Random Musings

During my TOEFL training, one of the things I heard in almost every single session in the teaching segment was the importance of having fillers. (Planned activities to fill up time in case part of your lesson ended early or the class was extended, etc.) When I was writing, the advice tidbit I heard over and over was to be involved with people, but guard your writing time so it didn't become filled with up people and their wants/needs. This past week I have felt like my life was fuller than the hourglass I've been given. While at work proofing a devotional that's to be printed tomorrow, I came across this: Real servants make themselves available to serve. Servants don't fill up their time with other pursuits that could limit their availability. They want to be ready to jump into service when called on. (Read II Timothy 2:4) and on the next day: Are you available to God anytime? Can He mess up your plans without you becoming resentful? As a servant, you don't get to p...

When upon life's billows you are tempted and tossed, When you are discouraged thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings money cannot buy: Your reward in heaven and your home on high. Count your blessings name them one by one. Count your blessings see what God has done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings see what God has done. I was born in America. I have a wonderful husband. I have a roof over my head that doesn't leak. We can afford cleaning supplies. Indoor plumbing. Washing machines AND dryers! in my very own home! I have a large family. I like my church family. The land of plenty - mechanics, food, hardware stores, medicine, target, etc chocolate Dr. Pepper INTERNET!!! books a sewing machine quilting friends friends who like to eat out dogs who keep the geese out of the garage sunshine mailboxes instructional internet videos copy machines one more Sunday of take-down after church (Lord willing!) funny stories & the gift of laug...

My husband is right: I have no concept of time. The geese have discovered they like cabbage. To be more specific, the cabbage out of my garden. Last week's frost killed my tomato plants. I now have my bean row back. After four days without internet, AT&T came out and replaced our modem. I now fill like I am back in the land of the living. Today is my last day of vacation, and there are so many things I want/need to do that I will never ever fit them all in. Such is life.

My senior year of college I had a coworker from Latin America who was seriously seeking for answers to life. I called another friend attending a nearby university, and asked him if he could meet us at a nearby park one afternoon to talk. Both had last minutes obstacles and neither friend showed up, but my other college friend was upset that a) I didn't get his message and b) I went to a park (I couldn't invite my co-worker to the dorm) to meet a guy I only knew from work. I laughed at him for being paranoid, but some of his comments did get me to thinking. Where do we draw the line between trusting in Christ to protect us and fearing the evil that surrounds us? When is it naive to trust people and paranoid to be suspicious of everyone around us? A few years back I visited a ministry that had its office in a church in North Raleigh. To reach the ministry, I had to speak to a receptionist behind a glass window who made me sign/register before the elevator was opened to allow me t...

For those of you who haven't heard, a group of students UNC protested against a former Colorado Congressmen who had been invited to speak at the school until he was forced to flee for his safety. Personally, I think the school officials should live up to one of their mascots, and apply the tar to the foul and offensive students and one faculty member who so disgraced their school and our country. Freedom of speech is an American's constitutional right. The club who sponsored the speaker has a right to their viewpoint, whether or not others agree with it. He was not speaking at graduation, not addressing a classroom required for graduation, not even lecturing in a place where others would be forced against their will to hear it. Yet people who oppose the club and the speaker gathered, taunted him, held banners up over his face while he was speaking, and even through a brick through the window, shattering it into the classroom where he was speaking. Why is it that "tole...

I enlarged my garden rows when tilling March. Having learned from last year, the rows are further apart, AND I added 1/2 a row. I was going to be sensible. Plant what we want, but in amounts small enough that I can handle. I still have a paying job, after all. Last week we went to Hudson's to have the push lawn mower repaired. We came home with four biddies. Today we went to pick the lawn mower up, and while Bobby showed the repairman the way to the van, I stopped in to pick up a few tomato plants. I think that's where I went wrong. We only had a few minutes, and I never think or plan well in a hurry. I looked at the prices for small containers and the prices for a flat. The flat looked about right. So that's what I got. When we got home, Bobby happened to ask how many plants I bought. He was quite shocked when I told him I bought a whole flat. "You bought 48 plants?" WEELLLlllll , no not intentionally. Turns out I overlooked the little detail that...

Well, I sort of/kind of finished my first quilt "square" on A&A's quilt, and let's just say the circumference of the ring is bulging a bit. I called my mother-in-law, and she came over and looked at it, made a few suggestions, then whispered, I'd just do another one and see if it has the same problems. But I am going to take her dreaded advice, removed a rung of the circle and resew it. Hopefully that will fix some of the bulge. Meanwhile, I've had this quilt idea in my head for so long that it's hard to let the dream die. I would really like to have it ready for June, but reality is that it's just not going to happen. Unless I quit my job and do nothing but quilt all day, and somehow I don't see that happening. A part of me thinks if I get the quilt top completed and marked, then I can find someone who machine quilts and hire them to do it. But I'm not sure that would be quite as much "fun". And if all goes well, I might ac...

This year was to be the year the geese nested on their own. No incubator, no brooder box, no herding goslings in and out of the dog pen, no picking up gosling parts from the yard and burying them. Dottie and I put up a pen, and while I don't have the doors up yet, I do have the parts for it as well as the hooks for securing the bottom. Meanwhile, half the geese refuse to enter voluntarily. (They'll go in for the food, but that's it.) Yesterday morning we realized one of the geese was nesting in the duck house, and the dogs were harassing her. So we discussed options, I gathered up boards, a hammer, and nails, and we blocked all the paths to the house except the ones the geese use from the water. Since then the mother goose has not returned to her two eggs. I told Bobby she's got two more days, and if she doesn't return to the nest by then I'll collect them and pull out the incubator. Chirpie nested against the house again, and of course the dogs had her e...

My aunt Mattie (my great-great- aunt to be exact) lived with us off and on growing up. Even as a child, I thought she was tiny (think of a short Jessie Martinez). She was the "baby" in her family, and was the next to the last of that generation of Johnsons . Whenever I squirmed a little too much for her, she would ask me if I had ants in my pants. Why is it easier for some people to sit still than others? After I had the flu during high school, I could always tell when we'd passed the thirty minute segment in class without looking at my watch. My hip joints would begin to hurt and squirming in my seat would alleviate some of the tension until that bell rang and I could stand up. If things went well my joints popped immediately and I could move normally. If my joints didn't pop right away, I'd stand and wiggle and pretend to rearrange my books or look for a paper until I could move properly. Then I moved off to FWBBC where we were required to wear skirts an...

Bobby says I'm crazy. We now have Easter peeps. Two Rhode Island Reds, one week old. Two White Plymouth Rocks, two weeks old. And I have 6 weeks to build a pen.

Nothing like a bill in our state legislature to make one realize that our society has killed common sense. The bully bill addresses the problem of bullying in our public schools. The very fact that there is such a bill indicates part of the problem. Since the authority of being a teacher or principal is no longer enough, having a school handbook is not sufficient, we now resort to state law to make our children "behave." But here's my beef with such bills: they destroy equality. When a middle school girl follows a classmate she doesn't like into the bathroom, sticks her cell phone under the stall door and snaps photos, then sends them to the entire school, that's bullying. But wait...under the bully bill, it's not as severe because the girls share the same gender, the same religion, the same race, etc. Now, if the girl in the stall happens to be a different race, then the photographer gets a worse punishment because of the bully bill. And that makes no sen...

Several of my facebook friends enjoy taking all these quizzes and personality tests, such as "What's your ministry?" I'm really not sure how my favorite foods have anything to do with my ministry, but other questions, such as "what inspires you" had many answer choices I could have easily picked. I found the timing of this quiz interesting as we are now going through lessons on spiritual gifts at church, and I honestly have no idea what my spiritual gift is. So I took the quiz and the answer was: Ground's Keeper and Fence Mender. Bobby found this very funny when I told him. Growing up I always heard the verse "to whom much is given, much shall be required" quoted, and I came to dread it. To me it meant the more you developed your talents or areas of expertise, the more work you had to do. And I think that's where the difference of a talent and a true spiritual gift comes out. I don't think (and I may be woefully wrong on this) th...

This morning after we woke up, we were shocked to hear on the news that the Garner Emergency crew fought a fire at 3am on Bryan and Clifford Rd. When they said the house was apparently abandoned we knew immediately which house: the Stancil place, the first home Bobby's parents had and where they lived until he was four years old. It was part of the farm that was purchased by the Wake County Board of Education a few years ago. While the house was still standing, its insides had been gutted and the surrounding yard had become a dump for people too classless to drive 25 minutes to the landfill. I guess deep down I still hoped the County BOE would decide not bulldoze the place and we could acquire the house after the road was rerouted and it wouldn't be near the school. I've wanted to refinish that place ever since I saw it. And now it's too late. the front porch