gratitude

Your cleansed and grateful life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done.
Matthew 8:3


Counting these blessings over the past days...

The last of the plumeria blooming beautifully...(before they head off to their winter home in my mother-in-law's spare shower.)

three (!!!) lemons on the lemon tree...

a man-child who still has some boy in him...(I came down to breakfast to find dragons battling it out on the counter.)

Possibly the last blooms from the tropical garden Josh put in this summer. (since we are not tropical climate dwellers, most of the garden will be dug up to be replanted next spring.)

freshly laundered quilts and blankets as we prepare for cooler fall nights...

Won't you consider joining the gratitude community and offer thanks for your daily blessings?

My eyes are tired.

It's amazing how old I can feel on very little sleep.

The good news is that the Boy seems to be back to normal.

So we'll pack up our heavy duty industrial strength Lysol for another day.

And after fixing dinner, cleaning up from dinner, heading to the library, then my mother-in-law's and my mom's, heading back home, washing a load of towels, and feeding some dogs, perhaps I'll head off to bed.

Assuming my brain doesn't turn to pudding first.

what I did on my spring break...

1. I worked the first two days.

2. Cleaned out and up the "tornado" closet.

3. Cleaned out underneath the downstairs bathroom sink. Ick.

4. Took five (out of 81) tropical plants outside. (warm weather)

5. Brought five (out of 81) tropical plants back inside. (frost) Repeated later in the week. Brought back in on Sunday because it might SNOW.

6. Set some new boundaries for a seventeen year old boy.

7. Bought 25 hurricane glass pieces, 4 giant crystal goblet thingies and 2 crystal vases for some one's wedding.

8. Found storage for 25 hurricane glasses, 4 giant crystal goblet thingies and 2 crystal vases so they don't get broken before January.

9. Got unhappy news from the doctor.

10. Cooked. Cleaned. Rinse and repeat.

11. Considered taking the dog for a walk. It's a good thing the dog cannot read minds. He might have been disappointed.

12. Read six books.

13. Took books to the used book store so they could be sold. Bought more books thereby negating any space or monetary gains.

14. Got a nudge from God, made a decision.

15. Cleaned over, under and in the fridge.

16. Pondered the Dairy Queen Truffle Blizzard. I'm happy to report that my thighs and I resisted. So far.

17. Washed every dish in the state of Kentucky. Or at least it felt that way. Oh, what is that I see? More dishes? Yippee!

18. Read my Bible and thought about the fate of the Israelites. Wondered if I remind God of the Israelites.

19. Ran errands with my daughter.

20. Went out to eat with my husband.

21. Put some things on Craig's list for my brother-in-law. Anybody know anyone looking for an antique surrey?

22. Got ready to go back to work. (how quickly the days pass. In the beginning I tend to procrastinate, thinking I have so much time. Then, suddenly, it's Monday morning. Oops.)

what I wouldn't give for a bowl of oatmeal...

I feel I have been most neglectful of my blog lately. It's not that there hasn't been anything going on in my life. It's not even that there has been too much going on. There's been the normal amount of ridiculousness, stress, excitement, drama and trauma. I guess it's more a matter of not being a very good steward of my time. (It's certainly not that I have been too busy to write because I have cleaned my house from top to bottom, organized everything I own into little plastic drawers, lost fifty pounds, found a cure for the common cold and knitted an entire wardrobe out of recycled plastic bags. Although I did wear a dress out of a garbage bag once. But that's another story.)

Anyway, I decided to have a totally random post, filled with totally random things...if I can think of anything.

1. It is COLD! It has been COLD. I think it plans on being COLD until Derby day. Which, for the record, I find totally unacceptable.

2. Basset hounds have very COLD noses when it's COLD. And they like to stick them in very inconvenient places.

3. We are being visited by a "lesser poobah" at work today. (my bosses boss as opposed to my bosses bosses bosses boss.)

4. If you don't fill a Yorkie's food bowl when HE wants you too, he will shoot the bowl across the hardwood floor with his paw like a professional hockey player hitting a hockey puck. (They seem like such small dogs. Don't let the size fool you. They are very demanding creatures.)

5. Life rule number 6,782: Never leave parrotlet food on a table where larger dogs can see it. Because the larger dog will snatch it off the table and run upstairs with it. He will then proceed to shred the bag and eat as much of the seed as he can get into his big stupid mouth, leaving behind little bitty pieces of plastic as evidence of his crime.

6. The aforementioned rule is somewhat similar to rule number 5,496 which says not to leave bowls filled with Christmas candy on anything lower than the fourth shelf of a book case. Because everything else is just about chin level for the same stupid dog.

7. Yorkies can also flip their dog food bowls upside down so that they look like they are playing the shell game on the Price is Right. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't want any of the prizes that they might choose to leave, though.

8. Dirty dishes seem to be multiplying like bunnies in my kitchen sink. It's somewhat reminiscent of Christmas time except there are no cookies or pies or cake or any other goodies to compensate for their presence.

9. This has not kept me from developing my winter layer of fat though. You'll be happy to know that once again I am storing up enough blubber to keep myself (and a small village in Outer Mongolia) warm.

10. Which is a darn good thing, because it's COLD outside!

Believe it or not, this is a picture of a real dog. (I know it looks like a fuzzy slipper.) This is Ivan the grumpy Yorkie.

Do you ever wonder...

what I do all day? Probably not. However, since I am sort of trying to participate in the Project 365 thing, I feel it necessary to take random pictures of things to remind me (and you) of my year. So....

(this is the part where I feel I must confess that my life is not terribly exciting. I don't ride camels, I don't make my own soap, I don't sing opera, I don't travel to exotic locations or make homemade jam. And I'm pretty happy that I don't do most of those things. I just do my ordinary everyday thing.)

Now that my confession is out of the way...I thought I'd share another teeny tiny bit of my life with you. (because I haven't shared enough.) Without further ado...

This is my desk. At work. I am not responsible for most of the things that show up on it. (If you look closely, you will find some decapitated willow tree people and other various and assorted things that no one has any idea what to do with). And while I am confessing, I must confess that I cleaned it up a bit before I took this picture. Sometimes you can't even see the desk top. The binder has the information about the upcoming VBS workshop I am planning. (remember last year?) The red folder contains all the schedule requests for February. (something else I was supposed to finish already. sigh.) I'm sure the rest of the stuff belongs to Mary Jane. I think she put it all there when I wasn't looking so her desk would look clean instead.

I hope you are impressed with this tiny glimpse into my world. I promise we will not be visiting the litter box next. Probably.

I must confess...

Some mornings I just don't want to go to work. For whatever reason, I'd rather stay in bed. Or at least stay home. This morning was one of those mornings. Kind of grey outside with me kind of grumpy inside. When I pulled into the parking lot at work, however, this was waiting for me...

It's like God painted the sunrise just for me. Almost like He was tapping me on the shoulder, wanting me to see what a glorious day He created.

I'm glad He got my attention. I would have hated to miss it!

because we are family...

Once a year the LifeWay girls (employees, wives, daughters) get together for an evening meal at the Melting Pot. (It used to be our Christmas celebration but we decided to move it to January this year.) We enjoy each others company outside of work (most of us have worked together so long that we are more like sisters than fellow associates)and this gives us uninterrupted time to hang out and eat. because eating is good.

We go to the Melting Pot because they serve us cheese and chocolate. And that makes us happy!

Here are Dusti, Diana and Amanda enjoying a moment of calm before the food arrives. (We can be a rather rowdy bunch.) Diana just returned from Israel. For some reason, she (and her seminary class) thought this would be a good time to visit. We are grateful and thankful that she made it back safely.

Then we have Judy, Helen, Mary Jane and Karrie. I don't get to work with Karrie very often because she has a real job outside of LifeWay. (She only works a few hours a week.) Judy is my manager's wife. Helen and I will be doing the Esther bible study with her starting on Tuesday. For some reason I missed taking a picture of Katie B and Laura. But trust me, they were there.

What's fondue without "flambe"? Our every handy fondue maker, Amir, made such lovely, tall colorful flames for us. This was a bananas foster fondue. I hear it was delicious. (I skipped it for some reason.) I know it smelled like cinnamon. We also had the chocolate and peanut butter fondue. Yum! (next year we are going to bring our own bananas so that we will have extra dippers. Or we'll bring a tupperware container so we can take home the leftovers. Anyhow, a lovely time was had by all. (and how could it not have been a lovely time? There was cheese...there was chocolate...there was cheesecake for the chocolate...)

For the past few years, the men have been mumbling about equal time but we have held firm and stuck to just the girls. So this year they requested time off for Man Night. That will take place this Thursday. They are having pizza and showing Willow. I love Willow and am somewhat envious. But not enough to give up cheese and chocolate. Besides, we have our own copy of Willow. So maybe I'll watch it tonight.

I hope your Saturday was fantastic!

when life gives you lemons...

Rejoice!

We have a Meyer's lemon tree. Just one. And I absolutely adore it. There is nothing sweeter than the smell of lemon blossoms. (and nothing pricklier than lemon thorns.) Anyhow, each year, our little lemon tree presents us with one lemon. Just one. Perhaps it feels that if it were to gift us with multiple lemons we would not appreciate it as much. Regardless, there is much hoopla surrounding the "gathering of the lemon." Once the lemon is gathered, there is considerable discussion as to how to use the lemon. Last year, we celebrated the gathering of the lemon by making lemon cookies. Oh my, they were delightful. And inhaled within a matter of hours.

This year we made these. (and I use the term "we" very loosely.)

Lemon squares! (I suspect these will be gone soon as well.)

It's an amazing thing to take something so bitter and make a deliciously sweet delicacy out of it. Perhaps there's a life lesson in there somewhere...

seven oh two

That's what time it was this morning when I realized that I was not working the closing shift today. Instead, I was supposed to be at work at 8 a.m. Sigh. (I had planned to be lazy this morning. I guess I can be lazy another day. I'm good at lazy.)

Anyway, I hope your day isn't quite as adrenaline filled as mine has been so far!

choices...

sometimes I wonder if we need to go back to kindergarten and work on our shapes since some of us seem to struggle with putting the right shaped silverware in the correct spot in the silverware drawer.

but then I wonder if I should just be thankful that someone (besides me) emptied the dishwasher.

Ivan the terrible

Ivan is our oldest dog. He is one of two Yorkies that lives here and he will be eleven in July. I have noticed that the older he gets, the more he grumbles and complains. (Not unlike other people I know) He is very possessive and protective. Everything in the house that he wants, belongs to him.

Bring in a new bag of dog food and set it down? It belongs to him.

Any one of the five dog food bowls? They all belong to him.

People? His.

Toys? His.

He continually takes on the bigger dogs for anything he feels they are doing wrong. (Although I suspect they see him as some kind of squeak toy that they can play with.)

Ivan also likes to protect me from things that he thinks might want to harm me. If my in-laws come over? Bark bark bark. Never mind the fact that he has seen them thousands of times and they have yet to kidnap, maim or otherwise harm me.

Prince Charming drops by? Bark bark bark.

Heaven help the mailman when he drops off a package. You'd think it was Satan himself, ringing my doorbell.

This morning at about 3 am, Ivan decided that I needed protecting again.

From the thunder.

Sigh.

Rumble, rumble rumble. Bark, bark bark.

Can I just say that it thundered for about two hours? Bark, bark, bark.

I'll be picking up a very LARGE Mountain Dew on my way to work this morning. And my little Yorkie? I'm sure he'll be sleeping the day away. After all, he was up all night protecting his mommy from the big bad thunder. That way he'll be nice and rested in case it returns again tonight.

Survival

We have survived.

Forty slices of pizza, one sheet cake, two tubs of ice cream, six bags of chips, an order of cheese bread, two pounds of peanut m&m's, three dozen donuts, and three dozen donut holes later. I am amazed at how much sixteen year old boys can eat.

Anyway, The Boy is sleeping it off and we are trying to restore order to the rest of the house. And dh seems to have picked up the only version of the flu that had not yet infiltrated our house. It's a good thing that I bought a new "industrial" sized can of lysol. I am so ready for spring! Or the end of cold and flu season. Or both.

Only three more days left in Jona-palooza. The festivities are beginning to wind down. Actually, the only other planned event is on the actual day of his birth, which would be Wednesday. I know, you are thinking, "hasn't that boy had his birthday yet?!?" I told you, he believes that it should be a week long celebration and somehow he has convinced us of the same thing. Oh well, life will get back to normal soon. No, wait, The Boy will be getting his permit and learning how to drive. Sigh. I think I will have to find a new normal.

We survived the snow. Not that there was a lot of it but it snuck in a couple of hours earlier than expected, causing traffic snarls and school delays. Unfortunately for The Boy, he was home sick so he totally wasted a snow day. (This theory makes complete sense to him but to me, a day off is a day off. After all, he wouldn't have gone to school if everyone else had...) Regardless, with the unexpected weather, we (dh and I) dashed out the door this morning with the house "undone." So there are quite a few tasks left to be taken care of this evening. However, this was the sight that greeted our eyes.

In direct contrast to the weather, we worked on decorating the vacation bible school area of the store today. This year's theme is "Outrigger Island" which is very tropical. So MJ and I spent a good portion of the day hanging grass skirts, putting up ocean backdrops and "sandy beaches", making a "flip flop" trail down the aisle, and making sea turtles. No snow in sight. We enjoyed ourselves. Especially the sea turtle "creating". The craft is actually designed for 3 to 5 year olds so you can imagine that MJ and I had a little trouble with it. Spreading glue on things that weren't supposed to be glued, feet that weren't even and stuff like that. Maybe we need to go back to taking arts and crafts classes. Gluing 101 or something. It's days like this that make work fun. (And I didn't even tell you about the giant hair bow I made for me to wear out of leftover Hawaiian print tablecloth plastic. And I shamelessly wore it for about thirty minutes. Got some real strange looks too. MJ made a sash out of her material. I still think they should be happy that we didn't put on grass skirts!) I think we made the most out of our full moon day. And now it's off to do up the undone. Never a dull moment around here.

Adventures and Anniversaries

My husband likes to go to the flea market. He likes to wander up and down the aisles and see what people put out for sale. He normally doesn't buy anything, but he likes to look. My son likes to go to the flea market. He likes to look for used video games at bargain basement prices. I don't particularly like going to the flea market but I go sometimes to spend time with my husband and son. I like to look at the puppies (two of our five current dogs are "flea market finds".) and parrots (yes, there really is a lady who sells parrots at the flea market. We have not bought parrots from her but she has some mighty nice african greys.). There was the usual assortment of Pekingese, doberman, rat terrier, and Chihuahua (can you believe I know how to spell that from watching Les Nesman on WKRP in Cincinnati?) puppies. They were all adorable but I do not need another puppy. Elwood the amazing Basset Hound appears to be stuck in puppyhood so no more puppies for me. But then it happened. We rounded the corner and there they were. Ferrets! Three of them. They were blonde (like me), fuzzy (not so much like me...I hope), cute and curious. We had a wonderful time "chatting". And I told dh, "this is what I want for our anniversary." Fortunately, I don't think he believed me. Because we didn't come home with a ferret. Which is probably a good thing. Because I don't think the dogs would like one. Or maybe they would like one too much. (Visions of the dogs passing around a dead possum at Cinderella's eighteenth birthday party float through my mind. That was not a fun afternoon. At least not for the people. The dogs seemed to enjoy passing the possum around.)

We went to the Saturday service at church tonight. I think I mentioned that Max Lucado was preaching this evening and tomorrow. He did an amazing job preaching John 3:16. What was even more amazing to me was that he had preached his brother's funeral this morning before flying here for the service tonight. So if you have a moment and want to offer up a prayer for his brother's family, I'm sure it would be appreciated.

This magic moment...

I told MJ today that I was waiting for the "magic moment". The morning that I wake up and feel like taking on the world. Or at least like getting out of bed, doing my morning stuff and heading off to work for a full day of work. And now the week has ended and I am still "momentless." But there's always tomorrow. Not that I am going to work tomorrow. But I suppose the magic moment could come any day now.

In the mean time, we have a normal weekend planned around here. Grocery shopping, laundry, ironing, nagging The Boy about the state of his room, looking for new curtains for the living room, staying warm. It's supposed to be really cold this weekend. I think I might want to just stay in and huddle under the covers. But our cupboards are bare and the natives want food. So someone will have to venture out at some point to restock the pantry.

I spoke to my SIL this evening about our vacation plans. I have the opportunity to work the Deeper Still event in Atlanta this summer and my SIL is going to work it as well. After we finish up there, we will be heading to the beach! I honestly can't think of a better combination. Priscilla, Beth and Kay and then the ocean! Some of my favorite stuff. (And my SIL isn't too bad either.) We're talking about visiting some lighthouses as well. If I had the money (and less creaky bones) I'd buy a lighthouse and make it our home. I love lighthouses. I think I'd want one in Maine or somewhere that had fierce winter storms so I could watch the winter seas rush up against the rocks. I guess it would probably be really cold though. And dh would just as soon have a lighthouse in Hawaii. Which is fine too but I don't think they have fierce winter storms. We'll have to check that out the next time we go. Which will probably be in about four years. For that magical twenty-fifth anniversary. Thirty will be the trip. To Italy. So I have nine years to learn Italian.

I suppose I've rambled enough. It's probably time to move on to more productive things. Like requesting library books. Or cleaning the kitchen. Enjoy the evening!

It must be hormones...

because I spent yesterday feeling extremely cranky at anything that moved (and eating everything that wasn't tied down). I appear to be much better today. I'm sure you heard the collective sigh of relief from our part of the nation.

We had snow this morning! It was pretty and brief. Since we had already had our traditional "snow shock" earlier this week, there were only a few accidents. And the snow was gone by noon. I did take a couple of pictures of it as I was leaving the house. I'll try to post them later.

The Boy and Cinderella are both waiting for the computer so I guess I'd better finish up. Wouldn't want to stand in the way of another exciting entry in The Boy's spanish blog. Nor am I going to lose my temper over the crack that Cinderella just made. Because my hormonal moment is over. Over. I promise.

It's Saturday!

Which means a festive, fun filled day around our house. We (dh and I) are getting ready to head out to the grocery. I love it when he goes shopping with me. It can be fun! From there we will pop into the library to check on Cinderella and drop off some books. Maybe they will have a best-seller I am looking for. I don't have any particular one in mind but I am always on the lookout for a good book. Then it's back home to plow through the laundry and ironing. We're cleaning parrot cages today too. There's a ball game on this afternoon. We would normally be excited about watching it, but we are having a Horrible season so most games are painful to watch. But a true fan watches during the good and the bad. Besides, we might have a great game. So what if Vandy is unbeaten. Some body's gotta win. Might as well be us, right? I think it will probably be a quiet evening. We have a DVD from netflix to watch and are making homemade pizza. (No sauce for The Boy.)

Speaking of The Boy, he seems to be doing some better. He made a conscious effort to eat some yesterday and he ate some breakfast. We are planning on tempting him with his favorite food for lunch. Hopefully, knowing he can stay home if he feels sick will prompt him into eating. The mind is a tricky thing and it's hard to battle something that is in your head. But I do appreciate your prayers.

Well, we are a' Wal-marting so I'd better go. Happy Saturday to you!