Random Musings

my first ipod video! Of course, now that I've figured out how to take the video and upload it to the computer, the ground is now covered and it's coming down nicely! I might have to post another one later today!

2002 2010 Have we changed or what?

For middle school I attended a Christian school where we had to wear a uniform every Wednesday for chapel. 1st -12th grade probably had 100 students total. Chapel was basically church. We song a few songs, then listened to a sermon. One year, we had three different preachers all preach the same sermon outline: I. Sin will take you farther than you want to go. II. Sin will cost you more than you want to pay. and I've never been able to remember point III. Each pastor had their own references and illustrations for the points, but all three had the exact same outline. Needless to say, there were numerous jokes about preachers selling sermons to other preachers so they didn't have to write their own. I made the mistake of repeating one of the jokes at home. My mother did not find this funny in the least, but instead informed me that if I had heard the same sermon outline three times then God was trying to get something through to me and I had better start listening. Last ...

This morning we had a discussion about chickens. In case you didn't know, egg production is dramatically linked to sunlight. The shorter the days, the less likely you are to get eggs. (It takes a chicken a day to a day and a half to create an egg.) Commercial chicken farms will install electric lights on timers during the fall and winter to keep the chickens laying. Most hobbyists don't do this because it decreases the lifespan of the hen. So now that you know some of the basic egg laying facts, you'll understand that we're getting next to no eggs out of our 7 hens. And obviously we're not getting ANY from Ugly (our rooster). So that led me to ponder whether or not it was worth the cost in feed to keep the chickens if they're only putting out in the spring and summer. And again, like the last summer we had the Belarus kids, I was reminded that the value of a dollar is much more than 100 cents, and is actually relative to our personal values. Watching our ch...

I've never been a big tv person. Growing up I watched The Cosby Show every Thursday night that we didn't have band practice. During the summer I'd watch Perry Mason at lunchtime with my Dad, but other than that, I don't really remember watching a whole lot of television. So I find it strange that there are a few shows I actually enjoy watching now. Survivor - a friend of mine was an ardent Survivor fan. Our last conversation actually took place after church on the Sunday night of Survivor's first season's finale. He was ardently hoping a certain person wouldn't win. After his death, I watched the next season just to see what he had been so passionate about seeing. I found it to be a great quilting show (one you can not have to watch the screen every minute to know what is happening) and have seen most of the seasons since. The Good Wife - I've missed quite a few in this series because it comes on after my bedtime. (Yeah, I know. That's sad.) ...

I know this will never happen. But in my dream world, when I retire, my life would look like this: 7-8am - get up & going 9am - read the paper & whatever else suited my fancy 10am-12noon - sew or quilt 12noon-1pm - lunch with friends 1pm-3pm - computer/art/garden 4pm-5pm - nap 5pm-7pm - cook, eat, clean 7pm-9pm - watch tv or projects 10pm-midnight - write or read bed! Would that not be an awesome life? There'd be no laundry or housework 'cause I'd job it out (now you KNOW I'm dreaming, especially since those things cost money AND are very private things for me!), so all my free time would be spent "playing"! How cool would that be? Meanwhile, as reality sets in, the idea side of my brain has kicked into high gear. Every time I turn around I think of something else I'd like to be doing (and I can guarantee you ironing is NOT one of them!). It doesn't help that my Keepsake Quilting catalogue came in the mail today. I did turn down a gazilli...

This past week I've thought a lot about packaging. Outward appearance isn't everything, but it does make a big difference. As an idealist teen it always aggravated me that boys gravitated toward the pretty girls, whether they had brains or not. I could understand why they were interested in the girls who had a nice personality and were pretty, but the mean ones? By college I realized I was interested in outward appearance much more than I ever dreamed possible. One of my fellow first shift cafeteria workers would show up downstairs at 6:30am in clothes that had not been ironed (and mind you...they looked as if they had been wadded up wet and then stuffed in a drawer!), and her hair brushed but not fixed. Her mindset was that her clothes were clean, they matched, she was clean, her face was washed, so what else did she need to worry about? Mind you, she was very smart and very nice, but her appearance drove me crazy!!! I wanted her to at least look like she cared about her...

I made my trip to Sam's Club this afternoon to get all the stuff for the kid's activity on Saturday, only to discover that Sam's Club does not sell condiment packets (the small packages of mayonnaise or mustard). They have the HUGE containers of these items, but that won't help us in assembling lunch bags. A small part of me says obey instructions and leave the sandwiches plain, and don't worry about whether or not there's a mayonnaise/mustard packet for the sandwich. The other part of thinks about how this may be the only meal these people get for the entire day. Shouldn't they at least have a somewhat decent sandwich? If I have time tomorrow I might stop by Chik - fil -A and see if they'll sell me 70 packets. That's all we need. If we do this next year I'll know to order them in advance. Birthday candles...my Mom didn't have any for Dad's cake on Sunday, and my five year old niece was quite concerned about it. She wanted to impr...

Yesterday morning I had the first of a two-part class in applique (a type of quilting where you sew the material onto another piece of fabric instead of sewing two pieces two together). It went well, I had a great time, was excited to come home and show Bobby (who was working from home) everything, only to set lunch on the table and be told: "I've got bad news." Uncle Jimmy died. Like his brothers (Bobby's Dad, Uncle Wade, and Uncle PL) it was a quick heart attack. He took a few steps away from his truck to greet a friend and then was gone...like that. And while he was old, it still shocks me to think that the man who I worked with in the garden for four years and cut up with every time I saw him is no longer on this earth. I thought about it again this morning, wondering if today was my last day on earth what would I want to do with it? And the reality is, none of us ever know whether or not our next breath is our last one. And since I'm trying to refrain m...

When I was in the third grade, my mother informed me I needed to work on my handwriting. I remember telling her it was pointless, for not only did I look like my Dad, I had inherited his handwriting skills as well. (This was pre-preacher days when Dad was a pharmacist. Let's just say not only do pharmacists know how to read a dr's messy handwriting, they can write that messy as well.) I don't remember all of Mom's response, but I do remember her back arching and me spending some time practicing writing that day. And that night after supper Dad spent some time with me at the table working on cursive letters. It seemed to me his handwriting radically improved after that. Another thing my Dad and I have in common is our middle initial "R". While our middle names are totally different, as a child I loved to write my name Monica R. White because Dad always wrote his Jerry R. White. To me it seemed like this special bond we had. After I got married, it surprise...

I am old. I grew up in the Bible belt, where even people who did not go to church knew the Ten Commandments, the Creation story, some of the Beatitudes, a few parables, and at least 2 verses of Amazing Grace. And yet, two of my four years in a public high school were 2 of the 3 loneliest years of my life. (My last year of middle school in a Christian school ranked third.) As one of my high school friends told me one day after overhearing classmates discussing weekend plans, "It's not that we don't like you, but we don't invite you to our parties because we know you don't drink. We don't won't to offend you by inviting you to something we know you can't come to." I actually appreciated her comments, and to this day that girl holds a very soft spot in my heart. Then I went off to a Christian college, and the remainder of my life has been somewhat isolated within Christian communities EXCEPT for 2.5 years at Wake Tech and one summer at UAB. It was ...

One of the things I miss the most about childhood is having someone to look after me when I'm sick. You don't truly appreciate Mom fixing you things to drink or rubbing your back or just holding you until you feel bad, but you still have to fix your own meals or drink or figure out what medicine to take. And for all my Mom friends out there who've not only been sick themselves but also had to look after a little one (or multiples) at the same time, my hat is off to you. One of the nice things I don't miss about childhood and sickness, is as an adult I don't have to go to the doctor unless I think it's necessary. (I'm reminded of a few scenes were I'm rasping out my rationale for NOT going to the doctor while gasping for breath and my Dad standing there staring at me as if I'm from another planet and then laughingly saying, "Get your jacket and get in the car.") Some kids had normal diseases like chicken pox, strep, or tonsillitis; I had b...

Do you ever wonder why God created our noses? I mean, the nose is basically an angled, tunneled entrance into our sinus passages. I suppose noses are more aesthetically pleasing. Can you imagine what our faces would look like if we just had two big holes where our nose is? On the more practical side, I know they play an important role in filtering the dust and dirt from the air we breath and such (reckon that's where the idea for a vacuum cleaner came from?), but really...a two-tunneled slanted entrance? As a kid I used to ponder why adults were so adamantly opposed to nose picking. To my five year old brain, it made perfect sense. If you looked at people's nasal openings and their index fingers, they almost always seemed the same size. It was as if God measured them to fit perfectly. I also couldn't understand why girls who would make mud pies or swim in Smith Lake (which is very dirty) would think picking your nose was so gross. It is just dried up dirt after all....

front tire tractor tracks Monica tracks rear tire tractor tracks (my brother-in-laws cleared our driveway) Lucy & Linus tracks bird tracks (they made quite a pattern around the chicken pen eating the corn I dropped) Bobby braving the elements and scaring me half to death. He had fun.