This post, as you can probably figure out from the title, is long overdue. It's been on my mind for awhile now, but life, you know. It kind of gets in the way. The minutae.
See, this post, it's all about honoring God. There's a verse in the bible, in Luke , chapter 6, verse 38, " Give and shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give unto your bosom."
Well, I've recently (and forever back), seen the proof of this. You see, when we moved into this house, it had a huge, old, people-eating size deep freeze in the basement. We had our own, but for some reason we left the older one powered up and used it instead. For awhile it sat nearly empty, in spite of my usual stocking-up ways. But last year, when Mr. GraceandPeace was off work for awhile, I noticed something a little, well- odd. It started to fill up. Not due, mind you, to anything we were doing.
But odd things started to happen. Like one night Mr. GraceandPeace called me and told me not to buy any bread. So I didn't, but didn't know why. (He'd been given the extra's from a food bank.) When we met up, he had a trunk full of bread products. And I don't mean just white bread. I'm talking about wheat bread, croissants, doughnuts, danishes, muffins, cake, and on and on. And this is what he had left after he opened his trunk to everyone he works with and said," Take whatever you want!" So, the extra's went in the freezer. And then, the holiday meat parade started. Both my husband and my son get holiday hams. But it didn't stop there.
Oh, no. Mr. GraceandPeace brought home extra hams from co-workers who don't eat meat. And my simply darling mother-in-law, who is retired and volunteers her time, brought two extra food baskets to us, that she hadn't been able to deliver.
And I began to find some really unbelievable deals at the supermarket. And so the freezer began to fill up. But not just the big deep freeze. Also, the 'fridge-top freezer, and the pantry.
And when things got really, really rough, we got a check in the mail from a relative we never expected to get one from.
And so, I guess I just want to honor God with this post. To say thanks to all the people who've been open to being His instrument of good measure. Because things here, while always abundant, have lately been, "pressed down, shaken together, and running over!"
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, November 30, 2009
Four Days Off!
Well, the first time off I've had since last April is over, and let me tell you, it was wooonnnderful.
I cooked like a maniac last week, until Thursday of course. Then I ate like a maniac! After which I did not cook again all weekend, unless you count Saturday night's chili, which I mostly don't count.
The weekend was full of blankets, internet surfing, crossword puzzles, leftovers, and pondering lots of nothing at all. (Do you think that Hidden Valley Ranch is attempting to take over the world by addicting us all to Ranch Dressing and then lowering the supply? Hmmm....)
It was a great weekend, but now it's over, and back to the daily brew. Before 11 a.m. this morning, I did five loads of laundry, endured two fits thrown by a four year old, and had three conversations with business people regarding money.
Love those Mondays, really.
I cooked like a maniac last week, until Thursday of course. Then I ate like a maniac! After which I did not cook again all weekend, unless you count Saturday night's chili, which I mostly don't count.
The weekend was full of blankets, internet surfing, crossword puzzles, leftovers, and pondering lots of nothing at all. (Do you think that Hidden Valley Ranch is attempting to take over the world by addicting us all to Ranch Dressing and then lowering the supply? Hmmm....)
It was a great weekend, but now it's over, and back to the daily brew. Before 11 a.m. this morning, I did five loads of laundry, endured two fits thrown by a four year old, and had three conversations with business people regarding money.
Love those Mondays, really.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Veteran's Day
Just want to take a moment to remember the vets in my life:
My dad, who served in the Korean war.
My grandpa Bayer, who was drafted during WWII and didn't even make it through basic before the war ended.
My Brother in Law, Bob, who recently retired from a career in the army.
My grandfather-in-law, who doesn't always remember his family. He served in WWII, and if you ask him about it, he'll talk for hours about it. What he did, where he served, how he played basketball with "John F ". (That's JFK, to the rest of us.)
And to all the rest of the veterans out there: family, friends, acquaintances, and people I don't even know. The ones who will know I remembered them, and the ones who won't. The family of those who gave their lives so I can sit and watch TV in my living room and talk politics in public. Thanks. You'll never know how much you've done for us. God bless you all.
My dad, who served in the Korean war.
My grandpa Bayer, who was drafted during WWII and didn't even make it through basic before the war ended.
My Brother in Law, Bob, who recently retired from a career in the army.
My grandfather-in-law, who doesn't always remember his family. He served in WWII, and if you ask him about it, he'll talk for hours about it. What he did, where he served, how he played basketball with "John F ". (That's JFK, to the rest of us.)
And to all the rest of the veterans out there: family, friends, acquaintances, and people I don't even know. The ones who will know I remembered them, and the ones who won't. The family of those who gave their lives so I can sit and watch TV in my living room and talk politics in public. Thanks. You'll never know how much you've done for us. God bless you all.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Waiting for the Butter!
Sometimes, the days of life slide by like buttah, one after the other in a haze of easiness, all things going smoothly. Everyone gets along, no one is sick , all the bills are paid on time. To slightly mis-quote JRR Tolkien in The Hobbit, it's a strange thing, but times that are easy and days that are good don't make very good tales.
So the tale of our lives this year should read like a novel. A seven month layoff, an accident that injured my dear husband's back, my mom in the hospital for months, my sister's grandbaby in the hospital with cancer. And I , who am the Official Stresser Over of The Budget - well. Lets just say that that particular part of my job description has kept my very busy lately.
And my slight heart murmur, which can be triggered by stress and caffeine, is going like a freight train some days. Dear husband is getting impatient with being off of work. Our children, who get along with one another very well for brother and sister, find reasons to be in their rooms alot.
So I'm taking a step backward, thank you very much. I'm loving the autumn rain, detoxing from all the caffeine I've ingested lately, spending more time enjoying my family, and making time for my quiet time with God. I know all this is for a season, and then things will change.
I know that no matter what happens God will use it for good.
I also know that we are extremely blessed to have an extended family that cares about us enough to help when we need it.
So, I'll work on focusing on the good things I have in my life instead of the problems. But I'm still waiting for the Buttah days!
So the tale of our lives this year should read like a novel. A seven month layoff, an accident that injured my dear husband's back, my mom in the hospital for months, my sister's grandbaby in the hospital with cancer. And I , who am the Official Stresser Over of The Budget - well. Lets just say that that particular part of my job description has kept my very busy lately.
And my slight heart murmur, which can be triggered by stress and caffeine, is going like a freight train some days. Dear husband is getting impatient with being off of work. Our children, who get along with one another very well for brother and sister, find reasons to be in their rooms alot.
So I'm taking a step backward, thank you very much. I'm loving the autumn rain, detoxing from all the caffeine I've ingested lately, spending more time enjoying my family, and making time for my quiet time with God. I know all this is for a season, and then things will change.
I know that no matter what happens God will use it for good.
I also know that we are extremely blessed to have an extended family that cares about us enough to help when we need it.
So, I'll work on focusing on the good things I have in my life instead of the problems. But I'm still waiting for the Buttah days!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Grace and Peace
I'm standing at the mudroom window, leaning on an old bench, absorbing the silence of an August rain. The deck is wet and slick, the Dusty Miller and Moss Rose Plants are laden with the two day rain. The mustard a previous owner planted is heavy and nodding with the bounty of wetness a late summer rain has provided, and the accidental tomato plant growing in the hostas is ripening quickly.
An unseasonal wet and cool two days is providing me with a taste of Autumn, a cool breeze a gift of God, and I'm just savoring standing here, watching, listening, smelling.
The deck lights come on south to north, one by one, and the gentle rain continues, feeding, nourishing, both the plants and my spirit. I wait gently for the silence of an autumn rainstorm, it's where I belong, it's where I live always in my soul. That spot where the bounty of summer is fully ripened and waiting to pick, and the restfullness of winter is far ahead.
August is when I started dating my husband, Autumn when I knew we would be together for a long time. It's when we were married, when our first child was born. When my thoughts turn to both wandering to new places, and staying at home for a season.
My knee leans on the bench, scarred by dog paws and children's toys, and I am overwhelmed with gratefulness, Knowing that this patch of land is mine for a time.
I wait for the streetlight to come on in the yard of the Narnia house,and listen to the rain, and watch squirrels scurry to get home, and listen to silence.
An unseasonal wet and cool two days is providing me with a taste of Autumn, a cool breeze a gift of God, and I'm just savoring standing here, watching, listening, smelling.
The deck lights come on south to north, one by one, and the gentle rain continues, feeding, nourishing, both the plants and my spirit. I wait gently for the silence of an autumn rainstorm, it's where I belong, it's where I live always in my soul. That spot where the bounty of summer is fully ripened and waiting to pick, and the restfullness of winter is far ahead.
August is when I started dating my husband, Autumn when I knew we would be together for a long time. It's when we were married, when our first child was born. When my thoughts turn to both wandering to new places, and staying at home for a season.
My knee leans on the bench, scarred by dog paws and children's toys, and I am overwhelmed with gratefulness, Knowing that this patch of land is mine for a time.
I wait for the streetlight to come on in the yard of the Narnia house,and listen to the rain, and watch squirrels scurry to get home, and listen to silence.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Summer Redux
I think I may have mislead you a couple of posts ago. About summer, I mean.
Summer is sweaty, hot, uncomfortable weather. I prefer cold, really. But about the actual stuff we do. Well.
Summer? It's : Time to read whole books, from start to finish, without backing up to re-read a couple pages so you remember where you were last time, weeks ago, when you left off.
Summer is Strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and peaches. It's watermelon and cucumbers and lemonade and sweet tea. It's late mornings and late evenings and fireflies.
Oh, fireflies! How I love a yardful of fireflies, Blinking late into the evening.
Summer is bats flying high over head, baby squirrels getting fat, a long lazy walk by the river. It's hazy mornings with iced coffee to wake you, the smell of elephant ears and funnel cakes cooking, and the scent of a distant campfire.
Campfires! Browned marshmallows and melty gooey smores, roasted hot dogs on a stick.
Hot dogs and hamburgers and pork chops and chicken on the grill, every week. Salads and fruit.
The farmers market, barn sales, yard sales, aimless drives through the countryside.
Summer is baking in the sun, even if you wrinkle like a raisin. It's a cool dip in the pool or the lake or the river or the hose.
It's my dog diving headfirst into the river to retrieve a stick, sticking his head in the hose while it's going full blast and loving it, shaking and getting everyone around soaking wet.
Summer is sidewalk chalk drawings and first babysitting jobs and melting ice cream cones with the whole family.
Summer is the cool air in the movie theatre and the library, the shivery feeling when you first come into the house after a day outside.
Summer. It's not too bad. If only I could have it in the early fall...
Summer is sweaty, hot, uncomfortable weather. I prefer cold, really. But about the actual stuff we do. Well.
Summer? It's : Time to read whole books, from start to finish, without backing up to re-read a couple pages so you remember where you were last time, weeks ago, when you left off.
Summer is Strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and peaches. It's watermelon and cucumbers and lemonade and sweet tea. It's late mornings and late evenings and fireflies.
Oh, fireflies! How I love a yardful of fireflies, Blinking late into the evening.
Summer is bats flying high over head, baby squirrels getting fat, a long lazy walk by the river. It's hazy mornings with iced coffee to wake you, the smell of elephant ears and funnel cakes cooking, and the scent of a distant campfire.
Campfires! Browned marshmallows and melty gooey smores, roasted hot dogs on a stick.
Hot dogs and hamburgers and pork chops and chicken on the grill, every week. Salads and fruit.
The farmers market, barn sales, yard sales, aimless drives through the countryside.
Summer is baking in the sun, even if you wrinkle like a raisin. It's a cool dip in the pool or the lake or the river or the hose.
It's my dog diving headfirst into the river to retrieve a stick, sticking his head in the hose while it's going full blast and loving it, shaking and getting everyone around soaking wet.
Summer is sidewalk chalk drawings and first babysitting jobs and melting ice cream cones with the whole family.
Summer is the cool air in the movie theatre and the library, the shivery feeling when you first come into the house after a day outside.
Summer. It's not too bad. If only I could have it in the early fall...
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A Story About a Company
I have a little story to tell you. It's not a very nice story, unfortunately, but it is true. This is a Story about a company. A company most people think would be delightful to work for. Like most companies, this one has it's ups and downs.
The insurance, for instance, runs the gambit from unbelievably fantastic, to nonexistant, depending upon your postion within the company. The pay rate depends entirely upon your ability to attract new clients, and your boss can be a delightful person or a real jerk, it's just the luck of the draw.
Aside from the ups and downs, however, there lurks a darker side, a side that no one ever really sees. Unless, of course, you work for the Company.
The truth is that the Company is not very well run. My supervisor, directly hired by me and the board of directors, (I'm on the board of directors), has turned out to be a real moron. For instance, my supervisor was hired entirely on his own word of mouth-stupid, I know, but it's the way it has always been done. All of what he said has turned out to be a lie. In addition, since he is directly responsible for the budget our company operates on, you would think he would be a financial genius, but as it turns out he can't do the simplest addition or subtraction. The simplest things escape him, such as the fact that you can't spend more than you take in, or that you need to cut out the extras before you cut out the essentials. (If I spent all the money I earned on chocolate bars and pretty shoes, and then couldn't pay my bills, everyone would think I was a moron with no sense of financial responsibility, right? )
Since the supervisor of our company is so bad with money, most months I spend the time between submitting my pay voucher and actually receiving my pay, sweating it out, wondering if I'm actually going to get paid.
Now, before you wonder why I don't just quit and get another job, let me explain: This job isn't just a job to me. It's what I dreamed of doing when I was in high school, and I am educated, and continue to take education classes and seminars, to be able to do my job both effectively and in the most up to date manner. And besides, I love my job. I provide a real service, a service that affects my customers in the most positive way.
If I were to lose my job today (a real possibility because of the Company's current budget crises), I would need to : 1. Be retrained for another type of position. 2. Probably file bankruptcy so that I could afford to go to school. 3.Move to a cheaper community, possibly another state, to live in a way that would enable me to go to school. 4. Almost certainly go on welfare to enable me to be able to live , feed my children, etc, while I retrained for another type of position.
So you see, I'm invested in this job-totally aside from the fact that I love my job (and how many people can say that?!) the fact that my job would impact so many people if it were lost, should be a real consideration in the Company's budget plans.
And so, while I sit here and wonder if my paycheck will arrive this month, the executive board and the Supervisor duke it out with their war of words, while they fight over weather or not to cut 'nonessential' budget items out, and weather or not to continue to fund essential services such as the one I provide to our customers. While they fight, I wonder, as do others, weather or not we will be able to feed our children next month, or give them a place to live, or provide them with health insurance.
I wish, as do all who work for The Company, that the service I provide would just be funded, so our clients can continue their own work, and stay off of welfare themselves, and that the Company would quit playing games with the little people who work for them.
Oh, yes...the Company I work for is The State Of Illinois, and the job I do is to provide daycare for all of the Moms and Dads we decided a few years ago needed to be off of welfare, and work to support themselves. Moms whose husbands left them, or Dads whose wives disappeared. Moms who went to school and are professionals, or the parent who suddenly finds themselves alone when the other parent decides to leave. In other words, You, and Me. The Rank and File of daily life. Or, in the words of Sesame Street, the people who you meet, when you're walking down the street, the people who you meet each day.
I'm not a person who receives lucrative multi-million dollar contracts from the state. I'm a person that provides safety, food, and loving care and education, for the children of those parents who refuse to go on welfare-but soon may be forced to because of the current budget situation. I find it hard to believe that our government is willing to sacrifice the services that I, and many others like me, provide, just for the sake of political posturing, and making sure that their business partners are taken care of.
We're the people the current government wants to cut the essential services of, the ones who have worked hard to get where we are, who continue to work hard, who won't quit.
And the ones who will remember this when it comes time to vote again.
Remember this-no matter where I go or what I do, I will vote again!
The insurance, for instance, runs the gambit from unbelievably fantastic, to nonexistant, depending upon your postion within the company. The pay rate depends entirely upon your ability to attract new clients, and your boss can be a delightful person or a real jerk, it's just the luck of the draw.
Aside from the ups and downs, however, there lurks a darker side, a side that no one ever really sees. Unless, of course, you work for the Company.
The truth is that the Company is not very well run. My supervisor, directly hired by me and the board of directors, (I'm on the board of directors), has turned out to be a real moron. For instance, my supervisor was hired entirely on his own word of mouth-stupid, I know, but it's the way it has always been done. All of what he said has turned out to be a lie. In addition, since he is directly responsible for the budget our company operates on, you would think he would be a financial genius, but as it turns out he can't do the simplest addition or subtraction. The simplest things escape him, such as the fact that you can't spend more than you take in, or that you need to cut out the extras before you cut out the essentials. (If I spent all the money I earned on chocolate bars and pretty shoes, and then couldn't pay my bills, everyone would think I was a moron with no sense of financial responsibility, right? )
Since the supervisor of our company is so bad with money, most months I spend the time between submitting my pay voucher and actually receiving my pay, sweating it out, wondering if I'm actually going to get paid.
Now, before you wonder why I don't just quit and get another job, let me explain: This job isn't just a job to me. It's what I dreamed of doing when I was in high school, and I am educated, and continue to take education classes and seminars, to be able to do my job both effectively and in the most up to date manner. And besides, I love my job. I provide a real service, a service that affects my customers in the most positive way.
If I were to lose my job today (a real possibility because of the Company's current budget crises), I would need to : 1. Be retrained for another type of position. 2. Probably file bankruptcy so that I could afford to go to school. 3.Move to a cheaper community, possibly another state, to live in a way that would enable me to go to school. 4. Almost certainly go on welfare to enable me to be able to live , feed my children, etc, while I retrained for another type of position.
So you see, I'm invested in this job-totally aside from the fact that I love my job (and how many people can say that?!) the fact that my job would impact so many people if it were lost, should be a real consideration in the Company's budget plans.
And so, while I sit here and wonder if my paycheck will arrive this month, the executive board and the Supervisor duke it out with their war of words, while they fight over weather or not to cut 'nonessential' budget items out, and weather or not to continue to fund essential services such as the one I provide to our customers. While they fight, I wonder, as do others, weather or not we will be able to feed our children next month, or give them a place to live, or provide them with health insurance.
I wish, as do all who work for The Company, that the service I provide would just be funded, so our clients can continue their own work, and stay off of welfare themselves, and that the Company would quit playing games with the little people who work for them.
Oh, yes...the Company I work for is The State Of Illinois, and the job I do is to provide daycare for all of the Moms and Dads we decided a few years ago needed to be off of welfare, and work to support themselves. Moms whose husbands left them, or Dads whose wives disappeared. Moms who went to school and are professionals, or the parent who suddenly finds themselves alone when the other parent decides to leave. In other words, You, and Me. The Rank and File of daily life. Or, in the words of Sesame Street, the people who you meet, when you're walking down the street, the people who you meet each day.
I'm not a person who receives lucrative multi-million dollar contracts from the state. I'm a person that provides safety, food, and loving care and education, for the children of those parents who refuse to go on welfare-but soon may be forced to because of the current budget situation. I find it hard to believe that our government is willing to sacrifice the services that I, and many others like me, provide, just for the sake of political posturing, and making sure that their business partners are taken care of.
We're the people the current government wants to cut the essential services of, the ones who have worked hard to get where we are, who continue to work hard, who won't quit.
And the ones who will remember this when it comes time to vote again.
Remember this-no matter where I go or what I do, I will vote again!
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