebration. All except for me and hubby. We have other responsibilities with the animals and all plus we'd never be able to come up with the necessary funds so it's best that we wish him well from here in California. Ken (my son for those of you who may have forgotten) came over yesterday and rigged up my computer to be able to watch the events through his laptop and the computer cam so we'll get to see parts of it. Of course it's raining buckets in San Antonio tonight and it doesn't look good for the rest of the week or weekend either so I'm not too sure how the graduation will take place. Will they move it indoor or hold it in the rain? Ken and my daughter-in-law and my two granddaughters and one grandson-in-law all made it back this morning. One of the first things they did was go to a supermarket and stock up on junk food since that's what Michael has missed the most it seems. He says they feed them pretty well on the base. He's just tired of not having sweet things to eat. So there is a whole array of sweet things waiting for him and his buddy (whose family couldn't make it to the ceremonies) at the hotel room. The ceremonies go one for 3 days beginning tomorrow. Michael will be allowed to go off base with his family one of those days (or maybe it's Sun. that that happens). I suggested they take in the Alamo and the River Walk. But they're going to leave everything up to Michael.

Michael's flight made B.E.A.S.T. Excellence last week which was B.E.A.S.T. week. (That is where your squadron goes on maneuvers and gets to apply everything they've learned over the previous 6-1/2 weeks. Including eating MREs [meals ready to ear] for a week, crawling 70 yards on their bellies fully weighted down, with an M-16 across your arms, surviving a gas or biological attack, and searching for IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. And a whole lot more. Michael's flight taking Excellence was a huge honor and they were allowed to display their banner or streamer after a short ceremony.

There is so much to the graduation. There's the Airman's run. The parades. The coin ceremony. The ceremony for the honors coin for those who made honors. (I am sure hoping that Michael gets honors. I will be just as proud of him if he doesn't but I'd like to see him get it for his own sense of self-worth.) I'd like to see him walk away with every ribbon possible to earn and there are 3, I believe. We are all so proud of him. He called me from Sacramento before his plane took off for Texas and I felt really privileged to get that call. How many guys call their grandmas before their plane takes off? The first letter we got from his was awful. "I hate it here! This place sucks! I've made the biggest mistake of my life." Essentially that's what he wrote in his first letter. But the last few weeks he's taken on a sense of self-pride and accomplishment. Things began to come as second nature. And you could just hear the pride in his letters. I think now he's pretty sure he hasn't made the biggest mistake of his life. And besides that, he says he looks really hot in his blues! LOL.

There are about 800 trainees that graduate at a time. Once they receive the Airman's Coin they are instantly A1C [Airman First Class]. I sure wish I could be there. But I've done as much as I can to be actively involved with his experience. I've written him at least twice a week since he left (and he's written me 4 times which isn't too shabby considering he's had his parents and siblings to write also). My family has always been very close. Tight, some would say. And Michael has all the support he could possibly have. I can't help but feel for all those young men who don't have anyone to cheer them on. It must be really hard.

I am still knitting although I have slowed down considerably. I have the type of personality that goes full bore into something without surfacing for air and goes 90 miles an hour until the steam runs out. That's where I was heading. Full scale burnout. But I think I stopped myself in time. Like I said, I still knit but I knit when I really feel like it. And I'm going to put all my surplus energies into sewing for awhile. I have a brand new sewing machine sitting in my linen closet that I got for Christmas 3 or 4 years ago that has never been out of its box. I haven't sewn anything for over 23 years and so my best friend, Kathleen, has offered to bring me back up to speed on my new machine. I'm going to make a pot holder or hot pad first just to get the feel of sewing again. Then I'm not sure what I'm going to make but I think it will be some short pants or whatever they are called. (They'll end about 5 inches below the knee.) I never seem to have enough pants to wear and it's really, really hard to buy anything to fit me because I have such an unusual body size/style. I like elastic waists and I simply have to have pockets! But I want to make some in nice spring colors. So I think after the hot pad I will venture into pants. And maybe some tops too. I'll have to see.

Well this has been a short post. And I've barely touched on everything that's been going on since I last posted. But I just felt like I needed to write again. Sorry it is always so long between posts. Until next time... God bless you.

Grandma's Little Boy

2010-02-17T00:40:00.000-08:00

My only grandson left for Lackland Air Force Base in Texas today for boot camp. I had been sworn in months ago but he had another swearing in this morning before he had to leave for the AF base. So grandma is a bit sad. I mean, I am happy for him because it is something he really wants to do and I am so proud of him I'm nearly bursting at the seams. The sadness comes from knowing he's not a little boy anymore and knowing that from this time onward he will be different. He'll be his own person. He will turn into a man and mature far beyond the little tyke who called cookies "ones." [There's a story behind that but I won't bore you with it right now.] He called me yesterday from Sacramento to say goodbye and I cried of course. But not while I was on the phone with him. I was able to hold it together until we had said our goodbyes and had hung up the phones. He wants to be a firefighter and he got that position so he's really excited. Anyway I thought I would share that. I hope to blog again real soon. In the mean time, please pray for Mikey when you have the time. Thanks in advance...

Another Day In the Trenches

2010-02-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

I finished my second pair of socks I was working on when I last wrote. They turned out to be the perfect size. Now I am working on my self-striping yarn (Felici Paradise from KnitPicks) for my third pair. I have one sock knitted to after the "heel turn" and it's now on holders while I work on the other sock of the pair. I will knit on this one until I'm ready to close with the Kitchener stitch and then I will go back and pick up the first one where I left off and knit it to to the closing of the toe also and then I will close both toes and I'll have my third pair done. Funny that they are all different sizes when I'm doing everything I can to make them all one size. I even knit a swatch with the Felici yarn and I'm using the needles the gauge called for and they appear smaller than the last pair that I used a smaller needle on. Go figure!!! It's frustrating! Now all I have to do is worry that this pair is too small. Seems like I've got to worry about something or I'm just not happy. Whine, whine, whine. Sorry.

We are working our way through the book Life's Healing Choices by John Baker. The material is good but there's one thing I don't like about the book and the step study that goes with the book and sermon is that it ends up labeling everybody a "recovering" something-or-other. Recovering codependent, recovering alcoholic, recovering sex addict, recovering over eater and on and on. I don't believe that we are all "recovering." I believe that most of us are "recovered" (past tense) something-or-others. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior everything in our past becomes out-dated. It's all past tense. It's history! God is good and faithful to forgive us our sins and put them as far away from us as east is to west. I'm not a recovering sex addict, or gossiper, or over eater. I am recovered from those sins. If we still live in its reality then we have not yet understood God's all-encompassing grace and it is a spiritual matter not a psychological one. And that's precisely what this study does. It deals with all our faults on a psychological level. Under God's grace there are only two states of being: unforgiven and forgiven. If we are forgiven then we have been set free and rest in God's love. If we are unforgiven then the one and only thing we need is God's forgiveness. Baker's book asks its readers to take a "moral inventory" and write it all down for as far back as can be remembered. What??? I ask again, What in the world is he thinking? He's asking all "recovering" Christians (and remember all Christians are recovering something-or-others to his thinking) to go back to the beginning and dredge up all the pain, all the sin, and all the errors in our pasts and deal with them. But, excuse me if I'm wrong, I thought God had already dealt with all my past sins and pains. If I am still living in the reality of all that error and guilt and sadness then it will do no good whatsoever to dredge them up all over again. It is a spiritual misunderstanding. I have not yet fully understood God's eternal, everlasting, all-encompassing, totally unmerited grace. The answer is a spiritual one. Dive into God's word and don't come up for air until you have fully and completely learned that God's forgiveness is free (that's the unmerited part) and absolutely complete (that's the everlasting and eternal part). God has already forgiven my past. I don't need to rake all this muck into my life today and "deal with it." God already dealt with it in His Son, Jesus Christ. It's like having a splinter in my foot. I take my foot and splinter to God and He removes the splinter. Problem solved. I don't need to find that splinter again and shove it back into my flesh so I can ask God to extract it again. Once God deals with the splinter I will never again need to feel the pain of that splinter. And if I do? Then I have a spiritual illness that can only be cured with and by Jesus Christ. There's no illness so great that getting alone with Jesus Christ will not cure.

And then there's the part of the program that has you verbally share your "moral inventory" with a fellow believer. That's like saying, "I'll take this sliver and shove it into somebody else's flesh." I strongly disagree with this step. This step takes you into a self pity party where you moan and groan and make someone else feel miserable. The only Person who needs to know these things is God. And if you're truly a Christian you've already told Him these things in your confession. And He's already forgiven you. You don't need to ask for His forgiveness again and again and again. Especially not through another human person. If we are God's children then we are already forgiven for every sin we ever committed or will ever commit. And that's the reality we need to live in. God's grace. His forgiveness. And if we don't live in that reality then we need to go to the source, the Bible, and learn what God's grace really means for us. We don't need to label ourselves with "recovering-anything." Christ has already labeled us. We are God's children. Totally forgiven. Totally free. No matter how corrupt your life was before you sought forgiveness from God, no matter how much pain was there, no matter what kind of wreck your life was in, it is no longer part of your reality. If you go back and try to psychologically "deal with" your sins you've missed the boat entirely. You haven't learned that God's grace and forgiveness are all-encompassing and eternal. Go to the Bible. Go to God in prayer. Ask Him to teach you what His forgiveness means. Don't go back and wallow in the muck and the mire of your past. Live in the reality of being a child of God. Totally forgiven. Totally loved. And totally free.

There is some worthwhile information in Baker's book (mostly in the quotations from Scripture). But don't use it as a book with all the answers. Go to the book. The Bible. There you will find the answer to any question you might have about your relationship with God. That's where you'll learn all about forgiveness and grace. We are able to live free of our pasts through the Truths found in our Bibles. The Bible is all we'll ever need. I guess I sound a little bit negative about Baker's book, don't I? I don't mean to, really. It's just that I get nervous when someone tells me to find my answers in a "moral inventory" and to find forgiveness for my past sins by confessing my sins to anyone but Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not saying you can't ever reveal your sins to someone else. I'm just saying that we don't need to pour over the years of our lives and write down every sin and hurt and habit and hangup and then share that list with someone else other than God. There is a time to confess sins. When they're current!! All this stuff in the past is just that: Past. I don't see anything wrong with talking over a current situation with a trusted friend as long as you're not seeking forgiveness from that person. God and God alone can forgive. But a trusted friend can help you see the error of your ways, so to speak. They can help you attain a balanced view of what's going on in your life and help you understand what you need to do. And most times there's a very simple solution to the problem. You need to get alone with God. But if you're struggling with a current issue, by all means, confide in a trusted and trustworthy friend. Talk openly and honestly with that person and seek their guidance. And chances are they will guide you right to the Bible where you'll find all the answers you need. We don't need all this psycho-babble because that's what it truly is, babble. This step in Baker's program is just exactly what a secular counselor might have you do. We have something so much better. We have the Counselor, the Holy Spirit and He will guide us into all healing. If we are spiritually ill we need a spiritual healer.

Baker's book will do a lot of good for a lot of people. But I think it's slightly off track with this step in the program. This is Baker's "8-Step Program." Not unlike the 12-Step program that has helped so many alcoholics and addicts to get clean and sober. But all the human race needs is Jesus Christ. Why go out of our way to end up being told that you're a "recovering" person. You aren't recovering in Christ. You are recovered! Past tense, present tense, and future tense. Recovered. That's what we need to understand. Our past is just that ... past. God is good and gracious and will forgive us all our sins. Why do we need to go back and deal with things God has already dealt with? Is God's forgiveness lacking? Of course not. It's our understanding of that forgiveness that's lacking. And for that we need to realize that God has already dealt with our sins. He put them in Christ and then put Him to death so that we might live free of them forever- more. Our past sins are gone. We are loved and forgiven and whole. God has already put our sins away. We don't need to go and drag them all out again. We just need a full understanding of what God's forgiveness means. And that will be found in no other place but the Bible.

John Baker's book is doing a lot of good but I sincerely believe that this step in the program is off base. If for no other reason than the hurt and misunderstanding such a list of past sins and hurts and habits and hangups could cause if it got into the wrong hands. In fact, the book talks about a couple who went through just such pain. He was a "recovering" and she was a "recovering" and he made out his Moral Inventory and it somehow ended up in her hands and neither of them were ready to deal with the issues he wrote about in his list. That alone almost ruined their marriage that they were trying to save. That's why we confess our sins to God. Because only God can adequately deal with them. Our sins are only safe in God's hands because only God puts them away as far as east is from west. This woman suffered a lot of pain as a result of this step in the program. Pain that was totally unnecessary. That alone should have given the author pause.

Well, on to safer grounds here. Our weather is cloudy and cold. We had over a half an inch of rain during the night last night. I'm not sure when the next rain is due in but it will more than likely be tomorrow or so. We had over 8 inches of rain in January. So far most of February is just drizzle but even drizzle adds up. Can't believe spring is getting so close. Only a couple more months and we'll be able to open up the house for fresh air again. I intend on doing a lot of Spring cleaning this year. Guess I better get all my socks knitted before then. I have one more pair of Felici to knit and then I ordered enough Stroll yarn (from KnitPicks) for two more pair. All in all I will end up with 6 pairs of socks if I don't keep ordering more yarn and knitting more socks. But they are fun to knit and some of these are not going to be my favorites to wear because they're all different sizes. Hopefully I'll get a few pair to wear anyway. Guess I best get busy around here and do some knitting. Until next time...

To Blog or Not to Blog

2010-02-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

I really did have my mind made up to blog again. But I just never got back to it. A lot has happened since I last wrote but I can't think of a single thing to write about. Christmas came and went and now we are in the rainy season, although it isn't raining yet today and yesterday was a beautiful spring-like day here. We are due for rain later today and tonight and tomorrow. Thursday will be our shopping day and it isn't supposed to rain that day so we lucked out. (As it now stands anyway.)

I've been busy knitting. Just about finished with my second pair of socks. I was hoping this second pair wouldn't have any mistakes in it but alas! there are a few. But they are for me so I don't mind a wrong stitch here and there. But I do wish I would see these mistakes before I knit another 2 inches!!! If the mistake is only 4 or 5 rounds back I'm comfortable using a crochet hook and going back those rounds and correcting the mistake with the hook. But when they are 12 or 14 rows back, I am just not comfortable doing that. But I consider these early socks my learning socks so I'm not going to beat myself up about the mistakes. Suffice it to say I simply wish I didn't make them!! I don't understand why I throw in a bad stitch here and there. It makes no sense to break the rhythm and yet I do. My first pair of socks were too big so I dropped a needle size and wouldn't you know it, this pair is borderline too small. They are a nice snug fit. I just hope that doesn't cause the toe to wear out too quickly. I do like the fit better than the loose pair but I'm sort of frustrated. The first pair was too big all over and when that happens you're supposed to drop a needle size. Which is what I did. And now these are borderline too small. I have decided that I don't like trying to "fit" things. I prefer to knit afghans and such where it doesn't much matter if they're a little big or a little small.

Why would a different color in the same yarn, the same pattern, and the same knitter turn out to be a different size? You see, I did the leg with the same size as the first socks (#3s) and yet the leg is very snug. Everything was the same except for the color of the yarn. So anyway, the fact that these socks were knitting up smaller in the first place and then I dropped a needle size on top of that is what made them so snug. Sizing is discouraging to say the least. Any thoughts on sizing would be appreciated. I'm just learning so I'm going to consider these first few pairs learning experiences and let it go at that. Once I get the learning part down then I will consider knitting some as gifts. But of course that means I have to get everyone's foot sizes. But I don't know that anyone would appreciate the work that goes into making a pair of socks. So I may just knit socks for myself and let it go at that. The only thing is that I am perfectly happy knitting the same pattern over and over again and that drives Kathleen, my knitting mentor/teacher crazy. She thinks I need to knit a different pattern every time. But I'm going to stick with this pattern until I am more comfortable with it regardless of what she says. My next pair will be done with KnitPick's Felici yarn, which is a self-striping yarn. That will be a lot of fun. I knitted a few things this past Christmas that were done with self-patterning yarns and they were so much fun to knit. I bought enough for 2 pairs of Felici yarn socks and can't wait to knit with the yarn. Why I started with KP's Gloss yarn is a mystery to me. The first pair I did was Gloss and I had so much fun knitting them that I ordered more Gloss and the Felici yarns. And for some strange reason I started with the Gloss instead of the Felici. So I've had to knit this pair of socks wishing I had started with the self-striping. Bummer. But now I'll have 2 pairs to do back-to-back with the Felici yarn. Anyway when I finish with the yarn I have I will have 4 pairs of socks. Then I will order enough yarn for another 2 or 3 pairs and call that sufficient. I do hope they wear well. I'd hate for them to wear out too quickly and waste all that time and effort and money I put into them. But socks are fun to make. It's funny because I had sworn I would never knit a pair of socks. I thought like my husband thinks: You can go to WalMart and buy a pair of socks for a dollar, why go to all the work (and expense) of knitting them? But that was before I knit a pair and discovered how much fun they are to knit. And now I'm quite happy to be knitting socks. It's funny because I was very vocal about the fact that I would NEVER knit a pair of socks and when I finally did it made Ani (my knitting instructor) laugh out loud. I learned the lesson once again to never say never.

The fair is just 3 months away! And what do I have to enter? I was going to enter a lot of stuff but then I gave away most of what I'd knitted as Christmas presents last year so now I'm down to just a couple things. I was hoping to get a pair of socks knit without so many mistakes so I could enter them but I can't seem to knit a pair without a gazillion mistakes in them. I thought surely this pair would be better than the first pair and it's not. It has about the same number of mistakes as the first pair had. Maybe the Felici will be good luck for me and I will knit a pair without many mistakes. I don't mind one or two mistakes. But 5 or 6 are just too many. And of course, knitting them with a solid color makes the mistakes really stand out too. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I will get better at knitting them. Of course last year Kathleen entered 2 or 3 pairs and didn't take any ribbons. I guess the judge didn't like socks. Kathleen's socks were, of course, without error. Sometimes I get discouraged because she knits so well but I'm trying to learn as much from her as I can. That's what's important.

Kathleen gave me a sourdough starter and the recipe for sourdough waffles. Yummy!!! I made some for dinner last night and they were absolutely delicious. Then for breakfast I popped a couple in the toaster and had them again this morning. They were just as good as last night's waffles. The recipe makes a lot of waffles so I may next time divide the recipe in half. We'd still have more than we could eat in one sitting. I had like 6 waffles left over and that's a lot in anybody's book. Today I am feeding my starter and growing it back to sufficient size to use for another batch of waffle or maybe make some bread or something else.

Well, this hasn't been much of a post but at least I tried. I need to go now and get my hair and face straightened up so I can go run errands and get them out of the way. Hubby is going to make dinner tonight so I'm off cooking duty until tomorrow. I love it when he cooks because then I don't have to. Our sunshine has gone away and the clouds for the next storm are building up in the sky. We got over 8 inches of rain with the last series of storms that moved through our area. And we had to go across the river for one of hubby's doctor appts and we even got snowed on. It was so pretty. It was melting as quickly as it hit the road so there was no added risk involved and the flakes were so big and beautiful. I had forgotten how beautiful it is to drive in the snow. We didn't get any snow here at the house but Hogback Mountain had plenty of snow on it. This storm coming in is coming in much colder than the previous ones so we might get a little snow out of this one ourselves. I like getting a little snow but nothing like what we used to get when we lived farther up the mountain. I got really tired of shoveling the snow back then. When we lived in Colorado, we never had to shovel snow. We just swept it. It was always such a dry snow. Never had to scrape ice off my windshield either. Just brushed it away. Forgive me for this lousy post. I meant well. It's just that I haven't posted in so long I've forgotten what to write about. Sorry. I will try and post more often. But the operative word there is "try." Unfortunately I can't say increasing the quantity will improve the quality of the posts. Until next time...

Not Just Any Thursday in November

2009-11-19T22:18:00.000-08:00

Forty-six years ago today Richard Darnell Wilson came into the world weighing 8 lbs. 3-1/2 ounces and measuring 21-1/2 inches long. Yes Rich would have been 46 years old today if he had not committed suicide at the tender age of 22. He's been dead for 24 years and I still miss him so very much. I can't help but wonder what he would be like now. How many grandchildren would he have given me? Time has taken away the pain but nothing can take away the ache in this mother's heart. I've shed a few tears tonight. Something I haven't done in years. Tears can't bring him back nor do they wash away the loneliness I feel without him in my life. I think he would be proud of his little brother and the person he's become. And I think he'd be proud of me too for simply hanging on no matter what. We miss you, Rich. And I have always been proud that you were my son and I had the privilege of loving you. I still do, you know. Love you. I always will.

An Odd Day

2009-11-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

What an odd day this has been! It disappeared on me. I got absolutely nothing done and the day is over and I'm deep into the night. Oh I did do a few things. I finished one neckwarmer and started another. (Hopefully I'll have enough done by Christmas for everyone that's on my list.) I ran errands, although I found the bank and the Post Office closed, same for the print shop (where I almost risked life and limb to cross the highway to get copies made for my husband only to find them closed). I struck gold at the drug store. Got my $37 refund and picked up two free 2010 calendars and then headed to Kathleen's house for some one-on-one knitting advice. Mostly just checking to make sure I know what I think I'm doing (you figure it out). I was right on with my vest but still traveling scary waters as far as venturing into the unknown of knitting goes, and my little fountain hood will turn out all right even though I didn't join the ends correctly on the circular needle. Oh I did it correctly according to the directions I googled, but it wasn't Kathleen's way and therefore there's a slight problem with it that I wouldn't have if I'd trusted my memory of how she told me to do it. See, I did remember correctly, I just didn't trust my memory. Usually that works best for me because I have the absolute worst memory on planet earth. So that advice was good and I'll do it her way next time. But I'm really struggling with the hood on the circular needle. It is very difficult for me to get the unworked stitches off the cable and back onto the wooden needle points. It's exactly like trying to work a size 4 stitch onto a size 6 needle. The needle is too big or the stitch is too small, whichever you please. But I've never knitted in the round before so maybe this is always the way it is. Anyway I'm not having any fun knitting the hood. Not yet. I haven't given up and started over again. I'm persevering. I'm sticking with the plan. Oh yes, I paid my car registration today too although I couldn't put the cash in the bank because, as I said earlier, the bank was closed. That means I must go out again tomorrow to make the deposit. The thing is (with the registration fee) I've had the cash for the registration for over a month stashed away in a safe place. I was thinking my registration was due in December (that was the caddy) but I happened to think about it today and looked it up and wouldn't you know it, it was due YESTERDAY which means that I had to pay a $24 late fee for one lousy day. Go figure!! Also I had an executive board meeting to attend tonight at 7:30 and I remembered it at 7:35! Then about 8:00 I remembered it was Wednesday and I had forgotten to take my walk! Again!!! Ever have one of those days??? So this has been how my day has gone. And on top of all that hubby needed a gazillion things today. I'd no more than get settled on the couch with my knitting and he'd ask me to get something for him or make something for him to eat or any little chore whatsoever. Now I'm not complaining. I know he can't help it. He can't do things for himself when he can't walk, now can he? No he can't and I fully realize that but the "service with a smile" tends to darken with use. Before I knew it I found myself gritting my teeth every time he asked me to get him something.

I just wanted to sit and knit today. To lose myself in yarn overs and purls and feel the soft pull of the yarn through my fingers. But my knitting today was not relaxing or satisfying because I'd no more than pick it up and then I'd have to lay it aside to do something else. Pick it up. Lay it aside. Pick it up. Lay it aside. That's how it went all day.

My house is a fright right now. There's so much that needs to be done and I don't have the ambition to do even the smallest chore. I just want to knit. Which is what I should be doing now, undisturbed and thankful. But here I sit complaining in my blog. My blog that no one reads any more which is partly my fault but who's pointing fingers. Where was I? Oh, yeah, all I wanted to do was sit and knit today and relax to the feel of one needle gliding across the other. It's very soothing to knit and if you're the least bit stressed you should give knitting a try. But don't try to do it with a hubby who can't walk and do things for himself. The two don't mix. Water and oil. Okay I've complained enough. It's just that it was such a weird day. Nothing turned out right and nothing went according to plan. I feel like I've lived someone else's life today. All that aside, let me thank you for praying for hubby (and me). His leg (and my attitude) definitely need it. And I'll ask you to please continue to remember us in your prayers. Hubby's leg seemed a bit better today. Still swollen. Still red. Still very, very painful. I just need to cope. That's where your prayers come in. Yes, thank you for praying for us, especially hubby. He's the one in pain. Well we're both in pain but his is physical. Mine's only mental. But I still need prayer. Weird day. A really weird day. And I am in an equally weird mood. I'm sorry. I think I'll go knit for awhile and then go to bed. It's after midnight as it is. I wish I could just click my heels together and my house would be clean. Ginny talked about her laundry piled high and muddy boots on the porch. I don't have the muddy boots but I sure have the laundry that needs to be done. Tomorrow will be a better day. I will get up and get to work and get my chores and errands taken care of before I sit down to knit. And I will get to that laundry that I've said I was going to take care of every day this week. That and the vacuum. I'm going to go knit.

Prayer Request

2009-11-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

We have been very busy around here for the past few weeks. It all started simply enough. A couple weeks ago I noticed hubby's leg was swollen from the knee down to his toes. I suspected a possible blood clot and took him to the emergency room. They did a sonogram and failed to find a clot so he was sent home with instructions to wear an orthopedic stocking and keep his leg elevated because one could still form. As the days went by the swelling decreased except around his knee. And hubby began experiencing a worsening of the pain. Seemed that every day it hurt him more and more. I took him to his doctor and he ordered another sonogram to make sure a clot had not formed since the first sonogram. Again there was no clot but there was a build up of fluid in the area. His doctor ordered an MRI of the knee and we got those results this morning at 8:15. Seems that he has a cyst up inside his knee joint that is pressing on all the nerves and vessels in that area. Which as we all know is a very tender area. On top of the cyst is the fact that he needs a full joint replacement on that knee. He has "severe" deterioration of the bones and other arthritic problems. Right now, of course, the problem is mostly the cyst because it's bulging and literally making it feel like his knee is going to explode. I noticed tonight that his right leg is discolored, like if you put a rubber band around your finger and watch it turn red, so I know his circulation is not normal in that leg, the cyst is pressing on the vessels, restricting blood flow. He has been referred to an orthopedic surgeon but that can take up to a week here where we live. We love living up here in the foothills but things happen at such a slower pace up here. If we lived down in the Valley, he'd probably be scheduled for surgery by now. So I'm asking all of you to please pray from my hubby. Pray that the cyst goes down and releases the pressure in his knee which will lesson his pain a great deal. Pray also that he gets in to see the surgeon as soon as possible (like tomorrow) and that they get this thing properly taken care of. A knee replacement is a major thing to contemplate but if it has to be done then it has to be done. Hubby is quite a bit older than I am and at 78 this will be no easy operation for him to endure. He just had spinal neck surgery on August 24th. Since then he seems to have one problem after another. The surgery appears to have gone well but he's prone to spasms in his neck and shoulder muscles. Please pray also for that. Pray that God will work into this a wonderful blessing. (If anyone can do it, God can.) Pray that he gets on top of this pain and the disorder in his life and that in some way this will draw him back to God and to church. This is a hardship for me also in that I'm not able to be away from him for more than a few minutes at a time because he needs so much help getting around. I picked up a walker for him today and that has helped immensely. He can get around so much better using it instead of the two canes he was trying to use. Pray that it won't get so bad that I'll need to call for an ambulance to take him to the ER. We almost went that route last night. Obviously he had a terrible night last night. He was simply beside himself with pain and he couldn't get into any position that would lessen the pain at all. So please pray that he will sleep well and get rested.

I'm still walking 3 days a week and I got all my yarn and projects organized in the spare room. It looks a lot better in there I must say. And for an added bonus I know where everything is, yea!!

I'm not really writing a blog tonight. I just wanted to let you know about the latest events. Oh, please pray for me too. I may be a lot younger than hubby but I have my limitations too. I can no longer pick people up and move them around the way I used to do when I worked as a paramedic on ambulances. And I tire more easily than I used to. Thank you for reading my blog and thank you in advance for your prayers for us. I wish this weren't happening so near Christmas. We may not have the Christmas we'd like to have if the resolution to all these problems doesn't happen for a few weeks. We'd like to get in and get it done so that he'll be able to enjoy the holidays. He was able to attend his ship's reunion in Reno in September just a couple weeks after his neck surgery and just before this latest problem cropped up so he was blessed in that way. Until next time...

Why Is It?

2009-10-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

Why is it I always feel the need to write when I should be putting everything in order and getting myself into bed? Guess that's when things weigh on my mind. Things like the need to add a little exercise into my lumpy life. Since I took up knitting again a couple years ago (gee, has it really been that long! that wasn't meant to be a question) I have become less and less active and more and more a growing lump on my end of the couch! What's the matter with me? Didn't I feel great when I used to walk 6 miles a day? Yes, however now I whine such things as: Oh it's too hot to walk; or, Oh it's too cold to walk; or, any other of a million excuses I can come up with when pressed. So I have been thinking that I need to add a little exercise to my life. I can never stick with an exercise routine (my yoga mat I got two years ago for my birthday has never been unrolled) but I was able to stick with walking everyday (back then!) and, as I remember, I even looked forward to my time with the Lord. (I always talked with the Lord while I pounded the pavement. I didn't really pray. It was much more like just talking and I'm sure the people in the cars going passed me, thought I was insane talking to myself like that! Ah, if they only knew Who I was talking with, that would wipe that smirk off their faces. The God of heaven and earth! The Almighty Sovereign Lord of the universe! The King of kings! The Creator! God!) Where was I, oh yes, I need to start adding exercise back into my life (now that winter's right around the corner and it's going to be so tempting to whine about the cold) and the best exercise I can think of and will continue with, is walking. I've got some good shoes and I have plenty of clothes to layer on so I have no excuse, right. (Oh give me time. I'll come up with one.) Anyway I've been thinking about walking again for the past couple weeks. Then Sunday at church we were asked to take some flyers and distribute them around town. I thought that was right up my alley as it would get me out walking again. I could certainly canvas my neighborhood and then maybe I could just keep walking even after all the flyers were gone. So I did good. I took 35 flyers and wrote on the map that I would do the 2 blocks around my home. Yesterday, I was charged and managed to do a million things including walking around with the flyers. Only thing is I ran out of them long before I ran out of houses. So last night at knitting group I went upstairs to the sanctuary and picked up a big handful of flyers. (64 flyers! Yes, I counted) Today I meant to finish my 2 blocks and hit a few apartment complexes before going home. However one thing led to another today and the only thing I got accomplished was my bed and a nice long nap on the couch. Shame on me! But I have hopes for tomorrow. I'm going to get out there and walk and then I'm going to keep right on walking all winter long (except when it rains - now watch this be the wettest year on record) and shed a few pounds or at least feel a little better. When I finish with these flyers I'll go pick up more and walk again on Friday to distribute them. I'm hoping that by then I will be "in the habit" of walking and can keep it up. Sounds like a plan doesn't it? You see, that's the only negative I can find about knitting: You can't knit very well while walking. (Although my friend Ginny can knit quite well while she's walking, carrying her baby on her back!!) And if you knit as much as I do, you turn into a vegetable rather quickly. I know this to be a fact because it has happened to me. I have turned into a couch potato with a pair of knitting needles in its hands. But I am determined to turn over a new leaf. I will resolve not to knit until after I've walked if I must but I will start walking again. Nothing like 6 miles a day I can assure you but anything will be better for me than nothing. I will work up to an hour a day. That will be my goal. That's not hard. It really isn't. All you have to do is walk for 30 minutes then turn around and walk home. You can even walk the same route home if you want. You don't have to have a course to walk! Will I shoot for every day? I don't know on that one. I'll start out with three times a week and see where I go from there. I have decided that this absolutely must happen. I sit waaaaay too much while knitting. Yes, and I believe I am literally knitting my life away. It is not healthy to sit all day long. The thing is, I know this, so why am I having to give myself a pep-talk here? Because I'm weak. Because I'm spoiled and have grow lazy. Okay. I have my mind made up. I will start walking starting tomorrow. (Wait a minute, didn't I actually start yesterday? Yes, but I had not resolved to do so. And now I have.)

I'm going to start making a list every night of chores I need or want to do "tomorrow." I used to do this all the time and it really works for me. Yesterday is proof of that. I had 12 things on my list to do and I did all 12 of them. That's such a great feeling to cross that chore off and pick out another one! I will do this with w-a-l-k at the top of my list. And until it gets really cold, I will try to do my walking first thing, like it's the most important part of my day. I can't think of a better way to start a day off than to have an hour's conversation with the Lord. I wonder how many calories you burn talking to God. Anyone ever stop and figure that out? Someone, somewhere probably has documented that praying burns X number of calories per minute or per hour. But I don't know who or where s/he documented it.

These decisions are monumental stages in my life. I wish I could explain how sedentary my life has become so you would understand their magnitudes. Making a list every night = 6.5 on the Richter Scale. Walking = 9.9 on the Richter Scale. These are big events in my life. To me anyway. There's no way for you to feel the ground shaking the way it's shaking under me right now. But I resolve to do these two things. Do them right away and do them until they become second nature to me. Do them until a day without them would be hugely disappointing.

Another thing. I resolve to organize my knitting. This is a huge step for me too. My corner of the spare room is piled almost to the ceiling with skeins of yarn. Some full skeins, some partial skeins, and some just scrap. I am determined to get in there before this week is over and organize everything. I have boxes of balls of yarn and I have dozens of balls of yarn that have no boxes. Everything is just piled in there on top of itself. It's sort of layered though, I noticed that tonight when I was in there looking for a finished neckwarmer I had knit. On the very bottom is a layer of balls of yarn all in various stages of use and a few projects that I've started but haven't yet finished. On top of that is a layer of plastic bags and shirt boxes of finished projects. On the floor is the huge plastic bag that holds two afghans for Christmas presents (I think I'm safe here, I don't think they read my blog). But then on top of the layer of finished projects is another layer of jumbled up mess of balls of yarn, some new, some partially used. Then on top of them are more finished projects and then on top of that are several shipping boxes that are filled with new balls of beautiful yarn. I even have the project I bought them for, written right on the KnitPicks label! These are my treasures just waiting to be crafted into beautiful things. Mostly scarves and warmers and baby blankets (no I don't know anyone who is expecting) that will someday go to the hospital for babies along with the dozen or so baby hats I knitted last year. Now pretend you are really, really big and you have this equally big spoon in your hand. Now pretend you are stirring this mess. That, my friends, is what my knitting corner of the spare room looks like. It will take a full day to organize this mess but I vow to do it before the week is out! I will be determined because it really, really needs to be done and it will give hubby one less thing to nag me about. No, he doesn't really nag me. He just says things like, "We've got to get that room cleaned out." He says we but he doesn't mean we, he means me. That's the way he nags at me. we've got to do this or we've got to do that. And for some reason that really grates on my nerves. But I know it will please him immensely if I organize that area of the room. What I need are big plastic tubs in which I can organize all the different components of my "pile." (And it really is a pile, I'm so ashamed to say.) I mean, there's a desk in there somewhere, you just can't see it. And somewhere in that mess is all my Christmas wrapping paper and bows. Actually the bows are on top of the pile for some reason. They're in an opened shoebox, laying on it's side with bows spilling out onto my baby hats. When I was rummaging in there earlier this evening looking for that warmer, I saw the bows. I also found knitted things that I had forgotten I knitted. Yes, it's time to buckle down and do the deed. But how am I going to organize it without big plastic tubs to put stuff in? (There's really no answer to that question and I wasn't look for an answer. There is no answer.) Well, I will just get in there and do the best I can. Isn't that my mantra: I will do the best I can? Yes, this will please hubby. And it will also prevent me from having to go in there and rummage around looking for something. Yarn will be with yarn. Completed project will be with other completed projects. Works in progress will all be together in one place so I can see them and actually might even decide to finish them!

So anyway, how's that workin' for ya...

A Fresh Start

2009-10-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Trying to Update

2009-10-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

It has been ages since I've written a blog and now that I want to, I'm not sure I can because all my blog addresses were on my firefox (or foxfire) engine. So I'm writing this just to see if it will show up on my blog. Hopefully I'll be able to do this. I ask God to bless you today.

Nothing Special

2009-07-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

Another day; another blog. Actually it has been awhile since I've blogged so it's not like I'm constantly writing blogs. I don't have anything special to write about just the daily events that eventually comprise my life. We had a few really hot days a couple weeks ago but this past week has cooled off considerably. I think yesterday's high was in the low 90s and it's been dipping down into the 40s at night. Perfect weather! I love it getting so low at night. I sleep so much better when the bedroom is cold. I just snuggle down under the comforter and sleep like a baby.

I went to a Fourth of July party across the river and had hamburgers and a perfect seat for the fireworks display at the Junior High school. Their back patio was big and long and the earth just dropped away from their low cement fence and we had a totally unobstructed view of the fireworks. I had a really nice time. Both my sisters were there too. It was nice to get out for a change. I'm not socially bent as fate would have it. It just seems that I usually have nothing to say that isn't about my life with the Lord and so when I'm around nonbelievers, I don't talk much. But 99% of my life is wrapped up in that relationship and my subsequent church activities. I pray for my sisters but they just don't think they need God in their lives at all. So sad.

I have not had Pepper put down. I ran into and unlikely crusader for him when I mentioned my plans to my hubby. He didn't want me to put him down. He wanted me to give another month of thought to it. He's really attached to him, just as I am. But I hadn't realized hubby was that attached. So when we did our shopping for July, I went ahead and purchased another month's worth of dog food. And of course now I'm having second thoughts myself. I really wish we didn't have him but at the same time I'm in love with the little creep!! I had my mind so made up and now I'm all confused again.

My Bible reading is going quite steadily. So far I haven't missed a day or missed a portion of the material. I confess I skimmed a little when I worked my way through Chronicles, and if you've ever read First and Second Chronicle, you'll understand why. Job started out a boring chore but then I really got into it and I enjoyed my time reading it, especially yesterday (which I stayed up and read last night before going to bed - I almost forgot). But there are some beautiful verses in Job and overall it was well worth reading. As I said, I ended up enjoying it. I read Job all the way through a few months back and had found it boring then too. But by the time I got past chapter 20, I was really enjoying it. Much of it went right to my heart. The Sovereignty, Suffering, and Punishment. What's fair and what's unfair. Did Job deserve to have this happen to him? He was one of the good guys. So many others had to have been better suited and more deserving of this type of suffering. What exactly is God doing with Job anyway? Basically it all boils down to God's sovereignty to do as he pleases with His own creation. When we behave or live righteously we are not doing anything special; we're just doing as we ought to do. We don't give awards to people who do what they are supposed to do and neither does God. The thing to remember is that even in suffering we are to seek the Person of God. To love Him. To worship Him. Why? Because He deserves it. He is worthy of our love and worship. We are not worth the dirt we stand on and anything God gives us is an unmerited gift from the Father, Son, Holy Spirit! We are to love Him. The Persons of God regardless to what is happening in our lives. Things are rough and hard to deal with? Love God. When our struggles have mounted to painful peaks, we are to remember that we are receiving nothing more than what we deserve and are to love God just the same. Our love is for HIM. Not for anything He gives us or does for us but for Him who IS worthy of praise and love and worship and adoration. Even in the midst of great suffering we are to love God regardless of our circumstances.

God is omnipotent and sovereign. We must never forget that. We are called to love Him even when we don't understand Him. Poor Job! He had no answer to his many questions of Why me? And God never gave him an explanation either. Job's little pity party was him thinking he hadn't done anything to deserve such horrible suffering. But then Job comes to an understanding: That is that "though You slay me, I will love You still." Do we say that when things go wrong for us? Do we say, God, I'm going to love you even if you kill me? That's what Job realized. God has the right and responsibility to deal with us as He chooses. And we are to love him. No matter what's going on in our lives at each moment, we are to love Him with all our being. He is worthy of such adoration. Whereas we are worthy only of death. We are the ones who broke the covenant. We are the ones who went astray. We are the ones who thought ourselves better than we are. We are the imperfect, the flawed, the sinners. No matter how much suffering we endure in this life we are getting nothing more than what we deserve. So the next time you go though some rough times, stop and think about Job. Think of what we are: filthy rags. And praise God that He loves you anyway. Even while undergoing excruciating anguish God love us, and we are to love Him for who He is. And we must remember that God is worthy.

That phrase, "God is worthy" has such incredible depth for me. For some reason that one word "worthy" seems to mean more to me than to most people I know. I don't know why that's so but I tend to think that it does. When I am with people and I mention that God is worthy it just seems to be another word to them. The thing that gets me is the realization that God IS God and as God He could be any kind of God he chooses to be. He could choose to be a bad God. But He doesn't. He could choose to mistreat us, but He doesn't. He could choose to make every moment of our lives miserable, but He chooses to love us instead. He didn't have to make food taste good. Or He could have created food that tastes good but given us tongues without taste buds. He could have chosen to have roses smell so beautifully and then given us noses without the ability to smell. He didn't have to give us eyes capable of distinguishing color. Or He could have created this colorful world for His own pleasure, and given it to us as black and white. He didn't have to give us music, fragrance, laughter, love, sex, beauty. But He did. What an awesome God! A God so worthy of our love and worship and adoration. May we fall flat on our faces the next time we talk to Him and show Him that He is indeed worthy! He is worthy of it all. So the next time you hear someone say that God is worthy, think back and realize all that it means. And may the phrase "God is worthy" mean so much more to you from now on.

I am looking forward to Fall now. Summer is just now here and already I am looking forward to Fall. Ugh! Fall would mean leaves to rake and burn. Boo, hiss I forgot about that. Oh well, a little work is good for me. And our yard is certainly not a large yard. We just have a very big oak tree that shelters our entire back yard and it produces leaves three feet deep (or it seems that way). I was looking forward to being able to walk anywhere in my yard and not have to worry about stepping on a little doggy snake. Landmines. Messes. Pooders! Yes, I still want to put Pepper down but it will hurt so much to do it. It's like he trusts me to love him and care for him and I would be breaking that trust to put him down. The thing is, he's not suddenly going to stop snapping. He's not suddenly going to stop throwing a fit every time someone comes to our door. And, oh, my, perish bringing company into his house! Everything we do revolves around that dog. Where we go, when we go, how long we stay, etc., etc. My granddaughter's wedding is next month. What are we going to do about being gone so long? Will I have messes to clean up by time we get home. The cats are no problem. A bowl of water, a bowl of dry cat food, and a litter box and they are set for even overnight. Not so with the dog.

I'm still knitting on my yellow baby afghan. It's taking a little longer for some reason. One very good reason is that I keep making stupid mistakes and then have to rip out all my work and fix the problem and then reknit back to where I had been. I worked on the afghan all day yesterday and got about a foot done but by evening I was ready to knit something else. I almost decided to knit another dishcloth just for something else to do but I already have so many. I also thought about knitting another baby hat but I've already got a dozen of them! So I continued on with the afghan. I did get Jamie's red, summer scarf done night before last. I had such a small amount left to knit that I just decided to sit and finish it. I bought a bunch of cotton yarn last week because there was something I wanted to knit with cotton and can you believe it? I can't remember what I was going to knit. I wanted white yarn for some reason and I just can't remember what that reason was! Frustrating. Very frustrating.

This hasn't been much of a blog but it will have to do. Don't forget to leave a comment so I'll know it's being read. I'll make it easy on you, all you have to do is send your name. You don't have to come up with any words to write. Just let me know you visited. Thanks. And until next time, love the Lord regardless of what's going on in your lives. Love Him and give Him the honor He deserves.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2009-06-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for promises. Right? But this is the first chance I've had to actually sit down at the computer and write. Hubby has kept us hopping. His neck needs surgery and we have been having tests run with various doctor appointments. We had to go to Sonora yesterday to see one of the doctors at the Northern California Spinal Institute for an EMG. Hubby was not too happy having needles inserted into all his muscles on the right side. I told him he was lucky that he only had to have one side done. When I had mine done it was for both sides. It is a very unpleasant test, I'll give him that. With the test done we left the office with orders in hands for another MRI and an epidural at the hospital scheduled for the 14th. Also we had orders to schedule an appointment to see another one of the doctors who specializes in the cervical spine. We are hoping to have the surgery ASAP. Hopefully the epidural will give hubby some pain relief until we can get the actual surgery done. Last time we went over and saw the doctor he was given some morphine for the pain but was unable to keep it down so he's back on norco which helps some but he remains in a lot of pain. I'm really hoping that we can get his surgery over and done with before the fall. When you live up in the mountains, things take time. I will keep you posted and I covet your prayers for my hubby. That the epidural will alleviate his pain and that his surgery can be done soon.

We are in the middle of a heatwave here. Yesterday we drove over to see the doctor in 110 degree heat. When we got back home our thermometer showed that our high here had been 113 degrees! That's really too hot for anyone. It made for a hot trip over to Sonora and back. At least it cooled off a little last night. Night before last I had the intake fans in our bedroom window blowing across me and still I slept on top of the covers, too hot even for just the sheet. Last night was much better. It is supposed to be hot again today but not as hot as yesterday.

I made the painful decision to have my dog Pepper put down. I don't know yet when I'll have it done but probably before too awfully long. There are dozens of reasons for doing it, not least of which is his sudden tendency to snap and growl at everybody. Even me! And he worships the ground I walk on. The problem is that I love him in spite of his personality. I won't try to find another home for him because of his biting (and a few other flaws). I would just be putting his new owners at risk for being bitten. But I really do love this dog. Or I guess more accurately I should say that I love the dog he could be if he didn't have all these things wrong with him. It's a lot like being in an abusive relationship. Women stay in those relationships because they love the man that their man could be, if he just wouldn't beat her up all the time. It's like that with Pepper. I love the dog he could be if he just wouldn't bite and misbehave. But the facts are that he does bite and misbehave and he's getting worse. It will break my heart but I've decided that it has to be done. After he's gone we will bring Mama (our feral outdoor cat) inside (Pepper would never stand for us bringing another animal into the house). She is the sweetest thing and hopefully she'll get along with Mario and Punky (the cats we already have) and I won't have to worry about her being outside all the time. It's always a struggle to get her into the garage at night but there are too many animals up here that prey on domestic cats to leave her completely outside. That will still leave Little Mario outside but he is still very feral. I can stroke him once or twice when I put the food out but he hisses at me when I do it. Hubby has never been able to touch him. He is really truly wild and I am not attached to him like I am with Mama and I have no plans to get attached to him. Anyway, it will break my heart to put Pepper down but I've made up my mind to do it. Just not sure exactly when. Pepper is always close to me. He follows me from room to room. Sleeps curled against my side at night and beside me on the couch when I'm knitting. If I go outside, he goes outside. He follows me everywhere so it will be like severing me from my shadow.

I am busy reading the Bible. Since the first of the year I have been reading through the Every Day Bible which is the NIV divided into 365 sections to take you through the year. So far I've stayed faithful to that. Then a couple weeks ago our pastor challenged us to read through the Bible in 90 days and I have a schedule to follow that will get me completely through it in 90 days. So far so good on that one but I've got a long way to go. It takes about an hour maybe an hour and a half to read using that schedule. I'm going to really try to keep up with both of them but some days it really is a challenge to read through all that material.

My Bible study of the various disciplines of the Christian life is on hold until I get the 90-day reading done. Because that usually takes an hour by itself and that's just too much. I do miss it though. At least each chapter stands on it's own. I'm not going to suffer by taking a break from it. I can just pick it up right where I dropped off.

We have had a family of Gold Finches visiting our hummingbird feeder the past couple of weeks. My they are such beautiful birds. All that bright yellow flashing around. They can really drain the nectar out of the feeder in a hurry I'll say that much for them. But they are so pretty.

I'm still knitting. I've started a new afghan after finishing the white one last week. It is a pale yellow. I don't like the stiffness of the yarn but it's yarn that I've hung onto for 20 years and I'd like to get it used up and out of the way. What am I going to do with all these afghans??? I have the yarn for one more and then I will move on to something else. Oh, and I've learned to knit in the round! Yea for me!! I don't like it though. I just don't find it fun to work. But I'm currently knitting a pair of wrist warmers in the round. I've taken the first one as far as I know how to take it. I will need to have my teacher show me how to do the next step and she and her hubby are out of state right now so it's just sitting in the spare room until she gets back. That's why I went ahead and started the yellow afghan. I needed something to work on.

Well this hasn't been much of a blog but I've got to get busy around here. I don't even have my bed made yet. I woke up just before 5:00 this morning and hubby was still asleep. And then I started my Bible readings, then I moved to this blog. Hubby is up now so I'm going to close and get it made. Oh and I guess I should get dressed sometime today too! I feel like my blogs are boring now without writing a devotional but it has been a nice break for me. Maybe sometime in the fall I will get back to writing one occasionally. In the mean time stay close to the Lord. He's the best friend you'll ever have. And I praise Him this morning and give Him the credit for anything good in me. On my own I am like filthy rags, but with Him I am dressed in glorious splendor. He is my righteousness. And I praise Him for all the things He's doing in my life. He gives me strength and the will to continue during difficult times. Some days are just hard, let's face it, but we can make it through victoriously if we will cling to Him. His hand is always out-stretched toward us. All we have to do is take hold of it. Praise God!!!

I'm Sorry

2009-06-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

I know this is way over due here on my blog site but I'm going to have to let it say so many things I want to say and have no time to say them. Hopefully I will get to it really soon. I had planned on writing this with plenty of time but my time got away from me and here I am too rushed for posting. I will VERY SOON write a real blog. I promise. Right now I see that blogger is down anyway. Don't know how long it will be before I can post. But surely as soon as I'm ready to blog, it will be up and running. Who would have thought that I would get too busy to blog! I'm not sure when that will be but I am hoping not more than a day or so. Sorry for the confusion. Love ya...

It's Been A While

2009-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

...since I've posted but it doesn't look like anyone has missed me. Honestly I just have not had the time to blog. I've got so many irons in the fire. Something happens or I see or hear something and I'll think "I need to save that for my blog" but then I don't find the time to blog and when I finally sit down at the keys to write, my mind goes blank. I don't do well when I am overloaded with things and I've really got myself laid bare. Nothing seems to be happening to talk about. I have my Bible study on the Disciplines of Christian Living and then I've got two Bible reading projects going. I know. You'd think one would suffice, huh? Well, I have been using the Daily Bible since the first of the year which is an NIV translation divided into 365 segments with a few devotionals thrown in (not nearly as many as I had hoped for, but oh well!) and then my pastor challenged us to read the Bible in 90 days over the summer. So I've continued with my first plan and just added the second plan to it. At some point they will meet in the middle but the 90-day plan is much faster having many more Bible pages to read every day. But I am using a new translation I got for Christmas last year. It's the New Living Bible and I really enjoy it for reading. I'm glad I decided to use that Bible for my second reading plan. The NLB is a very good translation (paraphrase) for just sitting back and reading the Word of the Lord. I wouldn't use it for a Bible study. I prefer the NIV for that. But it's very, very readable.

So I've had all this going on in my life and have had meetings and meetings and meetings and of course I'm still knitting up a storm although I confess I've eased up a bit on it. I don't need to knit as much as I was there in the beginning. It's nice to have settled into a schedule that is more relaxing. When I first went back to knitting last year I almost knitted 24 hours a day! Day after day!! I knitted afghans and throws and shawls and baby hats (which by the way is about time to knit another one). Now I'm pretty well down to just one project at a time. I'm working on a white baby blanket. The pattern calls it an afghan but it's more of a blanket to me. Much tighter weave and a little on the small side for an afghan. I'm using white worsted yarn for it. But I picked up a pattern the other day for another baby afghan that I'll use my lavender (sport?) yarn to make. This one has a much tighter weave and looks and feels more like a blanket than an afghan which I think of as open and loose. This white one will be much warmer than any other afghans I've done. I have plenty of worsted yellow yarn left over from when I was knitting years and years ago (I knew I was hanging onto that yarn for some reason) and I think I will use it for an afghan too. I'm ordering some yarn and patterns today for future projects. I had hoped to order them online but couldn't figure out how to navigate their "store," so I'll do it snail mail. One of the projects is the yarn and pattern for adult jacquard wrist warmers that I think my granddaughters will like to have. The second project is for me. It's the yarn and pattern for yoga socks and yes, I plan on going back to yoga again. I have my DVD and I'll just do it here at home rather than going out to a class. I really need to be doing something. Anyway, I thought they were great looking socks and they don't have heels or toes so there aren't any tricky places to knit (I hope). These may be knitted in the round and if they are, that will give me the opportunity to learn how to knit that way. I do want to learn but I'm secretly hoping that they aren't designed to be knitted in the round because I'd like to just knit them like I know what I'm doing, lol!

[Hubby just took me down to the yard and showed me that we have two tiny cherry tomatoes on our vine now! Yippee!!! That is as close to having home grown tomatoes as we've been in years and years!]

I still have yarn coming out my ears and I'm buying more??? Shame on me! But I don't have any sock yarn around so if I'm going to be doing socks, I need more yarn. I've been thinking about making myself a sweater but I just can't get myself to do it right now. I'd rather knit things! I'm thinking about knitting some place mats too if I can find an interesting pattern. But then, most of those will involve working with more than one color and I'm not ready to tackle that issue yet.

Our weather has been so strange lately. Very cool and overcast for the past two weeks. Yesterday's high was only in the 70s. This is June folks!! We're supposed to be dripping in sweat by this time! I'm not in any way complaining though as I simply do not like hot weather. It just seems weird to have such mild temperatures this time of year. I could go for this temp all year round. The biggest problem we've had going for the past couple months is the wind. We've had an almost constant wind whipping the pollens and molds around activating all those nasty little nasal problems.

One of my blogging friends sent out the cutest chicken pictures today. She and her hubby ordered 27 chicks from somewhere with I think 3 roosters. But her little chickies are absolutely adorable! Harriet is the winner hands down for today's vote. She's got so much personality just standing there in the pic. Looks like she could rule the roost if you ask me. I sure wish I had 27 chickies to play with until they matured into laying hens. They are just so cute. We always had a pen full of chickens when I was growing up. It was fun to go out and gather in the eggs, to count them and see how many you got for the day. Anyway they just bring out the little farm girl in me. I always liked our chickens and I didn't like it one bit when mother would cook one for dinner. That didn't stop me from eating dinner but it made me sad. I would have turned down the fried chicken in a heartbeat if my doing that would save the chicken but I knew that would never happen so why not eat what the Lord has provided? I am not a vegetarian but I would be if I had to kill my food before I could eat it. There are too many vegetables to pick from before you start killing animals to satisfy your hunger. Or that' s the way I look at it anyway.

Well, yes, I know this is a very short post but I've got things I need to be doing before it's time to take hubby to the doctor and see if he can do anything for hubby's nausea and vomiting. As if he doesn't already have enough to handle what with all the pain he's dealing with and then to have this stuff heaped on top of everything else, it's kind of rough around here for Mr. Hubby. But I do need to get some things done. I wanted to vacuum but don't know if I'll get around to that or not. I have gotten the bed made and all my Bible reading is done for the day. There's about an hour's worth of reading every day for me to get my two different Bible reading plans fulfilled. And that's hard for me to sit still for that long. But I think my biggest problem is that I keep falling asleep. I need to do my reading before I start my day and I am constantly fighting the urge to sleep. I must have fallen asleep a dozen times this morning before I got all my reading done. But I can't read during the day (I've just too many things to do to spend my time reading) so that leaves mornings or nights and I end up battling the sleep issue regardless of which one of those I choose.

This hasn't been much of a blog but I keep trying. You have to give me credit for that, I do keep trying. I want to take out the time this afternoon before we leave to get my Bible Study done. I think this discipline is on prayer if I'm not mistaken and we can all use help with prayer in some way. Prayer is such an incredible gift from our heavenly Father and yet most of us get prayer so far pushed aside from our daily activities that we never seem to get around to it. I know that I could improve this area of my life greatly. I just never seem to take the time for it and a brush up on that discipline will do me the world of good. And then I do want to get more knitting done today too. I've got my bed made and the dishes done and that's as far as I've gotten. So anyway I'm going to let this be my blog for today. I know it's boring and I don't even know if anyone out there is still reading it but I keep trying. I think it may be time to put my blog to rest, permanently. We'll just have to wait and see how that works out. In the meantime, stay close to the Lord and improve your prayer time, it can't hurt!!!

2009-05-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well boo hiss I cannot get blogger to upload the right image in the right order. You've already seen this pic of my shawl. I'm trying to send a close up of this shawl and it's just not doing it. Oh well, I've pretty well beaten that horse into oblivion any way. So we'll let that go. I think it's past time for that. These pics are all out of order and they keep changing their order but here's a pic of the flowers and plants I have in the corner of the deck by our front door. I can't remember if I've sent that one or not. If I have, please forgive the repeat. Also showing the view from our deck. I don't think I've sent this one before. I give up with the pics. I guess what I'm going to have to do is not do more than one pic per post. Because blogger seems to discard them at will and it places them wherever it feels like putting them in my post. I'm going to leave well enough alone for today and just go with what I have on the page.

I have nothing on my plate for today. I've really been struggling (looks like I just lost one of the pics of the shawl. That's a good thing.) I just can't figure out blogger and how it aligns my pics and how it keeps dumping pics without me telling it to do that.

Okay, I'm going to try to make the type wrap around the pic. Hey, that worked! I was able to get rid of one of the pics of the shawl and still keep my photo by the door. I'm just having a hard time figuring out blogger and putting pics into my post.

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't have anything on my plate for today. Guess I'll take it as it comes. Hubby is going to try to get into the DMV today to renew his drivers license that expires June 5th. He's on the phone right now with the office for his spinal specialist and it sounds like they're going to try and put him off again. This will be the second time they've resheduled him and in the meantime, he's in agony. Bummer!! He's been trying for over a year to get in to see this guy and they keep putting his appt off. He really needs to go get some help and the sooner the better. Looks like Dr. Grant had an accident and broke his foot over the weekend so his appt has been changed to June 8th and he'll be seeing a different doctor. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe Dr. Grant was not going to be a good doctor choice for him. Who knows.

I'm really having a very difficult time getting started on something to knit. I'm trying to start another baby afghan but I just can't seem to get situated. I just can't seem to get a pattern to click for me. But I persevere! I will not be beaten! Oh yeah? That's what I was saying yesterday. Right now I'm back to Tam's dishcloths because I can't get anything else to work up for me. I think I will do as Kathleen suggested and do a small swatch of the pattern before I go to all the work of casting on 200 stitches and then knitting the border only to find out that the pattern doesn't work for some reason. (The reason is usually me. I'm sitting at a wide place in the path and I don't know whether to keep walking or sit down and rest.) Guess I've sort of decided to take a rest. But it seems like I can't get more than one or two rows of pattern stitches before I get into trouble. Maybe it's time to make a new choice and go with a short trial to see how it works out.

I finished my study of Proverbs and am now studying a little book called Christian Disciplines. The first study was about our quiet time. I learned much from it. I learned that what I've been doing for my quiet time is not working because I have been coming just to get my daily Bible reading done and not to spend time with the Lord. I hadn't realized that until the Lord opened my eyes through this study. I have inadvertently allowed my Bible reading to be the center of my quiet time rather than God. I vowed to change but find that even this very morning I fell back into my old ways. Thinking that my Bible reading was what it's all about. I know better but I can't seem to function in that new understanding. I will keep working on it. My next study is on prayer and I know there will be a lot of things for me to learn there. I've really let my praying diminish. I seem to stay in an attitude of prayer rather than in the functioning of prayer. I don't "officially" pray much. But it's like I take everything to God in prayer. It is an attitude. A way of living. Constantly being in this attitude. Constantly recognizing that I am in submission to the Lord's headship for my life. But, while I find that form of prayer in my relationship with God to be most rewarding, I think there needs to be proper prayers at times. I need to come formally to God and seek His counsel and worship Him above all else. But this discipline seems to have been pushed aside. It's not that I don't pray, because I most certainly do. But it's in the method and mechanics where I fail. I don't get on my knees and come before the Lord. I do it on the run, while I'm doing everything else, and I'm not sure that's enough. Granted I submit everything, every attitude and action to the Lord, but I've let the formality completely slip away. If I had to choose just one method I think I would choose the way of my prayer life right now. But I don't have to choose. I can have both forms as I relate to God. I think I need to spend some time cultivating the discipline of formal prayer. Jesus is my Example and He withdrew quietly to pray all the time. Certainly He kept an attitude of prayer, yet He saw the necessity of formal prayer. He saw the need and the benefit of getting alone with His heavenly Father and lifting His face toward Him. I will take the time out to study today and see what I can come up with. Maybe there will be some hints on how to incorporate this formal prayer into my attitude of prayer. Certainly without it I am not functioning at full power. Maybe this study will have some good ideas for me. Sometimes I wish I were Catholic so I could just recite my formal prayers; have a distinct method, time, and place for them. Prayer is so vital for the Christian walk. It simply cannot be done without it. Without prayer we drift off into a hazy relationship with our Creator and that manner and method leaves much to be desired. But it is so comfortable to simply exist in this attitude, rather than get down to the specifics. It's so much easier to just float instead of swim. I think I have become lazy in my disciplines. Perhaps I realized that when I purchased this study book months ago when Ken first got baptized. I had thought I was buying it for him but maybe the Lord was leading me to buy it for myself. I've had it on my shelf for months and months and I'm just now getting to it. But I think it is good, no I think it's crucial, to step back and look at our Christian Disciplines to see where we are in our Christian walk. It's a lot like maintaining a vehicle. Routine maintenance. Periodical care. It's sort of like oiling our hinges so they won't squeak.

It is important for me to keep vigilant in prayer and to use the ACTS acronym until a good habit gets formed within me. There are things I must do to facilitate good prayer time. Pick the moment, find the place, and realize that prayer is more than just asking for God's help. It is the vehicle of our love for God. As my prayers go heavenward God is worshiped. I am adoring my God when I see my proper place in prayer. Submission is an act of worship. But I must cultivate this habit. I used to pray constantly. I had a running conversation going with my Creator every minute of my day but I also spoke many formal prayers. I have become lazy in my Christian disciplines. My formal prayers don't need to be long or complicated; they just need to be. But it's not the number of prayers offered that is important, it is the recognition that they need to exist. I need to pray but I also owe it to God to pray. He deserves my prayers. My prayers must be more than just a long list of needs and favors. They need to be acts of worship to my Savior. As I concentrate on ACTS I will develop a better habit. Scripture says to choose these choices specifically. I need to make an honest attempt to develop a better relationship with my heavenly Father through prayer. What an incredibly valuable tool this prayer is in my life. Can you grasp the value of something that puts us in direct alignment with God? Not only does God hear our prays, He covets our prayers. He is ever prodding each of us into a better and bigger relationship with Himself. He is the power behind it all. Prayer was His idea. It was His gift to us. It's Him saying, " I may be bigger and better than you are but I seek your struggles and your joys. I seek to have a special arrangement with you, individually, just the two of us." Can you grasp that? It totally floors me to think that God wants to have anything to do with me at all. Talk about a mind bender! So now I must take what I've learned and apply it to my life. I could get all anal about this and say that I will get on my knees and pray every day from 9:00 to 10:00 AM, between 2:30 and 3:00 PM and between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evenings. That is usually my way of handling things. I like schedules and routines. I would have loved the military! But God says these forms of prayer leave much lacking. While I need to incorporate formal prayer in my life, I need to let the Spirit lead me on this matter. He will bring it to my attention if I will tune into His frequency, so to speak. How many times a day do I feel the Spirit pulling me to pray and then do not? This is my problem. This is my thing to work on. Is it yours too? I know now that my attention is definitely needed in this area. Have I spoken to you this morning? I hope so.

I have knitting group tonight and we're going to have a little party for Christy to present her with the sampler afghan everyone helped knit. (Except me. I joined the group a little too late to be a part of that.) But I will party too. Christy's wedding in only days away. My how the time does go speedily by!!! Don't you ever just want to reach out and grab time and hold it still for a little while? I sure do. The older I get the fast time goes too! That I can definitely do without. OK I need to get something done today so I best go and do something! Take care...

Reliving the Honors

2009-05-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

I was going to send two pics of my prize-winning prayer shawl but blogger won't let me do that for some reason. Blogger may be down again. Seems like every time I decide to post blogger is down. Boo! This is a problem I've been having for months now, blogger being down. Anyway this is my shawl with it's ribbon. I wanted to also send a pic of my afghan that should have won something. I know, I know, I mustn't hold grudges. But it didn't help finding out that my afghan was judged along with dishcloths and that I was pushed out by a first place dishcloth. Now, I make dishcloths myself. I know the work involved but it still shouldn't have been judged against a dishcloth.

My KnitPick order came in yesterday's mail and I was thrilled. I've already made one face cloth and a good start on my second cloth out of the same ball. I'm anxious to find out just how many face cloths I can get out of one ball. It would be wonderful if I could get three because that would bring the cost of each one waaay down. Just getting two will divide the cost in half. I wish KnitPicks yarn came in colors other than wheat-like ones. They look pretty bland. But the individual stitches show up nicely. I got a new KnitPicks catalog in the mail yesterday too and I've already decided on about $100 worth of things from them. Mostly for accessories, a needle holder and some blocking boards. But also more yarn. I want to buy some of this cotton yarn that is so soft and make myself a sleeveless sweater for summer. I once had one that I just loved but then I quit smoking and gained all this weight and can no longer wear it. This cotton yarn from KnitPicks is really soft. It would make a wonderful sweater. So all this added together means a large order. I won't place another order until after the first and another check. I've got the money stuck away for it, but I'd feel better having it out of next month's expenses. I wish I could get going on my next baby afghan. I had the border done and the first pattern row but it didn't come out right so I tried taking it back out stitch by stitch and kept dropping stitches. I was never able to completely recover and went all the way back to the beginning. I hate when that happens. So now I have to decide it I want to do it again or go with a different pattern. I know if I go ahead and knit that first row again, I may end up having to rip it all out again. I love to knit but I get frustrated when I first start a pattern row and have it not come out right. I had one too many (or one less) than I was supposed to have and that row called for about a dozen P2SSO in it and those are real bears to backtrack stitch by stitch. And obviously, if I had to take the entire thing out last time, I wasn't successful with my attempt. I don't want to do that again. Guess I'll just stick with my dishcloths and face cloths for the time being. I may get it casted on today so I'll have it to take over to Kathleen's tomorrow to have something to knit and to see if she can figure out what I was doing wrong with the pattern.

It's a beautiful day up here in the Gold Country (the foothills) and I had a nice quiet time out on the deck this morning. I slept late today and that doesn't please me but I just didn't wake up until after 9:00. All week I have been waking up around 6:30 -7:30 and I loved it. It's amazing how much time I have in a day when I don't sleep half of it away. If our day is anything like yesterday it will be quite mild all day long. Yesterday we got by with just running our fans so I didn't have the roar of the cooler to struggle to hear over. [That's a very poorly structured sentence but I think you'll know what I'm saying.]

My grandson is thinking about joining the Air Force with a friend. They want to enlist on the buddy program so they'll stay together. I think the Air Force would be good for both of them but my son laid down the law that my grandson is not to sign anything until my son gets to see the papers. Of course my grandson is 18 and legally able to do anything except drink so he can go over his dad's head if he really chooses to do so. I hope he will let my son be part of the decision making process. Upheavals are going like crazy in my son and daughter-in-law's life. Started out by being let go from his job of 14 years. Now his house is ready to go into foreclosure, his wife lost her job too, and then my grandson also lost his job, and my oldest granddaughter is getting married Aug 9th, and now Michael wants to join the Air Force. Talk about changes. Life is really throwing them some curve balls in the last few months. Wish I could catch some for him. It's hard to watch your child go through upheavals and changes. It's horrible to go through all these changes and not be able to do anything about them. When your kids grow up you lose all control. He feels like he hasn't had any control over his life for months now. And the thing is that we don't have control. Our lives are constantly being affected by the way of this world and the will of God. Is it possible to have one and not the other? As appealing as that may sound, I don't think you have an ounce of control. When things are going right we just think we're under control when really it's the will of God. And when things are going rotten in this life, we need to realize that all this world has to offer us is bitter water and we must seek to cultivate a deeper reliance on our heavenly Father. We must relinquish everything into His hands and live ultimately for the glory of God alone. It brings Him honor when we take negative events and turn them over for good. We must seek to always give the final control of everything in our lives to God. And we must rest assured that whatever happens is for God's glory and our ultimate good, even when it doesn't look or feel that way. It's a tight rope to walk, and a tough row to hoe.

Blogger is not cooperating with me at all today. It keeps freezing up so I am going to publish this and try writing again on another day. Hopefully it will publish. [Well, just tried to publish this and blogger wouldn't do it. So I will have to try again later.]

A Day at the Fair

2009-05-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

[It is really Monday May 18th. I have no idea what's up with my blogger's time stamp. Just wanted to let you know that the day isn't right. I can see on my blog that the date is off but I have no way of changing the dates myself.]

Sorry about the repeated picture of myself but now that I want to delete something, I can't get it to delete! Wouldn't you know it would be that way? I've lost several pics by doing nothing and now that I'm trying to delete, it won't do it. So guess you'll have to bear with me while I continue to learn the ins and outs of blogging with pics. The new pic (of the fat lady at the fair) was taken on the 14th when Kathleen and I went over to see what entries won ribbons and which ribbons they won. I got a third place ribbon on my shawl but nothing on my afghan that we both agreed was better than the shawl. I never would have thought that it would win a ribbon. And I also won a second place ribbon on my cookies. First time I've baked cookies in 40 years and I won a ribbon. Between you and me, I should have got the first place ribbon. Kathleen won first so if I had to be second I'm glad it was Kathleen that did it. But she made plain chocolate chip cookies. Mine were peanut butter oatmeal and raisins cookies with nuts. Lots more work and character in my cookies, I'd say. But her cookies were very, very good. I'm sitting here writing this while I wait for her to get here as we have to go pick up our entries today. She said 10:00 but she's usually a little late.

Well, I succeeded in getting rid of that unwanted pic but I picked up an underline that I can't get rid of. Computers!!! They drive me nuts. I see I also went to bold. Okay I just got rid of the bold. Now if I could just figure out how to get rid of the underline.

Just got back from picking up our entries and I'm ready to get started on my next baby afghan so I will keep this post really short. Next time maybe I won't mysteriously pick up an underline. I just looked at my pic again and I have really got to lose some weight. I don't even look like myself. Kathleen and I again marveled at the fact that there were 3 positive praises on the back of the judging slip on my afghan with no award and on the back of the first place winner there were 2 negative comments written by the judge. If the judge really felt that way, I should have gotten first place on my afghan. How funny that this little event has brought out so many competitive thoughts and emotions on my part. I don't particularly like that. I don't think it's attractive or spiritual. Humm, something to work on through the year until next year's competition. I think it's a riot that I won a ribbon at all. My very first time of entering entries into the judging competition. Actually two counting the daily event where my cookies won second place. So I think I did really well. Don't you? I will work on a spiritual overhaul on my attitude.

It's going to be over 100 degrees again today. I think summer has arrived with a vengeance. Fri hubby and I planted portulaca in our window boxes along the deck railing and some in some free-standing pots on the deck mixed with sprigs of Rosemary. And I repotted my cactus, transplanting several to a new pot. It looks really nice out on our deck and around beside the front door. I tried to have my quiet time out in my favorite spot on the deck this morning about 7:30. It was nice and cool and perfect except for one thing. Mosquitoes! I complained and hubby sprayed the entire area (and then some) with insecticide to kill them. It looks like blogger isn't cooperating this morning so I don't know if this will post or not. It's failing on the autosave feature which usually means that blogger is down. I'm going to try to send this and if it won't go through I'll just have to hope I don't lose it entirely. I mean, that would be a really big loss, LOL! I want to get to my study in Proverbs today too (I just have 2 studies left to work) so I've got lots of things cooking today. Speaking of cooking, we'll probably have leftover chili beans (yes, I know it's a weird choice for a super hot day but it's all hubby could think to make yesterday) again for dinner so I don' have to worry about that. I should be cleaning house. But I'll do that tomorrow. It doesn't look too, too bad, I guess. I'm just not the housekeeper I used to be. Rats! LOL. [Added on Edit: I just tried to post and it didn't work so I'll have to try to do it again later.]

Here it is hours later, look no underline!, I didn't do anything to get rid of it. It resolved itself. Anyway it is hours later and I'm going to try one more time to publish this post for my blog. We'll see what happens. Oh, and my study in Proverbs? Well I've given up on it. There once was a time when I could figure out anything. But my brain just doesn't work any longer and it takes entirely too many brain cells to take abstract thoughts and apply them to my life, what they mean for me. I don't know if I'll try tomorrow or not but I got started today and just had to give up on it. Proverbs is not an easy book for me and wouldn't you know that it's also the book I'm reading during my quiet times each morning! I feel like I have Proverbs coming out my ears. There must be something there that God is trying to teach me but I keep resisting. I'm just tired of thinking that deeply. Taking abstracts and turning them into concrete ideas. My idea of a proverb that would go with any of those written in the Bible would be: There are 4 sipper cups of milk on the table, each a different color, how big are the cups? They totally do not compare to my brain. Or, The wicked runs when there's no one chasing him, but the good drink in the cool water. What does one have to do with the other?!!!!! Ugh. I need an attitude adjustment. Okay I'm going to publish and see what happens. The autosave is not flashing so that should mean that it will publish okay. If it doesn't, I'll try again later. My life is so confusing!!

Just Feeling Brave

2009-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pics. I'm hoping they will all align into an order of some kind. I think the picture of me will come up first on my blog or at least that's the way it shows up on my blog writing page. This is a pic that I had my hubby take of me so I'd have something to send to Karishma in India. Karishma is a little 8-year-old girl who I have chosen to sponsor through Compassion International. I chose Compassion because they work through the local church setting and the truth about Jesus is taught to them. I've "adopted" children in the past but I was not allowed to write about my personal belief in the Messiah. Compassion encourages us to talk about our faith and to build up the child's faith also. Karishma lives at home with her mother and father and a sibling. Her father is a day-laborer and makes very little money to raise his family. My little bit each month helps tremendously. I am not doing this alone (I would if that were the only choice left open to me) but the entire deacon board at church has gone in with me on this project. It's sort of our project as a small group. I am responsible to make the monthly support donation and to do the letter writing but each deacon contributes $3 a month toward Karishma's sponsorship. That way it is not a big expense for me. It's strictly honor roll. They know if they donated the previous month and if they pay in advance, they know how far they are paid up. This is a terrible picture of me because you can see all the weight I've packed on on my chubby, little, round face. I have gained 40 pounds since I quit smoking and although I can't seem to lose it no matter how hard I try, it appears to have stabilized for me.

The second picture is of our tomato box. We went across the river yesterday and bought all the top soil we needed and the four tomato plants. We bought a cherry tomato, an early girl, a celebrity, and a whopper hybrid. Hopefully we'll have delicious tomatoes in a few months. This first picture is taken from our deck looking down on the box and the next picture is one taken while standing next to it. Hubby is wonderful about using scrap lumber to make things. The wood used for this box was given to us by our niece who was just going to throw it away and my son grabbed hold of it for us. It was an old frame for a waterbed and we had plenty of wood to build the box.

The next picture is of a drawing my hubby made. Hubby is an artist and I thought you might enjoy seeing what type of work he does. He sent me several photos of different paintings he's done and I chose to post this one first. Well it looks like I just lost the second tomato box pic. I don't know where it went but at least you have the one picture. Anyway back to the painting. I have dozens and dozens of paintings in my house all done by hubby. [I want to hit the return key but I'm afraid if I do the pic of the elk will disappear the way the second tomato box did.]

Okay I got brave and just moved my cursor down and clicked it. I'm still learning how to work with pics in my blog so you just have to put up with some of my trial and error attempts at doing things. Michael (hubby) has painted hundreds of paintings using everything from pen and ink to oil. This one is a pen and ink with watercolor. It is my favorite technique.

I have an executive board meeting tonight at 7:30 and that's about it for my schedule. I'm knitting dishcloths hot and heavy. My nephew just got married and my granddaughter and her fiance are getting married later this month so I'm busy making their wedding gifts. Dishcloths may sound like a puny little gift, but they are a labor of love to make them. It takes me about 10 hours to knit each dishcloth. I've chosen to knit them in garter stitch rather than get all fancy because the garter stitch doesn't stretch out as much when it is wet and the garter stitch takes more time because the knitted stitches are smaller and tighter together. It makes for a very absorbent dishcloth. Perfect for all the mop up chores you get in a kitchen.

Tomorrow is my day to go to the county fair with a bunch of friends from my knitting group. We've all entered things into the judging that we made this past year and we'll get to see if any of our work earned a ribbon or two. I sure hope my baby afghan wins a ribbon. It is very, very nice and just may win one. Keep your fingers crossed for me. We will go early tomorrow morning and get our cookies entered into the daily contest (that's what gets us in free for the day). You must understand, I am NOT a cookie baker. I may do a cake once in awhile or a pie if it comes frozen in a box. But I do not bake cookies. However I used a recipe given to me when I was only 10 or so years old by a neighbor who brought the recipe over with her from Germany. I used to baby sit her five boys. Those boys now have grandchildren I'm sure. Anyway I made up two batches of cookies and proceeded to eat one batch all by myself. They were very, very good and I will be baking them in the future for hubby and I.

So far I haven't gotten to my study in Proverbs this week I've had other things going. Hubby and I got our evaporative cooler cleaned out and ready to go for when we hit the high temps that are coming our way. Sat or Sun we are supposed to be above 100 degrees. So we took care of that on Mon and then yesterday was our vegetable garden and tomorrow will be my fair day. I actually need to go to the fair twice. Once in the morning with my knitting friends and then I'll go back later that night with my son and watch Kayla (my youngest granddaughter) vie for the Miss Calaveras title. Last year she came in first runner up. This year we hope she'll take the crown. She would really like to win the title. And for someone who's never gone to the fair, except to watch Kayla try out, I have a long day planned for tomorrow.

Hubby has taken the car across the river to have a heat shield bolted back on the underside of the car. The part simply fell off one day as I was driving the car. I circled around to see what had made such a terrible racket and there it was laying in the middle of the road. I scooped it up and brought it home but hubby couldn't fix it because the car needs to be up on a lift to get to the underside and we don't happen to have a lift around. I sent him with $150 and sure hope it doesn't cost more than that. It surely can't cost more, can it? Oh, I hope not. I'm hoping for to get at least $100 back.

Well I need to get busy doing something. All I've gotten accomplished so far this morning is the bed, a few rows of knitting, and this blog. I need to plan out dinner. We had Marie Calendar's pot pies for dinner last night because that's my knitting night and I get them all prepared with the foil around the edges and then he puts them in the oven about an hour before I am due to come home. That way we still get to eat together and it's piping hot when I walk in the door. I really need to do my study in Proverbs so I guess I'll take something out of the freezer to thaw for dinner and sit down at the table and complete my lesson for the day. It was a bit nippy this morning so I had my quiet time in here on the couch instead of out on the deck. Enjoy the day, my friends and God bless you.

Spring Fog and Clouds

2009-05-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

These photos were taken in May 2009 by Michael Harvey. I think the first one will be the pic of fog spilling over hogback ridge. It's rare to see fog this time of year but the marine layer from the Bay Area must have been really heavy that day. The second picture is of some of the cloud formations we get up here in the beautiful, clear blue skies over San Andreas.

[I'm not sure what happens when this cloud pic reaches the bottom of the fog pic. I think the type will wrap around the first pic but I'm not sure how to make it wrap around the fog pic (the second one. If I hit the return key, the second pic disappears (or at least it has a couple times). Okay so now I have both pics to the right of the text except for what's running under the fog pic. I'm afraid if I hit return I'll lose the cloud pic. I'm just going to type dumb stuff here for awhile and see what happens when I get a little ways down the page. It doesn't appear to want to wrap so I guess I will hit the return key and see what happens. If I do this and it disappears, you'll know why. It is now wrapping the photo but I'm having to do it manually and I know that won't work. Rats! I don't know what to do. Guess I'll just post this and you can enjoy the pics even though the text isn't doing what I want it to do. It's supposed to wrap around but it's just not going to cooperate with me. Okay I'm going to post this as is. I may play with it more later this afternoon. Maybe I just won't be able to post more than a pic or two and have them separated by the text. Frustrating to not know how to do things!]

Another Test

2009-05-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is my second attempt to add two photos to the same blog. This is a picture taken from our deck. That's Hog Back mountain in the distance. This is what I see when I'm at my computer and look to my right out the glass sliding doors. It's very beautiful. I may have some more pics coming in a day or two of some beautiful cloud formation taken this afternoon by my hubby.

Okay I'm just going to hit the return until I can get Mike's pic to align on the right side as it's supposed to. You can't see it but on my blog writing page (don't know what that's called) the two pics came out side by side and I have blogger set for right flush but something Keeps going wrong until I get down to the bottom of the first picture.

This of my only grandson, Mike, and he is the apple of his daddy's eye (and mine!) This was taken last year for his graduation. Right now he is working with the local fire dept to get his training in and then he plans on moving to San Diego and becoming a Federal firefighter. I should tell you that Mike towers over me by almost more than a foot. His braces are off now and he's almost a year older than when this pic was taken.

It looks like blogger isn't going to let me do a wrap around with his picture. Stupid blogger. As I type he just keeps moving down the page.

So guess I will not continue with this test since it's shown me that it won't work. Now looked what just happened! It's doing a wrap around the way I wanted it to. Sorry for calling you stupid, blogger. I should not be so judgmental. Anyway isn't he one handsome young man? I think so.

We had Steve Hall come to our church two Sundays ago and what a treat he was. Yes, that's right, Steve Hall came and played for my very small, back-in-the-boon-docks, off-in-the-woods church. I don't know who made the connections but I will be eternally grateful. If you don't know Steve Hall, he's got about 20 CDs available on Amazon. He's really quite famous with his music. (He's a pianist.) I was thrilled to be able to listen to him play and lucky enough to be able to purchase two CDs he and his wife brought up with them to our church. They live in Canoga Park down in southern California. He introduces his 15-year-old son on one of the CDs I bought, who is following in his father's footsteps. I've never heard such beautiful classical music played before and I can't get enough of it. It's wonderful to put on a CD and then just sit and let the music move you. (Great for listening to while napping also!) Since I lost most of my hearing years ago, I have not appreciated music because I can't understand the voices in the songs. Then I discovered I could enjoy classical, symphony music and bought several inexpensive CDs with Vivaldi (my personal favorite) and all the other greats. Then along came Steve Hall. Thank you, Lord, for your gift of music you gave this man and for the gift of appreciation of his music you gave me!

This is short. It's only a test and I would almost guarantee there will be more tests as I learn the in's and outs of this process. If you're just now checking my blog after a few days to a few weeks, please be sure to go back and look at the pics I've sent in previous posts during the last few days. I have several you might be interested in seeing.

Just Playing Around

2009-05-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm still playing with pictures. This is a picture of my oldest granddaughter, Jamie, and her fiance, Ofir. They've been an "item" for about 4+ years. I had my grandson's pic on this page too but it disappeared. Not sure where it went. I could have tried to put Mike on again but I decided to let it go for tonight.

Today I baked cookies for the baking contest at the fair next week. I baked a batch yesterday too but they were baked too long and turned into real crispy jawbreakers. These I made today are chewy the way they should be. The downer is that as I stooped and reached into the refrigerator to fetch a cube of real butter, I twisted when I shouldn't have and set my back off again. I just got over a session with my back. I hope this doesn't become a habit. I think, if I can get out of bed in the morning and walk and move carefully for the next couple of days I'll be okay. Pray for me, please. I don't want anything to interfere with my plans for next week. Kathleen and I and a couple other women are going to go to the fair next week on the 14th to see if our knitting pieces won any ribbons. And you know of course that we'll have to eat some junk food while we're there. And I can't go to the fair and not buy cotton candy!! Then I will go back that evening for the Miss Calaveras County pageant. My youngest granddaughter, Kayla, (I sent a pic of her dancing a day or two ago) is running for Miss Calaveras again so of course gramma has to cheer her on. She should have won last year I think but she placed second runner-up after winning the talent portion of the contest. I really want her to win this year.

I did my study in Proverbs today and it was selected verses on discipline. Something really came to my mind as I studied and I meant to remember it so I could share it with you but it seems to have slipped my mind. But we all know about discipline, don't we? It's something that we shun like the plague. But discipline is good and good for us if given in the correct way and that would be with lots of love and absolutely no anger. We need to "train up" our children and not "spare the rod" but we need to understand that this type of correction isn't in anger or in any way intended to harm anyone. I think it's like a grapevine. I was raised on a farm in Caruthers which is about 20 miles south of Fresno (California) and we had vineyards. Every year the vines had to be pruned and tied to the wire. At first it was done with difficulty. The vine never wanted to be changed (disciplined) and so we had to use gentle pressure to wrap it around the wire and then we used twist ties to hold them in place. The purpose was not to hurt the vine. We were "training" the vine to grow down the wires for support for when the new growth appeared and the heavy fruit began to pull down on the vine. This was discipline for the vine. Done for all the right reasons that would make the vine the best vine it could be. Well our children are like that vine and sometimes we need to use discipline with them to train them up to be what is best for them. But it's never done in anger. Only love.

My son is grown now with grown children of his own so how do these verses apply to me? They apply to me in that I am a child of God. And as my good Father, He disciplines me. He wraps me around the wire, so to speak, and ties me up there with the very Word of God because He loves me. For no other reason. He just loves me. And He knows what's right and He always DOES what's right. So whenever I go through a season of trouble ~ discipline ~ I must recognize the fact that God is disciplining me out of love and never anger. He is doing what is necessary to "train me up" into the person He knows I can be. He is the Vinedresser. He knows what's best for each and every vine. What is right for me may not be right for you. But our heavenly Father loves us with a perfect love and He will do all that is necessary to conform us into the image of His Son. Jesus is the perfect Son and in that sense the Father even disciplined Him, not in the sense that Jesus did anything wrong. But only in the sense that His Father knew what was best for His Son. Scripture tells us that Jesus learned obedience from the things He suffered (Heb 5:8). It's the same with us. Discipline is training. And we learn obedience from the things we suffer and endure here in this life. Jesus never sinned. His obedience was solely that of training. You and I, though, are sinners and sometimes the discipline we receive is well earned from our behavior or attitude. We deserve the discipline. But even so, it is never done with anger. Our discipline is always to make us into the image of Christ. To refine us and remove impurities from us so that we might serve our Creator and worship Him alone. When we are disciplined we are loved. That is why we are supposed to be joyful in trials. Because we are being trained into being all we were meant to be. And we can rejoice in these trials because all discipline comes with deep, perfect love. It is important for us to fully understand that God is not being mean. He desires the very best for us and because He loves us perfectly He disciplines us for our own good and for His glory and honor. He disciplines us because He loves us with perfect love. How could a righteous and just God do otherwise?

More Pictures

2009-05-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my son and his wife and my youngest granddaughter. Isn't she a beauty? She's the one that taught me how to put pics in my blog. This was at a Valentine's Day Dinner and Dance at my church. Ken and Tamara went for the party and Kayla went as, well she was a lot of things. She took "studio" pics of the different couples that went. She sang and DJ'd the dance. This is a great pic of my son and granddaughter but I know Tam's going to hate me for sending this one of her. She's a very pretty woman. This pic just does not do her justice. Tam, if you see this blog, I apologize for using it.

Today was communion Sunday and everything went just fine. I was late getting home by time I had everything cleaned up and put away.

I have plans tomorrow to go with Kathleen to the county fairgrounds to drop off all our knitting entries to be judged and then exhibited during Frog Jump (the county fair). Mark Twain wrote The Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County in regards to this event. That's not the exact title of the story he wrote but it's close. I just can't come up with it right now. I think it's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. There is a lot of history here in our county. Bret Harte and Mark Twain both traveled these roads during the gold rush era as well as several other well-knowns. I'm going to see if I can send another pic onto this post so bear with me as I investigate. Hopefully, I'll be right back with another pic.

Well that didn't work out the way it was supposed to. The photos were supposed to be stacked not side-by-side. That is a pic of Kayla performing her dance routine last year. Okay now I'm going to publish these and see what it looks like. It may be a real mess, I don't know.

Okay, they did come out stacked but the new one gets inserted from the top so what I wrote about the valentine's dance and what I wrote for Kayla's pic are near the wrong photos. Hopefully you'll be able to figure this all out when you see it. I'm sorry but I'm just learning and doing things using the trial and error method. Probably what I'll do is save all the pics first and then go back on edit and do my writing. Blogger is not helping me any. But I'm getting there.

I discovered a really, really good verse today. This is from the Good News Bible. Joel 2:13:
"Come back to the Lord your God. He is kind and full of mercy; he is patient and keeps his promise; he is always ready to forgive and not punish." Isn't that beautiful? He is always ready to forgive and not punish. That's the kind of God we have. Amazing isn't He? He'd much rather forgive than punish. When we partook of communion this morning we were reminded that we have been saved and there is nothing we can do to change that fact. I know that's hard for some people to understand but it's because they can't see that our salvation is based on what Christ has done, not on anything we do. Christ's sacrifice was everything we needed and what we needed (His forgiveness) He freely gives. What a awesome God!

Still Another Picture

2009-05-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

This is a pic of the Cacti I have by my front door. In the post telling all about where I live (a few posts back) I said this was just to the right of my door but that wasn't right. This is just to the left of my door. The deck goes to the right. I need to repot the cacti in the middle as it's gotten "leggy" and I think it has also outgrown it's pot. There's also some ivy to the right and if you look carefully at the cacti on the left you'll see E.T. looking back at you. Do you see him?

We got up at 7:00 this morning and was across the river and in Jackson by 8:30 to do our shopping. I made all the lights on the way. It's next to impossible to make all the lights. You usually get at least one red light. We got our shopping done and were back home by 10:30 so we made good time. We'll need to go back again before the month is out to purchase the things we need that WalMart was out of though. I'd like to be able to just one month get everything on our list in one trip instead of two. I did manage to pick up some more yarn to finish my oldest granddaughter's summer scarf that I have almost complete. And I bought several balls of cotton yarn to knit a shopping bag, actually I think I have enough to make two shopping bags. And I picked up some other cotton yarn so I can knit some pot holders.

Came home tired from shopping. So was hubby but neither of us took a nap. I sat and knitted on my maroon shawl that I've been working on hot and heavy the past week. I'd rather enter this on in the fair exhibits but I won't have it finished in time so I'm going to stick with the green shawl I knit several months ago. I've progressed in my talent (knitting) and the one I'm working on now is better than the green one but hopefully it will be good enough. I'm also entering one of my baby afghans. The last one I finished. It just might win a ribbon. Oh I hope it does. I'm only submitted it because my friend Kathleen insisted I put it in for exhibit and here I am hoping it wins a ribbon. But it is a very nicely done afghan even if I say so myself. Kathleen and I will take our projects to the fair office Monday for judging. I'll let you know after the fair whether or not I get a ribbon. The fair isn't until the third weekend in May so it's a ways off.

Tomorrow morning is Communion Sunday which means that I'll have to get up early again. So far this week I've been up by 7:00 for five of the six days. I think I like it that way. I get so much more done in the course of a day when I don't sleep half of it away. Funny how that works, huh? Anyway, tomorrow will be a long morning for me by the time I set up everything for communion. I will plan on taking a nap tomorrow after I get home from church. I'll spend the afternoon knitting and playing on the computer with my granddaughter, hopefully.

I spent yesterday afternoon at Kathleen's house doing knitting things. She showed me how to do a felt ball and then I held the shank of yarn for her while she balled the yarn she bought to make something for her mom. It was beautiful yarn but is it ever skinny!!! Then we tackled this white baby blanket I have going by ripping out the rows I hadn't knitted right and worked on figuring out the pattern once again. I got the pattern from a book in the library and the pattern is written really, really difficult to understand. I'm about to toss that pattern in the trash if this doesn't work right this time. It's just that the pattern isn't clear. Kathleen has knitted enough in her lifetime to figure out the pattern when it's unclear. I haven't. But hopefully we've got it figured out by now. This is the third time we've had to figure out what they mean in their pattern.

We had a nice, soaking rain yesterday evening and then most of the night. Almost an inch. And we didn't have rain today until just as we were leaving the city to come home. I think it's supposed to rain more tonight. I like the rain, I always have. So far today we've just had off and on showers. Hopefully it won't be raining in the morning for church but I do think they said we'd have this weather pattern for a few days.

I didn't get my study in Proverbs done yesterday or today. I had compressed the study from a weekly study to a daily one so I'm still way ahead of things as far as that goes. I think I'm about half way in the study. Maybe I'll get back to it tomorrow. It's been a very valuable study for me. I answered a challenge last summer and read a chapter of Proverbs a day for a month (31 chaps) but didn't really get anything out of it. But I'm finding that there is a wealth of counsel there for daily living. First off it puts us in the fear of the Lord. Meaning that we are in awe of Him and are seeking His way to live our lives. I will try to find some gem to share with you from my study when I have a little more time. Right now I need to get some dinner before I faint. I'm really hungry which is explained by the fact that I've only had a couple slices of jicama all day long. So anyway, I'm going to close this post, satisfied because I could actually send a pic along with my blog. There will be more to come. I promise. Michael tried to send me another pic but it wouldn't come through to my computer for some reason. But hopefully I'll be able to send pics all the time now. As soon as Kayla shows me how to send more than just one pic at a time, I'll send several and may even toss one in of myself although I'll probably wait until the swelling in my throat has gone down. I don't know what's up with that. The left side of my throat is very sore to the touch but the right side is swollen like a tennis ball. Go figure that one out.

I hope you are having a great weekend and you'll have a wonderful week ahead. I really will get my act together on my blog. I'm just so thrilled that I can do pics now!!! Yea! Thank you, Lord. Stay in the shadow of our Creator and seek His will and stay in the Word. I firmly believe that we must be in the Word every day; every single day. Find the time. Even if it's only 5 mins, find the time to read something in the Scriptures. And pray. Pray without ceasing as Paul said. We have a great and merciful heavenly Father. Let's do all we can to adore and worship Him.

2009-05-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Okay this is another view taken from our deck. That is Hogback Mountain in the distance which sometimes gets a dusting of snow. This looks like a Fall picture but it was actually just taken a few days ago. It was late afternoon sun coming through the new spring leaves that makes it look like it was shot in the Fall of the year. You can see more of the vacant lot in the foreground in this pic.

Now I'm going to try importing another pic in addition to this pic in the same post. I'm really just flying by the seat of my pants here learning these ins and outs of doing this. I need to see for sure that this writes below the pic and it does. Now I'm going to try to do another image. Hang on.

Well that didn't work. I'll try it again. Somehow this isn't working. But I think I have figured out how to send at least one photo. My granddaughter is at rehearsals for the Miss Calaveras pageant but hopefully I will be able to get her to come over tomorrow afternoon and she can show me more. I'm happy with just being able to sent one pic!

I'll try doing another post.

Another Picture

2009-05-02T13:25:00.001-07:00

This is a picture taken from my deck with a zoom lens by my hubby, Michael P. Harvey 2009. (He insists that I give him photo credits). It is at the intersection on the other side of our vacant lot (you can see the grass of the vacant lot in the nearest foreground. That's a beautiful old barn that neither of us happened to notice until very, very recently. I don't know what that says about our powers of observation since we've lived here for over 5 years!

I can't believe I'm actually putting a photo in my blog!!! I have wanted to be able to do that ever since I started blogging a year and a half ago and finally found the one person who could help me and she did it in about 30 seconds!! I don't have the capacity in my computer to do pictures on my own. I have to have my hubby send it to me in an email and then I import it into my blog. I'm having a little trouble doing that though. I had given up and then somehow I got it to work. I have more pics to send so I'm going to be doing a few trial and errors runs through with my blog using photos so please be sure to go back far enough to get to see all the pictures. I think this is so really great!!! My daughter-in-law tried to show me how to do it about a year ago but her way was really complicated and I didn't write anything down. Then when I asked her the other day she said she had forgotten how to do it on my computer (for which I'm grateful because her way of doing it was really difficult) and suggested I talk to my youngest granddaughter. She came by today and I thought to ask her and Presto!!! I'm set. That is if I can remember how I got this far. She wrote everything down for me but blogger kept telling me I couldn't do something at one point. But then I chanced upon the solution and here it is. A blog with a picture!!!

Anyway I'm going to be playing around with this and figuring out how it works. I want to try to do more than one pic on a blog and checking to see that I can write between them, etc. etc. But please go back and see all the pictures.

An Experiment

2009-05-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

This is an experiment to see if I can write on the same page as the oak picture. I am learning to shift pictures from my email to my blog. I need to take this down to the bottom of the page and see what happens so bear with me for a minute. Looks like I'm able to do it but it's going to change the format of my page. Okay I'm going to save this and publish it as a post. (ignore the pig) The oak picture was taken by my hubby. Michael P. Harvey 2009.

A Little Food for Thought

2009-04-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

Our nation needs our prayers. As we become aware of unhealthy trends and decisions, we need to start with a personal heart cleansing and confession of any known sin. We need to confess and repent (1Jn 1:9) then cry out to our heavenly Father for the return of a vibrant, God-fearing culture to live in.

We often reach our lowest points because we stop trusting in the Lord, At such times, it's easy to give in to the temptation of taking matters into our own hands. When we do, it's easy to wind up in a mess. But if we look to the Lord again, we will see the way out of our pit and back into His loving will.

If we surrender to God in moments of despair, He will provide us with what we need, just as He did for David, Abraham, Joseph and so many other. He wants to strengthen His children so we can bear up under the weight of tough circumstances. So yield to Hm ~ at some point, we'll probably look back and mark the day as the beginning of new growth in our faith.

The Christian life is not about feeling good and deriving the greatest personal benefit from out connection to God. Rather, the Lord builds an intimate relationship with each of us. In that way, He can reveal more about Himself ~ truth by truth ~ as we believers need that knowledge. What a privilege!!!

Human strength is insufficient to rid ourselves of sin. The truth is that we are all in need of a Savior. Jesus Christ humbled Himself to die in our place, which was not a show of weakness. On the contrary, He made the most powerful sacrifice He could ~ and He did it for you and me (Jn 15:13).

What are we I doing with the amazing message of God's love? The commission to "go and make disciples" is meant to be an integral part of every believer's life. We need to share with others the truths about God as He reveals it to us. We all need to share about Jesus and what He has done for the human race and this very earth (remember the earth itself is groaning too!) while at home, at work, at school, among friends, or while pursuing hobbies. In other words, we are to celebrate the message of Easter every day of our lives. With anyone available.

Think about both your public life and your private life. Are both glorifying to the Lord? Allow God's light to penetrate any "darkness" in your thoughts, words, or deeds. Then others may be drawn to the Father by what they see in you (Mt 15:16).

Consider your blessings. How do you utilize all that the heavenly Father has bestowed upon you ~ namely, time, abilities, and finances? Each one of us must choose how we are going to live. It is our responsibility to be faithful servants of the living God, doing whatever He calls us to do.

My Bible study in Proverbs has shown me that it's impossible to extract the gems of knowledge out of the book without pencil and paper. Make columns with headings like: "How to Fear the Lord" and "Foolish Living (ungodly);" "The Righteous" and the "Foolish;" and "Wise" and "Foolish" or headings like these and just jot down what the Bible says about these subjects as you read through the different chapters. You will be blessed if you do this as you read the Proverbs. Remember chaps 1-9 are introductory passages so you may need to wait until you get to chap 9 before you're able to make these notations. It is a wealth of information missed if you don't take the time to do this. Proverbs is all about living righteously. Wisely. In the fear of the Lord.

Another thing my study has shown me is that I am a sluggard. That's right. As painful as it is to admit, I must confess that I am a sluggard. Now comes the hard part. Now I must make changes and adjustments. I need to be up doing things rather than sitting on my duff collecting dust. But the purpose of studying the Bible is to bring us into proper alignment with who God wants us to be and how He wants us to live our lives. The purpose is to show us how to live justly before our gracious Creator. It's absolutely amazing to me that He would take the time to give us direction and to leave us an "instruction manual" for doing just that. What an awesome God we have.

Rain is due in tomorrow night and I need to squeeze out of today the time needed to rake the back yard. Hubby weed-whacked it yesterday. Now it's my turn. But I will do it after I come home from quilting which will be about 2:00 or 3:00. It shouldn't take much more than a half an hour to do that. Hopefully. We are supposed to have a wet weekend so it looks like I won't have to wash my car on Saturday. That is always such a chore. A well-worth-my-time chore but a chore nonetheless.

I dug out a prayer shawl that I had half done and then put aside because I couldn't figure out how to do it. I thought I had messed it up and would need help getting it all sorted out. But I ended up with nothing to work on yesterday and remembered that shawl. So I decided to drag it out and see if I could figure out how to solve my problem. And low and behold, there was no problem. (Sometimes when I get tired this will happen.) So anyway I have something to work on while I wait to take my baby afghan over to Kathleen's tomorrow so she can figure out why the pattern isn't working for me. I do a repeat of 8 rows over and over again and for some reason it just will not work out to start another set of 8!! Frustrating to say the least.

Okay, I need to get dressed and go for my haircut and then to church for the quilting.

Another Blog

2009-04-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here it is, time for another blog. I have asked my d-in-l to come over and help me put pics in my blog but I haven't heard from her. Hopefully I'll be posting pics later in the week. Hubby has taken a few really nice ones around here that show off the beauty of where we live. (If you don't count the vacant lot next to us. It's not exactly a thrill to look at! Right now it's full of weeds.)

My friend, Ginny, came by and visited my last post. Thanks, Ginny! I don't expect her to stick around much because she has her hands full with six kids (three of them brand new!) and I think she does awfully good just to get her own blog posted. Here's hoping you do come back, Ginny, but I completely understand if you don't.

Our weather has been a bit colder the past few days and I've gone back to long pants (levi's or sweats, depending on my mood) and sweaters or hoody. We had climbed (or is it "clum?") up to 100+ degrees but that's really rare for this time of year. We don't usually start getting hot until late May, early June.

I read a book for Lent called The Carpenter's Cloth and was so glad I did. It's a beautiful little book. I mean, the book itself is oversized, but it's not a long book and the type is spread about over and around pics so it's not a difficult read at all. I can't remember the author right now but I'm sure you can find it by its title if you want to check it out. It was a wonderful book for Lent. My church has taken a verse-by-verse study of one of the gospels every year until this year. (I think we finished the gospel accounts.) And I had no plans for Lent so I just decided to read this book and I am thrilled I did. It really is a beautiful book. Read it if you ever get the chance. I didn't make it to church Easter morning because I threw out my back getting dressed to go. Bummer. Spent the entire day in bed. Speaking of which, I have no idea how I made it back to the bedroom under my own power. That was the worst my back has been in years.

No big plans for the week. I need to pick up doggy "treats" down in the yard and have a doctor and hair appts in the coming days but that's about it as far as responsibilities go. No that's not completely true. I have my knitting group tonight and Thursday I will juggle quilt making around my hair appt. so I've got a fairly busy week planned out. Our Women's Ministries is making these quick and easy quilts to give to those in need come Christmas. I think we committed ourselves to making a total of 50 blankets and believe it or not, we're making good progress at it. We'll have a pot luck this Thurs and that will add more fun to the mix. We're going to do our monthly shopping this coming Sat (so I probably won't get the car washed as planned) and then go over again next week to purchase tomato plants and flowers and the potting soil necessary to plant them. My quiet-time spot on the deck was so beautiful last year because of all the flowers. We hope to have the same look for this year. And the tomatoes? Well we decided to give them one more try. We say that every year and then when they bomb out we swear we'll never try growing our own again. But we always do. Our plants were so big and beautiful last year but nary a tomato. Zilch. Nada. None. We know we can grow them here because we grew some across town about 7 or 8 years ago, but we haven't produced any fruit since. And we so love fresh tomatoes. We're going to try just 2 plants though. An Early Girl and a cherry. Hopefully we'll be successful.

I've entered a knitted prayer shawl and a baby afghan in this year's county fair. I don't expect any ribbons because I'm just not that good yet but my friend/knitting-mentor talked me into submitting something. I learned to knit back in the dark ages back when I was still a very young girl (all of 15) but I didn't get serious about knitting until about 8 months ago. So far I've knitted 3 shawls, 2 afghans, 3 baby afghans, 26 dishcloths, 27 scarves, and 11 baby hats. I'm currently working on a summer scarf for my granddaughter and a white baby afghan. Kathleen has my afghan (she took it home after church to figure out a problem I was having with it) but she'll bring it to knitting tonight and I'll get back to working on it. Hopefully she will be able to explain the problem with the pattern. She at first thought the pattern was wrong (my thoughts on the matter too) but then figured out that it's just very poorly written and will show me how to make it past my problem tonight. It will be good to have something to work on again. I got the 11th baby hat made the other day and just about have Jamie's scarf done so I've still kept busy while my baby afghan was "in the shop." But I have, finally, released myself from my demon when it comes to knitting. I don't know what it is about me but any time I start something - be it blog or be it knitting or anything else - I always become consumed with it. It totally takes over my life and I'm completely absorbed in whatever it is I'm doing. For some reason when I start something, everything else gets pushed to the side until I've got it kind of worked out of my system. It's like being possessed by the knitting demon. No kidding. It's awful!!! But after a while, thank goodness, I settle down to a more rational pace. And I find that it is possible for me to knit and do other things in life at the same time!!! But it doesn't matter what it is I put my hands to work at, I've got to be doing it 100 mph, 100% of the time. It's much better doing things at a reasonable, more relaxed pace. But I always know I have to get the demon worked out of my system before I can make peace with whatever I'm working on. I will work feverishly way into the night then catch a short sleep and then be up again working on my project. Day after day. I'm surprised I don't burn out.

I'm reading What About the Big Stuff by Richard Carlson and I'm finding out all kinds of things. Most of which apply to me. He wrote the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff books and I enjoyed them too. Add to this my Woman's Study in Proverbs and I'm keeping busy lately. I'm glad our small group has recessed until the fall. I don't think I'd be able to add anything else to the mix. I'm not the kind of person who can do 35 things a day. I get 4 or 5 appts scattered about my week and I'm too stressed out to handle any more.

Guess I better get to my quiet time. I usually do it first thing every morning but for some reason I decided to blog first today. I'm using The Daily Bible for my time with the Lord and it's working very well for me. It's got the right amount of Scripture to read each day along with some commentary and devotional material. And it is set up chronologically so that adds a nice sprinkle of seasoning to my daily Bread.

I hope to have pics for you very soon!!! Stick with me, you'll be glad you did.

I finally, finally, finally got my car washed last Sat and hope to make that my Sat routine again this year. It was so nice to drive a clean car all summer long that I'm sure I'll pick up the habit where I left off last year. Except for days that we have other plans. My autosave is failing every time it tries to save so I have to keep my fingers crossed that this post will publish. Guess I'll find out soon enough.

Well It would not publish so I'll have to just keep my fingers crossed that it will do so later today or I'm going to lose this post. But really it's not like it's a great post or anything.

This is Me

2009-04-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try something different. I don't know if it will work in this setting or whether I'll be able to carry it out but I thought I'd give it a try:

I am old enough to draw Social Security this year. I know, I know that makes me older than dirt but it sure beats the alternative, as my father used to say. I weigh 160-165, depending on what time of day you weigh me. I know, I know that's a "few" pounds too many. I was skinny as a rail my entire life (and still have skinny legs) and then when the Lord moved me to quit smoking I kind of packed it on a bit. I would love to lose this extra weight but have decided it was a good trade. Just to be free of the addiction is worth the weight (or that's what I keep telling myself!). I'm a little on the short side at 5'4" with small feet and hands. My complexion is fair and I have a sprinkling of freckles on my arms and across the top of my cheek bones. However, they are light and hardly noticeable at all. My hair is medium ash brown and very short with no sign of gray, cut up over and around my ears and just long enough at the apex to stand straight up the way I like it. Actually right now I need a hair cut because my hair has gotten long enough to want to lie down. That's not to my liking and I have a hair appointment next week to get it cut again. I'm thankful to God that my hair all fell out last year so that I'd see what it looks like this short. (I would never have mustard up enough courage to have it cut this short on my own. But when it all fell out I had no choice but to watch it grow back in and I liked what I saw when it grew to this length.) Straight and limp as a wet noodle all my life, it grew back in with curl and body and texture, much to my liking! So now all I need to do is wet my hair, finger style it making a soft part on my right side and trying to take some of the curl OUT of my bangs (I would never have dreamed I'd have this problem!) let it air dry and then run a comb or pick through it to give it that "finished look." And voila! instant style. My hair is now the way I have always wished it would be. Praise God! It really was worth having all my hair fall out just to discover this length for me. Not that I'd like it to fall out all over again. Boy that thought is scary because we have no idea why my hair fell out in the first place and that being said means that it could do the same thing all over again, just fall out and go for bald.

My forehead of normal size and is mostly pale from wearing bangs my entire life. My eyebrows are very light and quite often completely disappear on me. I try to make myself color them with a "blond" pencil before going out on errands or whatever. But I don't always succeed. I quite often forget to pencil them in. I actually just add a tiny bit of color, just enough to make it look like I have them. There is a slight scar over my left eyebrow from an accident when I was three years old. I was jumping up and down on my grandmothers bed and fell off and hit my head on a metal coffee can (this was in the "old" days when coffee came in metal cans with a sharp edge around the top when opened with a "key"). My eyes are set apart at a nice distance and are blue. I wish they were a bright blue and have hoped for it most of my life. But for the most part they are a blue that you don't notice unless you really look for it. I've passed the blue eyes on to my son and I think he has passed them on to his oldest daughter and son. My lashes are long and thin. They haven't always been thin. There was a time when they were thick and extra long. I've received many compliments on my eyelashes over the years. My eyes are a bit almond-shaped and are the right distance apart with a few crows feet around the outside edges of my eyes. The upper lid sags a bit now due to the passing of time and gravity and the years have eaten away at their beauty. Without makeup they appear to be weak to me but I don't wear makeup much anymore. Too lazy I guess. And not wanting to be a "painted old lady" I've opted for the more natural look.

My nose is small and slightly turned up at the end and my cheekbones are rather nondescript. They are high and toward the outsides but there isn't much to them. From certain angles my cheeks and face appear flat. I've always kept color on my cheekbones until recently when I ran out of blush and haven't bought any to take its place. My mouth is of proper size with a rather thin upper lip, nicely defined but still thin. I'm currently purchasing a little Avon lipstick and glosses because I had gotten tired of the shades I have and had stopped wearing it, but this face really needs color on the lips. There is a speck of red just barely above the lip line on the right side. I've asked several doctors what that might be and they've all just looked at me with a funny look on their face and an "I dunno" answer. There is one lone freckle just about in the center of my bottom lip that has faded over the years but is still defined. I have the habit of worrying my lips a bit. Meaning I move them around a bit and tend to "purse" them. (A habit I am always trying to break!) My chin is small and of a nice size.

I have a pleasant face. One that still shows a little bit of the beauty that used to be there. When I was younger I never thought of myself as attractive but looking at old photos have made me realize that once upon a time I was pretty and didn't know it. Sadly, jowls are beginning to form along the jaw line and gravity has taken it toll here too. It is a face that has little to look at anymore, but at the same time, it isn't unpleasant at all. The years and tragedies I've endured show around my eyes, which are a bit sad most of the time. Not that I go around pouting. But the sadness is definitely there. I smile easily and when I do, wrinkles form around the mouth and crinkle at the corners of my eyes. All in all, it is a pleasant face that has shed the beauty it once had and has settled for a more characteristic face. Worry lines show around my mouth when I smile and there's no hiding the fact that this face has smiled a lot over the years. Two interesting characteristics are revealed in my face: there is definite sadness indelibly written on it at the death of my son. That sadness will never go away. The eyes don't sparkle the way the used to and my smiles are always strained a bit now but at the same time, you can tell that this is a face that has laughed much over the years. I love to laugh and do it every chance I get but underneath the laughter lives a deep sorrow. I miss my son very much. Yes, my face is pleasant to look at but the beauty faded a long time ago when he took his own life. So there are opposites quite noticeable when I look in the mirror.

Well, that has been a quick tour of "me." I tried to be honest and just state the facts. I would have loved to have given you an imaginary description of a gorgeous woman but it would have all been a lie so I decided to stick to the truth. It is a face that I hope reflects the glory of God.

Until next time...

Early Summer?

2009-04-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

It reached 98.4 degrees yesterday on our deck! That's a bit warm to my liking during the day but it did cool off nicely last night and the intake fan in the window brought all that cool, fresh air across my face. It was heaven! If I were a widow, I'd have the intake fan on even during the coldest part of winter. I love the fresh air and I think it's good for me.

The view out the sliding glass doors is absolutely beautiful! All the different shades of spring green in the trees, bushes, and grasses are a treat for the eye. Our redbud in the corner of our yard appears to have survived the last late frost. Last year, the late frost killed all the new leaves and we had to wait for several weeks while it grew new ones. It really is amazing how many different shades of green there are in our world. And I'm grateful to my God for giving me color vision. Can you imagine a world without color? What a boring place that would be. I feel sorry for those who are colorblind and miss this glorious world. Our Creator must have had a ball when He decided to be creative and I am so grateful for that.

I put my back out Easter morning getting ready for church and stayed pretty much bedridden for a week. But I did make it to church yesterday morning and then I went back in the afternoon for the Blessing of the Bikes. (It's an annual thing we do for all the motorcyclists in our area.) We have a big bar-be-cue and then surround them and pray for the Lord's protection for them when they are on the highways this year. After being in bed for a week, it was nice to get out for a change even if it did get a little warm. And my face turned it's usual shade of bright raspberry from the heat. And to make it worse, the color blanches out of my face around my mouth which makes the red even redder. Last year, everyone thought I was going to stroke out or something. This year they took it in stride. After a month or two, depending on the temperature, my face will not turn so raspberry when I'm hot. But for the first few hot days, if I'm out in it, I will turn colors and look like I'm about ready to "pop my cork."

I have my last load of laundry in the dryer. Actually I should go out and check and see if they are ready. [Be right back. I've got a few more minutes.] And I vacuumed and made the bed this morning. The house is pretty well picked up but I will need to bleach my counters before too many more days. They stain so badly from coffee or tea and only bleach will get them clean. I still need to do my baths sometime this week but I try not to do anything but laundry on laundry day as I get so tired when I try to do too many things at the same time.

I started a new study last week. Let's see if I can stick with it. (I am notorious for starting things and not finishing them.) It's a study of the proverbs and I am already learning much. I got the study book from Discovery House Publishers and so far it's great. Mon through Fri I do about 10 mins worth of study and then on Sat I bring together everything I learned over the past week. I think it would probably be better to study it with a small group so there would be more discussion but I don't happen to have a small group around. I'm thinking, though, if it stays good, I might decide to lead a small study group for the summer. I need to check on the availability of more books and what the price would be for each. I don't know how things are with churches in your area, but mine here go almost dormant during the summer. I guess they figure most people want to be out enjoying life rather than being cooped upside a building for a study when the weather is so nice. Shirley has a study going that I went to a few times in the beginning and she'll keep that going through the summer but as a rule, we do good to have church once a week. I dropped from Shirley's study because all they are doing is reading Scripture out loud to each other. And while I believe you can always benefit from reading God's Word, I was interested in finding a closer and more detailed look at our Lord. But, as I said, if this continues to be a good study I will offer it and meet with whomever is interested at church. (Can't hold it here at my house because of my dog. He would bark. Even closed up in our bedroom he'd still bark and distract us. It's easier for everyone, I would think, to just meet at the church anyway.)

I can't remember if I told you in past blogs but I'm already reading the entire Bible again on my own. I bought The Daily Bible from Guideposts and it takes you through the Bible every year. This one is in chronological order, which I love, and there is even some devotional and commentary worked into the daily readings. Yesterday I took my books out onto the deck to have my quiet time but today I forgot and just had it here in the house. There's something really special about having my time outside with the Lord. I don't know what it is, but it's special. I wish I had remembered this morning but I'll have a lot of mornings to enjoy this way from here on out. I don't think it will go back to being too cold or wet outside until the end of the year.

I haven't been doing much with my knitting. I don't know what I want to knit. I've done so many afghans and prayer shawls that I want to move on to other things. Of course I have my ever-growing stack of baby hats now too. I knitted two of them while I was laid up last week. I'm currently working on a summer scarf for my older granddaughter. I already did a bunch of winter ones for her. I thought she might enjoy having this one. It is bright red and knitted from Fun Fur, hard to knit but pretty to look at. My friend talked me into entering some of my things in the county fair next month. I don't think I deserve a ribbon of any kind (I'm just not that good yet) but I thought it might be fun. Who knows? Maybe everyone else is a poorer knitter than I am. But I seriously doubt that!!!

I plan to plant my flowers and tomatoes around the first of May. I will use portulaca in the flower boxes on the deck railing, if we can find it again. That's all the little nursery here in town had last year so I planted that and we really fell in love with it. One plant can have five different colors of flowers on it and they attract bees nicely and will pollinate my tomatoes quite well, I would think. Hubby thinks that's why our tomatoes didn't bear fruit the last time we tried to grow them and he very well may be right. That was before the portulaca.

This has been a really nothing blog post but it's the best I can do today. I will try to find more interesting things to share with you. I should keep a pad of paper around where I can record things I want to talk about in a future post and not forget them. The other day there were a couple things I thought about but I didn't write them down and now I can't remember them to save my life. One of those things might have been that I don't have cancer like I thought I did for the past year! Yippee!!! Seems as though all the blood was coming from my bladder that was infected. Doctor put me on 10 days of bactrim and the problem went away. I already in my head had me losing my hair all over again from chemo. I'll tell you, my mind can go on and on and on! I truly thought I was a cancer victim. So anyway that problem is taken care of. I still have a few neurological things I'm not happy with but Doctor said I needed to see a specialist for them and so far I haven't found a neurologist who will take me.

Speaking of my hair ... it has all grown back out and it's better than ever. I don't think it grew back any fuller but it definitely has more body and curl. I don't even need hairspray. I just wash, style, dry, and comb and it looks terrific. I keep it too short to cause any problems even if I'm out in the wind. All I have to do now, if my hair gets windblown is just basically shake my head and it will go back into shape. So nice. I was always embarrassed before when someone would put their hand on my head to pray for me and have it stick to their hands because of the hairspray I had to use on it.

I promise to write more interesting things next time. I stay this boring and people won't stick with me. Sorry.
--Marj

Home

2009-04-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

As you come up the redwood stairs to our deck and front door, the cacti, ivy, and daffodils are just to the right on a little tiered black wrought iron stand. There's a small, glass-topped table that holds a currently empty planter where my welcoming frog says "hello." The rock face is beneath the table. Our doormat is showing its age, faded from too many summer suns. You go through a metal security screen door and the metal front door (great for magnets and notes!) is next. There's nothing fancy about the entrance way. In fact, it borders on drab and unkempt. In the summer it easily gets 114 degrees in the afternoons here so what I put here is limited. Every plant I've ever planted (until the cacti) has died from the hot-as-an-oven space. The redwood deck goes around to the right and goes back the length of the side of the house back to the stairs that lead down into the yard. Our big oak tree shades almost the entire yard. The yard is fenced and quite small but we have a small dog so it's of adequate size. It had a sodded lawn when we moved in but that washed away in a particularly violent downpour one day a couple years ago. Along the side of the house here on the deck we keep a couple lawn chairs and a table. The perfect place for my quiet time when the weather warms up. (It's almost there!) Then there are the sliding glass doors that aren't used as doors. Our summer evaporative cooler goes in the glass doors with clear plexi-glass over the opening. It's difficult for me to describe but maybe I've given you a sense of what's on the deck. We have window planters along the deck railing and when the portulaca is in full bloom it's beautiful here. Musical wind chimes and a hummingbird feeder hang down from the covered area. The roof is just an aging, weather-beaten open lattice. We put dark green shade screening across to block out the worst of the sun. It's amazing how much that screen helps! When the kids come up they spend a lot of time out here on the deck. Cathie smoking and John getting some relief from his cat allergies. It's really nice to sit out here on a hot summer evening and just relax with the sounds of hummers at the feeder and a note or two from the chimes, stirred by a gentle breeze. Last year was the first year I thought to have my quiet time out here and when winter struck I reluctantly had to give up my spot on the deck. And I am now anxiously awaiting the warmer weather to resume my times out here every morning. It's strange to sit here with the door open and the sun shining so brightly and knowing that a blizzard hit the Dakotas yesterday along the Red River that's at flood stage. I love California and I love living in the gold country in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. The last few winters we've gotten a spattering of snow and in the summer, the heat is almost unbearable on some days. When it gets THAT hot I will dream of the Colorado Rockies and remember I used to live there. In other words, what I'm saying is that I love everything about living here but for those couple of weeks each summer when it gets so, so hot. I just sweat and hang on for dear life, knowing it won't last forever and that gets me through.

I have an eclectic house. Nothing matches except for the couch and love seat, but even they appear different from each other. They are a deep green with black stripes worked through them. The gnarled-oak, resin-topped coffee table Rich made is in the center of the room. The entertainment center is on the right so all the sitting furniture is to the left of the front door. My walls are covered with original paintings and drawings. Mostly desert canyon paintings right now. But there are a few birds and garden scenes thrown into the mix to sort of balance things out. While the desert paintings are beautifully well-done, they are not my favorite paintings. I prefer the animals and garden scenes. Hubby's chair is sitting in the middle of the room, facing the TV of course. His chair is literally falling apart. I plan to buy him a new one with my stimulus money come June when the deposit is made into my bank account. I sit on the end of the couch and at first planned on buying me a nice recliner but the more I look at his chair, the more I realize I best get a chair for him and I will continue to sit on the end of the couch. Along the back wall is my long oak desk with my computer and files. I have photos of ones I love scattered across the top of my desk around my computer and monitor. Jamie and Ofir. Ken and Michael. Kayla. Mulder. Ken,Tamara, and Kayla. And Franci's kids in her jeans. Just fun pictures I like to let me eyes rest on occasionally. In the corner by my desk is my oak curio cabinet where I display my collection of porcelain birds. They are beautiful when I go all out and turn the lights on in the cabinet. (I don't do that often, conserving energy.)

My kitchen and dinning room are off to the left with the counter and sink jutting out into room with a pass-through opening over the sink, looking back into the livingroom. The house if fully carpeted except for the kitchen/dining area and the two baths. Hubby uses the master bedroom as his painting studio. The other two bedroom are down the hall and nondescript. For the first time in my life I have a set of furniture in my bedroom. I very luckily came into some donated bedroom furniture a year or so ago. Headboard, bedside tables, and dresser fill out the remainder of the room. Oh I have three chest of drawers in there too and a beautiful bedspread came with the queen size bed. It looks very much like a hotel room because that's where the furniture came from and I consider myself blessed to have it and I thank God for his gracious gift.

We have ceiling fans in all rooms except the dining area. There is a five-globe hanging light over the table there. Our table is finished oak with four oak chairs. One of these days I will buy four matching pads to go in the chairs. But right now I just have throw pillows in two chairs for our comfort while eating or playing cribbage. But someday I will have a matching set. (I hope.)

My house is set up more for function than for looks. Most of my furniture has been cat damaged over the years by our long-haired, orange tabby, Punkie. Mario our black and while short-hair usually sleeps in my dining room chair or the black chair next to the entertainment center. Not too long ago I had 10 cats but for very sad reasons I'm down to just the two. Well, there's a third one, Mama, who lives in our garage and I should count her too. I want to bring her into the house but she's afraid of the dog, Pepper. And to be absolutely truthful, I'm a little afraid for her. She's such a gentle cat and Pepper can get a bit rowdy. Pepper is my "purebred chi-wa-wa" who isn't the least bit a purebred. I think he's mixed with a dachshund. He weighs about 30-35 pounds and is quite large for supposedly being a toy breed. Pepper rules the house. Completely. He's very protective of us. Me in particular. He'll even bark at Hubby if I'm still in bed asleep and hubby comes back into the bedroom. No one, not even hubby, is going to come next to me while I'm sleeping. But he's an "equal opportunity" biter. Actually he's not a biter at all. He's never bitten anyone, he just "mouths" them and growls. Scares you to death because you think he's going to bite you but he just opens his mouth and puts his teeth on you. He does not bite. Thank goodness. Still I wish he didn't "mouth" either. It's frightening and rude. We've had a dog or dogs (plural) our entire lives and this is the first dog that has ever been so protective and grouchy. He even goes after me when I do something he doesn't want me to do. He had an infection when he was little and I had to try to force down these antibiotic pills the vet gave him and he said "NO!!!" quite loudly and made it clear that I was not to sneak up on him and try to give him a pill. I had to hide his pills inside a piece of hot dog or something to trick him into taking his medicine. And I can't pat him on the butt as he sits beside me on the couch because he had an anal gland infection and I had to apply ointment a couple times a day and he let me know right up front that I was not going to do what the vet said to do. So now anytime I appear to be sneaking up toward his hind end he lets me know immediately that that displeases him. He's got a memory that will outlast an elephant I think. So anyway, he's a bit rowdy at times but at the same time he's a dog that we've had more fun with than any other animal. He just does funny things. He's a funny dog. And we think it's worth the "mouthing" to have him around. Chihuahuas are very strange dogs when it comes to temperament. I'm glad I have only one of them. But, as I said, he's definitely NOT purebred.

Our house sits next to the vacant lot that leads down to the cross street. Lift your eyes to the horizon and you will see Hogback Ridge that is covered in trees and brush and well-sprinkled with homes throughout. At night we can look across town to the lights on the hillside. We can see the highway poking (just barely) through the trees. The flag that waves over the bank downtown is always visible. We have two more oak trees out front and a sidewalk that goes along the side of the garage leading up to the front steps and gate. Junipers and manzanita take up most of the area across the front of the house. We tend to get very hot here in the summertime because the temp boosts so high across the vacant lot and then slams against the side and front of our house. We are usually a good 6-8 degrees hotter than everyone else we know.

Well, this has been a mini tour of my home and surroundings. I am beginning to feel at home here. For some reason it has taken me a long time to feel that way. But when we moved in here there was already someone living here (my daughter-in-law's brother) and so it was his house for a couple years before it actually became our house so I think that was the attachment problem I had for a few years. But Randy has been gone for two years or more so it has just taken time for me to get to the point of feeling like this is "our" house, our "home."

Until next time...

I'm Coming Back

2009-03-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that right! I'm coming back to my blog; I'm just not sure exactly when. Probably in May sometime or sooner if I can get my act together. Thanks to all of you ... especially Sharon ... for being so faithful to keep checking my site to see if I'm still alive. Well I am and I thank you all. I will leave this for now. I just wanted to give you a head's up tonight with a big thank you to Sharon, ever faithful reader/friend. Have a lot to talk about if I can decide the direction I want this blog to go when I come back. Let me know what interests you, what you'd like to read in my blog. I don't do those clever, well-done blogs with cute animations and whing-dings. I just write. But I don't want to be a "teacher" so don't expect devotions like I did before. I am not well so this may be the direction my blog takes. I don't know exactly what's wrong. I just know somethings not right. So this may be my personal pilgrimage through the unknown. Who knows??? See you soon!!!