Hiatus

I've decided to take a hiatus from the blog. A really great blog gets updated daily, or at least several times a week, and I am not quite narcissistic enough to think that the world is waiting breathlessly to know what I've been up to or have been thinking. I also think photos punch it up a notch, and frankly, I'm too lazy to keep it fresh. So, I will be taking a break until I find myself motivated to make meaningful posts.

Made a quick trip back to Iowa last week to help The Iowa Orphan celebrate his birthday. While driving to Iowa City on roads that could be driven unconsciously because of their familiarity, I had the thought, "I know I'm driving North...but in Tennessee I'd be going South." My inner gyroscope or compass or whatever it is, has been permanently ruined. I will be lost to the cardinal directions (or is that ordinal?) forevermore. Sigh!

Have been snubbed by the local pet shelter as a volunteer, and only recently received a reply from the local elementary school in response to my offer to volunteer, so I can only assume that God has something else up His sleeve. Makes me laugh, because pet shelters will generally take anyone who breathes. I figure they lost my paperwork. Regardless, I'm eager to see what's around the corner. God is always leading somewhere. The verses I'm memorizing are from Isaiah 43:18-19, "Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past. Behold, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth. Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert." Good stuff - keeps my heart in the right place.

Reading John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life. Well worth it.
Cheers to all!

God is kind to idiots...

I've read about people who have done this kind of thing, and wondered how in the heck they could make that kind of mistake. And now, I've done it, and I understand.

Saturday I did some hair cutting, and since it had been a long time since I'd used the clippers, I responsibly oiled them up. I left the little bottle of appliance oil on the bathroom counter and failed to put it away with the rest of the equipment when I was finished. Fast forward to last night just before bedtime, when my eyes were feeling a little dry from being in a house with fans running all day. Yep. I did it. Grabbed the appliance oil instead of the bottle of eye drops and plunked a drop in each eye. (Never mind one has a black lid and the other is white.) No burning, but my vision surely got foggy in a hurry.

It took me a moment to realize what I'd done, and then I started flushing my eyes with water. Then, thinking that oil and water don't mix anyway, I began gently wiping the white part of my eyes to remove the oil, which actually was productive. (Don't tell my ophthalmologist, but I put a drop of vegetable oil in each eye to dilute the other oil before I called him. It worked fine.) Anyway, he wasn't too shook up about the whole thing and said it was fortunate that it wasn't an acid or base that would cause burns. Said my eyes would be more swollen because I'd flushed them than because of the oil - take 2 Tylenol before I went to bed.

God is kind. Eyes were fine this morning, and the skin around my eyes was nicely soft and supple. So glad it wasn't SuperGlue. Now that would have been a problem!

Done!

 4 years old with some of my sibs

Yes, it's 9:00 in the morning and I am through with my work in the kitchen for the day...maybe for the week. It's already 90 degrees, so I browned a couple of pounds each of ground beef and ground turkey, boiled eggs, and tried to ignore the visions of Food Channel delicacies that these things will NOT become. I'm shooting for easy. (I still feel kind of guilty because I can hear the marching band behind the house. The heat index will be 105 degrees today, and they will be out there until 9:00 tonight. Amazing! Their show has a dance theme - so far I've identified "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies", Theme from "American Bandstand", "I Could have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, and the "Tennessee Waltz", although I had to hum it for my mom so she could identify the title for me. I knew the melody, but not the name of the song.)

Thought you'd enjoy the pic of my family - I'm back right. Youngest 2 not born yet. Mom had 7 children in 10 years, and as Dad always said, "It's not a record, but it ain't a bad average!"

It's been a week since the washing machine betrayed me by unceremoniously overflowing all over the laundry room floor (and living room, by virtue of proximity). Took 3 hours by shop vac and mopping to pick up most of the 20+ gallons that escaped. Looks like it might have been a plugged hose that fooled the water level sensor. It's operating flawlessly now, but I can't say that I'm planning on starting a load and driving off to run errands any time soon.

I keep a bowl and piece of cardboard in the bedroom in hopes of capturing the little gecko who slipped in somehow. He's just a little guy, maybe 4" long, but little guys grow into big guys - easier to see but harder to catch. Truthfully, I figure I'll either catch him or find him dead when we rearrange furniture some day, having starved to death for lack of insects in the house. He likes our bedroom because it is farthest from the AC unit, and therefore is the warmest room in the house.

My thoughts these days are about what it looks like for me to finish out the last half of life (OK, maybe last third!) in a way that gives God glory and fulfills His purpose and ideas, and thus being deeply joyous and satisfying. I have time to invest now, and I want to use the time well - I have no interest in being "busy" because I don't see Jesus being busy for the sake of activity, though He was always about His Father's work. So I'm trying to listen intentionally, spending time with Him and soaking in this season of sabbatical. I think I'm starting to get a bead on where I might be heading, but not sure yet. I'll keep you posted!