(Photo Hunt post is a couple of posts below this.)

If you have some time to kill and just want to be entertained, try this Virtual Bubble Wrap. Or you could go to Flickr.com and peruse the Stick Figures in Peril. My son showed me this a while back. We’ve all seen warning signs on everything under the sun with those little hapless stick figures in various dangerous situations, showing us what not to do. They are not meant to be funny, of course — but some of them are. And the comments on some of the pictures are even more hilarious (caution: the language isn’t always the best, but most of what I have seen is ok). Someone made a group for them on Flickr. Some of my favorites are here, here, here, and here.

I didn’t have Jane Eyre on my winter reading list at first, though it is another classic I always wanted to read “some day.” But after seeing the first half of the new PBS production of it which was on last Sun. night, I put it on my list and started it yesterday! I saw an earlier production of it with Ciaran Hinds as Mr. Rochester, but there are some differences between this production and that one. I don’t know which one is supposed to be closer to the book. I must have seen an even earlier production of it at some point, because I’ve been basically familiar with the storyline.

Mrs. B. at Cherish the Home wrote a wonderful post a few days ago about what SAHW (stay at home wives) can do while waiting on the Lord for children. Another post of hers on humility provoked thought by reminding us that God doesn’t tell us to wait on Him to humble us but tells us to “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time” (I Peter 5:6). Of course, we can only do so with the Lord’s help. But clearly there is activity rather than passivity here, and I tend to just pray and ask God to make me humble when He tells me here to take action.

There is a beautiful poem called “To a Homemaker” here at Stephanie’s Musings of a Mountain Mama.

There is a good interview with Jamie Langston Turner, author of Winter Birds and five other novels, here.

On the topic of writing, Elisabeth Elliot wrote a piece on what I would call “Writing by Faith” but which she titled “The Trail to Shandia” here. (The title will make sense when you read it. 🙂 ) I thought the last paragraphs were interesting in light of the struggle several bloggers have written about (and I struggle with myself), the desire for approval. Of course we have to do what we do, even blogging, as unto the Lord whether we get any feedback or not. But these words comforted me that that desire is a ver human one and not always wrong:

“Do I need approval?” Answer: yes. Does anybody not need approval? Is there anybody who is content to live his life without so much as a nod from anybody else? Wouldn’t he be, of all men, the most devilishly self-centered? Wouldn’t his supreme solitude be the most hellish? It’s human to want to know that you please somebody.

Sometimes readers of things that I write tell me long afterward that they have thought of writing me a letter, or have written one and discarded it, thinking, “She doesn’t need my approval.” Well, they’re mistaken–for wouldn’t it be a lovely thing to know that a footprint you have left on the trail has, just by being there, heartened somebody else?