When Devastation Hits

I was told some news this past weekend that was devastating to me.  As it's a family matter I won't discuss it here, but I can tell you I felt like I was sucker punched in the chest.  At times like these my first reaction is at God.  Why did He let the situation happen?  He could have so easily stepped in and changed it, but He let it happen and I get angry.  I want to run from Him and dive into His word at the same time.  I want to find answers that will make me feel better, but I am so angry that I want nothing more to do with Him.  How can a person feel both those emotions at the same time? 


Logically, mentally, intellectually, I know we are a sinful people and we are gonna make mistakes and wrong decisions, but that doesn't make it any easier when devastation happens.  It's the emotions of the heart that don't heal.  Little by little the heart gets wounded and there is just no healing it. 


I believe there are a lot of wounded people walking around.  I'm sure every single person has one battle story they could tell; something so traumatic that happened to them that they are the walking wounded.  That's how I feel...I am the walking wounded. 


How do I pick myself up and just keep going as if I wasn't knocked down to begin with?  How many times in my life do I have to keep doing this? 


It's emotionally hard some days and I just want to stay in bed and not come out of my room.  But that wouldn't be living, would it? 


And as ironic as it sounds, I still want to stand before God one day and hear Him say I'm a good an faithful servant.  But I don't feel that way, at least not today.


And so I wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Another Book Haul, DH, the Dog and snow

DH and I went on another book haul.  There is a organization that sells books to help children in other countries and a couple of times a month they open their warehouse and sell their donated books.  However, I guess they get so many of certain types of books they have carts of free books and that's what these are <-------------; all recipes books.  I got all these books for free!!  I can't wait to go through them and pick out some different ideas and recipes for dinner.  I want to span my horizons! :) 

These are books we paid for, but they were only a $1 a piece.  While I was looking through the craft books a women with two daughters stood next to me and said, 'oh look, here is the book that is on mommy's list.'  I thought, wow, this lady must be really organized to make a list of books she is looking for.  I don't believe I was ever that organized, but maybe if I had been things would have been easier.  Who knows?  There are two things I really enjoy:  1)  going to book sales and 2)  shopping at crafts stores.  But since my crafts room is so packed I can hardly get in it, I have given up on craft stores.  I've decided I needed to weed out the stuff I have now and will go back to crafts only and after my crafts room is to the point I am organized and can actually work in it again. 

Now, about a week ago, when it had snowed, dh was going outside (at night) and when he opened the door the beagle dog bolted out.  If anybody has ever owned a beagle then you know these dogs are notorious for bolting out the door.  And once their nose is on the ground there is no stopping them.  And they aren't too street smart either.  So out she goes running, running, running and it didn't matter how much we yelled or screamed for her, she just thought it was a game.  My neighbors, who were going out to eat, got out of their car to come help catch our dog.  She would run in circles around us and we couldn't catch her.  The only way we got her was by our neighbor getting her dog.  When our dog came over to her dog, my neighbor jumped on our beagle and end of story.  Until last night when dh was putting the leash on beagle and two seconds later he yells in the house that the dog got loose.  Ahhh, now how did that happen again?  I was mad the first time, but I was doubly mad again.  We live on a highway and we've had quite a few pets die on that road and I just didn't want it to happen again.  But we could not catch the dog.  And it was snowing hard last night, too.  I just hoped the dog would not run to the road and that she would tire out and come back home.  I went to bed.  A couple of hours later I got up to look outside and she was on the porch with her tail between her legs.  I guess she realized when I turned off the outside lights and it was dark, wet and cold she didn't think it was fun anymore.  However, she was minus one $20 bling dog tag.  Still can't figure out how that would have come off her collar. 

Dh says we are never getting another hound dog again (this is our second) and I told him, I don't plan on being alive in another 15 years so it doesn't make a difference to me.  (We don't live so long on my mother's side.)

And we are thankful our electricity didn't go off last night.  Usually if it rains around here our electricity goes off.  We had a snowstorm last night and the lights were blinking off and on, but we didn't lose our lights/heat.  Yeah!  I cooked a chicken yesterday, so we can eat for the next few days. 



Book Haul

In the previous post did I mention that dh and I stopped by Ollie's in State College, PA because they have some great prices on books?  We only get to Ollie's once a year, so I usually have bags of books when I leave the store.  The prices are great; anywhere from $1.99 up to $5.99, but most of the books are $2.99-$3.99.  I could not get this many books in the Christian bookstore for the price I paid at Ollie's. 

Yes, I still have books left over from last year's book haul and I'll probably never finish all the reading, but at least I know they are waiting for me to plunge into their pages.  It's funny that I like to read so much because when I was in elementary school I had the worse time reading.  My mom used to sit me at the table and make me read to her.  I hated it.  In my day when we were learning to read the government started a new program called sight reading.  It was the worse thing they could have done to kids.  Instead of learning to sound out words, we were taught to recognize them.  That's the trouble I had.  I could recognize words I knew, but when it came to big words I had no idea how to sound them out because we didn't learn the sounds of letters.  Honestly, when my kids learned read, the program their school had was one of the best I'd seen for sounding out letters.  I wish I had learned that way...who knows how much of a better reader I'd be today.


 



   



Been Out of Town and DH's Knee

Dh and I have been out of town. We are leaders with the Christian Motorcyclists Association and we had our regional meeting this weekend in State College, PA.  The last three years we attended the meeting it had been snowing, but this year it did not, although there was snow on the ground driving the four plus hours getting there. The meeting is always held at the Ramada Inn.



It's always something to look forward to because we get to be with all the leaders from New England to Kentucky and Virginia, all along the east coast.  It's great to fellowship with other Christian who all have the same interests. And thanks to my beautiful and wonderful daughter for staying at the house and taking care of the animals!  I sure love her. <3 

But it was hard on dh because a couple of weeks ago he did something to his knee and is in a lot of pain.  He has this routine, when he gets hurt he refuses to go the doctor (and I've learned to stop nagging him about it because, frankly, I'm tired of nagging him about his health) and then when he finally gets tired of the pain or it's really inconveniencing him, he'll admit he needs 'help'.  Well, that day has arrived and he's decided that he's getting pretty tired of the pain and walking with his cane and not being able to move.  So I have found him an orthopedic doctor to go to, so now all he has to do is call the office and make an appointment. 

And as pathetic as this sounds I still haven't taken down the Christmas tree.  I've never, ever had it up this long, but with dh's knee, it's hard for him to pull out the stuff and take it down, but I guess I'm gonna have to manage it somehow.  Now I know why my mother use only a 2 feet tree when she got older.  Sounds like a great idea from here on out!

Blogs

I have been reading blogs for a few years and it's only been recently that I started one myself.  The reason why I didn't do this sooner was because I was scared to put myself out there.  Stupid...because I'm on facebook, myspace and all anybody has to do is google your name these days and your who life's history comes up.  If somebody was out to get me I'm sure they could find me with a click of a button.  So I put that fear to rest.


I homeschooled my daughter from sixth to eighth grades, then from eleventh and twelfth grades.  I followed homeschool blogs and found other people's life interesting.  It's kinda like taking a ride in the car, exploring new neighborhoods and trying to peek into people's homes and wonder who they were and what kind of lives they lead.  I don't mean it in the criminal sense, just curious about how other people live.  Blogs give that advantage.  Back in the really old days, pioneer times, I'd say, well, maybe even later than that, families used to live together be it in the same old big farm house or on the same farms.  That's how the older people taught the younger ones and how neat to have grandma teach the grandchildren how to garden, can, make yummy food, sew, crochet, knit...I mean, that's what life was like then.  Today, so many families are separated and some in other countries that we just don't have that togetherness anymore.  I find that blogs give a sense of that, we can learn from each other.  It's sorta the peek in the window, sort of thing. 


So, thanks for the blogs.  I really do enjoy them!

Learning Something New Every Day!

I think that should be a resolution to everybody's list.  We should learn at least one new thing a day.  Today I learned how to make and add a header layout to my blog.  It doesn't look exactly straight, but at least I did it!  There is a wonderful tutorial here:  http://blissfullydomestic.com/2010/how-to-make-a-blog-header-for-free 

I have been planning and sorta have set up a blujay.com store and and estsy store.  I wanted to make banners for those stores but it was hard figuring it out, but now I might actually be able to make my online stores look pretty professional...at least for me.  I crocheted some hats and scarves for my stores, but still have not taken the pictures to post or have everything set up.


My daughter modeling one of my hats..she's so funny


I promised myself I wouldn't procrastinate, but I'm doing it already or continuing my bad behavior.  Oh, I want to break this cycle of mine.  Didn't Paul say, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak?"  I totally get it.  One thing about being young is that you feel invincible.  Nothing can happen to you.  Don't know about you but I have jumped off stuff like shed roofs, jumped over creeks, swung on tarzan rope vines in the woods...and even if I got hurt, I just continued gettting up and kept on going.  So when, at what age do we stop doing that?  I mean, when do we stop pursuing the things we want in life?   When did we let physical pain get us down?  Why have we lost that spirit in us that Paul talks about?  When did we allow our bodies to tell us what to do?

Okay, so maybe some of you haven't.  Sprinkle some of that energy dust on me, please.  Or maybe I should let my spirit start directing my life again! 

Happy New Year 2011

It's the beginning of a new year.  A lot of us start out the new year with new goals and resolutions, but really, most of them are left overs from the years gone by.  Sorta like, 'since I didn't get this done last year I'll add it to this year's goals.'  It boggles my mind at how fast the years are going by and I don't feel like I've accomplished anything worth anything.  It not used to be that way.  I think I'm in a slump.  We stayed home this new year's as we've done so many times in the past.  Our daughter came to ring in the new year with us. 

We watched a couple of episodes of Disappeared.  That's a whole other discussion..how so many people just have disappeared.  By the time the show was over we had a minute to spare and changed the channel to Dick Clark's Rockin Eve.  So I got out the sparkling grape juice:

I usually take a picture of the family in front of the tv when the ball comes down in Times Square, but I didn't time it right and I got the daughter and husband in front of the tv with a kissing couple.  So I fixed that with this picture:

I like this picture better!  It's more festive, I think.  Oh well, our first 2011 memory.  And our daughter took a shot of her parents...

And this is a picture of Times Square.  Happy New Year to You and Yours!

Christmas 2010, Animals Spayed, finances

Christmas sure did come and go fast!  We work so hard towards getting everything right and then, boom, within minutes it's over and done with.  Then it's on to the next holiday, preparations, then boom, that's over and done with, too.  As a kid, it just seemed so long before Christmas day would arrive and the excitment and anticipation was so much fun.  But, I suppose, it's only as fun as you make it, right? 

Our Christmas was an itty, bitty Christmas.  I really thought the kids would complain as they are used to getting lots of goods, but we all are feeling the recession or whatever you want to call our financial state.  And so we all did itty bitty, but it was just fine.  We got what we asked for and a little bit more and we weren't so overwhelmed with 'where do I put this' syndrome.

I had bought a spiral ham and rolls, with potato salad and other stuff.  That was our Christmas dinner...just easy.  It was really laid back. 

So now that brings me to the New Year.  Our son has to work (he's a police officer) so he probably won't be here to help us ring in the New Year.  I think I mentioned that last year my daughter went on a ride along with him last New Year's Eve so that was the first time we weren't together to ring in the "new year."

Well, as I'm trying to adjust to the empty nest, I try not to hang onto the kids, either.  It's hard, though.  But I'm realizing that sometimes, they throw me a bone and actually want to call me or visit me.  I'm not saying we aren't a close family, just that they are learning to live their lives now as I'm adjusting to living mine without children under my wing, young or older.   It's an adjustment, just like it was when I brought them home as a newborn. 

During inbetween preparing and celebrating we had our dog spayed.  She still have stitches and goes back to the vets in a week.  One of our 10 cats had pyrometra (uterine infection) which wouldn't clear up.  I had been treating her for it, but really she needed to be spayed, but the doctors I had been taking her to said she need the infection to be gone before they would spay her because if the uterus broke open and all that infection went into her system she might die.  So, we treated her but the infection just kept getting worse and worse.  Finally, I took her to another vet who said the uterus needed to come out and that there was not way the infection would clear up because it was very bad.  When we picked Velvet up after surgery, the vet showed me her uterus and they said it was the biggest and most infected uterus  they had ever seen.  She saved it so we could see and I just couldn't believe my little cat was not sicker than she was.  A vet tech that was helping in surgery said she actually stepped back when she saw the uterus and hit her head because she was expecting to see a small infection and it turned out that they had to cut most of my cat's stomach to get the uterus out.  It was bigger than my cat.  I'm so thankful to get this done and it was just a weight off my shoulders, as I wanted to help my cat, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere until this vet helped me.  For that I'm grateful.

I also worked on our checking account as it's been messed up for years.  It's hard knowing how much money you have when you don't know how much money you have.  LOL....so, I finally got the checkbook balanced!  Yea.  I was so happy. 

My next project is creating a household budget and getting our insurance and tax papers straight.  I was beginning to work on that when husband came home from work and daughter called.  We agreed to meet at Chick-fil-a for dinner.  Love spending time with my kids!

Now, I'll probably go watch some tv, read and think about working on the budget tomorrow. 

On my Quest to Cook More at Home---

On my quest to cook more at home I made a pot of chilli today.  I can still remember the day, a long time ago, when my mom stood in my kitchen and showed me how to make chilli.  I was so impressed at how she just browned the ground beef, added onions, showed me how many cans of stuff to add.  She told me to get the one pot cooking while I was browning the beef and onions.  I don't know why.  I suppose that's the way she always made it, so who was I to question her? LOL  Then I add chilli powder to taste.  I usually serve chilli with saltine crackers, but I looked in my cabinet and I don't have any!  So I gotta come up with a plan b.  I don't know what it is yet.  Now that I think about it, I have Ritz crackers; that might have to do.  I thought about cornbread, but I don't have any of that either!  Stocking the pantry is gonna have to be another thing to keep up with in the new year. 

I went to the store last night to get all the Christmas dinner stuff.  We just have ham sandwiches, potato salad, chips, etc.  Nothing fancy.  Again, that's my mom's tradition.  I don't know how or when she started it; I don't remember my grandmother doing that.  I remember always big meals at grandmas, never sandwiches, so I guess maybe mom wanted to make things easy on herself.  That's okay. 

This will be the first year my kids won't be here sleeping on Christmas Eve.  Our son has lived in our basement and our daughter would usually come over Christmas Eve to spend the night, but this year she is sleeping at her brothers (he moved out in May) which is okay.  They will be coming Christmas morning.  Last New Year's Eve was the first time I didn't have my kids home.  Our son, who is a police officer had to go to work and he took his sister on a ride along with him.  Just as the new year was ringing in our daughter called to say they were on their way to the hospital to check out a dead body.  Crazy.  So that's how my kids rung in the new year.  And it was the first time husband and I had been alone for New Year's in over 30 years.  Awkward is a good word to describe how it felt.  A mother duck lost with her ducklings.

I don't care how old I get or my children get they are my children, my babies and I will always feel that way about them.  I will always see the little boy and little girl in them.  Some days I just want to squeeze them and pick them up like I did when they were small enough to do that and just show them how much I love them, but they really aren't into all that kind of love anymore.  They allow me to hug them and give them a kiss, but they have outgrown the playfulness of all that tickling and stuff.  *sigh*

The dog went to be spayed today and the cat is having female problems and she had to go to the vets.  She is scheduled to be spayed next Wednesday.  I wish I was rich. 

I keep putting off cleaning the house.  I don't know why.  I never used to be this way.  The husband used to have a saying, 'just do it' and we were good about getting our chores done, but honestly as we've gotten older we just don't commit to chores like we should.  I believe I totally understand older people now that I've become one myself!

Now I need to go stir my chilli.  Until next time..