Random Musings

There was a break in the weather Saturday so I started a project I had wanted to do most of all last year. So here's phase one: pulling up the bricks bordering my flower garden. Half of them had sunk fairly deep into the ground. And phase two, which I started Saturday and finished today, was digging up what was left of my old flower bulbs. And because I never totally do things in order, I started moving stones from behind the shed and filling in the brick holes before I finished digging up the bulbs. So phase 3, putting up the stones, was mostly completed today. So now we're heading to Home Depot to get one bag of cement and several bags of gardening soil, which I can hopefully put out tomorrow and plant the bulbs before the cold weather hits tomorrow night.

I'm simply making an extended list, as I sometimes look back at posts just to see what is/was happening in life at certain times: - government shut down (federally) is now extending longer than anyone dreamed possible. A young man (husband and father) that we watched grow up is being impacted. His widowed Mom is sharing what limited resources she has in hopes they can get by without going under. It makes me mad. - sat in on traffic court at Johnston county with a young friend. Thankful and grateful for an assistant DA who truly cares about people and is hopefully lighting a fire under some people to do what should have been done 5 years ago. I'm still flabbergasted at the number of people who were there with serious traffic citations. - The people of New York have stooped to a low I never dreamed possible with their new law allowing late term abortion...so late that it can even happen on the baby's due date. May God have mercy. - I feel as if insurance and medical t...

This morning we listened to part of the Interfaith Prayer Breakfast in Raleigh that is held every year on Martin Luther King Jr Day. David Crabtree was one of the speakers that we heard, and I appreciated some of the personal recollections that he had to share that explained some of his views and motives in his journalistic reporting.  One of the King quotes he stated, and I've seen many times since on Facebook, is this: Overall, it's a great quote. But when I started thinking about the daily things facing our society (Crabtree mentioned several, especially homelessness), I realized that the very terms justice and injustice are vague.  I mentioned some of my thoughts to Bobby, and he agreed that our very views of justice and injustice are largely determined by the framework with which we view society. For example: immigration. If I showed this saying to different friends and asked them how it applied to immigration in America, I would get the some of the following response...

Today during a quilt sew-in I happened to overhear part of a conversation happening at a nearby table. It totally caught me off guard. Both are very sweet and caring ladies. One of them is a widow who talks ALL.THE.TIME. Some of her stories are interesting. She was telling about a trip somewhere in England, and on the mantel in the countryside house was a cross-stitch hanging saying "God hears everything you say."  They were a bit shocked by that, saying how austere that was, and how it must have been an attempt to teach a child not to swear. Then one of the ladies (who is English) made the comment and said "Hmm. They must have been Baptists." Are Baptists the only ones who believe that God is omniscient? Are we the only ones who believe that when God's word speaks about the tongue and our words, it actually means what it says? I just can't fathom the mindset of believing that your God or deity is not powerful enough to know what you speak or think. What...

This morning some of Bobby's  great nieces and nephews stopped by for a few minutes. They immediately headed to the toy room and were quite  baffled when they encountered this:  I find it funny that they went through the empty living room and didn't notice anything amiss.  Two friends came over last night and put the bed back together. It took us over an hour to get it filled, but we we able to sleep in it last night. After 8 nights of getting up every 2 hrs, it was amazingly wonderful to sleep through most of the night. Since everything was mostly packed and or in different locations, (and I was exhausted), it took forever to get Bobby ready Sunday morning. By the time he left for church, I sat down to just rest a few minutes before I started washing clothes and unpacking our suitcases. When I went out to the car for the last bag, I noticed this:  Our birds weren't upright nor running around the pen. Sometime during the night we had a slaughter. ...

After 2 weeks of slowly cleaning, sorting, and packing 3 rooms, we had 2 friends from church come and help us move furniture Saturday morning. And by the time it was done, I was reminded of why we're doing this. I spent Sunday afternoon packing and emptying the closet floors. This morning we had to deal with a personal issue, and in the meantime we chose the stain colors and have evacuated until we return briefly to tend to animals and such. Discoloration from my last stain in the study. You can see where a certain set of wheels has traveled quite a bit the last 19 years. They'll be replacing at least 2 boards in the bedroom. About 16 years ago I goofed when treating the batteries to Bobby's chair and we had an acid spill about the size of a quarter. A few years later someone wanted to be helpful while Bobby was in the hospital and had our house cleaned without  consulting us. They mopped the spot, and in the process spread the acid, burning 4 boards. Thankful...