"100" -- Garden Patch

These are the five veggies I planted in my tiny little space on the sunny side of the garage.

10. CANTALOUPE










11. CUCUMBER



I have a hard time telling cucumber and cantaloupe apart. The seeds are nearly identical. The vines are quite similar. But I know which is which right now (before the fruit begins to be produced) because I planted the seeds from little baggies that had pictures on them.






12. There's something I just love about the smell of a TOMATO vine.










13. This LETTUCE is "black-seeded Simpson" which I know because I saw the seed packet. On the other hand, I've planted this enough times, and seen other kinds of lettuce, that maybe, just maybe, I'd be able to ID the particular kind of lettuce if I saw it elsewhere (but I'm not counting on it).







14. Cabbage leaves with a knobby base of the stem = KOHLRABI. The earwigs have been at my lettuce and kohlrabi.

Warm

Philip went out back to haul some dirt this morning and came in feeling a mite hot. I noticed yesterday that the deck seems like an oven on hot days, blowing hot air in through the window of the breakfast nook. (That aspect of the deck might be nice in March or November, but I'm not sure what to do with it in August!)

We put the thermometer out in the backyard. 110°. Oh. So it IS warm! It's only 90 in the front yard where there's shade. Y'know, in days past, the whole point of a day like today was to just simply get through it without heat stroke and without the livestock suffering from the heat. Nowadays, most of us just crank up the AC, and the main inconvenience is when we get a glimpse of the electric bill. Some of us, though, continue to get by just by splashing water on ourselves and drinking a lot and being lazy on days like today. But, hey, there's an upside: the laundry is drying super-fast on the clothesline!

Is there anybody sitting in the air-conditioning today that would like to send me money for their indulgences carbon credits???

Congratulations...

... to my son-in-law.

Weird Vegetables

I was recently reading Richard Blunt and he lamented that most Americans only eat about a dozen different kinds of vegetables. So Maggie and I brainstormed what they might be. Maybe:
onions
corn
green beans
peas
broccoli
carrots
potatoes
lettuces
cucumber
green pepper
tomatoes

Those are the kinds of veggies that are readily available at most grocers, most of the year, maybe in the freezer, and often in the produce section or as canned goods. But variety in the diet is good. It's good for our nutrition intake. It's also good for the cook's attitude so that she doesn't get bored out of her gourd. So Maggie and I brainstormed again. What else do WE eat (or should we eat)?

spinach
kohlrabi
cabbage
bok choy
brussels sprouts
rutabaga
parsnips
turnips
beets
cauliflower
okra
garlic
summer squash
eggplant
winter squash (including pumpkin)
greens (collards, turnip, kale, mustard, etc)

Then I realized that only a couple of items on this second list are available at Aldi or Super-Walmart (the grocery stores around here). But they're all available at Woodmans. My friend Tammy mentioned that she was missing the kinds of veggies she could get where she used to live; they just don't sell much variety here.

This year we joined community-supported agriculture. There are the benefits of getting good, fresh, organic foods. But one of the other attractions is that we get a variety of veggies that aren't sold in local grocery stores. And you gotta figure out what to do with them. (For instance, we got beets in our veggie-box this week. Several people sat down at the table with wrinkled noses. But you know what? Steamed beets with a slathering of little butter and salt tastes really good.) We're fine until October, but what happens when we have to start depending solely on the local grocery store for veggies again?

Looking at the seed catalog today, thinking about what kinds of shrubs and trees and raised beds we'll want to start next spring, I noticed all the weird fruits: the gooseberries and pawpaws and aronia-berries and currents. Maybe it would be better to plant those than apples. Apples are readily available. Blueberries and raspberries and Concord grapes and strawberries -- they're available but pricey. And some fruits are simply not available at all.

Lost Emails

The email addresses (and old emails that I needed to keep) haven't been moved yet from the old computer to the new computer. I've been stymied in needing to ask people questions, and not having email addresses to do it. So today I FINALLY hauled out the old computer with intent to weed out obsolete addresses and transfer the edresses to my new machine. And somehow --I'm still not sure how it happened-- rather than deleting about half the B's, I deleted from C to V.

I did manage to find a lot of email addresses in the files of old emails, and cut-n-pasted them into a Word document so as to move them the slow and painstaking way to the new computer. So at least I've got many of them. But this is not a speedy endeavor!

This is being reported so that you will have patience with me when I do not write to you. Lack of communication will not be because of lack of caring about you, but rather it will be due to utter techno-stupidity. :-)

Brakes

My bike wouldn't slow down properly. Sure, I could get it stopped, but not like I should've been able to. Brakes like this were the reason we finally had to put Zippy (the Toyota) out of her slow-death misery.

So I got new brake pads and installed them myself. I was impressed with myself! The brakes improved, but still needed help.

So I lubricated the calipers. Myself. But not one single bit of improvement.

So I got online and read up on how to make the brakes pinch the wheels tighter. I found the information. I found the screw-piece on the brake cables. I adjusted. All by myself. And now my brakes work just right! Yeee haw!

Biking

Plan A: We need more exercise. Especially Maggie and Andrew.
Plan B: I don't want to buy another car.

Plan A+B: We gotta start riding bikes to town.

The one time I jogged to town, it took 32 minutes. Last week I biked to town, and it was 20 minutes. Being the old and decrepit mother, I figured that two teens (who have been, incidentally, riding their bikes for fun & exercise while I engage in the tantalizing entertainment of dishes-washing and laundry-folding)
two teens should be able to do any physical activity that I am capable of. If I could bike to town and do a few errands and be back in an hour, they'd be able to. Right?

Wrong.
Andrew can.

Maggie cannot.
That hour of exercise/errands today took TWO hours. Maggie was hot, red, and exhausted. She needed rest stops.

We were supposed to go visit the cardiologist this week. Due to car-sharing amongst the family, I called and postponed the appointment. We're due to go now in October for a stress-test and check-up. I see no reason that her heart defect should have anything to do with her inability to keep up on the bike; I think it's just plain being out of shape.

I think it's very important for mommies of wee ones to get them out in their buggies and strollers for daily walks in the sun and fresh air. I think mommies of toddlers and preschoolers should make it a priority to get to the playground frequently and to go for walks. Something in my gut tells me that I should not have to do that with a 13-yr-old. But apparently I do.

Can I?

Decorating

(Hey, check it out! I'm figuring out how to work the camera and how to add pictures to my blog without complete step-by-step instruction by the kids every time I attempt pictures!)



With the red walls in our living room, a lot of our framed art didn't look so great in the house. Like I wrote the other day, figuring out how to make the house look nice is very taxing to my brain! So anyway, we were trying to look through what we had, figure what we especially wanted on the walls, what was expendable, and what might work. So we find this poster of Luther at the Diet of Worms; it had been rolled up in a tube for years after Gary won it as a door prize somewhere. Okay, the colors work very well in the living room. But it needed a frame. We tried a poster frame. No good. So we checked at Goodwill for a frame yesterday. Ooooh -- found a NICE frame, almost the right size, for only $5.


Turned out that my poster and backing didn't fit the glass and the frame. So I decided to just put the picture on top of what was previously in the frame. UGH! The colors were awful together. So now what? I found the touch-up paint for the living room and put that around the edges to cover the blue/purple/grays underneath. I would've rather used black, but I didn't have that available, and I'm not altogether too patient with this decorating stuff.

The second coat of paint dried overnight, and we proceeded to try to reassemble this complicated frame. Eventually we got it. Between me and Andrew, only three cuts on our fingers from the sharp edges of glass. And then we found the studs for the nails. Overall, it looks fairly decent. Not the best, but better than using Wacky Tack to hang a poster, which is more like my normal decorating modus operandi.

Jack It Up

Spent the weekend trying to accomplish projects that I've been procrastinating on. Gary and the boys worked on the deck.

When doing projects around the house, it seems good to take into account how your methods will affect the house in the long-term, as well as how repairs will need to be done later, or how the same job will be handled when it needs to be redone in a decade or two or three.

Gary's finding some frustrations with how things were fixed around here by previous owners. For example, when they put together (or repaired?) the deck in days past, they used a wide variety of screws: some deck screws and some that would rust, as well as several different varieties of screw-heads. Gary wants ONE kind of screw so that he won't have to keep hauling out different screw-drivers when he makes repairs someday.

Today's stunner was when they found that one of the posts/pylons holding up the deck wasn't attached to the joists that it was supposed to be attached to. When the deck was initially built, they just kinda sorta missed when they put in the bolts. So THAT's why the deck sagged there.

Philip's been digging out mud from underneath the deck. (Some previous owners put down non-porous plastic under the deck too. Then critters dug and threw dirt on top of the tarp. That stuff is muddddddY!) Today Gary and Paul did some more digging to clean up the wetness underneath the deck. And that's when the found the deck not attached to the supports.

So Gary and Paul came up with a plan. They would use the jack from the car to lift the deck back up to the height it was supposed to be. They dug down a little further, and then applied the jack near the place it had become detached. A little cranking, and it was in the right place, ready to be re-attached.

We are so proud of these resourceful guys! Like Gary said, he didn't expect to be able to fix this unless we paid somebody thousands of dollars to do it. We'd figured we'd just live with the deck being saggy. The guys sure are working hard and throwing a lot of physical labor into the spiffing-of-the-deck. But they're doing a better job of it than I'd expect of somebody who was just doing it for the money and didn't have to live with the long-term ramifications of how the repairs are accomplished.

Ethanol Ads

My husband tells me he's hearing ads now from desperate ethanol producers who are out to make us realize that ethanol has NOTHING to do with rising food costs. No! Of course not! Because [get this!] they aren't producing ethanol out of the corn we eat for food. Oh, no! They are just using the feed corn.

Well, of course. The feed corn for the animals is what's going into our fuel tanks. Not the food we humans eat! See? NOTHING to worry about!

Are they really so stupid as to think we don't realize the animals' feed corn is what provides us with milk, butter, cheese, eggs, beef, chicken, and pork? Good grief!

(And the scary thing is ... what if they're right, and we are stupid enough to buy into this propoganda???)

Nothing to Show for It

I spent most of the day trying to figure out which pictures and crucifixes and icons should go on what walls in which rooms, and which should be packed away for a while or maybe even given away altogether.

Oooooooh, my brain is tired!
I don't do pretty.
Trying to make things pretty is exhausting!

I'd try to figure things out, and then escape to go start the bread kneading. Then I'd look at the walls and ponder some more, and then go hide by doing some picking up. Help, help! Any chore so as to procrastinate on the "making things pretty" duty. Eeeeeks!

Andrew had a friend over this evening. When his mom dropped him off, she said she would LOVE to help and give advice and make those kinds of decisions. I think I'm gonna take her up on her offer. I've narrowed down which pictures must be put up, and which are expendable, and which ones just do NOT go with those red walls in the living room. But overall, I could only figure out a couple items on my own that I'm quite satisfied with. And my daddy taught me to be very slow and deliberate about deciding to put holes in the wall for pictures! So I don't want to rush into anything (only 4½ months after we bought the house....)

Tattoo

Philip did me a big favor yesterday by sitting with Maggie at the beach while I did errands. While there, he saw a woman go by with a tattoo of a Japanese letter character on her lower back (very lower, as in, the upper part of her tuschie).

It said...

LARGE.

Surely she picked the symbol based on how it looked and is clueless as to what it says, right?

Necessity of Those Records

WPA has long advised that parents filling out the PI-1206 request confirmation from the Dept of Public Instruction that the form was received. I usually stick a post-it note on my submitted 1206, stating simply, "Please send a letter confirming that you have received our form" and include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Philip is applying for an apprenticeship. We were amused a couple of months ago that they wanted his high-school transcript. Would his college transcript do? After all, it's from an official public school and not from some homeschool mommy. But no, they needed the high-school transcript.

Okay, so we found the transcript and mailed a copy. Today he was at the application for the unionized program. They need an official transcript with the school seal on it. So he wisely asks, "School seal??? I was homeschooled. There is no official school seal." They instructed him to send in photocopies of his paperwork for the state. I don't know if they require the 1206 or the acknowledgement back from the DPI that they received the 1206, but we'll send copies of both Official Papers from each year that he was homeschooled in high school.

Oh, gosh, I'm glad I kept them. I'm thankful for WPA's advice. I'm glad the records were in an easy-to-find location, safe from purging during a decluttering frenzy (or a move).

And for those who are curious, only half the guys who pass the tests actually get placed in an apprenticeship within the first year. Two-thirds of the guys who apply don't even pass the test, but Philip already took that and did exceptionally well. Problem is, nobody has been placed so far this year because the masters just aren't taking on apprentices right now. So it may be quite a wait.

Romans 10:10

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

You know how the doctors have to give you the whole run-down of all possible side-effects that may result from surgery or a treatment or a medicine? You're getting ready for surgery, and the doctor is telling you that you could end up paralyzed, or you could be allergic to the latex gloves on the doctor's hands, or you could end up in a coma or dead.

Prior to Maggie's first heart surgery, the doctor was telling us about the possible complications before we signed off on okaying the operation. One of the possibilities was that her voice could be damaged or that she could even become entirely mute. "Scuse us? You're cutting on her heart, right? Her voicebox is way up in her throat. How could her voice be damaged???"

So the surgeon explained how the nerve for the voicebox goes from the brain, down into the chest of the person, wraps around the heart, and then goes back up to the voicebox. So when he's working on the heart, the main nerve to control the larynx is right there, and it's possible that it could get nicked or damaged during heart surgery.

And at that point, the surgeon lost us from the anatomy lesson and the permission to allow the surgery, and found us in awe at how the physiology dovetails with the theology found in Romans 10.

Beach Hours

About a week ago I finally got Maggie to the beach for the first time this summer. There's a county park nearby (only four miles!) that used to be a quarry until they got too deep and hit water. At least, I think that's the story. Anyway, now it's a very nice lake for fishing and swimming.

Problem is, there are rules. I am really missing Lake Geneva. This beach requires you to swim in a roped off area right smack in front of a life guard. And there aren't enough life guards to man all the sections. The beach is open from 11:00 to 7:00, which are very inconvenient hours for me now that dinner is at 6:00. And even more inconvenient now that I'm short a vehicle. I want to get up and go to the beach from 10 to noon. Or after supper is cleaned up. Not only that, but at this beach they call for rest-breaks when everybody has to be out of the water for 20 minutes. Rachel recalled this rest period every hour from the times she's been to this beach with Matt, but I sure hope it's only on the odd-hours, and that it just seemed to her to be so frequent as to be hourly rest-times. Can you imagine swimming for only 40 minutes before they kick you out of the water for 20 minutes?

I keep trying to finagle a way to get Maggie out in the sunshine for some swimming exercise, and the hours that swimming is allowed are just not jiving with our schedule. I may have to take a drive over to Pewaukee and see what kind of rules and hours they have at their beach -- and whether they've recuperated from the flooding yet. This little scoliosis-girl needs some hefty doses of vitamin D while it's still available. And I'm not doing a good job taking care of that for her.

WW Noodles

We have seldom had whole wheat noodles that were edible. They tend to make a gooey, sticky, mass of yuck when boiled. My friend Sandy makes totally awesome ww noodles. And one time we found a brand at a store that was good. Backwoods Home author Richard Blunt informs me it must've been Ronzoni.

But today we found one that boils nicely and tastes just fine. At ALDI! This is so mega-cool. Fantastic price. Good pasta. Whole wheat. Wow!

Movies

Over the past several weeks, we have been bumping into GOOD movies. First was Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's basically "historical fiction" which is my favorite genre for books. It was decent enough for kids to watch. It's about a girl who was a maid in the home of a famous painter in the 1600s. For those of you who liked Spanglish (because of the characters not submitting to the desire to commit adultery), this story has some of that flavor too.

North and South was another one that came highly recommended, although I can't remember from whom. It is not about the Civil War, as the name would indicate to those of us who homeschooled history buffs. It is about a family who moves from the country (the south of England) to the city (in the north) where everything is about the mills and industry. We watched the first disc, and wanted to spend another two hours watching the second disc but didn't have it. ARGH! So we're still waiting to hear how the story works itself out. It was set in the late 1800s, and it really does a good job of showing the vocation of the workers and the bosses. But mostly it just is a riveting and well-done story (although it starts a little slowly). Highly recommended! But if you have it in your Netflix queue, don't start the first one until the second disc is in your house too. I hope I still feel the same way after we see the conclusion.

We also picked up Beautiful, a comedy with Minnie Driver about beauty shows. The heroine is an awful person, doing anything necessary to win Miss Illinois and then the Miss American Miss pageant. But in the face of adversity, she begins to grow up and make the right decisions. Some language that may be inappropriate for kids, as well as some pretty sassy behavior from the kids, but overall a really good show.

And finally, Madagascar. It was excellent! Hilariously, gut-busting funny! Great for kids and better for grown-ups! This is one of those movies that I might even consider buying ... and there aren't many that rank so high that I'd be willing to make space for them in the house.

Tag!

Okay, I'm slow. Angie tagged me to play a long time ago, during symposium, right before VBS, and I was not keeping up very well on blogs right then.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

That was about the time I had the good garden because Beau (a borrowed horse) had spent a few months fertilizing a portion of the yard over winter. I was homeschooling one high-schooler, three grade-schoolers, and a kindergartner, and had just finished a short stint with Maggie going to a speech therapist. It was also the summer that Pr Fenton suggested I needed a father-confessor that I wasn't married to, and he and my husband helped me find one. I was also just beginning to discover what it was like to have all my children weaned and not be pregnant -- weird at the time.


2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (in no particular order)?
*return videos to Blockbuster
*pick cherries and turn them into something delicious
*buy rechargeable batteries for the battery-eating camera
*ask the neighbor for permission to have a dump truck use his driveway for access to our septic tank, bringing in more top-soil after the dirt settled around the new tanks
*move the email addresses from the old computer to the new one

3. Snacks I enjoy:
tortilla chips with guacamole
warm chocolate-chip cookies
fruit smoothies


4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Pay off kids' student loans.
Pay off the house, and have Gary quit his cubicle job to do something else.
Give a whole lot of money to church and to some libraries.

Travel more.
Freely spend money on organic foods and raw milk products.
Buy an Aqua-massage for our home.
And a pool WITH a pool-boy.
Come up with a business where I could hire homeschooled teens.



5. Places I have lived:
central Illinois
River Forest
St Louis
Mississippi for a year
three different places in Wisconsin


6. Jobs I have had:
worked at two fast-food restaurants
printer at two print-shops
lots of maid work during college & sem
one year of in-home day-care
typing theses and term papers
paper routes (motor routes and foot routes)
supervision of paper-carriers


7. People I would like to know more about (in no particular order):
I lost track of who's been tagged for this and who hasn't. I think Rachel and Katie could still be tagged. I don't think I saw Paula's answers, so she may not have been tagged yet. How about Melody and Laura? (I'm getting old enough that I can't remember if I saw responses to this meme in the last couple of weeks or if it was a year ago.)

Garage Sale

We finally gave up. We hauled the stuff off to Goodwill. In May, when I looked at prices for advertising a rummage sale in the Shopper-papers, and considered how many direction-signs we'd need to put up, it was overwhelming to think of the cost of having a garage sale. And then there's the work involved. We finally decided we'd just piggy-back on one of the neighbor's sales, and do ours when somebody else had already brought customers out to the neighborhood. But that didn't work because our June weekends were all reserved for something else. And nobody around here seems to do July garage sales.

We toyed with the idea of saving the junk items for later in fall, like, say, maybe for the flea market at church. But I want the garage usable! I hate climbing over piles and piles of stuff to get to the shovels or the deep-freeze! Furthermore, Gary's been having trouble working on the deck due to wet weather. If we can put boards in the garage to dry out, or to keep them from getting wet again after they've been sanded, that'll mean the job is less influenced by rainy weather.

So we hauled a FULL van-load to Goodwill. There will be another van-load going soon. And another van-load of stuff is going to the curb this week for garbage pick-up. (Goodwill thought it was too shabby to take. And here, I thought it was still fine to use except for the fact that it's a smaller house and we no longer have room for these things. [sigh])

Now that we can see a few spots of concrete here and there on the garage floor, and move around to most places in the garage with needing to climb over only one or two piles of stuphph, I feel much freer and lighter. Now, on to catching up in the kitchen, and trying to finish the unpacking (from moving) this week. (I hope!)

Organic Veggies

Thursday Bible class was in charge of providing dinner one night for VBS. I took a whoppin' big batch of steamed carrots. Okay, so it's boring. It's easy. It's something I usually have on hand to take to potlucks. It's healthy. And it tastes good. Not good like a cheesecake, but good nonetheless, and your stomach feels better 3 hours after eating a pile of carrots than you do 3 hours after OD-ing on cheesecake.

I got so many compliments on the delicious carrots! When I took carrots to two potlucks at Triune, I got compliments there too. And I didn't DO anything. I just steamed carrots, put on some butter and sea salt, and that was it.

Ah, but they are organic carrots. And contrary to what I believed for many years, the taste of organic veggies sometimes makes a world of difference! We joined a CSA this year, and the strawberries and broccoli and spinach (all organic) are phenomenal. They are nothing like the veggies I get at Aldi or Pick-n-Save. Problem is, we're getting spoiled. What happens come November when we're back to store veggies? Ah, incentive to get my own garden going....

"100" -- More Backyard Weeds

7. SMARTWEED has smooth-edged leaves and one of the thickest stems you'll find in a weed. It's not flowering yet, but when it does, it will have spikes of pink flowers.






8. WHITE CLOVER is Thumper's candy. It smells sweet sweet sweet! Although it's called "white clover," the petals are often slightly tinged with pink. The flowering heads are smaller than in red clover. And of course, being clover, the leaves come in leaflets of three.





9. RAGWEED is horrid for those with hayfever. In fact, ragweed is the culprit behind the runny noses that usually get blamed on goldenrod.

Underwear

I wrote a year and a half ago about finding underwear for the guys that lasts and lasts. Although it's more expensive initially, it's cheaper in the long run.

Well, I have since discovered the same thing about Victoria's Secret cotton underwear. I don't want to put a link here (due to the pictures on the page), but you can find the page by googling "Victoria's Secret cotton panties," and they're currently on sale for 5 pairs for $25. That's a pretty good deal for ultra-comfortable, boring, long-lasting underwear.

"100" -- Backyard Weeds

After the septic system was installed, I seeded part of the mound, and the installer seeded the rest of the mound and the other places in the yard that were disturbed. When I put out grass, I seed heavily. Probably too heavily. Probably wasteful. But I get grass coming up in sufficient amounts to prevent massive amounts of weeds taking hold first. Well, the baby grass was finally long enough yesterday that it was time to mow. But that meant all those species of weeds were going to go down with the grass. Quick, quick, take pictures first!

1. This is DANDELION. You may recognize it. It is an alien species which was brought to America as a salad green. But the greens taste awful if you eat them after the flowers bloom. Maggie says they taste a lot like spinach.



2. This is a mint. It is called GROUND IVY or creeping charlie. The ground ivy is the one with the little purple flowers. It's very pretty, but it sure does like to creep and it's hard to eradicate.
3. Also in this picture is HOP CLOVER. It's the tiny yellow flowers. In this picture it's hard to see the three-leaf clusters that indicate clover, but here's an online picture.
4. There's also GRASS in this picture. Hey, laugh if you will. But it's a species we can identify!
5. Notice in the upper right corner of the picture are some 3"-tall MAPLE TREES. We could give you a picture of a grown-up maple tree, but I bet you've seen those. So we're just including the maples here with this snapshot.


6. PLANTAIN is recognizable particularly by the veins veering out of the stem rather than from a middle vein in the leaf. If you know plantain, then you can use it out in the yard or a park when you get a mosquito bite or bee sting or contact poison ivy. Plantain is excellent for skin problems.

Fourth-of-July Cheesecake

Sometimes you start a tradition without even realizing what you've gotten yourself into!

In need of cheesecake one year, and with ample supply of strawberries and blueberries, I made the dessert and let the kids use the red and blue fruits to decorate the cheesecake. The kids, in desperate need of repeating the treat the following year, made another Fourth-of-July cheesecake. Twice in a row. That makes a tradition, I guess.

The recipe is:
2/3 pound of graham crackers
1.5 sticks of butter
32 ounces of cream cheese
1.75 cups of sugar
1 Tbsp of vanilla
1/4 cup of cream (or 3/4 cup of Cool Whip)
1 quart strawberries
1 pint blueberries

Crush the crackers into powder, add melted butter. Pat into a jelly roll pan. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes.

Beat together the cream cheese and sugar. Add vanilla and cream. Spread into cooled crust. Decorate with fruit.

We used to make it look like a flag. But I don't like having to choose which kind of fruit I want on my piece of dessert. So we started doing the stripes instead.

Today I made this with organic strawberries, homemade cream cheese from raw milk, and raw cream. So even though it's nearly all fat and sugar (yummmmmm) at least it has a few redeeming characteristics.


Small batch
about 48 square-inches
6x8" or 9x5" or 7" round
1/2 package grahams (2.5 ounces)
3 Tbsp butter
1 (8 oz) bar of cream cheese
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp cream or 3 Tbsp Cool Whip
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and/or blueberries

Revive Me

This week's psalm is the "resh" portion of 119.
Verse 154: Revive me according to Your word.
Verse 156: Revive me according to Your judgments.
Verse 159: Revive me according to Your lovingkindness.

We so often think of God's "judgments" as something scary. But here is another place where we see the word "judgment" used to comfort and to bless.

Great are Your tender mercies, O Lord;
revive me according to Your judgments.

The judgment meted out upon us is:
You are in Christ, baptized into His name.
Atonement has been made.
You are holy; you are pure; you are righteous -- for His sake.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
For those in Christ, there is no trembling, no wondering if we have measured up, no fright.
Great are His tender mercies.
He revives us according to His lovingkindness.

Liturgical Hymns

This morning's psalm in Congregation at Prayer was 135. It sounded remarkably similar to one of the psalms we prayed recently. I went back and looked. Sure enough, much of the psalm is taken from 115 which is in the Hallel (in other words, part of the liturgy regularly used for holy days).

Our hymnals have hymnic versions of the liturgy: hymns on the Magnificat, the Te Deum, the Phos Hilaron, etc. And based on what we see in the Psalter, this is not a new idea. I thought that was cool.

100 Species Challenge

Brenda is engaged in the challenge to find and identify 100 species of plants within walking distance of her home. The initial idea was presented with pictures.

I'm going to break the rules and not list all the rules here; you can go read them for yourselves. Basically the point is to identify species within a mile of your house. Hopefully, your log or journal (on your blog) will include information about the plants, as well as pictures.

Seeing as I don't have a camera, I am postponing the start of this challenge until I can get one. I've been meaning to buy one for a while, and this might give me incentive. This project reminds me very much of one of my favorite books: Naming Nature by Mary Blocksma. We've read this book three times for our homeschooling, and it is the most valuable nature book we've ever used! If I could make this 100-species challenge into a project to do with Maggie, it would be good for both of us. I'm rarin' to go on this (as if I didn't already want to spend hours upon hours writing the blog posts that are spinning around in my head!) and tried to buy a camera tonight to start on the project with Maggers tomorrow. Ah, but the camera-decision was too big. So I hope to pick my son-in-law's brain for all the research he just did on cameras, and get to taking pictures before we lose more of the seasonal wildflowers.

(This will have the added benefit of teaching me how to upload photos to my blog. So far, I always require help from a child. They teach me how to do it, and then I forget before I need to upload the next picture. Many plant pictures may drill the procedure into my brain!)

New Bike

It's gonna make it hard to use bicycles for transportation if we don't have enough to go around. The top priority for yesterday was going to a friend's mom's place to accept some really nice hand-me-downs and pack up a bunch of clothing. The second highest priority for yesterday was bike-shopping. The second one didn't get done.

So the top priority for today was bike shopping. I thought it would take about an hour to drive to the store and choose the vehicle. It took three gallons of gasoline and FIVE and a HALF HOURS . That's all day.

At the first store, it seemed like too many of the bikes were dented or assembled not-quite-right. We looked and looked through the offerings and finally decided upon one. Got it home. Rode it. Gears didn't work. And when you have hills like we have here, you better have gears on your bike that operate -- or you'll be walking that thing uphill quite often!

Back to the store. Returned it. Headed to another store. Found something ideal, except a 24", and Mr Bigfoot definitely needed the biggest size we could get. So off to another version of the same bigbox-store, a store that "has sufficient inventory" of the item we needed. Got there. No bikes. Sold out. (The same thing happened to Gary with deck screws at a different bigbox-store. How can one branch of a store check with the other branch to be sure they've got an item in stock, and just not tell the customer the truth about being sold out? I mean, really, does it make for good customer relations to send somebody gallavanting all over the metro area only to find that the item isn't in stock after all? Can you say "c-r-a-n-k-y"?)

Well, we made Try #4 this evening. (We phoned first. And they set the bike aside in the back room for us. That was so nice!) The bikes at this store all looked properly assembled. I came home with a bike that rides smoothly. It will serve Andrew well. We also bought bike helmets which we will need to fit to our heads properly, and then make a habit of wearing them. And then we'll be all set to use our little muscles to transport ourselves around. We can claim we're being green. But really we're just being tightwads. :-)

Square with the World

It probably took me 8 years at our old house before I figured out which direction was east. There's a big curve in the road --a rather unnoticeable and gentle curve-- and also some not-square "corners" (at highway intersections) that make it easy to think you're driving west on our old street when you're really driving south. Further complicating the matter, "liturgical east" (that is, the end of the church building that contained the altar) was in the "east" as my senses intuited. Problem is, "east" was actually north.

Eventually I learned that the sun rises in the southeast at Christmas and in the northeast in early summer. And thus I eventually got my bearings, with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. My parents, however, not living in the place, continued with the same problem I had, sensing that the sun was rising in the south and setting in the north, even though their brains knew better. After many years, my dad's brain got it all straight, but his senses just wouldn't let go of that first impression. He said that he could be driving to our house, straight across Stateline Road, and everything was square and right with the world. But as soon as he turned onto our road, the whole world "spun" 90° in his senses. And I knew precisely what he was talking about, since I'd lived with the same feeling for so long.

This is one reason I think it's important that maps go on the north wall, so that places are lined up in the world with where they appear on the map. But the reason I bring up this story is because sometimes the same sudden "spin" will occur mentally. (More on that later.)

Sticker Shock

The credit card bill came in today's mail, and the gasoline was astronomical. It's never been that high. It's never even been HALF that high! I knew prices had gone up. But this? This was outrageous. Surely there was an error!

As I looked closer I realized that we had over $300 in gasoline for vacations. Whew -- those two trips in the van come out of the vacation fund. They aren't a typical expense, and next month's bill isn't going to be so frightening!

Legislation about Homeschoolers

A bill has been introduced in the Senate that would provide tax credits for homeschoolers. All homeschoolers who value their freedom should get on the phone with their senators and let them know that we are not interested in this kind of "help" from the government.

Jenn (whom I do not know) explains why very clearly. Here's an excerpt from her blog:
If we advocate for tax credits--beneficial as that money would be, as much of a right to that money as we have--we will essentially be inviting the federal government to notice us. To define us. To monitor us. To calculate us. To nickel and dime us. To determine us. This is an invitation that we cannot rescind. It's a way into our lives--a door, if you will. And once it is opened, it will never be closed--not by us and certainly not by them. It will only open wider and wider and our freedom will shrink ever smaller. And we will have invited this.

Besides the pigeon-holing of homeschoolers, the reporting requirements, and the invitation of the government further into our lives, there's another aspect to this legislation that people often do not realize. In high-school civics class, we learn how a bill becomes law. It all sounds so clear-cut. But when you get to politics in Real Life, bills coming out of committee often look quite different from the bills that went into committee.

There's also the record-keeping for taking tax deductions, and the government's prerogative to determine which expenses are allowable. Do we expect the government to pay for (that is, allow us a credit for) Bibles and hymnals used in our homeschooling? Do we expect them to allow the deduction of history or science materials that integrate Christianity in the textbooks? What about swimming lessons? Would it be fair for me to deduct my kids' swimming lessons (or piano or judo or theatre) when my brother's family cannot deduct those things? For those of us who use all of life to educate our children (like, say, daily Sudoku puzzles for a child) do we really want the loss of freedom that would result from the government deciding which expenses are legitimate homeschooling expenses and which are not? Might this even result in subtle pressure for homeschools to become more like conventional schools?

You really should go read Jenn's article. It explains this much better than I do and more rationally.


Hat tip: Jane.

Symposium (5)

One of the topics at CCA symposium a couple of weeks ago was contraception. I expected the discussion/debate to be between those who allow contraception in some instances and those who think it should never be used by Christians. That wasn't how the discussion went, though. While most of the speakers seemed to think that there should be allowances for the use of contraception sometimes in the life of married Christian couples, one of the speakers went so far as to suggest that there is a place for voluntary childlessness so that people can serve the Lord unencumbered by children. (Okay, so my eyes about popped out of my head at that one!)

A question was raised during the panel discussion as to the new stance in the church about okaying the use of any contraceptives. ("New" being something that has just been considered okay in the last 3-6 decades within the framework of 200 decades since Jesus' time.)

One speaker pointed out that "Be fruitful and multiply" is not a command which we are obligated to fulfill as best as possible. God said "Be fruitful and multiply" prior to the fall into sin. Before sin, Adam and Eve would have joyfully received children, and conception, pregnancy, and birth would have occurred easily.

But now, after the fall, things have been altered. The only perfect marriage is Christ and His Church. That is the marriage where children are given abundantly and are never a strain. Our marriages are poor shadows of the one true and good marriage. While it is obvious* that limiting the number of children can be contrary to the Gospel (which pours itself out for the other), we also need to remember that the husband must have compassion on the wife who is weak, whose body (or mind) cannot continue to bear children every year or every other year.

On the one hand, we cannot err in emphasizing LIFE too much. On the other hand, we cannot presume that we are capable of living completely the way God intended. If we must consider "Be fruitful and multiply" a command (instead of a blessing), we better be keeping our eyes on Christ and His obedience for us, and His atonement for our weaknesses. The more our eyes are on Him and less on our obedience, the more we find that we become ever more conformed to His image.


*footnote: I'm sure we all know people who "cannot afford" children although they can afford multiple vehicles, second homes, designer clothes, fancy vacations, etc.

Quiverful

Some people say that it's important that Christians be willing to "accept as many children as the Lord gives." They are saying that using contraception is wrong because doing so would not be "accepting as many as the Lord gives." Are we willing to imply that God's hands are tied by our decisions about contraception, as if He were prevented from creating life just because someone decides to use a product from the drug store or have a surgical procedure?

Catechesis and First Communion

Because the article was dated in May, some of you may have missed Pr Stuckwisch's post about "early" first communion and ongoing catechesis and what is necessary for proper reception of the Lord's Supper. It's long and thoughtful, so don't bop over there to merely skim the piece. But it's excellent. I appreciated especially what he said about the pastor's hard (and continuing!) work to teach when he takes seriously the task of lifelong catechesis.

Plink!

I love the sound when canning jars seal. Plink! I love the way the color of the jam turns from cloudy to ruby-red crystal when the sugar is added to the boiling fruit/sugar mix. I love making jelly. After purchasing frozen strawberries (instead of getting the ultra-premium taste that comes from picking your own from the berry patch) today I made 12 half-pints of jam and 7 12-ouncers. That ought to last these folks a little while.

Katie and Nathan arrived last night for a weekend visit. So did Paul's Rachel. It's been great to have them here! Today Rachel came to visit too. So did Laura and Ben. And this wonderful companionship and family-ness is why we looked for a house with a kitchen big enough for loads of people to hang out in together while work is being done!

Gary has made a lot of headway on the deck -- turning the worn and weathered boards over, getting the bottom sides (now the tops) of the planks sanded and re-placed, awaiting dry weather when we will be able to put down sealant.

Mosquitoes are unbelievable. I guess that comes with flooding.

We're in the process of getting a new computer. It's actually an "old" computer that is WAY newer than our old one. Nathan, the computer guru, set it up for us today, and did all the work of moving my bookmarks and installing programs and making it a painless transition for me (in other words, a barely noticeable change-over). He also let me know about some spyware that had slunk onto the old computer past the spy-bot. I had finally gotten caught up with the world's ways and started online banking, and now I think I'd better go and change all my passwords and user-names. Oh, gosh, it makes me nervous to even think about it. But I'm glad he caught it so that I don't continue on my merrily blind way of walking straight into identity theft or other scams. As for the new computer, the speed blows me away. Not too long after I started looking at gmail, Nathan asked if I liked the increased speed. And honestly, I hadn't noticed much improvement. But then later I moved to another program, and those fresh windows were popping up at a shocking speed! Wow, I'm going to get spoiled!

Stemms, Drivers, and Fischers for dinner tomorrow after church. Sounds like good times, lots of love, and lots of laughing!

Luke 15

The story tonight at VBS (also known as our "retreat on reconciliation") was the parable of the prodigal son. My favorite quote from Pastor this evening:

It's like there isn't a reprimand in the father anywhere to be found! Not when the son asks for the inheritance, not when he returns, and not when the older son complains at the end of the story. The father doesn't have a reprimand in his whole body.

Quote

Elephant's Child has a totally awesome quote from Walther about focusing on missions "versus" focusing on doctrine.

Agritainment

The nearby U-Pick farm has strawberries available. We've been out of strawberry jam for 5 months, and the natives are restless. (Oooooh, the abuse they endure, with the only jelly in the house being home-made grape that is completely awesome! My family is SO mistreated. My heart is bleeding for them.) We've been waiting for June, waiting for cheap strawberries instead of making the jam from frozen berries purchased at the store.

When I was trying to find out the cost of the berries, there were no prices listed on the farm's website. No prices listed on their signs by the road. But the website mentioned that they were "agritainment" for the whole family. There's a playground. There are animals. There are hay rides. There will be a corn maze. This made me nervous. This sounded pricey.

So today I wash the jelly jars. I gather the slave labor children and the buckets, and we head off to the farm. And I find U-Pick berries priced at $1.35/pound and the already-picked at $3.75/pound. YIKES. The regular price at Woodmans for frozen berries is $1.89/pound ... and you don't have to pick 'em in the hot sun. Or wash them and hull them. The price for frozen berries last time I was at Woodmans was only $1/pound.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to pay extra for buying local. Not when "local" means paying the premium for the farmy experience.

More incentive to get my own berries in the ground prior to next May!

Fetching Our Own Oil

From the Chicago Tribune: "Obama has said he opposes lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling. And on Friday he promised a moratorium on the practice. Now he will find out if the pain voters are feeling at the pump will be inflicted upon him for his position."


McCain still doesn't have the right position on drilling in Alaska or easing up restrictions on producing our own oil. But at least he's starting to talk about getting oil from the Gulf and temporarily reducing the enormous gasoline taxes. Now if only he could get 'em all to begin undoing the damaging demands for more and more ethanol.

From Symposium (4)

Bender's catechesis was entitled Cain and Abel and the "Murder of God." Call me biased, but I thought it was the best presentation of the symposium. There's too much to summarize it here. Besides, a lot of what was presented is already in the catechist volume of Old Testament Catechesis.

There was one thing I made particular note of from his presentation. Sinning is always self-serving. It is turned inward. It is designed to satisfy ME. The problem, though, is that sinning doesN'T satisfy. It cannot. Satisfaction and joy can come only through sacrificial love. (Maybe that's part of "being made in the image of God"?) We think, "I'll be happy if I..." have this, or do that, or whatever. But when we sin and get what we wanted, we are still unsatisfied.

(For some reason, this reminds me of the insatiable greed for Legos that I see in little boys, or for Barbie clothes that I see in little girls. Of course, these are shallow examples. And of course the Barbies and Legos are not sins. And of course it's easier to see this insatiability in children than it is in myself. Wait... did I get off topic?....)

In the topic of life issues, when we're talking about starving an aged or disabled person, or aborting a baby, these things promise ease to the people who remain. But these sins have results that were unexpected, and the sinner remains discontented, unhappy, and looking for bigger fixes of making his own comfort. The sin did not give what it promised. True joy comes only by giving and sacrificing.

From Symposium (3)

Piotr Malysz spoke on "Humanity in the Image of God." This was a good lecture. It was deep. I wanted sometimes to hit the "pause" button and think through what he was saying before he went on. But nevertheless, what he said was good stuff!

He started by pointing out that the 20th century proved more evil and more self-centered than any other era before. He pointed out that consumerism has taught us to find our uniqueness and our "self" in things. But we also have learned to treat relationships as disposably as we treat our things.

Pr Malysz said that we do not possess the image of God. The image of God is not a quality. It is not something we "understand." Rather, it is about BEING ... and about a relationship with Him and being connected to Him.




The fall into sin was, in part, when Adam and Eve strove to get the image of God ("you will be like God, knowing good and evil") as a quality, as something they could gain knowledge about. And in doing so, they traded the true image of God that they already had, and instead went after a false "image of God."

Sin isolates. Sin separates us from God. It separates us from the creation. It separates us from each other. When we sin, we violate someone's trust. Then we realize that others might do the same to us, violating our trust in them. To protect ourselves from being hurt or being betrayed, we withdraw from others and continue to further separate ourselves. (Hey, I realize now that this fits in well with our VBS theme of the week on reconciliation.)

We desire to be "like God" (as did Adam and Eve). But we imagine God to be powerful in a self-serving way. To be like Him [well, not really like Him, but like what we imagine Him to be], we try to control others. We desire to control people. We want to destroy things and wreck things. This is how we imagine God's "power" can be seen. But that's NOT what God's power is about.

God's power is seen in His loving sacrifice. Life is sacred because our dignity comes from God. The sanctity of life has nothing to do with OUR dignity or even the abilities that God gives us. OUR dignity is futile and fragile. But God sees us with the dignity that is His, the dignity imputed to us and given to us. We look like Him when we are mindful of that same dignity in others even though they be undignified and unworthy according to human standards, and when we sacrifice ourselves (that is, put ourselves out, or inconvenience ourselves) for their dignity (or life, or nurture, or needs).


Well, I'm afraid these rather disjointed comments don't come together too well from my jotted notes and scribbles. My notes were intended mostly to help jog my brain about what I heard. If there is anything wrong in what I wrote, it wasn't Pastor Malysz who was in error, but merely my misunderstanding of what he said.

From Symposium (2)

Stem cell research was discussed last week at the catechetical symposium in Waukesha. There was one comment made in passing that I found quite interesting. There is apparently a theory that cancer is caused by adult stem cells run amok. Even when we're done being little embryos, everybody (babies and kids and adults) still have stem cells. Although the point of stem cells is that they are changeable, so that they can heal or repair parts of the body, there can be too much of a good thing. If these grow too fast and grow out of control, this may be the explanation for cancer.

Kinda makes you wonder about how the doctors and scientists would control the stem cells they use in cures so that cancer doesn't become as an intended consequence.

From Symposium (1)

One of the speakers pointed out that less than half of the doctors are actually in the American Medical Association. He suggested that this was due to its liberal stance on issues, thus setting the AMA in opposition to the position of many healers.

This speaker also suggested that having a living will or a "medical directive" is not as safe as having a "durable power of attorney" because you can't lay out directives ahead of time for all contingencies. Better to have someone making those decisions in the circumstances that actually occur in our lives.

Another speaker pointed out that "pregnancy" is defined differently. Some doctors will say that a particular birth-control measure prevents pregnancy and is not abortifacient because they define pregnancy as the time when the baby is implanted in the womb and not when the baby is conceived. Thus they can claim that a birth-control method does not interrupt pregnancy, although some of us can clearly see that it does. So it's important to find out what your doctor's definition of "pregnancy" is. (Gee! Who would've thought that would be a matter of dispute??)

Milk

Boy, I don't know how the milk situation got away from us. But this morning we had four gallons that were more than a week old, and it is just beginning to turn bad. Part of this is because I overestimated how much the company would drink last week. Part of this is because I forgot we weren't eating dinner at home this week, due to VBS suppers. Part of this is because the refrigerator was accidentally unplugged for about a day and a half, which means the milk is beginning to sour earlier than it should've.

So today we're all hyped up on calcium! I told the kids not to eat anything except the things which were nearing spoilage (milk and lettuce, primarily). Breakfast was milkshakes made of milk, strawberries left over from vacation, and bananas. Mid-morning snack was a big pitcher of cocoa. Lunch was Mexican corn chowder. And supper was custard pies. That took care of 2½ gallons. Another half gallon is being set out to make whey for recipes. That leaves only a gallon to drink (before it really sours) or turn into pancakes and muffins (after it sours).

I am soooo overloaded on milk (which, by the way, has a very different meaning today than it meant 13 years ago....).

Homeschool Stereotypes

Mandatory reading: Jane's You Don't Look Like a Homeschool Mom. (She wrote this in response to an article about how the stereotypical homeschooler is so different from the "normal" American that the rest of society feels threatened by those weirdo homeschoolers.)



On the one hand, I don't want to write any more in this post, because I really want people to go read at least Jane's musings, and preferably the op-ed piece too. But on the other hand, I want to chime in.

I remember the time I was chatting with somebody who was suggested as a possible substitute paper carrier. We needed subs for vacation, and I called the lady. During the conversation, she (who was fairly new to town) decided that we would be greeeeat people to get to know. After all, we were
a) a pastor's family,
b) a large family, and
c) homeschoolers.
And we all know what that means, don't we? And those were the kind of people she wanted for friends. Thing is, this woman didn't know who we really were; she just lumped us into her stereotype.

There was also the eye-opening story of what happened shortly after we met Jane's family. They'd been church-hunting for many months. Everything they found was happy-clappy. Then they came to visit Triune. The stayed for lunch. We loved them and they loved us. But more importantly, the kids made it clear to Mom and Dad that the church-hunting was done and over: they had found the place where they were staying! As Jane told the story, later that day she announced happily to a group of friends (mostly pagan) that they'd found a church-home. For the most part, these friends didn't really care about church or liturgy, but they cared about Jane, and they knew how important this was to her. So they were all ready to be thrilled for her. Until...

she mentioned that the pastor and his wife have six kids and they homeschool. Whoa; put the brakes on, Nelly! "Jane, are you SURE about this? Are you sure this is the kind of place you want to be?" And Jane's response was, "Oh, they're not like THAT!" So even among homeschoolers who are not part of the stereotype, we too are very aware of the stereotype. Good grief, even I am leery of pastors' wives who homeschool more than 4 kids. Some of them are wonderful. But the experiences of the past have convinced me to be cautious when I meet people whose basic situation in life is identical to mine.

And for some reason, that's just kinda sad.

Loosened Bonds

In Psalm 116 we pray:
O Lord, truly I am Your servant;
I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant;
You have loosed my bonds.

Maybe you're like me, and go on reading the part of the psalm about thanksgiving, and thinking about how we are glad that He has freed us. But instead, stop and think about those lines right there for just a moment.

I am Your servant. I am God's slave. I am bound to Him. BUT "You have loosed my bonds." Does that make sense? We have been loosed. And yet we are His servants, His slaves. It almost sounds contradictory, until ...

a person knows whereof Paul speaks:
And having been set free from sin, you become slaves of righteousness.
And also:
Now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God,
you have your fruit to holiness,
and the end, everlasting life. (Romans 6)


A person might almost be tempted to think that the apostle knew the Old Testament and was expounding upon it. But if you thought that, you'd have to think the Old Testament was about the same God, the same promises, the same mercy, ... the same Jesus. :-)

Waivers

Paul is supposed to turn in his immunization record to the college. He is also supposed to get an updated tetanus shot. After the reaction Maggie had to her last tetanus vaccine, we are very very leery of getting those again ... unless we end up putting ourselves in a situation (like overseas) where there might be a risk of contracting tetanus. So today we were doing some online research and discovered Vaccination Liberation. I do not agree with everything on their page, but they do have a lot of links to state laws, to exemption forms, and to reported complications from vaccines.

If a person were to click on their state abbreviation (oh, say, "Indiana," for example) there would be pertinent laws listed, as well as a model letter for a birth plan which includes avoidance of immediate vaccination for hepatitis, vitamin K shots, and silver nitrate in the baby's eyes. Although this website wouldn't have everything you need to know about the subject, it would at least prove a starting point.

Deck Work

It's very hard to stain the naked deck (where Gary just turned all the boards over because the top side was so very weather-worn) when the forecast tells us that it will rain daily or every other day. And even on the days it doesn't rain, the grass is drenched with dew each morning. Not good weather for staining a deck.

Somebody drove up slowly to our house today and snapped a picture. I don't like it that complete strangers are taking pictures of us. I would be really freaked out, but I'm trying to convince myself that it's just some realtor. I know when we were buying, our realtor could show us examples of similar-sized houses nearby that had sold, and what the prices were, so that we could evaluate property values and what to expect to pay. So maybe that's all this was. I hope. My mind can construct pretty scary scenarios out of strangers taking pictures of us....

Time-Saving on Paint Jobs

At the old house, I painted with a semi-gloss or something even more shiny than that. I wanted the walls to be washable. Granted, it made it harder to put on the next coat of paint because the walls had to be sanded or roughed-up or treated in some way so that the next coat of slicky paint wouldn't slide right off the undercoat of [older] slicky paint.

The new house has an "eggshell" finish which is not washable. Every time I hit a fly or smash a mosquito, there's a blood splat on the wall. Finger-marks don't wash off. Food splashes in the kitchen don't wash off. These walls are going to need to be painted a whole lot sooner than if they were washable. I hear frightening stories about normal people who paint the insides of their houses every 2-4 years; apparently that's just what you're supposed to do. Well, if I can paint with washable paint every 9-12 years, I'm saving time (and money) even if I have to spend twice as long on the paint job!

Imprecatory Psalms

I don't understand how we pray that the Lord smash our enemies when we know our own sin and that we were enemies of God but that He has been gracious to us. If we are the recipients of mercy, and if God's mercy has captured our hearts, and if God wants all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, wouldn't we desire the salvation of our enemies? Wouldn't we desire that they be turned and become recipients of grace -- they who are as undeserving as we are?

About a year ago, Pastor finally got it through my head that we can pray those psalms of judgment against the true enemies: the devil, the world, the demons, and our own sinful nature.

But when I was praying Psalm 109 yesterday, the psalmist didn't sound like he was talking about demonic forces being judged, but flesh-and-blood people. So I asked about it at the end of Bible class. Pastor didn't have enough time to give much answer, but one thing he said helped a little bit:
We don't pray those psalms out of vengeance nor out of a desire to get even or to "stick it to them." We pray them because God's law is true. We pray that God's judgment be meted out upon His enemies for the honor of God, not for satisfying our own sinful desire to hurt those who have hurt us.

Gotta think on that some more...

Maple Grove

Y'know what happens when you get a new septic system right when the "helicopters" are about done growing on the maples? The wind comes along and blows gazillions of helicopters into your freshly dug-up dirt. The rain comes along and waters them. And then you have a yard that it full full FULL of itty-bitty maple trees! It's so funny-looking in the backyard. The places where I seeded grass are growing nicely. But the places where the septic installer seeded were are a little sparser on grass. So there are places where we have more 3" trees than we have grass!

Creation of Angels

Does Psalm 104:4 indicate that maybe the angels were created on the second day?

The psalm starts with light (day 1) and then goes to the heavens (day 2). It then talks about the seas and the grasses and trees (day 3). Then the sun and moon (day 4). Finally it talks about the creatures in the seas (day 5). In the section where the psalm is talking about the second day of creation, the psalmist mentions that God makes the angels. That doesn't assuredly mean that the angels were created on the second day, but it sure makes me wonder if that might be when it happened.

Zippy's Demise

Eleven years ago we bought a 4-yr-old Corolla. She already had 122,000 miles on her. And she had an irreparable dent in her back bumper. She had been sitting on the used-car lot for a while because nobody wanted her with that not-too-big dent. So we got her for a very good price. My dad thought we made a bad decision, buying a car with a dent. But she was good to us. She lasted many years. I don't think we fixed anything for the first 7-8 years we owned her; we just kept up with periodic maintenance.

Her brakes failed on Monday. Repairing her would have been manageable, except that her fuel lines were about rusted through too. The mechanic told me that, by law, he wasn't supposed to let me drive her home because the brakes were in that bad of shape. He told me that I didn't need to hurry to get her off his lot; a few days would be fine. Hey, I don't move too fast or think too quickly! I thought "a few days" was plenty fast. I found a junk dealer who would pay us for the car, instead of just having her towed away for nothing, or given to one of those places that takes donated vehicles. Because of symposium this week, I couldn't sit on the decision. And I didn't want to inconvenience our mechanic by leaving her sit on his lot for the whole week. So I sold her on Wednesday. It was heart-breaking. She had gone over 300,000 miles. She was the only car I ever had that had a name.

We're not sure whether to start car-shopping to replace her. We are inclined at this point to manage with the cars we have. So now it's time to get serious about toughening up my leg muscles so that I will be able to go UP and down and UP and down the local hills when we bike to town and back. We'll also need to buy another bike or two, and some helmets. I think the loss of Zippy is going to force us into more exercise, which will be good in the long run, but right now will be a bit of a strain on our time.

Janesville

After news of the GM plant closing, the city I love(d) is dealing with more devastation. This time it's flooding. The paper has a variety of stories, but none of the stories told me what I'd heard from Janesville people: that the library may have to close because of flooding and that the bridges are being compromised.

When we read about the signs of the end of the world, the floods and earthquakes and wars, I realized that those things would mean ruin and mess and injury and death. But something else crossed my mind this weekend. It also means ruined crops. And later, food shortages.

Gas prices are rising. Food prices are rising. There are shortages of food in other parts of the world. Our government has mandated that we need to put a certain amount of corn into making inefficient fuel for our vehicles. And now God has destroyed a whole lot of the corn crops. Even those of us with dry basements, even people in other countries, are going to be feeling the sting of these floods. (But not at all as much as those who are losing their homes and possessions!)

Presidential Race

Jane recently posted about Obama's opinions on abortion rights, with quotes about how he thinks that even babies who are born (as in, they didn't have the sense to not die from the abortion, but were born alive) should not be considered real persons, under the protection of law.

And then Cheryl brought to my attention Obama's stance on a Supreme Court decision handed down last week. Obama agrees with a court decision that says enemies of our nation who are held in prison camps should be awarded all the same civil liberties and protections that citizens have. McCain condemns this decision.

The second half of Paula's post on these topics sums it up pretty well.

Baby Picture

Katie posted a link to a picture of my grand-daughter. She tells me it was hard for the sonogram technician to find the baby at first, ... because this is one VERY active baby, doing somersaults, and pokin' Mommy a lot. It's supposed to be another month-and-a-half or two before Katie should be able to feel the baby. I foresee a tree-climbing, bike-riding, couch-bouncing speed-demon on her way.

Spinach Feta Bread

10-oz pkg of frozen chopped spinach
6 oz feta cheese (about 1 ¼ or 1 ½ cups crumbled)

1 ¾ cup milk (warmed to about 110°)
1/3 cup olive oil
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp sea salt
½ tsp nutmeg
2 pkg dry yeast (about 1 ½ Tbsp)

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour

5-6 cups white flour


Thaw (but do not squeeze and drain) the spinach.
Stir together milk, oil, egg, sugar, salt, spice, and yeast.
Stir in ww flour and 1 cup of white flour. Beat for 2 minutes.
Stir in spinach and crumbled cheese.
Add the rest of the white flour, stir and knead till dough makes a ball and is not too sticky.
Let rise once or twice. Punch down between risings.
Shape into loaves and bake in greased pans.
Two 9x5" loaves would bake about 55 minutes at about 350-375°.
Six small loaves (about 2 ½ x 5 ½") would be about 35 minutes.
Muffin-sized rolls or breadsticks are about 20-25 minutes.

The Roast

In an attempt to get some barbecue made today so that we'd have something real to eat at the end of the week in between sessions at the symposium, yesterday I took a chuck roast out of the freezer to thaw overnight. When I grabbed it off the counter this morning to put into the crockpot, I noticed something scribbled on the white paper wrapped around the roast. I assumed the butcher had hand-written somebody's name on the meat, but I couldn't figure out why someone else's meat would've gotten mixed up with our side of beef.

Then I got it.
"Roast" was crossed out. "Norris" was written in.

Chuck Roast Norris.

I knew that came from one of my sons.
I live with weird people!!!

John Back from the Dead?

In Matthew 10, Jesus sent out the Twelve and gave them authority to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.

In Luke 9, the same event is told much more succinctly. Immediately following the commissioning of the Twelve, we hear the story about Herod wondering about Jesus, and who He was and what He was up to. Some people thought Jesus was John the Baptist back from the dead, or maybe Elijah. I don't think I'd ever noticed those two stories back-to-back before.

Yeah -- people really were being raised from the dead. No wonder John-come-back was considered a reasonable possibility. Before I'd always thought they were being so stupid to have thought up an explanation of John's coming back. But other people were being raised. Why not John too? (Of course, that wasn't the true explanation of who this Jesus-guy was, but the rumors going around don't sound so outlandish in light of Matthew's version of the previous story in Luke's account.)

SAD

It's nearly summer solstice. The longest days of the year. Nevertheless, any single cloudy day has really been getting to me. It's daunting to think what the "seasonal affective disorder" is going to be like come January. I sure do hope I've got the "things" of moving (the boxes unpacked, the clutter in the garage, the pictures on the walls) finished well before the short days hit in September.

Keeping Up (or not)

Bonnie is one of the lovely women at church. She was widowed quite suddenly last fall. Ever since I've known her, she always seems such the optimist. She knows and believes and says that God is working everything out just right, and even when things hurt, she still cheerfully confesses that He is good and gracious, and her praise for Him abounds. On Sunday she was kindly and encouragingly reminding me that it doesn't matter if I feel overwhelmed, because we are in God's care, and it will all work out, and what's necessary will be done (because if it doesn't get done it wasn't really necessary after all).

And then today I spent hours on errands, including an exploratory trip to the west, which ended at my friend's store, after five other stops. And a trip to fetch milk. And catching up on laundry and bread-baking after vacation. And dinner. And Paul and I tried to figure out some things about registering for classes for his freshman year for college next August. And the little car's brakes failed, so we had to get it in to the mechanic and are now waiting on the verdict. (I hate deciding whether a car is getting too old and worn to fix again!)

I kept thinking throughout the day of all the necessary things that weren't getting done. And how I just keep getting more and more behind. I wish I could believe in my gut what my intellect consents to: that Bonnie is right and that God does know what He's doing. I just wish I didn't chafe against it and argue over it so often.

Modesty

1. I normally dress fairly conservatively. Even when the heat calls for shorts and tank tops (or even spaghetti straps), my clothes tend to be frumpy and modest compared to most of what you see out there in the stores and on the streets.

2. I don't like other people undermining what I teach my kids. If something is good and right to do, it's good and right -- not relativistic. In other words, I don't buy into the "it's good for me, but you have your own right and wrong."

3. During the past week, we were at a resort for a grand ol' family reunion with wonderful wonderful people. Also at the resort was a group of Amish folks. They were fun to visit with and chat with around the campfire. The kids were sweet and cute, and the parents enjoyable and friendly.

Thus #4, the dilemma. My kids love the swimming pool. I would put on my swim suit to go to the pool or beach with them. It's not a bikini. It's not particularly revealing as swimsuits go, and actually rather modest. But it's still a swimsuit, with naked arms and near-naked shoulders and most of my thighs exposed. And I felt like I was undermining the Amish moms simply to have a swimsuit. Even though I was more covered than most of the other females at the pool, I could just imagine the Amish women trying to explain to their munchkins why they wear the clothes they do and why they don't run around with that much skin exposed. It was weird feeling like The Bad Influence, while wanting to minimize the Bad Influence I was being, yet without avoiding the pool altogether.

Birkenstocks

Last time I bought shoes, I discovered that Birkenstock makes a high-arch variety. There's not much choice in type of sandal: just the Arizona and the Florida styles. The store where I shopped had the shoes available in only one color. The high-arch sandals are a little more expensive than regular Birkenstocks. The salesman told me that most people don't need (and shouldn't get) the ultra-high arches. I did anyway.

And now I have happy feet. Due to a very wet incident in the backyard with a hose recently, I ended up wearing a pair of old Birkenstocks for a day while my current pair dried. The old ones seem so very flat in comparison. And although my feet were not pained to be wearing them, I could definitely tell the difference in comfort level.

So for those of you who are Birkie-lovers in an attempt to avoid buying orthotic devices -- as opposed to y'all who love your Birkenstocks just because they're so darn comfortable -- you might want to investigate the "high arch footbed" which the company says is their "highest, most aggressive arch support."

Height

I was looking at the 150th-anniversary book of my home congregation. My brother, my sister, my uncle, and I were ALL smack-dab in the center of the back row in our confirmation pictures. My grandpa was the tall one in the pictures of the building committee for the congregation. My grandma was one of the tallest ones in the pictures of the ladies' groups. I guess there's no denying that there's some genes at work there! (Of course, Dad's side of the family ain't exactly short either!)

On top of that, my husband noticed something today. We're doing some time-consuming eagle-watching. (Eaglets are ready to make their first flights in the next day or so.) My uncle and I were both squatting in the exact same position -- the same position, incidentally, in which Philip squats (not sits!) on his chair when he uses the computer. Genes at work there too?

Left toTheir Own Devices

Family reunion. The grown-up cousins enjoying each other's company. The little cousins and second-cousins off playing and having a blast. Lots of games. Lots of talking. LOTS of laughing. Not as much "parenting" going on as normal.

So after lunch, the question is, "Mom, can I go swimming now?"

"Sooooo, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?" (Mothers will understand that that was a HINT and not a genuine question.)

"After breakfast."

For some reason, although I don't know what, I felt the needed to check on the veracity of this statement. So with a little bit of facetiousness, I asked, "After breakfast which day?"

"Yesterday."

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

After my eyes about popped out, I suggested that maybe, just maybe, she miiiight want to brush her teeth BEFORE going swimming.


And then my sister-in-law tells me that a cousin was reeeeeal helpful in this regard. Out in the lake, playing around the "Maypole," Tim tells the group of girls that they need to remember to brush their teeth (even if the parents aren't micro-managing them) because, if they don't, their teeth will get this fuzzy, soft feeling from all that plaque and nastiness. Girls, being girls, decided that maybe, just maybe, FUZZY teeth would feel kinda cool. Maybe they shouldn't brush so they can get that velvety feel on their teeth.

And then parents come along and interfere with their experiment. Harrrumph!

Psalm 78:34

When He slew them,
then they sought Him.
And they returned and sought earnestly for God.
Then they remembered that God was their Rock,
and the Most High God their Redeemer.

Psalm 78 is long. Seventy-two verses long. More than two whole pages in my Bible. Usually when we get to Psalm 78 in daily prayers, I end up reading a portion, or skimming through it pretty quickly. I'm bad. My attention is too short. It's easier for me to pray those 8-verse psalms or even those 16-verse psalms. But two whole long pages? My mind wanders.

This past Sunday, though, we were unable to attend church. I had no laundry to do. No dishes to do. I had time to say my prayers without rushing through a very long psalm. The psalm goes through the things God did for Israel, and how they rejected them. But He was faithful and worked wonders for them. And they rejected Him. So He became angry, but still He was merciful and rescued them. And after a while they spit in His face yet again. This is basically the way life worked through all the history of the children of Israel. And individual Christians can identify with that altogether too well.

But then we get halfway through this recitation of the cycling between unbelief and dependence upon Him and then unbelief again, and Asaph points out very very bluntly, "When He slew them, then they sought Him." It's almost like we cannot seek Him when things are going well. We should! But we tend not to. Thus the need for the curse of the fall, that we struggle with hard work and difficulty in raising kids and coping with earthquakes and floods. Thus God had to give over the Israelites to their sinful desires (for just one little example, to be like the other nations surrounding them) so that they would learn experientially exactly what their desires would garner them.

Pastor talks about the theology of the cross. Luther writes about the theology of the cross. The theology of the cross is obvious through much of Paul's writings. But this one verse really seems to express it in a nutshell: we have no use for Him until He slays us, and then we remember our Rock and our Redeemer.

I've got the quote in at least three different books, but I have access to none of them this week -- the quote from Luther about God's killing to make alive, God's bringing through hell to give heaven, God's bringing us low to raise us up. Yup, that quote is the extended version of these two verses in Psalm 78. I wish I could include the quote; I should probably memorize it. Somewhere in between laundry loads....

Palmolive

My finger hurts. (Waaah waaaah waaaah.)
For a few years I was struggling with a rash on my right hand that hurt and would get so bad that it would bleed. In the last few months I got it under control. I wasn't sure whether it was the Burt's Bees lotion or the Melaleuca Renew lotion or the Palmolive dish soap or the escape from fungus-house. But doing dishes twice (TWICE... only twice!) away on vacation, with soap that's not Palmolive (and what we have here isn't even Dawn!) and the pain is back, the itch is back, the welts are back.

I think the guys are doing the dishes for the rest of this week.
I think I'm going to be freely using my bottle of Renew.
And I think Palmolive just gained one very loyal customer.

Psalm 73

Asaph is having a hard time with the way it seems life plays out. The unbelievers prosper. They have wealth. They have comfort. They oppress the Christians. They sass God. It is just plain useless to be a Christian.

Then Asaph admits that if he were to say such things, it would be untrue and it would scandalize God's children. But he just doesn't get it! He doesn't see how it can NOT be true. Then he goes into the sanctuary of God and figures it out; he sees what will be the end of the wicked.

And that is how Asaph's heart was grieved and how his mind was vexed -- his seeing with his eyeballs (and his senses and his logic) what was going on with the unbelievers and the righteous.

I was foolish and ignorant;
I was like a beast before You.
NEVERTHELESS I am continually with You,
You hold me by my right hand;
You will guide me with Your counsel;
and afterward receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none on earth I desire but You.
My heart and my flesh fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.



Sometimes it can be comforting to see that those great saints of the past were as lousy sinners as I. If they can be as unbelieving as Asaph (in other words, if I am as unbelieving and chafing as Asaph was being), we still see that God is faithful to us, turns us around, hangs onto us, and gives us Himself who/which is our only real desire.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever!