Be still, and know that I am God … Psalms 46:10
At 7 AM tomorrow, my husband goes on vacation. As I have shared previously, I am thankful that he was able to do so before I go back to school, which is in ten days.
So…you will forgive me if my posts are few and far between. Enjoy your first week of August.
I’ll be back.
My daughter-in-law told me recently that my sons “idol” ( I think she meant ideal role model) is his dad. As it should be. Do those kinds of things change?
With that in mind, I thought you might enjoy this picture of my youngest grandson, nineteen months old, in his daddy’s chair. I have seen that pose before….
This photo is, of course, also posted on my son’s website. You can click on the photo for a larger view.
We don’t have anything like the California heat here in central Indiana, but it IS hot. I found a recipe for frozen fruit cups, and in looking for something to put the cups in, decided to use some dessert cups that were my mother’s. There are only three. I always thought they were pretty when I was a little girl, and I asked my dad for them, but since then they have just sat in my cupboard. They are plain glass with a stem and a design etched in the cup.
My parents never had a lot of money. Dad turned eighteen in June of ‘43, Mom in July. They were married in August, and two weeks later he left to serve in the Navy during WWII. Funny, though. I really never remember MINDING that we didn’t have a lot of money. My Mom knew how to make little things special. I think that’s why I really never noticed the money thing.
My husband remembers his childhood the same way. His is the middle boy in a family that had five boys in six years. So when I showed the dessert to him in its pre-frozen state, we both tried to think of where Mom might have gotten the cups. Neither of our moms would have gone out and spent money on dessert cups. We decided that either peanut butter or jelly came in those dishes.
Jelly. THAT made us both smile. Mostly, my mom made her jelly, but occasionally she would see jelly in little four ounce glasses that had cartoon characters on them, and she would buy one so that I could have the glass. I was always so excited! Turns out, my hubby has that memory as well. My sisters are seven years either side of me, and like I said, he and his brothers are really close in age. So, I got to use the glasses a whole lot more than he did. But he said his mom kept buying until each boy had his own.
I wonder if our moms would smile to know the little things they did that made us so happy. A few more pennies spent for jelly, and we thought we were really blessed. I hope I have done the same for my children. Given them little memories that mean a lot. As for me, tonight when I eat my fruit cup, my mom will be really close.
And I will smile.
FROZEN FRUIT CUPS
1 8. oz can unsweetened crushed pineapple
1 8 1/2 oz. can apricot halves
1/4 cup sugar
2 T. water
I cup sliced fresh strawberries
1 medium firm banana, sliced
Drain pineapple and apricots, reserving juices. Cut apricots into bite-size pieces; set aside. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, water and reserved juices; cook and stir over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. Cool for 5 minutes.
Stir in the pineapple, apricots, strawberries and banana. Pour into four six ounce custard cups or disposable plastic cups. Cover and freeze. Remove from the freezer 40-50 minutes before serving.
YIELD: 4 servings
This recipe comes from Taste of Home’s COOKING FOR TWO magazine, Summer 2005.
I didn’t, but as I scanned AOL News, I saw a link to “Is the Bible More Racist or Sexist?” Naturally, I clicked on it.
That particular entry was about the book of Numbers, and I didn’t see much in it that I didn’t know except the dolphin skin thing in Chapter 4. I sort of think it a little “out there” to talk about Monty Python episodes in the Bible like the test for adultery in Numbers Chapter 5, but I can see how it might appear. And I too have wondered why Miriam took such a hit in Chapter 12 and Aaron got off. Seems like it might have been an attitude of the heart thing to me.
Anyway, all this made me curious about the author of this project. His name is David Plotz, and he happens to be Jewish. He accidentally got interested in the Bible at a cousin’s bat mitzvah, picking it up to read when he had nothing better to do. And he found an unfamiliar story, that of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, so he kept reading.
Mr. Plotz is humble about the whole thing. In fact, the subtitle of his first entry is “What Happens When an Ignoramus Reads the Good Book?” He says that he figures he will repeat things that are obvious to some people, and he hopes that he will get e-mails when he screws up.
If you are interested , you will need to link here for the beginning of Plotz’s project, here for “Why Joseph Is My Hero,” here for “There Are Ten Other Commandments,” here for “Leviticus on Slavery” and here for “The Book of Numbers: Biblical Racism and the Story of Moses’ African Wife.”
The tone of this blogging project made me want to keep reading. It never hurts to see the questions about Scripture that someone else raises. And I hope this journey will lead to good things for Mr. Plotz. The Bible does say that God’s Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).
Once again, I have Martha to thank for this story.
Malachi 3:3 says, He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”
This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what this statement means about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to their group at the next Bible study.
That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn’t mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.
As she watched, the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were the hottest to burn away all the impurities.
The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot. Then she thought again about the verse that says,”He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.” She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.
The man said yes. He not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith,”How do you know when the silver is fully refined?”
He smiled at her and answered,”Oh, that’s easy-when I see my image in it.
If today you are feeling the heat of the fire, remember that God has His eye on you and will keep watching until He sees His image in you.
Then there’s Lebanon, and Iraq, and Israel and the leaders of our country and the big contractor ride my husband has at work today and…
…so many reasons to pray.
My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning I will direct my prayer to You, and I will look up. –Psalms 5:3
Knowing that I had posted earlier this month on Spelling Standards, my son pointed out this post from alexking.org. I have seen this before but thought it was worth sharing. I am NOT in favor of our moving to phonetic spelling, but this posting certainly does give enough examples of the problems we face as speakers of English:
Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:
- The bandage was wound around the wound.
- The farm was used to produce produce.
- The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
- We must polish the Polish furniture.
- He could lead if he would get the lead out.
- The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
- Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
- A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
- When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
- I did not object to the object.
- The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
- There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
- They were too close to the door to close it.
- The buck does funny things when the does are present.
- A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
- To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
- The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
- After a number of injections my jaw got number.
- Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
- I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
- How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinean nor is it a pig! . And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
P.S. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?
I have had several discussions with my older sister about non-fiction. Her husband was a research physicist, and they decided that their children would only read non-fiction, that anything else was rooted in non-truth. I won’t say I won, but here’s what happened.
When my sister’s youngest daughter, Lillie, was about ten (she’s nineteen now), she would not do what her mother wanted immediately because her nose was always in a book. At least that’s what my sister said. Lillie’s perspective may have been different. Anyway, my sister told me that she was going to forbid Lillie to go to the library because she was sure that the fiction Lillie was reading was behind her less-than-immediate obedience.
Now, I am not taking Lillie’s part, per se, but she was ten years old and home-schooled. I really doubt that she had picked up fiction that was that sinful to read. And I really doubt that her reading fiction was the source of her disobedience, although I will admit that, being a reader myself, there were many times when I obeyed my own mother rather slowly if her requests happened to come at a good point in my stories.
What I told my sister, though, was that if our mom had forbidden me to go to the library (something she never would have done), I would have run away.
“Really?” my sister said. “Even when you were ten?”
Yep. Even when I was ten. My mom understood that stories offered me hope, showed me a world where things were better than this one, a world where things worked out, sometimes in the space of a few hours. I am sure that I annoyed her greatly when I was in the middle of a good book, but she allowed me that chance to escape.
With that in mind, I want to recommend this post by Barbara Nicolosi entitled “Better than Real.” Ms. Nicolosi makes several good points, but the ones I like the best are these:
Stories are constructed and so offer a vision of artificial necessity to an audience that experiences real life as random. That is, the parts in a story are related to the whole in a relationship of necessity. Life isn’t random, of course, but our perspective is limited so it often seems to us that there is no cause and effect in our lives. This particularly rankles in the moral area: Some people to bad things, but appear to suffer no ill effects. Or else, Innocent two year olds get terrible diseases. Stories offer a “kharma” that assures the audience that their gut sense that in the end good will triumph is correct.
…Stories are not objectively “better” than the real. But they are better for the human viewer than the real because they offer God’s perspective — one that is complete, necessary and harmonious.
What I get from Ms. Nicolosi’s words is that stories give us all the pieces, something that we can’t get unless we are looking back on an experience. It’s that linear time thing. We can’t see the end. But God can. He knows how all the pieces fit. In a sense a storyteller plays God. He or she, as Ms. Nicolosi puts it, “sifts” the parts of a story so that “only those are used that will complement the other parts.”
This is what I understand the “sifting” to mean. I know I have a lot of blessings. But since I am in the middle of things, I get frustrated. I am seeing things in the rough draft form. And it’s nice to go somewhere, albeit in a fictional world, where I can have all the pieces. And things work out.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m all in favor of a well-told story. Not because it’s better than real life, exactly. More because a well-told story gives me a chance to rest from real life. I don’t think I have a bad life, at all. But sometimes I like being reminded that there’s a hope of something better.
Well…maybe that’s an exaggeration. A little one. I didn’t know I wanted it until I saw it, and I would really only buy such a thing if I had money to burn, which is unlikely. Still, I think I drooled over this dryer the way men are said to drool over cars.
The hubby and I don’t normally appliance-shop unless something breaks, but we had been discussing a small chest freezer for some time, and yesterday we went looking. We checked out three different appliance stores in Indy and during our search came up on the Maytag Neptune Drying Center. According to the Maytag website, these are the benefits the dryer has:
- Removes odors – steam and optimum temperatures grab odors, while gentle airflow removes them. Use a dryer sheet to add fragrance.
- Saves up to $250 each year in dry cleaning – savings are based on an average dry cleaning cost to refresh at $6.00 per item, four items per month
- Three times larger capacity – The Maytag® Neptune® Drying Center offers a capacity that is three times larger than a traditional dryer
- BreezeCare™™ Drying System – air circulates around and through every item; gentle temperatures are easy on fabrics
- Dry Clothes Cycle – safely dries special-care items; eliminates shrinkage and damage
- Refresh Cycle – freshens “dry clean only” items using optimum temperatures, humidity and air circulation
- Backed by the Maytag® Dependable Performance warranty
- Drum light – makes it easy to see inside the dryer when loading or unloading
- EQ™ Plus™ Sound-Silencing System – for ultra-quiet performance
This dryer has sweater racks and hat racks inside, and I watched as its “wrinkle-release”motion shook the clothes hung in the top cabinet for a little over three minutes. All of this luxury has a price tag of only $1200 which, when you think about it, is perfectly affordable after you spend the $900 for the front load, rear control washer that would go with it perfectly.
Like I said, I can think of lots of things to buy BEFORE I would buy this dryer. Still, the looking was nice. And my husband indulged me, which was nicer yet. I think that next time we go shopping, maybe he should test drive the Dodge Ram with a Hemi that keeps calling his name.
The consonant thief has returned the Rs. You can read the whole story here. Hope none of you stayed up nights wondering what was going to happen.
