My day in numbers.

1: The number of seconds it took me to look out the window, see the driving rain, and decide I wasn't doing my long run.

2: The number of donuts I ate. I do realize that running and then eating donuts is counterproductive, but they were calling my name and my willpower was having an off day. Tomorrow I will throw the rest of the box in the garbage.

3: The number of miles I ran on the treadmill (aka the hamster wheel). My original plan was six miles, but then I got up this morning and saw it was pouring, and I'm just not that dedicated. So why didn't I run six miles on the hamster wheel, you ask? Because it's just too dang boring. Three miles was all I could muster.

4: The number of loads of laundry I did today. In anticipation of the full-time job I still don't have, I've been trying to do things I don't normally have time for, like washing curtains. Today I did that. Four is also the number of times I swept up the dog hair in the laundry room. And if you go out there right now, dog hair tumbleweeds will gently roll as you walk past. I wish my hair grew as fast as Pete's.

5: The number of times I ran from the car to the gym, a store, or my house, wondering why I didn't bring the umbrella I just bought last week. I'm nothing if not consistent.

Here's hoping for a sunshiny day tomorrow.

Be thankful ~

The artist as a model.

One of Abbie's classes this semester (Digital Imaging) had her making up a movie and then producing a movie poster for it. So she created this whole plot about a research assistant in time travel who doesn't believe the Rapture is going to happen, but then travels forward in time to after it has happened, and then comes back. But then it's too late because he's lost the opportunity to believe by faith. The movie is called Foresight, and she made this awesome poster for it, using her friend Ryan as her model.

Another guy in the class made up his movie and wanted to use Abbie as a model. Some girl did her hair and makeup, and while I don't have the final poster, here's the photo they used (by Nathan Rohrer):

While it's beautiful, it really doesn't look a lot like her. It's amazing how a little makeup can turn a lovely young lady into someone who looks like a villain.

Here's the real Abbie:

In another class (Art as Communication) she used Leah as her model for this project:

I love that she's so talented! And now you know where my tuition money is going. :)

Be thankful ~

Weekend recap. (Warning: graphic photos of chicken processing)

This could be the longest post in history, but I'll try to keep it brief. (Edited to add: I failed.)

Saturday we had a planned appointment at some friends' farm to help slaughter chickens and turkeys. We'd never done it before, but we wanted to try some of their animals raised without hormones, antibiotics, and other stuff we'd rather not eat. If you volunteer to help with the processing, you get the birds for a good price. So off we went.

We were greeted by Olive the calf. I love calves. Olive has the most beautiful eyes and long eyelashes. And she's just so sweet! Until you realize you're standing too close and and she's nursing on your sweatshirt.

Mr. Farm Boss did the job of killing the chickens while we watched and waited for our jobs to begin.
Abbie's not sure she's going to Chick-fil-a ever again.

Once the birds are dead, they are scalded in super-hot water, which makes their feathers come out easier. Then they're tossed into a machine Mr. Boss made that gets out most of the feathers.

After that they go to the first table where any remaining feathers are picked off and the heads and feet are removed. This was Abbie's job along with Kevin, Cori, and two of the boss's boys.

They get rinsed and head to the gutting table. Here's Mrs. Boss giving us a gutting lesson. It's really pretty easy once you do a couple.

Then they get washed thoroughly and either wrapped in paper or packed in freezer bags. Nina was a champion washer.

We processed 90 chickens and then started on the turkeys. Same routine, bigger bird. Ben volunteered to gut the first one.

Noelle actually did one willingly. Doesn't she look like she's having fun?

I even put my camera down for a few minutes to do a few with a little coaching.

But the highlight of the day was the pair of kittens hanging around. Abbie and Man-squared: the children of the man who hates cats.

Sorry if that was all too much information, but at least now I feel like if I were lost in the wilderness I could gut my own food . . . if I could catch it.

Then came Sunday, when Tony (ze trainer who trains: name that movie) got baptized. I was allowed to act as the mom and go up to the baptistry for photos:

We invited Tony to church last spring, the week before Easter. He's been coming with us ever since, asking questions.

We've had many, many conversations with him over the past few months, and more people than I can count have been praying for him—people he will probably never meet until we get to heaven.

Tony trusted the Lord Jesus for his salvation a few weeks ago at our fall revival. He invited his family and all his old friends from high school to come witness his baptism. 

Watching his conversion from start to finish has blessed me in ways I can't even put into words. It's like going back and experiencing my own all over again. God is so good to us.

Then Sunday afternoon a few people from our Sunday school class came over to eat lunch and make cards for the nursing home residents (we go the first Sunday of each month to sing and preach). My job was cooking grilled cheese and tomato soup, and blond brownies. Their job was making cards, which they did to the extreme.

It was a great weekend all around (aside from the fact that Ben spent Sunday with a nasty sore throat), and now we're prepping for Thanksgiving. Three turkeys, two cheesecakes plus pumpkin and apple pies, stuffing, potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans and Brussels sprouts, homemade bread, cranberry sauce, . . . I'm running 6 miles tomorrow in anticipation.

Be thankful ~

The new me.

I've been working on a post detailing the history of Man-squared's truck, but I still lack a few photos and some inspiration. It's coming though.

In the meantime, Abbie and I got our hair trimmed today, and while I wanted to do something different, in the end I chickened out and stuck with the same cut I've had for the last 20 years. I've always envied Abbie's amazing curls, but never had the slightest bit of body in my hair.

On the way home in the car, Abbie said she wanted to experiment with my hair when we got home. She insisted she could make it curl, so I said, "Okay. Whatever." Enter curl cream and a diffuser.

Long story shortened here: It curls! I am absolutely amazed and I couldn't stop laughing! At first I thought it was ridiculous, probably because I've never seen myself with curly hair, but Ben likes it, so I guess I'll learn to do it this way.

Pardon the cell phone picture.

Thanks to the lovely Kim Wood for the great haircut.

Be thankful ~

Yoga baby.

Just stopping in to share a picture I found on my phone today while sitting in a waiting room. I was scrolling through my photos, which are about 99.9% pictures of the grandbabies, and found this one of Bean doing yoga with his mommy.

Look at that flexibility!

I can only dream of getting my head on my toes.

Be thankful ~

It was more of a climb than a hike.

Last Saturday a few people from our Sunday school class went to hike Humpback Rocks again, the same place we went last April where Man-squared gave my heart palpitations with his acrobatics on the cliffs overhanging a valley thousands of feet down (at least it seemed like it at the time). The weather was perfect.

According to tradition (ours), every hike starts here:

The trees up high were bare, but lower in the valleys, there were still some pretty colors:

My super-fantastic sun flare photo. I need some practice.

Heading back up after hiking D-O-W-N for an hour and a half. We got halfway up and had to choose between two sides of a loop back to the parking area. After much deliberating, Ben chose the long one. Yes, that's it. We'll blame Ben.

This is the view everyone goes for:

Even though he took us the long way, I'll keep him.

Be thankful ~

More on the cupcakes.

Well, look at me, blogging twice in one week! If I'm not careful, this could become habit-forming.

Yesterday was my second trek into Georgetown, this time with my cousin Cathy, who lives in Idaho but comes to DC occasionally for business. Since she was staying in a different part of the city, we decided to meet at the Rosslyn Metro station and walk across the Key Bridge into Georgetown. It was kind of early for dinner, so we walked around the university for a while, gawking like the tourists we were and taking pictures.

Beautiful architecture.

Whenever I come across a statue, I stop and take a picture for Abbie's sake, but I stopped short of sitting down and playing a game of chess with him. This is Jan Karski, a Polish man who lived through the Holocaust and somehow is credited with helping the rest of the world understand what was going on there (the plaque didn't say exactly how). He spent the later years of his life as a professor at Georgetown.

After we had our fill of sight-seeing, we headed toward M Street, where all the food and shops are. We had a great dinner at the famous Clyde's of Georgetown, and then made a bee-line for you know what, where the full dozen sucked me in because somehow six amazingly incredible cupcakes just didn't seem like enough.

The first one didn't make it out the door.

Cathy and I in front of my favorite store on earth. What you can't see by this picture is that my bag of cupcakes is three times the size of Cathy's. Can I blame it on Man-squared?

In other news, daughter #4 was here last weekend (she of the beautiful brown eyes) for some babying and a fresh batch of granola. Here she is obeying Ben and keeping her foot up with ice on it (sprained ankle).

The babying thing worked really well until Sunday afternoon when we had a houseful of people who wanted blond brownies and Abbie called with a lost-in-Roanoke emergency that required my full attention and the help of GoogleMaps plus Mapquest, both of which were wrong, and Noelle wound up cleaning up from lunch AND making the brownies. I'm not sure that did her ankle much good, but on the upside, dessert was fantastic.

I'm sorry about the events not being in chronological order, but I have to deal with these things when I get the photos downloaded (or is it uploaded?), and that only happens sporadically. And now I'm going to turn into a pumpkin.

Be thankful ~

ABCs for today.

I've been fussed at my almost everyone in my family now for not blogging since November 2. But I have great excuses. I've been working a lot, traveling some, having large parties of college-age people at my house, and trying unsuccessfully to keep the dog hair swept up.

Because of all the activity, all my RAM has been redirected, leaving none for the blog. So to help me out, I'm going to use the ABCs.

A is for the two apples that are drying into shriveled masses on my counter since we started using the woodstove and it's usually 80 degrees in here.

B is for bananas that I just bought when I went to Tar-jay after going to the gym tonight.

C is for cupcakes, which you will understand in a few minutes. I have cupcakes on the brain.

D is for dog hair. What else?

E is for Man-squared, whose real name is Elijah. He told me a few weeks ago after hearing some good preaching about Elisha, that I should have named him Elisha rather than Elijah. Either way he's an E.

F is for Franconia, which is the name of the Metro station I'm going to get on a train at tomorrow to go see my cousin Cathy in DC.

G is for Georgetown, where we will have dinner at Clydes and then visit the world-famous Georgetown Cupcake store, which will charge me $15 for six cupcakes and I will gladly pay it.

H is for huff and puff, which is what I did for 5.03 miles today. My first five-miler!

I is for something, I know it is. I just can't think of anything right now.

J is for Joy, who has pictures of last Saturday's firewood stacking party (which I could have blogged about, but I left my own camera at home), only I don't know where she has stored them. I'll try to find them.

K is for Karin (not me), the German lady in my Strive class who speaks English very well except for the word with. She always says mit, which is German for with. I love her.

L is for Leah, who danced at a wedding last month. If you went to BJU, you'd understand why that's such a problem.

M is for magpie, which is a bird that never shuts up. When we were kids, my two older brothers worked on my grandfather's farm. He called them magpies because he said they talked when they should have been working. Oh, the memories.

N is for Navy, which we spent 20+ years in, and now John McCain wants to take away the health care for life that we were promised.

O is for the oil in my car that I think needs to be changed. Or maybe I'm just using that as an excuse because I can't think of anything for O.

P is for Pettit (Steve), who we are going to hear preach Friday night. If you ever get the opportunity, go hear the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Team. The music is amazing and the preaching is super.

Q is for quit, which I would like to do right now, but that would be lame. (You thought I wasn't going to think of one for Q, didn't you? Come on. Admit it.)

R is for rebel, which I have just a teeny bit of in me. I won't explain, but I shocked my yesterday with it.

S is for supper, which, after a five-mile run and a Pitaiyo class, I would like to eat three of.

T is for truck, whose motor Ben and Man-squared are going to work on hooking up tomorrow.

U is for updog, which I did many of in Pitaiyo tonight. So many, in fact, that my upper back is sore.

V is for vote, which I did today. Did you?

W is for Wally, my youngest nephew whom I have not yet seen. I hope to be able to hold him before he's a year old.

X is for x-ray (you knew that was coming), which I had to research today (not the actual x-ray, but the word). Did you know that it used to be standard to capitalize the X, but in the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, that's been changed, and now you lowercase the x? And also, when using the word x-ray in title case, you only capitalize the X but not the ray, because the part before the hyphen cannot stand alone as its own word. So now you know.

Y is for yogurt, which is my favorite breakfast with homemade granola in it, microwaved for 30 seconds so it's all warm. Y is also for YUM.

Z is for zero, which is how many letters are left. Amen.


And herein ends the reciting of my alphabet day. You're welcome.

Be thankful ~

The evidence.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we have a neighborhood bear. I'll call him Henry. He's been making himself known more and more over the last few weeks, beginning with a daytime sighting by Pete and Man-squared in the backyard. Recently Henry's been visiting at night, leaving a trail of trash that stretches all the way down the yard and into the woods.

A few nights ago he paid a call on the house across the street, completely dismantling their trash can enclosure, which was built of 4x4s and screwed together. Apparently Henry has been eating his Wheaties.

In the wee hours of this morning, around 1:30, Pete started barking, which is a rare event. (A while back we actually had a car stolen out of our driveway and he never made a sound.) I thought about going to see what Pete was upset about, but having a face-to-face with Henry in the dark wasn't on my to-do list, so I stayed in bed.

This morning we found our trash and our neighbor's distributed evenly across both yards. When I got back from grocery shopping, Man-squared had it all cleaned up, and I mentioned that I still wasn't convinced it was Henry. Maybe it was just a dog.

Until Man-squared held up this black bean can:

There is now a bounty on Henry's head, which Man-squared would like to have mounted. I just want the hide.

Be thankful ~