workin' for the weekend

For several years I have considered Wednesday to be my "Friday."

Saturday is a day of preparation - not necessarily a restful day.
Sunday is the Lord's Day. Imagine how much resting gets done in a pastor's home. Hah.
Monday - the beginning of the school/work week. Tuesday - more school, with the time constraint of piano. Wednesday, more school, and a lot of piano. And usually school AFTER piano too. Gads, do I ever dislike harping on children to finish up schoolwork when it's 8:30 p.m.

So now that the heavy teaching load is done for the week, I'm sitting and knitting in the La-Z-Girl chair. Well, blogging now. I'll have some knitting pictures on Ravelry soon - I finished D's socks, as well as made a pair of Spring Mittens for S. Still chipping away at A's sweater, now nicknamed The Shroud, because that's how long it'll be on the needles...

Did you catch that back there? SPRING mittens. Alaska's been sending their cold air down to Seattle. It snowed last weekend. Snow! In April!! (You high prairie states people just quit your scoffing; I live at sea level and this simply should NOT be--see previous post and consider our blighted hopes... and plants and shrubs...) So anyway, with the bone chilling weather, S. requested a pair of mittens. She dolefully asked, "will these take as long as D's socks?" Fortunately for me, they didn't, because knitting with size 5 needles is much different than size 1's. They were begun Friday night and finished on Tuesday.

Last weekend (the frigid snowy haily rainy one) I worked in the museum at The Fair. Unheated building. I was thinking warm thoughts as I knit that mitten, though, and I had more than one offer of purchase from passersby. My friend Christy ran and got me some hot coffee, so the day wasn't a total freeze out. I informed A. that I would require a HOT meal when my shift was over with, so he lovingly prepared a six-course meal drove me to the Old Country Buffet, where I could warm my hands in the hot macaroni and cheese casserole. Well, I was sorely tempted to, anyway.

Monday we went to a pastors/wives conference up in Gig Harbor. I was not too thrilled about taking the day off from school: WASL testing was last week and we got virtually nothing done school-wise, and I'm feeling rawther behind the 8 ball (did you hear my Eloise accent there?). That said, however - I changed my attitude rapidly once I got there. Not only were Dr. Bob Jones III and his wife Beneth there, but Dr. Jim Berg was also one of the speakers. The overall theme was "Reclaiming Our Teenagers," but for me the shot between the eyeballs was "What is your purpose in life?"

Oh sure, we all know that one from the catechism: To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, right?

Back in the day when my kids were toddling and non-schooling, I kept a yearly notebook to record observations from sermons and things that God was showing me in my study of the Word. At the front of every notebook, I wrote out that year's mission statement. The wording might change slightly from year to year, but the basic gist was always the same: "By God's grace and power, and for His glory, I purpose to: 1) sit at Jesus' feet, learning of Him by His word, loving Him by my obedience to that Word, and living out my faith in expectation of His coming; 2) be an encouraging wife and mother, creating a haven of peace, order and safety; 3) encourage and equip other women to live for God's glory, sharing a current message from a close relationship to my Lord."

Somewhere along the way, I lost my focus. I'm notoriously forgetful; if I don't see it, I don't remember it. Long story short - I switched notebooks, and because the new notebook was not as user-friendly as my previous notebooks, I fell out of the regular habit of using it...and this mission statement (dated 2004) has been out of sight, out of mind.

SO, the circumstances of my life lately have brought my old yearly mission statements back to mind, and I need to get back to the "This One Thing I Do" mindset. That will help me clear away some of the clutter - not just in my thinking, but also in my scheduling (overbooking?) --even to the point of clarifying which activities/choices are best for our family as a whole - does it help or hinder my purpose? All things are good, but not all things are profitable. :)

That's what's rattling around in my brain lately. Need lots of grace to carry it through. Fortunately I have a Father with an abundant supply.

Speaking of a gracious Father, I'm so excited for both Karen and Kari - both of them moms to be, via adoption!! Makes me get all farklempt, in a good way.

Okay, part of that mission statement involves maintaining an orderly schedule; meaning, I get enough sleep so that I'm not tempted to eat my young tomorrow morning when they invariably act up. Talk amongst yourselves.

gonna be a bright, sunshiny day

Today was the nicest day of the year so far in the greater Seattle area! The weather broadcasters were all nervous, saying "maybe" we'd get to 69 (staying away from the 70 degree mark). When it was all said and done, the high in Seattle was 78 degrees - so Puyallup probably hit 80.

Kids pulled out the Slip-n-Slide, which wreaks havoc on the grass,but I can handle it once a year or so. I prepared early for grilling chicken and made potato salad (I do not possess potato salad skills, but I looked around at allrecipes.com to find something that looked tasty.) I also made an apple pie and some chocolate chip-toffee-pecan cookies. Oh great, two desserts--JUST what I need!

After getting the meals squared away, it was time to play in the dirt outside! I planted my flower baskets and dug up/replanted my strawberries, then sat in a lawn chair to knit whilst the children slipped and slid, creating a mud wallow of the front yard.

Today I also received a call from my credit card company. Apparently they noticed some suspicious activity on my card today, and they were calling to verify everything was okay. Everything was NOT okay, as neither I nor A. had used the credit card at all! Some internet cad attempted to make three separate purchases on my card, totalling somewhere in the vicinity of $140. I thanked the credit card company profusely for their watchfulness. That account is now closed, and we'll be getting new numbers/cards next week. That has me a little paranoid about online purchasing, which is my holiday lifesaver. My Christmas shopping is about 65-70% completed online. The company representative assured me that Paypal is VERY well protected, so no worries there. She said what probably happened is that someone sat down and punched in sequential numbers until they found one that worked - but just to be sure, she wanted to know if both A and I had our credit cards in our possession (which we did, so they weren't physically stolen).

This makes me wonder about sites that don't require the use of the security code on the back of the card - I mean, you have to get all 16 numbers on the card right, and then the 3 on the back, what are the odds, hm?

We'll see what the fallout of this will be in the weeks to come.

It hasn't ruined my bright, sunshiny day, whatever! ;) Tomorrow, though - I won't be seeing so clearly, the rain will be back.

And now that it's sundown, the kids are bathed and ready for church tomorrow, and freaking themselves out by watching a video of Doctor Who -the Third Doctor - hiding behind my green chair so the hissing maggots with fangs and the glowing green stuff doesn't get them.

Bright, sunshiny day - green, glowing night... it's all good.

geek quiz

Quick, name the tv show! (Linnet, you are disqualified from this)



see more crazy cat pics

Potato

A pointless song to enjoy. I need to stop wasting time at YouTube :p

The Lord's Prayer

Cute and a half.

perspectives

Earlier in the week, I sat and drank morning coffee with my husband, who was looking out the window.

"Look at that," he mused, "How long the smoke from the neighbors' chimney lasts."

I turned to look as well, noting the wispy clouds moving and dissolving within feet of their entering the brisk outside air.

What is your life? I said to myself. A vapor... here, then gone.

All the frustrations of school/nonschool homemaking/nonhomemaking - as real and as big as they seem... aren't.

At choir, we've begun singing a song with text by the English poet Christina Rossetti called "All Flesh is Grass." More perspective. :) Here's the poem (with the line that smacked me upside the head this week):

So brief a life, and then an endless life
Or endless death;
So brief a life, then endless peace or
strife:
Whoso considereth
How man but like a flower
Or shoot of grass
Blooms an hour,
Well may sigh "Alas!"

So brief a life, and then an endless grief
Or endless joy;
So brief a life, then ruin or relief:
What solace, what annoy
Of Time needs dwelling on?
It is, it was,
It is done,
While we sigh "Alas!"

Yet saints are singing in a happy hope
Forecasting pleasure,
Bright eyes of faith enlarging all their
scope;
Saints love beyond Time's measure:
Where love is, there is bliss
That will not pass;
Where love is,
Dies away "Alas!"

about me

Yesterday I received a homemade card from my dear 9 yo daughter, and I just now got around to reading it.

There's a heart with a smiley on the front - and when you open to read the inside, it says in wobbly crayon cursive:

"To the
biggest,
grumpiest,
Mom ever!

I(heart)U
UR the
BEST!"

...I think I need to change the "about me" section.

cabcree is so cool

....Look what she did for me!! She redesigned our church web site!

This is still (as crafty people would say) a WIP. Any mistakes in text, etc. would be mine. She took our old site and refrubished it so it's more kewwl with CSS-ey things. Mine looked very 90's old school.

And A. still gets his favorite colors on the web site.


So, props to Raba-baba-caba!