Is it time for Shirley yet?!

I sat down at my computer with the intention of reading my email and then posting a blog.

A friend sent me a link to this video...

...there's no amount of my blog rambling that can top this...
Be Blessed!!

Praise Him

Let my mouth
be filled with Your praise
And with Your glory
all the day.
-Psalm 78:1

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Quilt by Lisa Ellis

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Trash to Treasure?

Sara got me thinking about rubbish. Although the rubbish of which I'll write is not at all the same as the rubbish of which she writes...

Sometimes rubbish is good... (I think)

Brillo Man has a new nickname: Junk Man.

His newest "hobby" is taking other people's discarded junk and turning it into money. Okay --so he's made several hundred dollars hauling people's scrap metal to the recycling plant. I don't complain when he walks in and hands me a big wad of cash. But perhaps this last time he went a little overboard...

Yesterday, he went to pick up someone's yard sale leftovers. A pickup truck and a trailer FULL of junk. Amongst this treasure were two moldy ottomans, some moldy clothes, some moldy encyclopedias, ten or twelve moldy-smelling video tape holders, a huge box of moldy shoes, a couple of moldy, chipped angel figurines, a bouquet of moldy, plastic flowers and a dozen moldy ice cube trays (some of which were cracked). Did I mention that most of this stuff was moldy?!


Also included in this truckload and trailer load of JUNK were some kind of electric motors. A treasure!! (don't ask me, I don't know anything about electric motors but Brillo/Junk Man walked around with a gleeful grin muttering something about copper...) There was also a sweeper, some windows (with metal on the frame) and a couple of other metal objects. Brillo/Junk Man spent considerable time with his magnet checking to see if things were steel or aluminum or whatever. (Since this new hobby began, he goes nowhere without a magnet in his pocket.)

I failed to mention that there were a couple of items that we did keep: the hand-carved wooden hummingbird ornament nestled in the bottom of a soup mug surrounded by the moldy and worn out shoes. No, I'm not keeping the shoes (wrong size) but I did elect to keep the bird and the soup mug. (As Olivia has given Brillo Man yet another nickname, "The King of Soups", we use a lot of soup mugs.) (But that's a subject for another post)...

As I type this, Junk Man is outside tearing apart the electric motors to get to the motherlode - the COPPER! Do you have any idea how much 'they're' paying for a pound of copper??!?!

Earlier today, Olivia and went to the mission --with the moldy things that we thought may be slightly valuable. The mission wouldn't even take half of what we had in the van. So, I brought it home, wondering what Brillo/Junk Man was going to do with it all. I assumed he'd burn it as 95% of the leftover mission rejects are burnable.

But no.

He's buried the encyclopedias somewhere in the "back 40". He says he's using them as 'mulch or fertilizer' for the tree that he's going to plant - or has planted. (I'm not quite sure but I think that he's thinking that by placing those moldy encyclopedias in the ground out will sprout a tree of knowledge of good and evil.")

So now he's burying the junk.

Pat --our 'state park' is now a landfill.


....meanwhile, the 'artist' in me is picturing all kinds of neat junk sculptures we could make!


....and I think I've failed to mention that on Thursday, I'm driving to a nearby town to pick up three bowling balls which a fellow freecycler is leaving for me in the front seat of her wrecked Chevy Blazer. (The bowling balls are for my 'garden sculptures') Wait! She did tell me that her Blazer is wrecked! I wonder if she'd let Brillo/Junk Man haul it away....

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I will lay waste the land...
--Leviticus 26:32

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Addendum: I went outside and asked Brillo/Junk Man what was up?
His reply: "I just spent about an hour's worth of work making my fifty cents!"
I had just taken a sip of pop and spit it all over myself as I laughed!
Never a dull moment...

Lilies

Consider the lilies how they grow:
they toil not, they spin not;
and yet I say unto you, that Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these.
-Luke 12:27

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photograph of the lilies growing in our 'state park'.

Unfolding the Rose

A friend sent this to me via email
and I thought it was too nice not to share:

Click below:

Unfolding the Rose

laying it down

in the silence

when all I hear is my heart beating

I call on Your Name

and listen.

the world is still

but my mind races on

wondering just how You're going to come through

this time.

You always do.

You're always faithful.

when it all seems impossible

when there's no way for me to figure it out

with final resolution

tonight, in the silence

I lay it all at Your feet

and wait

and listen

and know

that You are God.

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For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future."
-Jeremiah 29:11

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The Rules

I have rules.
Rules by which I think everyone should live.
Some are hefty rules.
Some are puny rules.
But they’re all rules.
In my definition - a rule is not to be broken.

Here are some examples of some of my rules.
I won’t drive above the speed limit (unless no one is behind me).
(If someone is behind me, I won’t drive even one mph above
the posted limit and complain the entire time that the person behind
me is tailgating because, "you know, if I have to stop suddenly, they're going to run into me!") If there’s no one behind me –I drive whatever I
consider to be a safe speed - which could mean 50 mph on a 35 mph
country road on the occasion we’re running late to take Olivia to swimming lessons.
My justification? She’s only in the pool for 20-25 minutes of the scheduled 30 minute lesson as it is and dag nab it, I’ll be doggoned if she’s going to miss another minute because we’re running late. Besides, if the swimming instructors followed the rules and allowed the students in the water for the entire scheduled 30 minutes, then I wouldn’t have to break the aforementioned speed limit rule. (It’s their fault - not mine. I take no blame –but that’s a subject for another blog.)

I won’t open the mail until I use the proper letter opener - because I hate all those messy, torn envelope flaps which result from improperly opened mail. Brillo Man will attest to the fact that I have reprimanded him for sloppy letter opening - a huge infarction which should be punishable by something akin to scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush.

Which reminds me of my “scrubbing the kitchen floor” rules. One must first sweep every corner and under every cabinet with the whisk broom and dustpan BEFORE one gets out the vacuum cleaner (or as Olivia would say, the suck-up sweeper). Then you vacuum, then you get down on your hands and knees and wash and rinse the floor. If those steps are not followed, then I consider the floor to be improperly scrubbed. (I can’t recall ever scrubbing the kitchen floor in the home we live in now to be properly scrubbed....Brillo Man once got down on his hands and knees a few weeks ago, but I believe he left out the whisk broom step -thereby blowing any chance we had of the floor being scrubbed ala ‘the way I was raised to scrub a floor’.)

Here’s a rule. My stepdaughters bought me this awesome HUGE book of Sudoku puzzles for Mother’s Day. I have it in the master bathroom. Every morning, I work on a puzzle. Now here’s the rule –if I finish a puzzle, I am only allowed to place ONE number into the next puzzle before I rise to finish my morning routine. For one thing, if I got carried away with more numbers, my legs would be numb and I wouldn’t be able to walk. I know - too much information.

Here’s another rule. Don’t leave the ketchup out on the counter after use. Brillo Man almost always does this. My therapist has convinced me to “let it go.” My life has much less stress now that I no longer complain and mutter under my breath because the ketchup bottle has been left on the counter.

Here’s a rule: One is not permitted to walk around the house in one’s underwear. (“But MOM! I didn’t want to get spaghetti sauce on the new shirt that Grandma Leanne gave me for my birthday! Now may I puhleeze have my dessert?!”)

Another rule –no dessert until you’ve eaten your dinner.

And don’t get me started on the ‘NEVER end a sentence in a preposition rule’!

Enough about the rules . . . Brillo Man just brought in the mail. I have to go open it before it’s too late!!!!






These commandments that I give you today
are to be upon your hearts.
--Deuteronomy 6:6

Thanks to Pat for inspiring today's blog entry.