I’ve had a long week of back-to-work activities. Zut alors! I’m still at home.
I thought this was interesting, written by a fellow Episcopalian.
God has made us know what we always sorta knew: that we are not in charge, no matter how much we take charge of what God has left for us to do.
Indeed, we are not in charge. Sometimes I guess we need to be hit over the head to be reminded. But I choose to believe that all is not chaos and that God is in control. This helps me persevere.
I also try to keep things in perspective and stay grateful. We have much for which to be grateful, don’t we?
Our families, for one thing, far-flung as they may be. They keep us close in their hearts, as we do them. My niece sent me this video because she thought I might like it (and I do, of course)…
Our friends who stand by us…
Our churches, such as they are, even the virtual ones.
@thebabylonbee
We have our memories of summers past…
…and visions of the future…
I am grateful for good work to do even if I have to do it in an upstairs guest bedroom/office…
Keep being grateful and thanking God for whatever comes next. We can handle it. Have a good weekend!
“Be cheerful—the problems that worry us most are those that never arrive.”—Benjamin Franklin
Well, Katiebelle continues to be the sweetest baby alive. When we wake her up in the morning, she just seems so thrilled to be with us. No matter how fussy the day before has been, she wakes up full of smiles. Happiness really is a full tank of gas, and she has been filling up on long nights of sleep and, shall we say, enthusiastic nursing come morning.
“Hooray for a new day!”“No one told me that rainstorms could be so captivating!!”
In news from our never-ending semi-quarantine, we recently laughed about the rather dour direction of one of my sing-songy chats with Katie. I must have stepped or looked away from her for a minute, so in response to a brief fuss I sang something like, “Mommy’s still here / Mommy’s still here / Mommy didn’t go anywhere,” which eventually morphed into “Mommy never goes anywhere.” Is singing to your baby free therapy?
Katie’s advice for coping with COVID stress:
Lay on the floor and kick at the air a bunch. Gets rid of any pent-up tension.
Nothing like a little Bobby D to start a blog post.
A little bird told me that after my post last week, some readers were concerned about my mental state. What? Everyone isn’t pounding skittles and wine and worried about their waistline?
Well, try not to worry too much. There are still things that make me laugh. For starters, how much I sounded like this guy when I typed the above:
If quarantining and doing this blog have taught me anything it is that I relate far too much to Jim Gaffigan and Homer J. Simpson. This could explain my waistline situation, though.
I watched Lover Come Back, my least favorite of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson collection, this weekend. It has a plot that is similar to Pillow Talk but is irritating rather than funny. However, it was worth it to see this hat:
I mean, Doris looks like she belongs on a Star Trek set, not in the Hamptons.
The weather has been a lovely break from the upper-90s where we spent most of July. I took a walk yesterday and spotted this:
We’ve got modern art in Jefferson City now. This is a recent addition. While quarantined and allowed out once a day for a walk, I ventured up Capitol Avenue almost everyday. It was nice to get back and see the progress on the revitalization going on on the otherwise dilapidated street.
I also continue to improve my sewing machine skills. I made this tote bag on Sunday and it is a great size.
You can really learn anything on YouTube.
Happy Wednesday!
“Do all you have to do without complaint or wrangling. Show yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world and proffer the word of life.”
When I walk in my house I see pictures, bought long ago, framed and hanging — de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore — that I’ve cherished and stared at for years, yet my eyes keep returning to the masters of the trivial — a white stone perfectly round, tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell, a broken great-grandmother’s rocker, a dead dog’s toy — valueless, unforgettable detritus that my children will throw away as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips with my dead father. Kodaks of kittens, and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.
by Donald Hall
Trivial, we all know, means “of little value or importance.” Yes, it is true, most of my things are of no monetary value. But trivial in any other sense is in the eye of the beholder. To each his own, I say. I love my trivial pursuits.
The OM and I watched a great movie the other night–Kes (1969), an English film directed by Kenneth Loach and based on the novel A Kestral for aKnave by Barry Hines. It is ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s Top Ten (British) Films.
The story is about Billy Casper, a neglected working-class 15-year-old who finds solace and meaning training a kestrel, and it packs quite a punch. It is not an easy film to watch–so dreary and sad and sometimes it’s like watching a movie in a foreign language, so hard to understand are the Yorkshire accents–but it is well worth the effort. A wonderful film. The boy is perfect. We had DVR’d it on TCM, but you can rent it on Amazon Prime.
The world is more than we know.
“He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England; it was the caring about little things–the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread of the seagulls or love.” ― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
Yes, today I am back at work–still at home of course–but doing my thing remotely.
The gospel lesson yesterday was the loaves and fishes story in Matthew 14:13-21, a straightforward telling of one of Jesus’ miracles.
(I have been to this site near the Sea of Galilee where the loaves and fishes episode took place. I have the magnet to prove it.)
Five thousand fed and baskets of leftovers–all from five loaves of bread and two fish. There will always be enough if we share with our neighbors as Jesus commands us. Remember, Bunyan’s rhyme is true spiritually as well as providentially:
“There was a man and some did count him mad, The more he gave away the more he had.”
Here’s a sermon on the topic from Charles Spurgeon.
In other news, not much has happened on the homefront. We’ve had a lot of rainy days and so I haven’t ventured outside much and I haven’t seen the wee babes in weeks except for a brief visit when they dropped off my belated Mother’s Day present.
Thanks, guys!
I finally ‘drove my Cooper’ after three weeks of not in order to go to Michael’s for a curbside pickup. It was easy-peasy. We also took a drive to Lone Elk Park for something to do, but never saw a single bison. Ho hum. Par for the course.
FYI August is always “Summer Under the Stars” month at TCM, so there are lots of good movies to DVR this month. Olivia de Haviland has her day on August 23.
Try to enjoy your Monday.
*It’s home from work we go…(Frank Churchill and Larry Morey) The expression “heigh-ho” was first recorded in 1553 and is defined as an expression of “yawning, sighing, languor, weariness, disappointment”.
Well, another week has flown by and I struggle to recollect what happened. However, I did (almost) accomplish one thing. After my kitchen valance success I wanted to make an oven mitt with the leftover material. I ended up opting for something even easier — a potholder — which I’m making with fabric samples I ordered some time ago from Spoonflower.com. Before I got started I bought a bobbin winder, the one on my sewing machine being broken. It’s a nifty little gadget that certainly beats doing the job by hand.
I also purchased a small cutting mat, regular cotton batting and special heat-resistant batting called Insulbrite. Then I cut the batting to go with the sample pieces and started quilting. I’ve done about half of the right piece in the photo below. The lines are supposed to be evenly spaced and straight, but who cares? It’s my first potholder.
After a lot of swearing I finished sewing the two sides together, trimmed the edges and ended up with this:
Now if I can manage to sew the trim on the outside I’ll have a pretty potholder! Next, I’ll try an oven mitt, though I’m a little daunted by the thought of all the curves involved.
The potholder has been a nice distraction from work and colleagues who are so worried about getting Covid from returning students that they are actually writing wills. I kid you not. I’ve nothing against will-writing in general; it’s the panic behind it that gets me. What they need is a little perspective. I’d like to send all of the doom and gloomers this wonderful passage from C.S. Lewis. I’m not sure of its origin because I got it from a (sensible) friend who posted it on Facebook, but please read the whole thing:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
We could all use a big dose of common sense right now, don’t you think? When the world starts getting you down, pick up a needle or a book, bake a cake or clean out a drawer, take a walk or write a letter — every routine behavior is an act of defiance. Choose to live your life as normally as possible (though please do wear a mask and keep your hands away from your face).
dual personalities 