I'M A LUCKY GIRL

I’m a lucky girl, though I’ll never win the Powerball or the HGTV Dream Home. I have lucky bamboo on my desk at work and it’s lucky to be alive, since I only water it once a month or so. There’s a lucky three-legged brass frog with gold coins in its mouth staring at my front door. Feng Shui says it brings wealth, yeah right, just like the Chinese coins hanging on the knob of my front door. The only thing I can ever remember winning was a griddle at a pan demonstration at the school where I taught in 1974 – on my birthday, no less. I also won a basket of garden goodies at a Chinese auction last fall, but that’s about it. I’m not very lucky by the world’s standards.

Maybe lucky is not the correct word. I’m more than fortunate and truly I’m blessed. I couldn’t ask for a better husband. I’ll bet he would be surprised to hear me say that, as much as I nag him about stupid things. My lunch is wonderfully packed each day, including an ice pack to keep my yogurt with fresh berries cool and a cup of hot tea always awaits my departure for work. I joke about the only reason I have a cell phone – to let him know I am on my way home, so that my dinner is on the table when I arrive. It always is. I am truly blessed. He also runs the sweeper and does dishes and laundry, not as well as I do, of course. But then, I can’t fix all the many things he can or chop wood for the wood stove or light the darn stove, for that matter! He’s creative and very amazingly ingenious. It’s all right that he can’t spell. Little does he know that I don’t spell very well, either. I can’t get him to scrub a toilet, but that’s ok, too. He is trained to put the lid down, most of the time!

It is during prayer time in church, when I know how really blessed I am in my marriage. My husband reaches for my hand and holds it tight. I really miss that on Sundays when he goes away to Camp. I pray that we can grow together spiritually, and that our Lord and Savior will strengthen our faith, as we walk through the good times and the trials of life for there are many of both.

GAS PAINS

We really thought we had this Peoples Natural Gas (PNG) thing licked. It still lies looming in front of us with a new wrinkle. I won’t go into too much detail, but our gas was shut off a few weeks back, because of a leak. It tuned out not to be on our property and PNG would have to rectify the problem. Yeah! Not so fast. It appears that our land has shifted and is encroaching on the PNG easement below our property. We are in the middle of trying to find some solutions. Having recently found a solution to our increase in health care costs by refinancing the house, the current dilemma might put a damper on that. Never the less, Bob and I are confident that when God closes doors he opens windows and we will emerge victorious…eventually.

Please pray that we remain steadfast in our belief that “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28. I contend that it will be exciting to see how God helps us handle this.

Since August of 2008, I have asked God for a word (words, a phrase) each month. This has served two purposes. One is an encouragement and the other, by trying to memorize the word for each month, I am to exercising my gray matter (54 to date minus one that I just can’t remember). The word for January 2013 is BELIEVE. We're excited to see just how our Lord is going to help us through this. We believe He truly will.

HELPFUL HINTS

Yesterday, as I was dusting behind our computer in a cluster of wires extending from its USB ports, I noticed a few cords were neatly bound with clips from bread bags. I remembered doing this, ages ago, after I read an e-mail loaded with helpful hits using everyday stuff. I decided I needed to label a few more cords since our home houses multiple electronic gadgets from smart phones, an iPad, a Kindle, three digital cameras and who knows what else. I found one clip in a junk drawer and it reminded me how my mom saved things, because “you never know how it might come in handy some day.”

Bless her soul, Mom saved the black plastic bottoms off of the old style two liter bottles and the plastic containers in which strawberries came – lots of them. When we cleared-out her house in 2000, we found dozens and dozens of the flip-top caps from ketchup bottles. I suppose someone could find a use for such things, but I try not to save items that don’t have an immediate use.

Once that last sentence was typed, I thought I better ponder it before moving on. What do I save…ribbon, drawers full. Every color you can imagine. I buy it at yard sales for $.25 or less a spool, can’t pass it up. And then, there are wallpaper remnants to be used as wrapping paper. I have to have at least a dozen rolls. I also have over a drawer full of cloth napkins – picked up at yard sales for use to line baskets or set a pretty table for company. I almost forgot about the scrapbooking stuff that I have collected – cards, old calendars, things that can be used as embellishments that only embellish drawers and boxes in our storage room.

Ok Mom, I guess I have inherited some of your hoarding skills. But, you never know when it might come in handy – someday!

My original intent today was to supply several handy ideas, but I was side tracked. Only one more helpful hint…take an empty toilet paper roll or better yet one from paper towels and make a cut from one end to the other. You can secure it around an open roll of wrapping paper, or wallpaper in my case, to store it neatly until the next use. No, I do not save such rolls. I just use them as they come available.


"We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing." Billy Graham

GETTING STARTED

This blog has been started more for me than anyone else in an attempt to gather my thoughts and express day-to-day ideas running through my head. If in the endeavor I am able to share those thoughts and ideas to the benefit of others – all the better. I hope to make my musings amusing, as well as insightful, even if I am the only one to be enlightened.