I’ll probably delete this in the morning.
I have painted another postcard, copied from something I saw on…Pinterest, of course.
She walks on the path,
Where light and shadow take turns,
Her thoughts are her own.
Who knows? Perhaps it will find its way to your mailbox.
Perhaps this post will be deleted… in the morning.
We finished hiking all of Minnesota’s state parks back in September of 2023. Has it been almost three years already? As it turns out, we finished just in time, with various joints and limbs showing their age now (mine, not my husband’s – he’s still a spring chicken as far as I’m concerned).
One of the parks that we felt calling us back was Glendalough. Glendalough State Park Hike 2021 We had hiked it in 2021 and could see bikers whizzing around on the part of our trail that met up with the paved biking trail. “Let’s come back here and do the biking trail!” one of us said. And the other agreed. It would also give us a chance to try e-bikes again. I had not been impressed with my first outing on one of those a couple years ago in Flagstaff, AZ. Renting e-bikes in Flagstaff 2024
The last park of our five-year adventure was Maplewood State Park, which is not far from Glendalough. Maplewood State Park Hike 2023 We had our camper with us this time and with no places for RV’s at Glendalough, we planted ourselves last week at Maplewood, another beautiful park. Here are just a few photos from our camping trip.
We also met old friends at the park for a cookout over the campfire: hot dogs, various fruits, chips and salads plus…you guessed it: S’mores! My family made them differently than everyone else when I was growing up, a fact I did not know until my late teens. We made ours with peanut butter on saltines, topped with a marshmallow, which we popped into a broiler. Fabulous! I love the salty sweet combo. Our friends brought some dark chocolate, which I have to admit improved the experience. Yum! No photos though – our hands were too sticky for handling cameras.
I’m going to have to delete this post with sticky fingers in the morning.
When I was young, my mother and her dad, my grandfather, worked secretly to make a large dollhouse for us kids for a Christmas gift. Mom bought some very special doll furniture for it, but soon realized that we were just going to break it all, so she boxed it up and put it in her closet. I don’t think at the time we appreciated what a grand edifice it was, but I hope that we played with the dollhouse enough to give my mom and grandpa true satisfaction after having spent so many hours of loving labor over it.
Fast forward about 30 years. After four boy babies, we finally had a girl! I called my mom and dad almost immediately and asked them, “Do you still have that dollhouse?“ When the answer was yes, I claimed it. It had to be extricated from the storage area under the basement stairs. Dad had removed and discarded the four stately columns in front of the house in order to make it fit in the storage area, much to my mother’s dismay. I claimed the special boxed up furniture, too. In my childhood it had seemed a great injustice to have those items unavailable. I let my children play with them, and guess what? They broke a few pieces. Oh well.
It was a bit of a fixer-upper. The roof was gone (also removed to make room for storage). My husband made a new roof and I cut up little pieces of sandpaper and stapled them on for roofing tiles. The kitchen and bathroom linoleum were in bad shape so I took those out and replace them with new shelf paper. Several of the doors were hanging off their hinges (they still are). My husband bought new lights for each room and set it up so we could plug it in and turn them on. I repainted the house and opened it for business.
Fast forward another 30 years. The dollhouse is in our basement. It is quite large and I don’t know if any of our children will have room for it. When we have families over with children, which we do fairly regularly, I like to show off the dollhouse and let children play with it. The last family we had here had a lot of young children, and we left them completely unsupervised with it. When I looked at it a couple weeks later, everything was higgledy-piggledy. I couldn’t even find the dolls! That was over a month ago.
Today, I went down the basement to do something that had nothing to do with the dollhouse. Straightening up the dollhouse was not on my to-do list. Nevertheless, when the spirit moves, one must move with it. I spent over an hour taking everything out and putting it back in its proper place. I have always taken the world of dolls very seriously. It didn’t sit well with me when the missing dolls showed up crammed into one of the closets.
I wonder now if children have forgotten to play with something like this. Do they need a little guidance? I like to think of them moving the dolls around the house in a purposeful way, like setting them down at the dining room table to eat, and putting their food on the table for them. After supper, the family could sit in the living room while dad reads the Bible. Perhaps mother could play the piano. Grandpa and grandma would sit in their comfortable chairs by the fireplace and read the newspaper.
The next time we have a family over, I will continue to welcome the children to play in the dollhouse. But I might stick around for a while to show them how it’s done, to spark their imaginations as they play with this little family in their little house.
I’ll have to resist the temptation to be too controlling; I already feel the impulse welling up in me.
I’m going to have to straighten this post up in the morning.
I have to admit that I did not see this coming when I had total knee replacement surgery: I have, apparently, forgotten how to walk. I noticed it as I started walking again when the knee was stronger. My gait felt awkward and my opposite hip hurt. I chalked it up to adjusting to the new knee. A thought surfaced: what if this is the new normal? I prayed about it and tucked it away.
Whate’er my God ordains is right
His holy will abideth
When you take a walk, you don’t usually think about the action of walking, anymore than you think about breathing. Your legs know what to do and everything else follows. It’s like riding a bike, right? You are in automatic mode and are free to converse, think, look around, take photos. But now I was analyzing every step. Heel, toe, heel toe…that’s right. But that inside pain on the upper right thigh – did I pull a muscle? And the pain on the outside of the hip? What’s that about? My six-month post-surgery appointment was coming up.
I will be still whate’er He does
And follow where He guideth
The Physician’s Assistant gave me a glowing report concerning my knee: everything is healing up as it should and the bend is excellent. You wouldn’t think you could be proud of being able to bend your knee well, but think again. Now, how about this hip pain when I walk? She asked a few questions, did some manipulations and said, “Well, sometimes this can be just an adjustment to walking with a good knee again as you unlearn the way you were compensating for the bad knee before.” Yay! “But in your case, I think it looks more like hip arthritis, which might not be helped by therapy. Good news, though – a hip replacement surgery is much easier to recover from than knee replacement surgery!” Oh. “Let’s set up another appointment in a month just in case the therapy hasn’t helped and we want to look at some options.” All righty then!
He is my God, though dark my road
He holds me that I shall not fall
I gave birth to twins many years ago, an emergency C-section at 33 weeks. Twin blessings! But the delivery was filled with tension and the recovery was difficult. Our oldest son, who was five years old, was so thrilled with having twin brothers that he suggested that I should have triplets next. You see where I’m going here. I was not prepared to start thinking about another replacement surgery in the middle of recovering from the knee surgery. But as I was grappling with this new and unwelcome vista before me, the words of a hymn came floating into my head “Whate’er my God ordains is right.” Oh, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world to leave it all to Him who knows and loves me best. He is the perfect Father; I have complete confidence that His plan, whatever it is, is for my good and His glory.
And so to Him, I leave it all
And so to Him, I leave it all
I’ll probably heel/toe this post to the delete button in the morning.
What delight
to be able to wander into the garden
and wander out again,
the vase exploding with flowers
for my sister
Delight, delete, what’s the difference? You’ll find out in the morning.
I was taking a stroll through Pinterest and became enamored of the things people were doing with their dried flowers and leaves. I’d been making bookmarks by randomly strewing them in laminating pouches and running it through the laminator. I liked how they turned out. But now there was a whole new game going on. Clever people had used different elements of flower petals and leaves to create wonderful images. I had some dried flowers and leaves left over from last year and thought, I bet I can do something like that. I invited my friend Barb over for this adventure and we got to work. I showed her some of the different designs and we chose a flower fairy, thinking it didn’t look too hard. We were wrong.
For one thing my dried things were so dry that they were brittle and hard to use. In addition, as we were placing them on our paper, every time we breathed, they scattered. We decided we needed to put a little glue on each piece while placing it. This was when I discovered that my friend Barb is glue-challenged. It turns out that she’s had a bad relationship with glue for many years. In her hands, it seems to find its way to everything but the thing that she wants to be glued. She told me of a time when she was using super glue, and ended up with several things being super glued to her fingers. We went ahead with our project, but it was a trial to her.
The Pinterest flower fairy was so charming and delicate. Her hair was a poetry of thin petals curling away from her head, and her face was well-formed. Her figure was trim. Her skirt was flowing and her wings were sheer and lacy. The bouquet she held out was lovely. More flowers grew out of the grass at her feet. Our supplies were meager, so we had to make do with what we had.
In the end, I had a flower fairy. Her hair was an unfortunate stiff thing that looked like she’d been caught in 20 mph winds. She turned out rather buxom as well, nothing like the lithe sprite in the original. Her bouquet was just two little flowers with no holder. However, I thought her legs and feet turned out quite well. Here she is:
And below is Barb’s flower fairy, who ended up with somewhat of a mop head and a matronly body, but is still presenting flowers with an attractively slender arm. I love her wings, bold and purple! I think her legs must have come off at some point, but we can pretend that she tucks them under her skirt while she’s flying.
When I see our flower fairies, they make me laugh and give me good memories of a laughter-filled afternoon with a good friend. By the way, I didn’t actually ask Barb’s permission to share hers on the blog, but I can’t IMAGINE she’d say no. 😬
I’ll probably have the Flower Fairy delete this in the morning. She might as well have something useful to do.
You’ll be amazed to learn that I am writing this post, not from the Sticky Chair, but from the garden bench. Pleasant insect sounds abound, as well as a dog barking just far enough away to be background noise. The trees are singing their susurrus song, which is no doubt near the top of creation’s hit chart. Towers of purple coneflowers are straight ahead. I can see bees delicately taking pollen from those startlingly orange middles. The flowers give, the bees take, and everyone is happy. The bees are having a party over on the cornflowers, too. “I think that I shall never see, an insect happy as a bee.” (With apologies to Joyce Kilmer for stealing his lovely lines.)
I haven’t copied much in my Commonplace Book lately. It is an oft-interrupted habit. But I have a few to share.
Meekness allows us to sit easy in our saddle, not reacting like a thermometer to the surrounding situation, but by being more like a thermostat, setting the temperature of our own spirit, even if we have no control of the surrounding situation. Meekness allows us to get control of our own soul.
Nancy Wilson
I’ve heard another definition of meekness as “power under control.” The control of the soul is key. Next time I feel my emotional temperature rising, let me remember to be more like a thermostat than a thermometer, controlling rather than reacting.
We are always looking for justice;
the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is – never look for justice, but never cease to give it.
Oswald Chambers
But what about my rights? What about them, indeed? Jesus had a better claim to rights on the way to the cross than we could ever have, yet He went anyway.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. …Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.”
Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount
Case in point.
My tendency is to think that my burdens are very big, very existential, but they must be solved only by moving heaven on earth. Very often, they are solved by a snack, a nap, or a bath.
Joy Clarkson (from the book You Are A Tree)
I suspect – but don’t yell at me about this – that this may be more true of women than men. Many’s the time I’ve been beside myself about something, only to find that a good night’s rest worked wonders.
And now, right on schedule, I’m hearing the lilting coo of the mourning dove.
I’ll probably need to turn the thermostat down on this post in the morning.
The world outside is sweltering and I am happy to sit in the Sticky Chair with a fan blowing cool air in my general vicinity. Our family didn’t have air conditioning of any kind when I was growing up. We had a box fan in the living room and an oscillating fan up in the bedroom I shared with my sisters. I slept in the top bunk, where I would feel periodic air from the fan cooling my face. When the pillow got hot, I would turn it over to start afresh on the cool side. Sometimes my siblings and I would get into little scraps over people hogging the space in front of the box fan downstairs.
We went outside a lot in spite of the heat, probably because there wasn’t any significant relief from it in the house. My dad, who had summers off because he was a teacher, would take us to the nearby lake for a swim to cool us off. We would be wilting from the heat in the car on the way over, but once we ran into the lake, the air felt cool again. My dad would swim laps on the other side of the rope while we played water games on our side. We opened our eyes under water all the time, which I don’t think I’d do now. One game involved us all going underwater and one of us would try to say something. We’d come bursting out of the water shrieking with laughter over how funny it sounded, trying to guess what was said. Sometimes my older brothers would go underwater, let one of us younger kids step on their shoulders and then they’d jump up and throw us off. “Again! Again!” we’d cry. And they’d do it again. At last, it would be time to go home. We’d shiver from the cold and welcome the warmth of the car. Our fingers would be all pruny and our appetites would be sharp. Supper would be waiting in the back porch, so we’d sometimes stay in our suits and sit on towels while we ate.
We had no idea that we were making such rich memories.
In my mind, we had lots of photos of us going swimming, but I couldn’t find any. Here’s the swimming crew on a Sunday morning dressed for church. I’m in the front on the right. Littlest sister wasn’t born yet.
I’ll probably delete this with pruny fingers in the morning.
The Goldfinch
Flit and flash of gold
With feathers dipped in the sun.
Quick visit – then gone.
Quick blog post – then gone…in the morning.
During a FaceTime chat today with our granddaughter (6) and grandson (4), my granddaughter suggested I tell a regular story, like “Jack and the Beanstalk,” but using stuff from around our house for the characters and scenery. I’m in!
Here we have Jack and his mother:
Having been told to go sell the cow for money to buy food, Jack ended up selling it to a peddler for 5 magic beans.
Jack’s mother wasn’t too happy about the beans and threw them out the window onto the ground. She harangued Jack for a bit and went to bed in a huff.
As you know, a beanstalk grew from those beans (you’ll see that later). Jack went up the beanstalk. He fell from halfway up which was unfortunate, but he clambered back up and again and found the goose who laid the golden egg.
The elements of the story were getting somewhat hazy to me, but I managed to remember the “Fe Fi Fo Fum” bit and employed that a couple times with the accompanying line, “I smell the blood of an Englishman!” My granddaughter laughed and said, “That’s just what my Dad used to say!”
I asked for help from the audience, having forgotten how Jack got out of his predicament, but no help was forthcoming. It occurred to me that a hatchet was involved. I had no hatchet, so the goose had to donate her nest to play the part of the hatchet. Jack climbed back down with the golden egg and cut the beanstalk down just in time. The giant fell with it and was killed. I’m not sure what happened to the goose, but I like to think she came down with Jack.
Jack’s mother, who had originally been quite upset about the purchase of the magic beans, was thrilled to get the golden egg. We decided that Jack’s father was at work and missed the whole thing.
THE END.
That’s how our lamp ended up on the floor. I guess I should pick it up, along with the beans.
I’ll probably hack this post down with a fake hatchet in the morning.
Many years ago we bought a reproduction of the 1828 Noah Webster American Dictionary of the English Language. We take dictionaries for granted nowadays, but it was quite a monumental project for Mr. Webster. He really wanted to make a dictionary “suited to the people of the United States.” He referred to it as a “work which shall be a guide to the youth of the United States.” He sought to rescue our language from “sciolists” (I had to look this up in his dictionary. It means “One who knows little, or who knows many things superficially; a smatterer.”) and to redeem our language from corruption.
Near the end of the preface, he said, “I present it to my fellow citizens…with my ardent wishes for their improvement and their happiness; and for the continued increase of the wealth, the learning, the moral and religious elevation of character, and the glory of my country.”
He also wrote “To that great and benevolent Being…I would present the tribute of my most grateful acknowledgments. And if the talent which he entrusted to my care, has not been put to the most profitable use in his service, I hope it has not been ‘kept laid up in a napkin,’ and that any misapplication of it may be graciously forgiven.”
After reading those words, I’m quite ashamed that up until this point I have not availed myself of Noah Webster’s great work very often. This lovely book has been used more often to press flowers than anything else.
My husband and I have been talking about reading through it, picking out words that are unfamiliar and adding them to our vocabulary. Maybe the word “skimming” should be used instead of “reading.” For fun I started looking through the “A’s” and stopped at the word “abature: grass beaten or trampled down by a stag in passing.” Now there’s a word your average person doesn’t get a chance to use very often. Here’s my attempt: “I saw a stag in the distance and in attempting to follow it, I looked for the abature left by its trampling.” I wonder if you could use the same word if it was a cow, horse or elephant doing the trampling?
I illustrated it. It seemed like the right thing to do.
This blog is produced by a sciolist and ought to be deleted (or trampled on by a stag) in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 