Prudent ~ wise or judicious in practical affairs; sagacious; discreet or circumspect; sober.

How many of us are wise?  How many of us are foolish?  Where does wisdom come from?  Why do some people seem so blessed with it but the vast majority of us seemed to have taken a potty break from the line as it was being handed out?  We missed our chance.  Is wisdom something innate, handed down thru generations of DNA, or is it something learned thru the School of Hard Knocks?  A combination of the two, maybe?

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.  I've found that being blessed with a high IQ...right up there with President Obama...does not necessarily mean wisdom is part of the package.  Some people can be so 'book smart' they leave us scratching our heads in wonder.  Yet some of the wisest people I've met in my lifetime never did well in school.  The answers they have to whatever Life throws at them, how they deal with problems,  is just there. 

When God offered Solomon anything he desired, Solomon chose wisdom.  And his answer so pleased God that He bestowed Solomon with great wealth and riches besides.  Every time I come to that part of the Bible as I'm reading thru, I always pause and ponder on that.  What would my request have been?  Would I have chosen wisdom?  I know I love to learn and my mind has always been a vessel I'm constantly trying to fill.  But wisdom?  I would like to think I would have been smart enough to say wisdom...but I'll never know.  Like a very wise friend of ours once said when it comes to understanding Scripture..."Just believe it, and turn the page."

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. ~ Gloria Steinem

Oh, I could be doing so many other things at the moment.  I could be sorting thru things to help my husband pack for a big bear hunting trip he's leaving on in a few days with our son.  Idaho seems like a long way from Michigan but this is a hunt together they've been anticipating for months on end now.  I could be at the store picking up propane and unscented wipes...don't ask about the wipes, outside of the fact they'll be using outhouses along the way.  I could be calling our warranty insurance to have an air conditioning technician come and figure out why our central air took a nose dive yesterday and quit blowing out cool air.  I could be starting laundry and making the bed.  I could be doing a lot of things but I looked at my blog this morning and realized several days have passed by in a blur again and I'm woefully behind in writing on here.  One of life's biggest mysteries:  Where does time disappear to?

Well, I can tell you where mine went.

First of all, we had a very beloved friend of ours named Jean who arrived on the 10th of May from Portland.  Dear Hubby managed to get that Friday and Monday off so we decided to show her why we love living here in Michigan so much.  Have you ever noticed how Michigan is shaped like a mitten?  I never had before the trip my daughter-in-law and I took here a year ago in January to house hunt and a lovely young coed from Michigan State sat beside me on the plane to Detroit.  As she described different areas of the state, showing me where Lansing was located, where the Upper Peninsula was, she kept holding up her hand and pointing at it.  I must have had a funny expression on my face because she stopped short and began to laugh.  She said, "Michigan is shaped like a mitten, don't you see?  There's the thumb and the basic 'hand'."  When she pointed that out, I got it.  She said, "You'll get used to people holding up their hand at you real quick.  Everyone does it." And she was right.  Even I do now.  On Jean's first day with us we took her on a drive up the right side of the thumb, along the shores of Lake Huron.  She had never seen a Great Lake before, outside of a small glimpse of the shoreline of Lake Michigan on a trip to Chicago.  We stopped at several spots along the way and just gloried at the beauty of the day.  On a scale of 1 to 10 it had to rate at least a 15.  We met friendly Michiganders along the way, saw some light houses, stopped at an antique shop near Lexington where I found a beat-up pie safe that I knew would be beautiful if I gave it some TLC and plenty of Old English furniture oil...and it is.  We stopped for lunch after we curled over the top of the thumb and headed south towards Saginaw.  We put 400 miles on our vehicle, and she loved every mile of it.  She told us, "Now I understand why the two of you love it here so much!" and she kept asking us if there were any houses on our street for sale.  She said if her family wasn't centered in Portland she'd move here in a minute.   On Saturday I took her to the Town Peddler Antique Mall and we spent a couple of enjoyable hours wandering thru it.  We spent Saturday afternoon on a tour of downtown Detroit our neighbor Donna so graciously took us on.  She is 82 and lived here all her life, plus she was a city tour guide in her younger years so she really knows her stuff.  I was just heartbroken to see how such a beautiful and proud city has been so devastated by the economic fallout the past few years.  She told us it once had a population of around 3 million.  Now there are less than a million left, and downtown is a virtual ghost town...so many storefronts boarded up, so little foot traffic.  And it's a shame because it truly is a beautiful city, nestled on the shores of the Detroit River and overlooking Windsor, Ontario.  The Detroit River is the waterway that connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie, and it was awesome to see huge ocean freighters gliding up and down the river!  We spent Mother's Day at my son's house and had a lovely time there.  Monday morning we got up bright and early and went for a long walk, then took her to the airport in the early afternoon to head home.

The week prior to Jean's arrival we had new carpet laid in the house.  Then I spent a few days 'putting together' the guest room.  I'd been buying different knick knacks and art work that caught my eye the past few months in anticipation of getting the room ready for guests, and I had so much fun seeing it come together!  I'd even found a slip-covered boudoir chair at the Salvation Army for $39...all it needed was to have the slip-cover washed and it looked brand new.  As Jean walked into the room for the first time she looked around and went "Oooooh!" as she spotted one thing, then "Ooooooh!" when she spotted another.  The new mattress set passed muster, too.  She said it was like sleeping at the Ritz.   I love it when my thrift store and antique 'finds' please someone else's eye, too.

Well, I suppose I should go get the propane and wipes.  And make the bed.  And start the laundry.  I've been doing a lot of yard work, too, and have plans to open up a narrow flower bed along the back fence and plant gladiola bulbs there today.  But I'd better get going...thunder showers are heading this way.  And I don't want to get caught in the rain.

Fret not thyself... ~ Psalm 37

Most of the time I am pretty good about setting fretfulness aside.  Most of the time.  It takes up too much mental energy to allow it to hang around.  I used to be a monumental fretter.  I could take a concern and worry it like a dog does a bone, not letting go for days or weeks on end.  Then a very dear internet friend of mine named Kathie from Perth, Australia...who was also a monumental fretter...told me of the 99/1 Rule an Irish friend had passed on to her.  99% of what we fret about never comes to pass.  The one percent that does, we face it, we deal with it, and we move on.  I mean, think about that.  In all reality, isn't that the truth?  I fretted about living long enough to see my children graduate from high school.  They are now 33 and 35 years old.  Don't need to fret about that one any more.  In years past when money was extremely tight I'd worry about getting bills paid.  Dear Hubby and I have an excellent credit rating.  Obviously, that worry didn't come to fruition, either.  I am a very practical minded person and when this 'rule' was brought to my attention and I gave it some thought I decided it made sense to me and began applying it to my life.  I can not begin to tell you how liberating this has been for me.

And yet, sometimes a certain concern will come along and I find myself chewing away at that old bone of fretfulness again.  It concerns a loved one who just can't seem to get their act together.  Who slides along in life without putting any effort forth to better their position or quality of life.  And everyone around this person wants to see them succeed, wants to see them get some kind of vision of moving on into the here and now and quit dwelling on the past.   To realize we're all getting mentally exhausted from trying to help them keep it together.  To realize we're not going to be here forever to keep coming behind them and straightening their life out.  To know how frustrating it is to pitch in to try to help, only to know we'll be right back at square one in a month or two.  To know how angry it makes us to take time out of our own busy schedules to help with things that would take very little effort on their part to keep under control.  We all spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how we can help this person realize they need more help than we have to offer anymore. 

I am speaking from the heart here.  I am not being critical or judgmental.  I am saying this because I love this person.  I want to see them happy, to be able to face a new day with a sense of anticipation instead of an "Ugh.  Another day to get thru" attitude.  I want to have it settled in my heart that when I'm gone this person is at a place in life where they're happy.  That would ease a tremendous amount of my fretfulness.

I don't know.  It's so true how none of us can see the forest for the trees when we're in the middle of something.  A bad marriage where everyone around them has the solution as to how to improve things except for the two who are married to each other.  Situations like that.  We can all see the solutions in our situation, too, but until the person in the middle of it sees the need it's like bucking up against a brick wall and being knocked back a few feet every time we try to bring it up.   I heard a sermon once many, many years ago and the minister used a phrase that has stuck with me all these years.  He said, "You've got to have a want to."  He was referring to spiritual things as far as wanting to stick with the gospel.  But it is so true for everything in life to succeed.  You  have to have a want to.  Not a "Welllllllllllll, maybe I can change."  Or the idea in the back of your mind that everyone will come bail you out.  Again.  No.  It's kind of like the situation where the little boy cried "Wolf!" too many times.  The others are going to give up.

I don't want to say I'm at the point of giving up.  I love this loved one too much to do that.  But if we could only help this person see their need to give themselves a good shaking and toss off the layers and layers of apathy.  To begin to enjoy life instead of burying themselves away from the world.  There's so much out there.  If only they could chop down a few of those trees in the forest and see the sunlight.

Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things. ~ Author Unknown

Once upon a time I used to think I wanted to do a lot of entertaining. And I did a fair amount for a few years.

Then Dear Hubby's work shifts became so impossibly early that we both got in the habit of going to bed around 7 pm so we could get up around 3 am to get him sent on his way.  I had previously been a night owl most of my life but I came to realize if I ever wanted to see him I needed to adjust my hours to his.  So I did.  And, honestly, I've never minded.  To me, the most peaceful hours of the day are those before daylight.  The city we lived in had a quiet hush over it in the hours before its hellish commuter traffic began.  I could hear train whistles moan in the distance.  I heard the first bird song of the day.  I enjoyed sitting at my computer drinking my coffee and blogging and gradually coming awake.  I used to blog quite regularly back then.

Since we were going to bed around the time most people were sitting down to dinner, our entertaining time  gradually disappeared.  I never really missed it.  I found it to be quite stressful and so did my family.  I wanted the house to be perfect, the food to be perfect, Dear Hubby to be perfect, and the kids to be perfect.  By the time company arrived I was almost too tired to enjoy it.  And I have never been a comfortable chitter-chatter.  It was always a relief to shut the door behind 'regular company' as they left at the end of the evening.  Not that I didn't enjoy them.  Not that I didn't love my friends.  I'm just not what I term a 'traditional' woman.  I have never been frilly and girly and 'into' things like fancy dishes and silver and linen on the table.  At this stage in life if you come to dinner at my house, expect Stouffer's lasagna and paper towels taken off the roll on the wall to use as napkins.  That's just the way it is here.  Suits me and Dear Hubby just fine.

Do you know what kind of entertaining I enjoyed?  Well, in years past my husband was involved in the Merchant Seamen ministry at our Portland church.  This was prior to 9/11...before the terrorists attacked and changed America forever.  We used to be able to go down to the docks along Portland's Willamette and Columbia rivers and freely move around on them, climbing on and off the huge ocean freighters inviting merchant seamen from all over the world to come to church.  There were many who came.  And often after church we'd invite them over to our house for coffee and refreshments...homemade cookies, pie, cake.  Our children were exposed to these people who were from all over the world, and the visitors had the opportunity to come into a 'real' American home and see what a 'real' American family was like.  They came from everywhere, from A to Z, from Argentina to Zanzibar. Many of them were away from their homelands and their families for months at a time and especially enjoyed interacting with our children.  It was a real blessing to have them in our home. 

Dear Hubby was also involved with another gentleman from our church in going down to the low-rent apartments and hotels along Portland's Skid Road and inviting people from there to church as well.  Many came, and we opened our home to them too.  Some were down-on-their luck.  Some of them were lonely Seniors.  Some were young kids backpacking across America.   Students.  A huge cross-section of humanity. 

I don't know why, but I felt so much more 'at home' and comfortable with them.  I loved having them come into our home.  I put on the coffee pot and pulled out some goodies and we'd sit around and talk about where they came from, where they were headed.  I have always had a voracious appetite for knowledge,  and I found their stories fascinating.  I was like a sponge, soaking it all up. 

I guess I have entertaining on my mind because we have a very dear friend from Portland coming next week to spend a few days with us.  I've been in the process this past week of getting our guest room set up and comfortable for her, tho she told us she'd be happy with an air bed on the floor.  What makes it easy is she isn't 'regular company'.  She's like family, and her visit is so happily anticipated.  I won't have to 'put on the hog' for her.  I can just....relax.

When nobody around you seems to measure up, it's time to check your yardstick. ~ Bill Lemley

Did you think this is a photo of our basement?

Nope.

This is.



We have been blessed with a very roomy 1100 square foot basement in our Michigan home.  Pictured here is the main part of the old-fashioned rec room.  Off to the left is another area that's part of the rec room, too.  It's empty outside of a hat rack on the wall.   There is a finished room that could be counted as another bedroom but I've designated that one for Dear Hubby's Rubbermaid storage bins full of hunting clothes and other paraphernalia.  He is doing a great job of keeping that in order.  No clutter, just bins stacked against the walls that he can rummage thru when he needs something.  I also have a big laundry room area where the furnace and water heater are.  There's a storage cubby under the stairs and a wall full of ceiling-to-floor cupboards.  I have never had so much inside storage space.  In the garage is another wall of ceiling-to-floor cupboards as well as a wall with triple-tier open shelves.  I never thought I'd see the day I'd have more storage space than I have stuff to fill it.

As to the first photo that I snitched off of Google images, that's pretty much how my Portland basement looked.  We had next-to-no closet space in that house.  No pantry and minimal cupboard space in the kitchen.  No linen closet.  Whatever needed to be stored was put in the unfinished basement.  Hardly any power outlets, for that matter.  Extension cords were my best friends.  Houses built in 1912 didn't need plug ins and closets.  There were very few electrical appliances and gadgets in the early part of the last century.  You had your Sunday-go-to-church outfit and a few other clothes and that was it.  No need for walk-in closets big enough to hide an army in.

I like organization.  I almost border on obsessive/compulsive when it comes to order.  Order makes me feel peaceful and less stressed.  Tranquil.  Chaos and messiness makes me feel anxious and uneasy.  I don't know why.  Does it hearken back to childhood issues?  Is it a control issue of some sort?   I'm "A place for everything, and everything in its place" sort of person.  I like knowing when I'm in need of a hammer I can go to a certain cupboard in the basement, open it up, and find the hammer there where it should be.  I like counters to be clean and uncluttered.  When I go to bed, I take dirty cups or glasses out to the kitchen.  I like waking up to a neat and orderly living room.  Does that make me obsessive?  Compulsive?  Or someone who just likes order?

Life has also blessed me with two packrats.  My Dear Hubby and my daughter.  I think in 38 years together I've done a good job at compromising with my husband.  In 35 years with my daughter, I learned to cast a blind eye as much as I could.  They are not me.  I can't make them be me, as much as I'd like them to be in this one area of life.  If only I could make them both realize how easy it is to just put away what they use.  Then they could find things.  They wouldn't be tearing around looking for things they just knew they'd put on the dresser or stuck in a drawer or basket.  My way of compromising is just standing back and letting them stew and worry.  It is not my problem.  I know where my stuff is.  Where it should be!

Oh well.  The good Lord made each of us individually with our quirks and likes and personalities.  We are who we are.  And I'm a neatnik.

The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~ Mad Magazine

I'm waiting for a carpet consultant to arrive so we can start the process of getting new carpet laid in our house.  Isn't it sad when existing carpet is of such good quality it still has a lot of life left to it but its ability to lie flat on the floor is gone?  The previous owners of this house, who were the original owners from when our house was built in the late 1950s, had the carpet stretched before we moved in here and there was just a slight hump in the living room carpet.  Now, after walking over it for a little over a year, the humps and bumps are everywhere.  So...since we have a friend from Portland due to arrive in two weeks, we decided it's about time we get some new carpet.  And time for me to get the guest room in order as well.  When we first moved here it was our daughter's bedroom.  When she moved out it converted into our grandsons' play area.  They have a big Rubbermaid storage bin in there with their toys and Cooper's legion of garbage trucks and box of junk mail he loves to play Mail with.  When they're here they spend time playing with their Star Wars light sabers and pirate swords in there.  Nothing to hit, nothing to break.  We have a big mostly-empty old-fashioned rec room in the basement large enough for them to play field hockey in but will they play down there?  No, not unless I stay down there with them.  It's "scary".   Well, once the guest room is set up and decorated there will be no more Star Wars or Pirates played in there.  Grandma is only so tolerant.

And people wonder why I love living in this state so much!

Of travel I've had my share, man. I've been everywhere. ~ Johnny Cash

I wish I could say I took this photo because it's such a lovely one, but no.  Someone else was the shutterbug on this one.  It is of a region I recently traveled to that was filled with many huge farms and thousands of acres of fields that at this stage of the year are filled with last year's corn crop stubble but the farmers have been out tilling many of them and the scent of freshly-turned rich soil fills the air.  It smells so good!  And it's so black and fertile...you just know Mother Nature is waiting for it to be planted so she can make something burst forth.  Spring has definitely sprung!

You know, I've always loved America.  I have always felt so fortunate and so blessed to have been born and raised here.  Even with all of its political and financial woes in recent years it is, in my humble opinion, still the best country in the world.  In this past year I've had the wonderful opportunity to do a lot of traveling around the upper Midwest and each time Dear Hubby and I venture out into some more unknown territory it's such a thrill to discover even more of what makes this country so great.  The diversity of the region...the people...the beauty...the sheer size of it...continues to overwhelm me.  I have gone places and seen things I never dreamed I would ever see in my lifetime.  Living here has opened my eyes to just how limited my horizons were living on the West Coast.  But they were my limitations.  I just didn't feel the need to travel around it much.  California didn't seem that much different from Oregon, which in turn didn't seem that much different from Washington.  The terrain and climates might have varied a bit, but to me the people in the west are pretty much the same up and down the Pacific Coast.  But once you come in to the true heartland of America, even in one state there can be so much variety.  For instance, northern Ohio and Pennsylvania seem so much more 'northern' until you get down towards their borders that they share with West Virginia and Kentucky.  There you begin to hear a more southern flavor to their speech.  At a restaurant a waitress asked me if I wanted grits with my breakfast meal.  Living here is so much more vastly different than vacationing here.  The more I see, the more I want to get out and discover.

Dear Hubby and I were out on the road again recently towards the south to see what that was like.  We stopped at a farm and were looking thru some things for sale in the barn.  There were a lot of farmers there and I got taken up in just observing them.  Some were in their 70s and 80s and were still strong, solid men...the salt of the earth.  You could tell they've spent their lives working out in the elements with their leathery wind-burnt skin, their faces etched in lines.  I had such a sweet thing happen to me there.  One of the farmers, an older gentleman probably in his 80s, had come in and was looking around.  All of a sudden he began patting his pockets and he said, "Oh dear!  I can't find my cell phone!  It must have dropped out of one of my pockets!"  so Dear Hubby and I began looking around with him to see if we could help him find it.  Then Dear Hubby came up with the brilliant idea of calling the gentleman's phone so we did.  The ringer was set so low we could barely hear it but I kept tracing the sound and finally found the phone sitting in a pile of stuff off to the side.  The gentleman was so appreciative...he said he couldn't understand why the ringer was so low because he's so hard of hearing he couldn't even hear it, haha!  After thanking us he wandered off out of the barn and I heard another farmer ask him, "Did you find your phone?"  and he replied, "Why, yes I did!  That sweet little girl in there helped me find it!"  That just touched my heart.  I am a silvery-haired 58 year old woman and it's been a long time since someone has called me 'little girl'.

So...my love affair with middle America continues.  Every time we hop in the car is like setting off on a brand new adventure!   And I, for one, can't get enough of it.

Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality. ~ Alfred Painter

I'm one of those people who kind of likes milestones and I just passed one while I was out of town recently.  Last nite when I came to my blog I saw on my Stats that I've had 100,339 visitors since the stat counter gadget came on to my blog's management section a couple years ago.  I think all told, since I began blogging in April 2005 I've had somewhere between 750,000 - 1 million.  I've lost track along the way.  Even if it had been 10 I would've been thrilled, when you consider how many blogs are still out there.  Not as many as there were in blogging's heyday, and most seem to be political, news oriented, or whatever.  I'm not sure how many people blog just for the pleasure of it like I do.  But to think all these visitors have crossed my path the past few years...well, I find that simply amazing!  So thank you so much for stopping by and  spending a few minutes here reading the thoughts in my head. 

What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise. ~ Barbara Jordan

One of the things Dear Hubby and I love doing since we moved to Michigan a year ago is wander around this absolutely gorgeous state.  We rarely ever have a destination in mind when we climb into our vehicle and we're always pleasantly surprised by what we find.  We try to stay away from the main freeways that crisscross the state.  We take the little highways and byways and what we usually discover is Smalltown America along the way, quaint little towns that haven't changed much in the past 100 years with a Main Street and brick storefronts with pots of flowers along the sidewalks in the summer.

We took a recent drive along the Underground Railroad Memorial Highway.  Actually, when we took the cutoff from I-94 heading south from Kalamazoo we had no idea we were on a roadway that had once been a major passage for slaves fleeing from the south.  A sign along the way informed us.  We came to the burg of Vandalia which was one of the stations where they'd find safety and shelter.  The town is very small with a population of around 400 people, 38% of them under the age of 18, so I'm thinking it's one of those idyllic out-of-the-way places for raising kids.  What we saw as we drove thru were some amazing old buildings, such as the church I have pictured above.  And once we'd realized we were on the memorial highway, I spent my time thinking about what the people who'd traveled along it 150 years ago must have felt as they fled for their lives.  I don't know what the landscape was like back then but since most of it is open farmland all around with groves of trees and marshy spots, I'm thinking it wasn't much different than what it is now.  Out in the elements with not much more than the clothes on their backs...it was very sobering. 

Before we moved here, Michigan was a state I knew existed.  I knew Detroit was here, that it was in the upper Midwest, and it's the home of America's auto industry.  But I never gave it much thought beyond that.  I'd heard of the Upper Peninsula.  I knew the Great Lakes were around here somewhere but didn't realize how the state is actually surrounded by them on 3 sides. And I never ever dreamed it was so full of America's history.  The town of Monroe, not many miles south of where I live, is where General George Armstrong Custer grew up and one of the bloodiest battles took place.  I've seen the church where he and his wife were married.  Detroit was the second founded city in America.  It was also the jump off point for slaves entering into Canada on the Underground Railroad.  Detroit has been under the rule of Native Americans, the French, and the British in the past before it became part of this country.  And once you get within a few miles of the perimeter of the metro area, Michigan is mostly rural outside of a few bigger cities like Lansing, Kalamazoo, Flint, and Saginaw.  Detroit is also the only major city in America that actually looks south onto Canada.

I have a friend who, a while back, gently chastised me for comparing Oregon and Michigan so much.  True, I do write a lot about the comparisons between Northwest living and Upper Midwest living, especially on Facebook.  But I think of friends and family in Oregon and Washington and I'm sure most of them know as much about Michigan as I did before I moved here.  Which is not much.  So I try to share my new experiences and love for my new surroundings.  As my next door neighbor Donna says, "But Oregon is so far away, Kris!"  How many of those I know and love out west will ever visit here?  Not many, I'm thinking.  I was quite aware when we moved here there are many who I'll most likely never see again.  I'm ok with that, since with technology everyone is just a click away, and once I get Skype figured out I can 'see' them on screen as clearly as I'd see them in real life.  When we first learned about the possibility of moving here I remember thinking, "Detroit?  Are you serious?!  Are we crazy?!"  But oh, how pleasantly surprised we've been.  Sure, Detroit is a city in major crisis.  It's filled with crime and decay.  But it's such a tiny part of an absolutely beautiful state.  Pure Michigan.

You can call me late...just don't call me late for dinner. ~ Anonymous

Sometimes the best laid plans go astray.

Yesterday Dear Hubby and I decided to make the 212 mile drive to Kitchener, Ontario, in Canada to attend one of our faith's little "branch" churches there.  When we lived in Portland we attended the world headquarter's church for almost 35 years before moving to SE Michigan.  Our faith's branch churches are scattered all over the US and Canada, as well as being spread all over the world.  But here in the upper midwest the churches are usually many miles apart.  We can either choose to go to the church in Chicago...or to the one in Kitchener.  We're almost equidistant between the two.  Since we have traveled to the Chicago area a time or two since moving here we know we're not big city fans.  The traffic there is insane, no matter what time of day you go.  Kitchener, on the other hand, is a lovely drive north of Detroit to Port Huron, where we cross the Blue Water Bridge into Sarnia, Ontario.  From there it's almost a straight shot east on a beautiful highway that carves its way across miles and miles of western Ontario farm land.  We spot deer and wild turkeys and hawks along the way.  Each season has its own charm.  And it's peaceful and oh so NOT stressful. 

We arrived at the church in Kitchener and had a wonderful service there with the saints who are some of the most warm and welcoming people we've ever met.  The vast majority of them come from Newfoundland originally.  Because of the fishing and logging industries dying out in that part of Canada many of the people had moved to Kitchener for work and they established a church there.  Since moving to the Detroit area we've traveled there as often as we can to attend church and whenever we have the pastor and his wife, who've become dear friends of ours, invite us over for dinner before we set out for the 212 mile drive home.  We met up with them before and after church to say hello and to chit chat yesterday and as we went out to our car they were busy talking with some Filipino visitors so we assumed they were having them over for dinner and we headed off down the highway towards home, figuring we'd stop somewhere along the way to eat.  About half an hour later Dear Hubby's phone rings and it's the Pastor.  "Where are you guys?" he asked.  I said, "Um....on our way home."   "Oh no, you were supposed to come here for dinner!" he said.  I told him we'd seen them talking to the Filipino gentlemen and had assumed they were having them over for dinner so we figured we'd just go ahead and leave for home.  "Oh, no, no..." he said.  "We had never met them before and were just getting acquainted.  No, whenever you guys come you are to come here for dinner!"  He invited us to come back but we were about halfway between Kitchener and the next city west, Woodstock, and Exits are few and far between on that stretch of highway.  By the time we turned around and arrived back in Kitchener it would've been time for them to turn around and head back to church for afternoon Sunday School.  So I apologized, he apologized.  We said next time we come we'll take them out to dinner to make up for it.

I sent a message to the wife apologizing all over myself when I got home, I felt so badly.  Here she'd gone to all the trouble of cooking a lovely dinner.  But luckily one of their daughters and her children had been there for dinner too so I don't think anything went to waste.  This morning I apologized again.  And then I got a message back from her telling me no, no they should have made sure we knew we're to come every time.  And she said it was pretty funny when they realized we weren't there any more and her husband went around the back of the church to see if we were sitting there waiting for them.  Usually we follow them to their house.  We weren't there...well maybe, they thought, we'd gone on ahead.  But then they drove up to their house we weren't there either!  Where were we?  That's when we got the call.  She said we missed pineapple chicken, rice, Caesar salad, a casserole their daughter had made, homemade lemon pie, and homemade blueberry cheesecake.  Argh, lol!  It would've been much nicer to visit with them instead of eating in a noisy and crowded Cracker Barrel restaurant but you live and you learn, ha!

As we were getting ready for bed last night I reminded Dear Hubby about something a friend of mine had emailed me when we first began attending church in Canada and I had told her how warm and welcoming the people there are.  She said a friend of theirs who'd moved to Portland from Newfoundland had told her and her husband how hard it was to get used to the way things are done in America compared to his homeland.  He said there hospitality is pretty much of the 'open door' variety...you can drop in to visit friends and family any time and you're always welcome.  Well, we know how that's evolved here with our rush-rush busy society.  You call ahead, whether you want to visit friends or family, to see if your visit is going to be scheduled in and welcomed or not.  Pierre found out early on you just don't decide to go knock on someone's door at 3 in the afternoon and expect a happy greeting.  Like I told the Pastor when we made our little cultural etiquette faux pas, Dear Hubby and I would never presume we were welcome and just drop in and expect dinner!  That just goes so against the American way of doing things!  I must admit, it's pretty fascinating getting to know our neighbors to the North.  We are very similar in so many ways, and yet they still live by a much more polite and neighborly way of doing things.  The way our country was when I was a little girl.  I remember when friends and neighbors would just drop by, and if someone showed up around suppertime, another plate or two were put on the table, no questions asked.  I like it.  When did we lose it?

The rainy days a man saves for usually seem to arrive during his vacation. ~ Author Unknown

Dear Hubby is on his way home as I write this.  He's spent a week's vacation visiting family and friends in Portland.  When he made his travel plans I had no idea at the time that I would also be on 'vacation' myself from taking care of the grandboys. I had heard my daughter-in-law's mom was planning on visiting here from Texas again but there was no set date at the time.  Oh well.  I had a nice week to myself, too, here at home.  I took down the sheers in the living room and had them dry cleaned.  I set up my new laptop computer and purchased a new flat screen TV after our old boxy one decided to die on me the other nite.  I got the Play Station hooked up to it, the HDMI cable attached.  I even figured out how to hook up my computer to the TV so Dear Hubby and I can watch our Portland church's internet broadcasts on the much bigger TV screen.  We'd been watching them on my old computer monitor and let me tell you, this is so much nicer.  The screen also fills completely when Dylan plays his video games.  He's one happy camper.  I put the old TV out on the curb for the garbage guys to pick up but by morning, pickers had come by and pretty much taken all of it except the outer casing and the screen.

When Dear Hubby called me from the airport this morning once he'd gotten thru security he said, "I hear you had a tornado warning last nite!"   Say what?!  That was the first I'd heard of that!  I do remember waking up sometime in the nite, hearing thunder and the rain pelting the roof, but I've grown to love the sound of it after living here for a year now.  It doesn't frighten me...it lulls me to sleep.  Deep sleep, obviously.  Dear Hubby said "Didn't you watch the weather last nite?"  I told him whenever he's gone for any length of time I don't watch TV at all unless I decide to watch something I have taped on the DVR.  When I slid the drapes shut last nite around 8 pm it was dusky and looked normal to me.  Well, people here tell us Michigan weather can change in a minute and I guess they're right.  You know, I thought I heard an alarm go off last nite but I thought it was on a car.  Maybe it was the tornado warning?  I don't know.  When I picked up our drapes at the dry cleaner's this morning the woman who helped me asked me if we'd had any damage from the wind last nite at our house.  I must have been unconscious.  I didn't even hear it.

Regardless, today it's beautiful and sunny and warm.  I have the front door open and the window in the living room.  Sun is streaming in. Birds are chirping everywhere.  And it was snowing in Portland when Dear Hubby left for the airport.  They're having our weather! Go figure!  What a strange winter it's been.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~ Sylvia Plath

Last nite I began doing something I've wanted to do all my life.  I began writing a book.  I sat down at my keyboard and let the words begin to flow.  Several hours later, when I shut my computer down for the day, I had 6 pages of blood, sweat, and tears ripped out of me.  People have told me as far back as I can remember that I have the talent.  And as far back, as hopeful as I've been in my heart that I do have the talent, I've balked at truly sitting down and getting serious about it.  One major stumbling block was when an early anonymous reader left a comment asking why anyone would be interested in reading about my boring and paltry life.  That stabbed me to the heart and caused me to doubt myself.  It almost caused me to shut down my blog completely.  But if nothing else, as my mom used to tell me while I was growing up, "You're stubborn as the day is long!"  I was.  I am.

So, as I go along...as I commit myself to this new life venture, I don't know how much time I'll spend here.  I may still come by regularly --  well, fairly regularly.  My track record hasn't been so good lately.   But I do have a bit of a 'time bomb' hanging over my head.  I am on a hiatus from doing the daily day care for my grandsons while their other grandmother is visiting but she'll be leaving again in a few months.  If I want to get done, I need to devote a lot of time to it.  We'll see.

Wish me luck.

Truth is, I wouldn't know a gigabyte from a snakebite. ~ Dolly Parton

Well, wish me luck.  Tomorrow I launch off into the world of technology once again, this time to set up a new laptop I purchased recently.  My old desk top has been dying a slow and  --  from all the sounds it's been emitting  --  very painful death.  I've had it for 6 or 7 years so it's served me well but as far as the technological realm is concerned it's probably beyond prehistoric.  Kind of like me.

I don't know why I'm so intimidated by technology.  I think I can say for my generation we all feel that way.  In the early days of VCRs and clunky cordless phones I thought it was confusing enough but as the years go by and more and more gadgets pop up on the scene...well, it's pretty humbling when my 3-year-old grandson tells me "That's an iPod, Gram, not an iPad".  Or is it Ipod and Ipad?  See, I don't even know which is what.  And do I have a Smart Phone or an Android?   All along I've been thinking it's an Android.  All I know is I've finally discovered the Speaker button on what I have and I can finally hear the other person speak and understand them.  Is it just me?  I can NOT hear voices well on them and now that I've discovered how to text...well, I've always been about a million times more comfortable talking by typing than I have by speaking so I'm truly in my element now.  I'll tell you now, you'll be lucky if you ever hear my voice again if you live more than a mile from me.  And since the vast majority of friends and family are centered on the West Coast, my voice will soon be nothing but a memory, ha!  The trouble with that is, I don't have a clue how to add people to text to so I have my nuclear family and that's it.  In a world that's supposed to be so connected I guess you'd say I'm pretty isolated.  But that's ok.   I don't have time to talk and I rarely text during the day unless it's something that concerns my grandkids.

So...wish me luck as I launch off into unfamiliar territory.  I'm sure in my mind I'm thinking it will be much more complicated than it is.  Probably nothing more than plugging it in and sticking a cable of some sort into it.  Somewhere.  One can only hope.

And it didn't even rain. And it didn't even flood -- outside!

Dear Hubby and I will be taking care of the grandboys today

while our son and daughter-in-law take care

of this.

The second time in 4 months the sump pump

failed.

I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel. - Audrey Hepburn

I have this little gadget at the bottom of my sidebar and it's been there, I think, since the inception of my blog.  It's called Feedjit and even tho I know a lot of you are already aware of it and have it installed on your blogs, I have a continuing fascination with mine.  I check it quite often, just to get an overview of who's visited from where.  What tickles my brain the most is wondering how on earth they find me.  It does tell me that many come by searching for the quotes that I've used as my headers.  I think my most popular one is "One ringy dingy" from "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In", a popular variety show that bridged the time period from 1968 to 1973.  Otherwise, the Google searches I see are not specific for the most part.  I just have to wonder on my own how someone in Paris or Edinburgh or Quezon City or Lebanon, Oregon, found me.

With that said, this morning it's snowing and cold.  29 with wind chills in the high teens.  I awoke to a predawn glow in our bedroom.  When I know snow is in the forecast I love to leave the blinds open thru the nite.  The glow of the natural light outside that filters in thru the sheers is magical and soothing to me.  I guess it's got something to do with knowing it's so cold and snowy outside while I'm hunkered down cozy under the quilts.  I'm hoping the forecast this morning is accurate, only an inch or so.  I have to drive out to the airport later this morning to pick up Dear Hubby and I have to find my way to a terminal there that I've never been to before so I'm hoping for smooth sailing.

I love airports.  One of my favorite pastimes is watching people and what better place to do that?  When I was a teenager my family had the weird quirk of liking to drive to Portland's international airport every once in a while and just sitting there watching all the travelers come and go.  In those days, the 1960s, we could go out onto the huge terraces and watch the jets land in 'real time'.   You could wander all over the terminal and no one ever suspected you of any covert activity if you lingered anywhere.  We also loved to park along the fences near the runways and have the jets practically land on our heads!  And when the military jets would take off, you could feel the thrust of the engines from the tops of your head to the tips of your toes.  What an adrenaline rush!  Especially thrilling for my little brother and me who came from a small town miles from any airports.  The big thrill there was to run down to the railroad tracks in the late afternoons and wave at the engineer and conductor on the freight trains that passed thru town.

I haven't had much time to blog because life has been especially hectic lately.  But Other Grandma should be here next weekend for an extended visit and I think we'll be sharing the child care duties while she's here.  I must admit I'm ready for it.  I am so tired.  Audrey Hepburn's quote so says it all for me this morning.

I have beautiful music playing on Pandora.  The house is quiet and so peaceful.  I think I'll go pour another cup of coffee, snuggle up on the couch with a throw, and watch the snow fall.

I should not go back and read my blog entries from years past.

It breaks my heart.

Places I've Been...and Have Yet to Visit. -- Sent to me by my friend Karen

=   I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots.  Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.

=   I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.

=   I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work. I live close so it's a short drive.

=   I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much on physical activity anymore.

=   I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often.

=   I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

=   Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting  older.

=   One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense!  It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart.  At my age I need all the stimuli I can get.

=   And, sometimes I think I am in Vincible but life shows me I am not.

=   People keep telling me I'm in Denial, but I'm positive I've never been there before.

=  So far, I haven't been in Continent; but my travel agent says I'll be going soon……..

I Know What Jesus Looked Like....

I know what Jesus looked like.

I see Him in the faces of my grandchildren,

in a sun-drenched alpine meadow

filled with rainbows of wildflowers.

I know what He sounded like, too.

His voice is in the laughter of 

children in the distance,

drifting through my kitchen window

on a summer day.

I know where He walked...

through the valleys of life's trials

and beside me in 

the still waters.

I know what the hem of His garment

felt like.

There was healing in its hem.

There was comfort

in its warmth.

I know what His love is.

It has flooded my soul

and filled my heart with

peace.

And I know what His Word is.

Life everlasting.

Time is not an enemy.
Time embellishes and enhances.
It teaches patience
and produces wisdom,
nuggets of gold to pass on
to new generations.
It is the ebb and flow
of the body's rhythms.
It enriches,
it diminishes,
on tides so subtle
we are taken by surprise
as we look in the mirror
and see its
delicate etchings
in life maps
trailing down
 the plains of our faces.

Time is a gift.
It is one more sunset to savor,
one more flower's scent
on a hot summer morning.
It is one more snowflake
to taste on the tip
of your tongue.
It is realizing
with each passing day
we are not losing ground.
We are gaining
one step closer to
Home.