Random Musings

One of my favorite things about being with family over the holidays, is the ability to work jigsaw puzzles with people who love the insanity as much as I do. (Well, my siblings do complain about the ones I bring, but they've yet to start bringing other options so I think they secretly love the challenge.)  Last night at my mother-in-law's house I looked at my watch at 8pm, and then when Bobby said we needed to go and I looked at my watch it was almost 11pm. I was totally flabbergasted. Tonight will end the last of our Christmas celebrations, and a small part of me is ready to get back to a routine and normalcy. The other part of me feels as if this holiday season has been one emotional roller coaster and I would love a check-out time from reality and life to just emotionally recharge.  And yet I know that life, like puzzles, work best if you take small breaks but keep working toward completion, even if you do feel like you're the missing piece (that your brother stashed i...

Every time I pack for a trip longer than two days, I can't help but hear my nephew's voice as he helps unload the van..."This is like moving!"  Oh dear one, you have no idea just how much stuff your Aunt Monica has! But it does sometimes feel that way.  Clothes (both church and everyday), medical supplies, Christmas presents, a bag of things to do/read on the way...it adds up fast! And this time there's the extra unusual things: a rabbit cage, a huge bag of food & bedding. Needless to say, our little van is often full! This trip will be one of the two we've made in the last 12 years where I've NOT been overly stressed or exhausted before leaving, and I'm looking forward to it.  Traveling is so much easier (in my mind anyway) when I'm not already exhausted before we even leave. So tonight I'm rejoicing that this trip has the potential to be so much easier, and that 38 is FINALLY over! Broken bones, overcommitment, pain, disaster, I bi...

What do you get when you combine Christmas caroling in the back of a pickup with a very pregnant deacon's wife? Me. They say the other deacons and the pastor followed the trail of hay to the hospital. Somehow they convinced the nurse to carol in the nursery with "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear". They claim I screamed through it. I'm still not crazy about that tune. The words, however, are lovely. I don't miss that story being re-told every year at church. Some things are worth hearing just once or twice.

 This last Saturday afternoon Mary Booth and I had the privilege of having a "cookie bake" with the girls from the oldest Jr. Church class. (Kimberly had already left by the time we started the photo shoot.) We had a good time, even if I was exhausted when it was over. :)  This is one of our two mishaps. My Mom's recipe calls these "russian tea cakes" and they are a very caky-type sugar cookie. There was a miscommunication on which container had flour and which had powdered sugar, so we wound up with almost 5 cups of powdered sugar in this recipe. :) Needless to say, they were super-sweet, a tad chewy when they came out of the oven, and next to impossible to get out of the pan. None of the girls wanted them. By the time they cooled, it was impossible to get them out. Thankfully Mary had the bright idea to soak the whole pan, cookies and all, in hot water. After a few minutes, the whole sheet came out. We had a good laugh over it. Note to self: next year la...

My camera batteries died while were at the Open House, but here's what few photos I did manage to take.  This pic is a little blurry, but the eagle supported tables in one of my favorite things in the Governor's Mansion.  The first tree you see upon entering.  And a close-up of the dogwood flowers that adorned it.  The stair case has always impressed me, even though it's heavily masculine-looking. I know such detailed work in wood was not easy to do during that time frame, so that makes all the ridges even more impressive. The finials at the end of the staircase have Raleigh's oak symbol craved into each side, and for some reason, that always makes me think the staircase resembles nutcrackers.  From the NC room...(again, sorry for the blurriness) a wreath made from dried tobacco leaves.  The mantel in this room is covered in dried flowers and cotton balls. Notice the North Carolina trees below instead of the poinsettias that...

Every one in a blue moon we head to a small town called Wilson's Mills, where the Calamity Jane's store has a Wicked Chicken Auction every Sunday afternoon. Bobby's geese (we have 4 females left) have started fighting lately, something they've not done in the ten years we've had them. Even the chickens and rooster get upset and try to separate them when it happens. So we headed to the auction in hopes of finding a male goose. They actually had a goose that matches ours, and when the held it up before the bidding started, I was unable to see the tell-tale pouch (females have a saggy bottom on one side after they've laid eggs).  We got the goose for a VERY good price, got home, and realized it was a GIRL.  On the bright side, the four original geese are now so busy trying to keep away from the new goose that they are forgetting to fight. While there, someone had brought in several boxes of 6 week old animals. Every pair had gone for at least $2 (some as high as ...

For those of you who don't live near us, the property adjoining ours was sold about 6 years ago to our county for the purpose of building an elementary and a middle school. The town of Garner denied the building permit on the elementary school because of a political issue, then politics got VERY ugly around here with the school board getting a Republican majority that behaved very rudely and the NAACP came in full force and responded just as rudely back. Numerous lawsuits and newscasts later (plus a downturn in the economy), the plans for both schools are no longer even listed on the county's website as future school sites. Meanwhile, the county has leased the land to the city of Raleigh as a place to dump storm debris (trees and such) from government locations during the next five years. Our discussions of "what we want as a fence" on the property line stopped being discussions and are now 95% reality. After evaluating prices and dreams, we finally ordered trees fr...

I'm at the public library where the computer screen tilts down at you in the most unfriendly fashion and am REALLY missing the comfort of my home "library".  We fried our internet modem Saturday, so it will be Thursday, at the earliest, before you can expect any more posts. I had planned to upload a few pics from our trip to the Governor's Mansion Open House on Saturday, but that will clearly have to wait. Meanwhile, I expect to get quite a bit done this week without the lure of checking e-mail biting into my free time. Hope your holidays are moving according to schedule and that you are remembering the reason we celebrate like crazy. :)

I have an unusual sense of humor. Last year Bobby got a gift that was hysterically funny. Even funnier was his almost-a-vegetarian niece's facial expression when she found out he actually ATE it. :) I won't tell you what it REALLY was. You'll just have to wonder. At least until after Christmas.

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham has to be the craziest, most thought provoking, and insane Christmas book I have ever read. It's short. It's not a legal thriller or a "call to reform the justice system" as many of his books are. It's simply about what happens when a modern American family who celebrates Christmas in the traditional American way decides to skip Christmas. Literally. Like anyone who's ever seen a show on hoarding suddenly decides to clean house, this book will totally flabbergast you into evaluating what you do that is and isn't important about the holidays. a blow-up Frosty for your roof, anyone? :)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson remains my all-time favorite Christmas book.  Yes, it's a child's chapter book, but I've not found one to beat it. I found a movie of the book, but we were very disappointed in it. It was made in the 1980's, and I thought the script writing was lame, especially after seeing the Garner Towne Players Youth do a great production based off of this book a few years ago. Evidently, a media group started making plans to write a screen play based off of the book last year, but there's been no word yet as to where or if it will actually be remade. So meanwhile, I'll just continue to read the book every year. I'm actually getting my Mom a copy. My niece, who is 7, is the angel in their church play. While learning her lines and finding out that she "suddenly appears", she has become convinced for the play to be realistic she MUST be dropped from the ceiling somehow. According to her, everyone knows angel...

Last Wednesday night our church looked at Psalm 139. I've read and known many of these verses most of my life, but have never really broken them down into a contextual analysis. Needless to say, those verses have been on my mind A LOT since this past Wednesday. A few of the reality checks that brought them back to mind: a blog friend who is fighting cancer mentioned that one of her Thanksgiving praises was also her Christmas wish: more time with her family . And yesterday, I received an update on a fellow believer, an imprisoned pastor. He was thankful for being allowed an extra 5 minutes every month with his wife. Instead of the allotted 15 minutes a month, the guard was letting him have 20. And this past month, they let him see his wife and small child from behind bars where he could actually semi-hug his son instead of only seeing them through glass. And why is he in jail? He preached and practiced God's Word in a land where it is illegal. So in the midst...

I love Schulz's Peanut gang, and there's nothing better to capture the total American spirit of Christmas than this movie. It gives you the misplaced priorities, the funny scenes, the hyped emotions, out of control Christmas programs and the simple reminder "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."  There's one or two Christmas movies I've never seen that I hope to watch this year, but I have a hard time foreseeing anything replacing this one!

I don't remember ever believing in Santa Claus. I know we never sat in his lap. (Walker County didn't have a mall until I was in middle school!) I know my parents weren't opposed to the notion of Santa, as many of our presents were signed "from Mr. and Mrs. Claus" or "From Santa & His Wife" but I never believed. Maybe because I recognized Daddy's handwriting, maybe because I knew Santa used the same wrapping paper as my parents (or maybe because my little sister found the hidden stash of presents EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR).  But I do know by the time I was in middle school if any of my siblings joined me in making a gift for Mom and Dad, we would sign it "From Santa's elves".  One Christmas I watched my brother-in-law set things up for his girls, and I asked him if he needed help wrapping presents (a lot of the gifts were unwrapped under the tree).  He looked at me like I was crazy and said "Santa doesn't wrap his presents. He ...

The Jesse Tree was created as a response to Christian parents who want their child to fully grasp the meaning of Christmas: the whys and hows of Christ's coming.  I have a family member and many friends who do it yearly with their children, and there may come a year when Bobby and I do it together. Who knows? Here's what I've written about the Jesse Tree in the past: http://burdenbearer.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=HoxC9TMBAAA.MCwjFX8qWGdgwYFe5whHWQ.Q9okP5lCGwGtxJL71Q9WdA&postId=7400376427115699136&type=POST And if you're interested in starting this Christmas devotional with your child, this website has free devotionals and ornaments. You do have to subscribe to either her blog or to have it e-mailed to you, though. Let the Christmas posts commence! :)