I've always banned guns in my kids toy chest. I felt that playing with toy guns would desensitize them to real gun violence. I also felt even toy guns could be dangerous. But ya know, everything can be dangerous. There is no way to child proof the entire house, much less the entire world. So now I'm rethinking. Comments welcome.
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My plumbing blessing.
So our field does have to be replaced. It is going to take 3-4 weeks and will cost nearly $4000 for everything. (new field, haul away,tank pump out, Tan root removal, permitting, bla bla bla) We got 6 quotes from companies that were recommend or that I found good reviews on and settled on a very small company called Johnson's. They came yesterday to pump the tank so our tub would drain out and we can flush our toilets. If we are very conservative on the flushing it should last until the job is done and the system is functional again. No showers, no washing machines or dish washing in the house. Very limited sink usage for hand washing. So now why it's been a blessing..... Because it made me realize how much support I actually have. My family is not in this whole "Life" thing all alone. 1) my church family - Thank you God for giving me a church family that is helping us to pay for this, the biggest financial disaster in a long line of them over the last 4 months. Without that support we would be without plumbing indefinitely as we have no other recourse for paying half this bill. Our church group tries very hard to live in the way the Bible tells us too, and function as a group the way the Bible teaches. Without this support, we would be stuck. Thank you God for leading us to the church we began searching 11 years ago, and for all we have learned from them over the years. 2) My family. My ever patient Husband standing beside me and working with me without missing a beat. Hugging me when I was overwhelmed and telling me it's not that bad, we'll get thorough it. Our parent are always there to help us through anything we face in any way they can. This is just one of many times that has proven true. Help with the last bit of the payment we can't scrape up, a place to crash, Mom making cat food for our collective felines without any help this week, washing cloths whatever... you know all the amazing little things parents do. Aunt Caitlin Eileen Gambrell for taking the girls tomorrow night too so they can get a good shower and get away from the stress for a night to have fun. (and so I can get away from the stress by going out too) 3) My friends, For offering to help in any way they can, financially Stephanie Whitman Walters, by letting me do laundry at her house and telling us to come whenever we need to, Natasha De Synegub, For letting my whole family invade to take showers, Debbie Hunt, for letting us invade to use her bathroom repeatedly Missy Tomlinson Petschel, for others that have given suggestions and offered words of support, letting me know that we are NOT alone! Thank you! For telling me, yes you can take the time in this huge mess to get away for two hours and be human and spend time with friends. 4) For Girl Scouts of America for the skills I need to get through this. For the determination to roll with the punches and put on my Big Girl panties. We have a camp dish washing station set up on the back porch. So now I can clear my sink and get on with life. We just took showers in our bathing suits on the back porch (cause sometimes you just don't have time to drive to a friends house in a hectic day). Four weeks with no indoor drainage..... so many people, all over the world, deal with so much worse every day. We have a roof over our heads,clean water on tap, electricity, and support. It felt like a major disaster a week ago but, not so big a problem after all. Warning, there will be some bad language as I quote from a group in this post. I saw a very disturbing image today. The Westboro Baptist Church, which by the way is the NAME of a non profit group and not affiliated with that church, is a very disturbed group of people. Like the 11th -13th century crusaders of the Catholic Church, they have completely missed the point of the Bible, and I have some doubt if they have even read much of it. For those that don't know who they are (as I did not.) the WBC is a small non profit that stages protests against gays, jews, and anyone else they see as not following the morals of the Bible.
Despite any differences I may have with their views or methods, the thing that actually disturbed me the most is the image I saw of one of their protests. The woman in the picture had a shirt on that said God Hates Fags .com. and was holding 4 signs, one of which said God Hates Israel. GOD IS LOVE. God LOVES all of his children. He does not accept sin, but he loves even the worst sinner. Anyone, no matter what they have done can turn to him, and if they are sorry in their heart for what they have done, be redeemed and welcomed home. That is the whole point! I posted on facebook earlier today that I am so tired of people on both sides of politics calling the other names. It's infantile and useless, but this.. this is so so much worse. To tell anyone that God hates them shows such a complete lack of understanding of what Jesus taught that is makes my heart hurt for them. No matter how moral you try to be, how hard to are trying to follow Gods rules, you HAVE made mistakes, you HAVE done things wrong. No one person is any better than another. Telling someone you hate them, is never going to make them see your point of view. Telling someone that GOD hates them, is NEVER going to help them be saved. In fact, it is more likely to drive them away from God and deeper into sin which is one of the things we are told most clearly to guard against.
Is not hating your brothers and sisters a sin? I sin. On an almost (if not completely) daily basis I make mistakes. I snap at my children, I worry, I fear, I eat too much, I don't take care of all the things I aught to, I don't do everything I do for the purpose of serving God and his children. I sin. And yet I am allowed to teach bible classes and serve in my church. What makes my sin so much less vile than anyone else to God? Just because you think someone else's sin is "worse" than yours does not make that perseption true. Proclaiming that God hates any of his children... I have a feeling that one is going to be especially hard to explain though. This "church" has taken it to an extreme. But I know it is something I have to remind myself of regularly too. I am just as likely to sometimes think myself "higher" because I am trying, actively, to follow God and I know so many "Christians" that done seem to be trying very hard at all. So I do fall into that same trap myself. Just because it's a lesser extent doesn't make it a lesser sin. So for now, I will try to focus at all times on the thought that GOD LOVES all of his children and I need to treat them the way I would treat Jesus if he were standing at my door right now. Matthew 25:45 KJV Then shall he answer them, saying , Verily I say unto you, In as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And in the reverse, if I do it for the least, I do it for Jesus. So tonight, I will pray for the WBC for all my brothers and sisters that are lost in any way. For those that don't believe, for those that have been misled to believe false teachers, for those that think they believe but do nothing that Jesus tried to teach them to do. And I will pray for myself, that I will be able to keep my own mind open. That I will be able to accept everyone that I come in contact with. That I will recognise that they are Gods child and my sibling. I will prey that I will be able to be meek, peaceful and loving in all situations. ( I am not meek and accepting by nature. So if you are reading this, pray for me in that too.) And that I will be made aware of all my own sins so that I can continue to work on correcting them day be day. It's a never ending project. But, I do love my projects. Is it more convenient to
take groceries from your neighbor's house than to go to the grocery store? Well yeah, it is. You don't have to pay for gas, it's a lot closer so it will take less time, and after all, they invited you to dinner last week and said to make yourself at home didn't they? So you can save a ton of money, it's really convenient and after all, you have to eat don't you? Your children will suffer if they don't get that food, and you can't really afford to buy it all yourself after all.... times are hard. If you could only save money on the food, you can afford to send your kids to camp this summer and everyone wants what’s best for the kids after all! I doubt many people would think this is ok, but somehow they believe that violating the terms of use for their personal Netflix account is somehow ok. It's less expensive for the library to maintain one Netflix account than it is to buy all those movies themselves. It's more convenient too, they don't have to manage a vast collection, put them on servers, deal with where to store things... it's very convenient, and they save money too! And after all, they are paying for the service. The fact that the neighbors invited them LAST week for ONE dinner gives them open access to the fridge forever? The terms of use agreement specifically states this account is for PERSONAL use. That they are prohibited from public display. How is that OK? We are teaching far more than the content of our lessons. Is it ok to pirate movies, music, novels? Is it ok to photocopy textbooks instead of buying a copy for each child. Intellectual property rights are difficult to enforce, and sometimes even difficult to see the victim. That doesn't make it OK to steal. That doesn’t make it OK to break the copyright laws. Just because Netflix is unlikely to persecute, doesn’t make it OK to violate the agreement you have made with them. That they, in turn, made with the people that hold the copyrights to those movies and shows. http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/ibstreamingfilms_021810.pdf I've heard this story before, and just came across it again recently. IT's such a perfect example of why God cannot take away all the struggles and pain we go through even though he has the power to do so.
"A child found a chrysalis in his back yard and wanted to see it open and know what kind of butterfly it would become. He carefully placed it in a glass jar and watched it for weeks. On day he finally saw a small crack in the side where it had begun to split open. He sat and watched intently as it wiggled and flailed. One wing began to emerge then it fell still. It did not move again for a very long time (to the boy) and he began to worry that the Butterfly was stuck and would not be able to get out. He got a small pair of scissors and very carefully trimmed down the outside of the spit to make it easier for the butterfly to get out. After a time the butterfly began again to struggle to get out and it's wings burst free from the weekend cocoon. It sat with It's wings together and hung for a long time then eventually dropped to the bottom of the jar. It did not move it's wings and when the boy took the jar outside it did not try to fly away. Confused and worried the Boy asked his science teacher the next day how long it would be until his butterfly would fly away. The teacher gently told him that cutting the cocoon had made it so that that butterfly would not ever fly away. The butterfly must go through the struggle of leaving the cocoon to build it's wing strength and develop it's ability to fly. Without that struggle, it would never be able to leave the glass jar. " God knows how to help us develop our wings so that one day we can soar, free of the bonds that keep us in our glass jars. He knows how strong to make our obstacles so that we can get through them but still be tested and able to grow. If he cut us free, it may relieve the pains of today, but condemn us in bondage in the long run. Always remember that he has a plan to make you fly. It will end as he wills it, if you accept his will for you. All we have to do is trust, leave the worry in his hands. I have heard some of the most interesting names in my time in the school system. Every once in a while it comes up and I get to tell people some of the more interesting ones. These are all real given names, not stage names or fictisious names. They are people that have been known to me personally or known personally by me, my family or close friends. This list will be edited as I hear more but for now My top most bizzare names collection
From my mother's days as a math teacher The twins... Jenny and Jennifer Passion Chambers From my high school, winter park class of 91 Velvet Lipps A teacher at my kid's school, Mr Finger And finally, my Husband's Grandmother remairred after her first husband passed away. The oddest, and mayby crewlest name a parent has given a child aconstant reminder that someday.... Eule Dye Think you know any that top these? Email them to me I'd love to hear them. The Lock and the key are very different things. Different shapes, different sizes, one is small and delicate; the other is large and bulky. One is a single piece of metal or wood, the other is a complex collection of parts working together to make the whole. One keeps things out, the other allows one in. One guards, the other reveals. If someone looked at them and did not know their purpose they would not have any reason to believe the two objects had anything in common.
The differences do not however make these two things separate. The differences make them useful. Which is more important? The lock is stronger. The lock is used first. The Lock is bigger. The lock protects. Is it then the more important of the pair? The Key reveals, the key gives the protected treasure in to the owner’s hand, the key is then the more important? Can you use a lock with no key? Can you use a key with no lock? The Lock and the Key are of equal value. Each is needed to function and each is useless without the other. Since they are of equal value can their work then be interchanged? Can the Key be used to protect the treasure? Can you secure the box, the chain with it? Can one lock be used to open another? If you try to use a key where a lock is needed you cannot protect anything. If you try to open a lock without a key you risk damaging both the lock and the treasure. Much damage has been done to our society, to our children to ourselves because we failed to understand this simple truth. Women are equal to men. Both are of equal value. Both are required for healthy families. But they are not the same. We do not have the same function. We do not have the same strengths. We need to remember this simple truth and rearrange the way we think about each other and about ourselves. It's about 1 am. Steve just got home and I am still awake. I very much dislike this getting up at 6 and still not sleeping at night thing. Every few days I have to take a nap just to remain functional. But still not sleeping well at night. You would think after all these years I would get used to not having Steve home at night and sleep anyway, but alas, it is not to be.
Now he is home, and I shall attempt to retire. Tomorrow I'll be back on campus trying to figure out why random machines can not access the domain with a network log on even though they can with a local admin log on. It's getting old. I also need to get the inventory started and make sure the database I wrote last ear is functional. Maybe it will even work well enough to have other volunteers come in and help with the actual inventory. Well off to bed, wish me luck sleeping. Good night. Hello World!
So I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age. Journals are now blogs, and anyone can read it while I'm still alive. Guess I'll have to be careful what I post. I don't expect to be posting every day... but every once in a while I wax philosophical and need a place to write it out. One good thing about this option, it has a built in spell checker so maybe someone other than me can actually read it once it's written. I'm doing this right now because my Aunts needed help getting their museum site revamped (topfunaviation.com btw) and I also want to offer tech training at my girls school and web site development is the top of everyone's wish list for what they want to learn. So, I'm going to set up this site to have some idea of what Weebly can do and then design the training from there. I think really the first thing I should do is just have them watch a selection of the training video's already out there then do one on one sessions to answer questions. This site seems pretty easy to use so far. After retrofitting DP 10 years ago I'm still in awe of how tech savvy the staff at cornerstone is overall. I remember spending months walking around campus showing people where all THREE power switches were.... no the computer isn't broken, you have to turn it all on.... and these teachers now are installing their own smart board drivers and creating slide shows with very little help. It's amazing what a few years can do. Well I do have to be up in the morning by 6:30 and it's after midnight, so more to come later. Good night world. |
AuthorI'm a Christian, a wife and a mother. I'm a girl that likes Sci Fi and I was a woman in the technology field in the 90s. (Fan girls are not as rare these days as it was when i was younger, I know.) Curently I'm focusing on my pottery and trying to make that an income source. Archives
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