Random Musings

We briefly talked about doing a Christmas letter again this year. I did look through my pictures to remind myself of what all happened, was quite shocked, and then never got back to the computer to make that happen. So I'm limiting myself to one photo for each month and recapping 2013. January a day of freezing rain where we were amazed at the number of cardinals that bombarded our back porch and dog pen     February - Bobby Retired!   March - a new quilting/sewing machine! :) Happy, Happy, Happy!    April - my nephew and niece were saved and baptized! :)    May - first visit to the Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, and the opening of Garner's War Memorial   June - our first ever dolphin tour, a mini-vacation with family, and an 80th birthday party for the matriach of the Bob Bryan clan. A very happy but busy month!   July- The church's annual Family Fun Fest was rained out, family toured t...

My husband does not prefer green peas (what my family calls English peas). I happen to like them, especially with mashed potatoes. After being sick on the medicine the Urgent Care Clinic provided, my parents immediately started making bland foods in hopes of getting something in me so I could take yet another round of meds (yeah, rah). Mom had been in and asked if I would try some mashed potatoes and peas, and I nodded yes (no voice on my part and no hearing aids in on her part...a really interesting combination the last 24 hours at home and only my nieces were getting my hand signals and my nephew made squeaking noises every time I tried to talk). Bobby came in a littler late to check on me, and with a bit of confusion and concern on his face, told me they were making a plate that had mashed potatoes and peas on it, that everyone thought I had asked for it, and they were mixing the food together. At this point, I actually laughed. (Well, at much laughing as I could do without a voice...

I have to confess, I was expecting the normal hand-drawn Christmas card from my niece this year. Imagine my surprise when I opened the card, and read "In Memory". Yeah. For whatever reason, she took two Gideon donation cards from church, scribbled out the inside, and wrote our name on the blanks inside. I'm assuming she doesn't know what "In Memory" means, and that she liked the picture on the front. For whatever reason, she was quite pleased with it, and I can honestly say I've never received a Christmas card like it. It's now in my drawer of momentos. While Bobby's wheelchair was a work in progress, one of the things we attempted to do was send pictures of the broken parts to Orthopedic Services, in hopes they could possibly order the parts before everything shut down for the holidays. (Which turned out to be a big failure.)  This might sound like no big deal, but my parents's house has no internet service, and most people struggle to ge...

Growing up, I was blessed with many siblings in cousins on both sides of my family. I don't ever remember not having someone my age to play with at family gatherings; it was more an issue of who to play with or finding someone I knew the best. That's not the case for my nieces and nephew. My oldest nieces are in college. My nephew is 13, my other niece is 9. They also have lived very far apart all their lives, so most holidays they don't see each other. With my birthday coming immediately before Christmas, my birthday has become something of a "tradition" to be celebrated with the two younger ones (because they live near my parents who we are visiting at the time).  Carly has taken it upon herself the last two years to "plan" birthday parties for everyone. She discusses it with her Mom or my mother, and designates who is buying, baking what. She doesn't always get what she wants (like last year for my 40th when she just KNEW I wanted a fancy cake wi...

One week ago today we headed out for Nashville, TN to see the Moffitt clan (Bobby's youngest sister and her family) for a day or two before heading on to be with my family. En route Bobby's chair refused to be budged from its lock-down position. At all. If you've ever lived with a disability and needed assistance, you know that holidays are NOT the time to have an equipment malfunction. No one is open, and if they are, you're almost always going be charge holiday time when it comes to the labor portion of the repair bill. Mechanics do have families, too, you know.  Thankfully for us, they happen to be in my family. We arrived in TN to find a friend of Susan's there, and Matt and David (my bro-in-law), began dismantling the back of Bobby's chair in order to leverage the chair into an upward position so we could ease it out of the lock. It took a while, but they were not only successful in getting him inside and settled, but also in strapping the wheelchair back ...

Yesterday a good friend had a spell during church. We still don't know what happened, but it scared a good number of us. We could tell she was starting to improve, was getting better (starting to argue with us), but I was very concerned about her slurred speech. I've never been so thankful that our church is blessed with so many nurses! When we finally ruled out sugar issues, one of the nurses agreed with me that she needed to head to the local CVS minute clinic and get her blood pressure checked. My friend told us it would no longer be low because we were all being a pain in the neck and driving it up. Being the kind, considerate person that I am, I told her we could also be a pain in the butt if we needed to be. Thankfully she laughed. There's nothing I hate more than being sick and having an audience. I had a migraine once that triggered other problems and resulted in at rip to the ER. An extended family member came over to "help out" and I remember wishing s...

Monday night we attended a political function. I'm not a huge fan of political events. There always seems to be an excessive amount of posturing, extreme positions, and lots of bandwagoning. Political events in the rural areas are a little bit nicer as everyone talks to everyone, and people actually talk about things other than politics. Unfortunately, this one was in Raleigh. Despite the location, most of the people were very friendly, even though neither Bobby nor I are adept at talking to strangers or working a crowd. The room was small (wheelchairs are a lot easier to manuever in open spaces) and people seemed to hover near the drinks, making it impossible to get to anything without interrupting a conversation (it was like watching one of those animals shows that sets up a camera near the watering hole), and I was more than a bit baffled when two of the classiest dressed ladies in the room, fixed their plates, then stood in the middle of the buffet line, one on each side...

Earlier this fall I bought three books to give one of my nieces for Christmas. (Before you gasp in horror, this is for one of the nieces who enjoys reading as much as I do.) Two of the books were based on recommendations from World Magazine. One of them I haven't finished and I'm quite appalled by it (I won't be gifting it); the other, Letters to a Young Progressive , I actually enjoyed reading and am happy to gift it. The third book I picked up out of curiosity in a Christian bookstore. A college friend of mine works in Afghanistan, and has for the last 13 or so years, and several of my high school classmates have spent time serving with our military in Afghanistan. Needless to say, their viewpoints and experiences are very different. It has taken me a while to work through the book, but In the Land of Blue Burqas has to be one of the best Christian non-fiction books I have read in a very long time. So many times I interrupted Bobby's reading to share a passage with...

The first time I worked with small kids, ever, was the summer after I turned 18. I volunteered to be an assistant to an older woman as she taught the 3&4 year olds for Vacation Bible School. I was excited. Monday rolled around, and about 2pm (VBS started at 6pm), Mom got a phone call that Mrs. Evie was sick, and I'd need to take the class. Her daughter was dropping all the supplies, ready to go, at the church and would have everything ready for me. Did I mention I had never really worked with small children before? I had three 3year old boys, all by myself. After the night was over, I told my Mom how impossible it was to teach the lesson. They were ON the table, UNDER the table, sitting BACKWARDS in their chairs, EATING their crayons, coloring the TABLE, the CHAIR, and asking me five questions (and almost none of them related to the lesson) for every one sentence. In short, it was chaos. My Mom looked at me like I was crazy, and laughed. "Well, that's three year olds...

Another book I read several years ago, but it's also one of those books that never quite leaves you. Grisham's main characters attempt to do what so many of us adults have longed to do at one point or another: skip Christmas. The whole book is hysterically funny, and the ending is pathetic and yet heartwarming, but it also made me evaluate how pointless so many of our the holiday traditions truly are. Ever since reading this book, it's made me want to boycott the things that aren't truly important (and several of those things I can't because those traditions are so important to other family members), and yet has also helped me realize that I too have traditions that are sentimental to me but have no intrinsic value.  If you're looking for a fun read, like the Best Christmas Pageant Ever, this is one that will have you laughing out loud, and yet thinking about its contents for weeks afterward.

  Singer's book is different from most run-of-the mill Christian books. While a work of fiction, it addresses some of the political issues surrounding the holidays, but has a very unexpected ending. Some of the stereotypes in the characters bothered me early in the book, but as the story unfolded, I had to admit that I could identify several people who could adequately be the person the story's character was based upon. (So maybe it's not so much stereotyped after all!) This book is one that leaves you thinking and pondering many issues, from the fine line between freedom of religion and government-sanctioned religion to the age-old debate of when to obey government or what prinicples and doctrines are truly worth fighting about. This book would be an awesome read for any group that loves intense discussions.

I read this book as a teenager, and I have read it several times since then. It is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the best Christmas books on the market. I like this story so much that I even considered its play version as a script for a Christmas play at church. After reading the copyright requirements of the play, I decided it wasn't the best match for our church. But that doesn't stop me from ranking this as my all-time favorite Christmas book, and I think it should be a must read for anyone who teaches Sunday school.