Random Musings

My agenda for this week: cleaning house One unusual event: neighbors (yes! we actually have some now!) are coming over for supper Friday Good news: one of those things I should have said "No" to but didn't was cancelled. :) Bad news: I'm having neck/shoulder problems again Garden update: harvested first onions yesterday; chickens (two in particular) are flying over the fence and digging up plants...grr!! Chicken update: had our first snake of the year in the pen last week; biddies are all feathered and should be ready to mix with the adults by the end of next month What I'm reading: Counter Culture and Secret Missions of the Civil War Quilt projects:   hahahaha...whatever I pick up at the moment. There's at least four projects out on my sewing/cutting tables at the moment.

Last night neighboring property owners attended a meeting about the new elementary school. Construction starts February 2016 and hopefully ends April 2017. If designated year-round, school would start July 2017. If traditional, then it would start August 2017. When will the road be paved? Probably after construction. :/  Here's the sketch of the school (currently being built in Raleigh). Our location would have it flipped the other direction. The large section is three stories, the school should hold 800 students, and there is nowhere on the site plan for mobile units to go.  This is the property layout. Top left sketch area is the bus parking site which will also connect to the future middle school. Road at the bottom of the page is the driving entrance to the school, and is a few feet from our driveway. See the dotted line along the bottom of the green (near the bottom of the page)?  That's where our property line is...the shrub/tree line, the edge of our...

As a child I was always mesmerized by hour glasses (and always puzzled by how they could measure a minute but were still called hour glasses). Something about watching the sand drop, sometimes rushing through as if it couldn't move fast enough, and others where you felt you could almost count each grain as it dropped. Sounds like life, doesn't it? Spring time for me means being outdoor more than I normally am. (ie, I actually breathe more outdoor air than feeding the animals, cleaning out the chicken pen, and walking to my car)  There's yardwork, as in cutting grass, trimwork (weedeating, pulling weeds, cleaning the porches and trimming shrubs...all of which I hate and doesn't get done that often), and gardening. This week I took on a task that needed to be done (and for the record, is still not finished). I didn't prune the grapevines this winter. And this is what they looked like. And because they had grown up/down so much, it was next to impossible to cut...

Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. ~ Ephesians 4:32 (KJV) I think that was one of the first verses I learned as a child. It was one I heard often anyway. Coming from Mom it was usually shortened to "Be kind."  And the crazy thing, I find as an adult it's one of those passages that is so simple but so hard to live out. That person who always rubs me the wrong way?  Kindness and tenderness would look at their crazy work schedule, their health issues, the family stuff they're facing. Kindness and tenderness wouldn't focus on me and my thoughts about them, but that person and their needs. Kindness and tenderness would listen and not paste on the fake smile. Forgiving...on behalf of someone else and when it's not deserved. Forgiveness is one thing. It can be a struggle even when someone apologizes and asks for it.  But that's not a condition here.  This forgiveness is exten...

I spent most of the day (6:15am-5:00pm) with Bobby's cousin at various places of Chapel Hill. Imaging Center, breakfast at a really cool place called The Eggs and I, UNC Neurosciences Center, and home. And despite waiting and waiting and waiting for the doctor as you are prone to do at hospitals, I didn't get any reading done, at all. Strangely, I'm actually okay with that. Bobby's cousin is a little person, a dwarf. He's four feet four inches tall. His wife is even shorter. Being with them makes me realize just how much I take for granted. Something as simple as getting in and out of a car is a huge ordeal for them. Usually I take them to appointments, but I don't go in to the doctor with them. Today they asked me to, which took me by surprise a little. His upcoming surgery, while serious, is not life threatening. To hear his wife tell it, you'd think they were going to be moving parts of his brain. (They will have to remove a small section of his skull.)...

Selfishness is one of those sins I think everyone struggles with greatly, though we seldom recognize it. The last few years, I've noticed it more. Sometimes the battle is H A R D and other times, not so much (and that very well could be because I'm ignorant of it). I am very selfish with my time. I am very blessed in that I do not have to work outside the home. Before we were married, Bobby and I looked at all our options, and decided that for us and our situation, it would be best if I were his caregiver. And for this season of our lives, that is still the case. The first year of our marriage, against his advice but with his blessing, I worked part-time, about 30 hours a week. And it was rough. When my contract ended at the end of the school year, I didn't renew it.  Five years later I went back to school as a student, and then resumed working part-time again. It started out as 20 hours, which was manageable, then increased to 25. I found myself frustrated and out of wh...

Last night while leaving a restaurant (aka. fast food place), we saw a cat we hadn't seen before. Let's just say it could be the basis for that cheer that was so popular in middle school (U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you ugly, hey, hey, you ugly - and for the record, our Christian school cheerleading squad was not allowed to perform it....much to our dismay). I pointed the cat out to my husband, who responded as I thought he would - " I don't know why so many people find those cats ugly." Over the years I've learned that any animal that I find he cute he'll shrug his shoulders over, and any animal that makes me want to cringe inside, he finds very adorable. I'm not sure what that says about my appearance or our relationship, but it's the way it is. Regardless, during the course of the conversation, I referred to the cat as a "he", only to be corrected by my farmer-man husband. Evidently, male cats are never tri-colored; only femal...

First, the quilt page has been updated (I posted the final, quilted version of my third quilt of valour). This last week I read the book Growing Up bin Laden by Osama bin Laden's first wife and fourth son. It was heart-wrenching, sad, and enlightening, all at the same time.  But so far, every book I've ever read about the middle east that involve women in the book, except one, have left me feeling overwhelmed and a little flabbergasted that God chose me to be born to American parents. I do not consider myself a feminist, though the older I get the more I see many Christian males as male chauvinists. For example, a Christian group I know recently posted that they need assistance moving things. They specifically requested men to come move furniture and dismantle desk units, and for women to come pack up the office supplies. I do understand that most women do not enjoy lifting heavy objects and that men are typically stronger. But it also made me laugh. a little.  My roommate...

Last week we had the opportunity to visit a little bit of the towns of Washington and Bath, NC.  Due to uncontrollable circumstances, we didn't do much of the historic walking tour in Washington, but we did get to see the original church (and maybe one of the oldest in NC) in Bath. It's still being used as an Episcopal church, and the original building has not had any additions, though there are buildings around it that belong to the church. The church is open for tours (which means you walk in and look around). It was fascinating. These pew cushions reminded me of the church I grew up in. One long red cushion that runs the length of the entire pew, and is not attached. I've only seen glass bookcases in old churches. Here it was used to store Bibles and hymnbooks. Beside, hanging off the window sill, was a basket holding coloring books and crayons for kids. The view from the front of the church. The original building of New Bethel Baptist Church here in Garn...

Last year, I had the crazy idea that if I took apart the panels on the dog's pen, I could enlarge his lockdown area by connecting the panels to the end of ramp and the side of the porch steps. It worked great for several months. Then we had a young man from church come over and help out with some yardwork. Buster could not stand it that Bobby and someone else were within his sight, and he couldn't be there. So this is what he did:  He chewed off the lattice work under bobby's ramp. In the beginning, it looked more like one of those cartoon things where a person bursts through the wall, but he's chewed off most of the edged corners. I was thinking I would replace that panel this year, but he and Little Dog use that as a shortcut and an area for playing, so I've just left it. It also meant his 10x20 play area when he's locked up got reduced back to 10x10. I was pleased with how plants we've planted, both around the house and in the garden, were blooming....