Random Musings

A person's point of view (POV, as writer's magazines call it), truly and totally dictates almost everything in their life. During my mid-twenties I had the opportunity to teach English overseas. The organization I taught with had many single people (okay, at the time was MOSTLY single people) and I really learned a lot from my older teammates. Some of the lessons I'm not sure I fully grasped until much later, but they put the foundational thought blocks in place for me. All my life it was wrongly emphasized that the role of a woman was to grow up and be a Mom. Not by my parents, but by many around me. At school, like at home, I was taught to grow up and use whatever talents/skill sets I had to the best of my ability (with certain limitations, of course, but I won't go into the insanity of small town Alabama). At my college graduation, one of the professors commented on how our class was unusual, that over half the class wasn't engaged or seriously dating anyon...

There's certain fundamental, childhood Christian truths my Mom and my Sunday school teachers impounded into my brain: Be kind (Eph. 4:32) Treat Others the Way you WANT to be treated (Luke 6:31) Tell the truth to everyone. (Rom.17:11) Be thankful. (I Thess.5:18) Don't complain (Philippians 2:14) Don't retaliate (Prov. 25:21-22, Matt 5:38-40, Rom 12:19) Sometimes I forget that not everyone had those principles drilled into their heads. Complaining? Oh, that's just what teenagers/adults do. We call it venting, and it's good for you. Kindness? Every man for himself!  It's all about ME! The Golden Rule? No way! He/she wouldn't do that for me! Gratefulness? Say what? I DESERVE that! Why should I say thank you? You OWE me! Revenge? If I don't stand up for myself, no one else will. Eat or be eaten! And those things seem small, and minor, and not all that important. But the older I get, the more I realize how dysfunctional our society is as we remo...

It never fails. Anytime I help a person move, I feel like I need to go home and immediately start cleaning/purging the house. Or I start thinking about an unknown time in the future when for some unknown reason we might need/want to move, and where we might go and what that would look like. I know that most likely, if we ever move, we will be down-sizing considerably, and this time I actually walked through the house and pondered what we would keep/get rid off. I don't know if this train of thoughts come about from moving some growing up, or being a semi-vagabond during my young adult years, or if anyone who's never moved ever thinks these kind of thoughts. But since these thoughts started last fall (when my friend Mary moved), I've been even more adamant that I read the books we have instead of checking out any from the library, and if it's not a book that I'll read again or share with someone, then it has to go. In January I actually took a box of books to th...

When Bobby and I would visit his aunts, one of the topics of conversation was her garden. Sometimes I asked her questions; sometimes she would talk and ask me questions (aka interrogate). But I must say I learned from her that there's no shame in trying something and it not working, or trying something that didn't work a second time. One year we were both having problems with deer. 1/3 of my garden was peas that year and the plants were doing the best of anything I had ever planted. Pea pods (they look like little sticks) were coming out and I was starting to get excited. Until the next morning when half the row was nothing but leafless stems...no flowers, no leaves, no pea pods...nothing. The next morning, the rest of my peas were in the same shape. Turns out the deer climbed my little 3 ft fence, enjoyed their free buffet, and my plants never recovered. Many farmers and gardners in the area complained about deer and resorted to all sorts methods to deter them.  After that s...

We've not seen a lot of our newest neighbors, which surprised us. When they were preparing the house and working towards their moving date, they always honked their horn when they went by, waved, or stopped to talk. Then they moved in, and it all stopped. Bobby tried to call their cellphones, only to find they had been disconnected. Yesterday we walked up the hill to say hello, and found out that his wife was diagnosed with cancer right before they moved, is now taking treatments through Duke, and is not doing well. I cannot imagine moving to a new place without knowing anyone (although her daughter does live in Raleigh) and facing a life-threatening illness at the same time. I thought he'd lost a lot of weight since this time last year, and he admitted the heat is killing him this year. (They're from Michigan.) Last summer he shocked me by how long he'd stay outside and work in the yard (he'd come and work for a week at a time), even on the hottest days. He laugh...

A few weeks ago I went out to check an area of porch railings that I had painted, and was shocked to see a patch of green on a post. Upon closer examination, I realized it was a tree frog, which I had never seen at our house before. Since then, he's showed up on our bedroom window and during the middle of the thunderstorm the other night, he appeared during a lightning flash on the bathroom window. That was downright creepy. Nothing like walking into a dark room, seeing the lightning flash  and there being an outline of a frog sprawled out on the window. I must have startled it as much it startled me, for it quickly jumped away. Does anyone else have these frogs around their house?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know one of my goals for 2014 was to finish two projects for every one I started. But that was six months ago.    Every month one of the quilt shops in Raleigh  has a block of the month class (you pay for the first month, then bring your completed block in to the store and attend a 15-20 minute lecture on how to piece the next month's block for free, of $5 if you don't finish your block), followed by a guild-like group ($3.50 a month) where you learn a new quilting technique or about a new gadget and have show and tell of whatever projects you're working (except my group seldom has a lot to to show). This month's Bernina Club demonstrated a way to "dye" fabric using fresh plants, fabric, tape, and a hammer. I wasn't expecting to be overly impressed as fabric dying is NOT my thing, and I came away with my mind whirling and a multitude of project ideas.   Step one: Choose your leaf, flower, or grass. (Check out the internet on...

My husband is usually an excellent gift giver. There's only one area where he's failed, and it's become something of Bryan family folklore. My husband, like me, loves to read. When he was about my age, he realized there was no one to pass on his favorite childhood books to (which were quickly becoming antiques) so he started gifting them to his nieces and nephews as birthday or Christmas presents. The problem? Most of them don't like to read.   His family, like my father's family, has generational layers within each generational branch (cousins getting married while other cousins are just being born, creating subgroups within the grandchildren and great-grandchildren).  The third set of nieces and nephews are now reaching their teen years. A few years ago, we were at a loss what to give Glory for her birthday, so we simply asked. Her answer? "Not a book."  We laughed, and ever since then we've been on a search for a book that Glory would actually...

Ever seen geese fight?  Well, now you have. These two started at a VERY young age. One we lost to Buster (how do you convince a dog this is not his personal squeaky toy?) and the other now very closely resembles the geese. Whenever we make the 12 hr drive to my hometown/county, we cheer with every state line and when the hills start showing up. Nothing screams North Alabama like the hills that house the coal mines. And the stray that showed up last week between our trips...after a trip to the vet today checking fo ra microchip and scouring Craigslist and the pound listings...he's now officially ours. The pressing item now (besides putting his rabies tag and collar on) is deciding whether to continue calling him "Little Dog" or give him a real name. And Buster, who is VERY jealous of his new friend, though he does somewhat like having a playmate. And another photo from Alabama...one county away from "home", a site and sound that it SOOO familiar...

The last two weeks have been quite crazy, though not necessarily in a bad way. We had the opportunity to go to Alabama and spend time with family. While there, we visited with family, got to visit a WWII museum (Did you know Alabama was the home of two German POW camps? I didn't until this past year.) with my husband, parents, and aunt, and had a small opportunity to discuss medical issues with my Mom.  There's a strong possibility we'll head back there in the fall (to my parents, not the museum), even if Mom overrides the doctors and says no to surgery.  Watching parents age isn't fun. I briefly flipped through some old pictures one night, and found a picture (which I remember being made) of my Mom and most of her siblings when they were my age. It was kind of strange seeing it. It was like looking at my younger sister and a few cousins dressed in 80's clothes and hairstyles. We made it home, exhausted, to deal with the fact that a strange, starving dog (now a...

today is yard work and laundry and housework and one more quilt square to finish day, so there's not time  to post pictures. But you can imagine: crow scarecrows a tiny dog 1/4 the size of Buster, but full grown, hanging out at our house a small garden (yeah, the one I wasn't going to have) a clean van (on the inside anyway!) a messy quilting room (that one I cleaned out a few weeks ago) and a bricked house across the street Until then, the summer sun is hot and the month is already ticking away! :)