Odds and ends

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Today marks the first day back to the ol’ routine after about an ten-day “stay-cation.” My oldest son’s birthday is in August and he usually takes a week’s vacation then to come and visit. My birthday is 6 days after his, and this is only the second time in six years that he has been able to be here for mine as well. My husband took off a week and two days while Jeremy was here, Jesse was laid off a few weeks back, so he was home, and though Jason had only one day off besides weekends, he and Mittu and Timothy were able to be here quite a bit. It was a great time with a good blend of activities and outings as well as quiet times at home. We went to the Ripley’s Aquarium one day, bowling another day, to Jason and Mittu’s house for lunch another day, and the kids went out out various times on their own. We talked and played games (I particularly enjoyed Telestrations and a game Jesse found called Drawful that involved using our phones to draw pictures of silly sayings that others had to guess), napped and read and ate. In fact, I had to laugh when the auto-correct on my phone kept trying to convert “stay-cation” to “starvation.” Nope, we definitely didn’t starve.

I seem to operate best with a certain amount of structure, so in that vein it’s nice to get back to the regular routine, but it’s sad as well, especially with Jeremy leaving to go back to RI until Christmas.

Timothy seemed to do well with the change in routine. He hasn’t seen Jeremy except in FaceTime since last Christmas but didn’t seem shy around him at all. If any of the family wasn’t in the room he was in, he asked where they were or looked for them – Jeremy noted he was like a little sheepdog trying to herd his people into one room. 🙂 I think he might be going through a little bit of people withdrawal now.

When people are here, even family, I have a hard time knowing how much to be available to them and how much to give them time to themselves. I’d hate for a hostess to feel like she needed to be with me 100% or have activities scheduled all day – in fact, a little down time and solitude are welcome when staying with people for a day or more. So I try to be generally available and not off doing my own projects, and if everyone seems content I don’t try to conjure up things to do. But we do try to have an activity or two scheduled out of the house just for fun and variety.

Is it odd that in the middle of middle age I still get excited about my birthday? 🙂 I get excited for all the family’s birthdays. My family does a great job in making those days special for me. The day after Mother’s Day or my birthday always feels a little like Cinderella the day after the ball, though. 🙂

When I first told people I was going to be a grandmother, many of them asked me what I wanted my grandchildren to call me. I wasn’t sure: I knew there were a couple of names I didn’t like and didn’t want, but nothing really stood out to me. I kind of just wanted to see what Timothy came up with himself. Lately he’s been calling us Mom and Dad (his parents are Mommy and Daddy), I guess because that’s what he hears everyone else call us. We figured we’d just work on the “grand” part later. But just recently he’s been saying Mom-mom. I like that. 🙂 We’ll see if it sticks.

In other news….we have a hummingbird feeder just outside the kitchen window. It seemed to take them a while to find it this year, but once they did, we started seeing them often. Recently, though, a wasp has claimed the feeder, and several times we have actually seen him shoo the hummingbird off, flying at it until it flew away, one of the oddest things I have ever seen. Jason remarked that if a wasp sting hurts us so much, it would probably prove fatal to a creature the size of a hummingbird. Lately they seem to have called a truce, though, and have occupied opposite sides of the feeder at the same time.

Some time back I saw my cardiologist just for a routine visit to discuss how my heart rhythm issues were going, and after listing several options (do nothing; increase medicine; try a different medicine; investigate other procedures), he said what I am sure meant something like “The decision is in yours” or “The ball is in your court.” But he is Indian, and the metaphor he used was, “The trigger is in your hands.” 😀

I enjoyed watching a bit of the Olympics most evenings, but I wish there had been more variety in the prime time coverage. Some nights it seemed like it was just race after race, and there were a multitude of sports we never saw in the evenings. I know there’s too much going on to cover everything, and they try to show the events that are happening live. If we turned the TV on during other times of day, we’d see a few different events. But it’s impossible to watch all day. I didn’t really investigate the viewing options on NBC’s site – might look into that next time.

I thought the closing ceremony was a little underwhelming – too many segments taking a very long time with no changes. But my favorite parts were the film segment after the hand-off of the Olympic flag to Tokyo, especially the prime minister as Mario, and then the montage of highlight clips at the very end.

I’ve forgotten to take pictures of a few cards I made earlier in the summer, but these were for Jason and Mittu’s anniversary and Jeremy’s birthday:

And finally, I just saw today that someone is thinking of making a new Anne of Green Gables TV series for Netflix that’s supposed to be “edgier,” and this article says it will “integrate new adventures into the beloved story, tackling issues of ‘identity, sexism, bullying, prejudice, and trusting one’s self.’” Seriously, can’t anybody write an original series without remaking an old one that was excellent? I don’t think anyone can improve on the Megan Follows’ Anne. And to “integrate new adventures” into a classic just shouldn’t be allowed. Go write your own story rather than hijacking someone else’s characters!

Well, I don’t want to end on a negative note, so I’ll share a couple of photos of Timothy with me on my birthday and Timothy’s first time bowling:

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I could look at his little face all day. 🙂 For now I guess I better stop rambling and go finish the laundry. 🙂

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Book Review: More Things in Heaven and Earth

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Barbara Harper

More Things in Heaven and Earth by Jeff High first came to my attention through this post about “gentle fiction.” He described the kind of books and stories I love to read, and he writes about Tennessee, where he grew up and where I have been living for six years now. So I wanted to give his books a try.

In this story, Luke Bradford has just finished medical school, and his first practice in in the small town of Watervalley, TN. He would have preferred a position as a research assistant, but that doesn’t pay as well, and he has school loans to pay off. He also would have preferred a large city to a small town, but a program that will allow his school bills to be paid off for a few years of service in an out-of-the-way town was one that could not be passed up. So he enters Watervalley reluctantly.

The book is peopled by a variety of characters. After accidentally causing a fire in his oven, which set off an alarm at the fire department, the mayor suggests that Luke hire a housekeeper. He sends over Connie Thompson, a “large and robust black woman in her mid-fifties” who brooks no nonsense. But she does cook well and keeps house nicely, and it’s fun to see their relationship develop. His neighbor is a 12 year old boy who likes to wear bicycle helmets and whose mother keeps to herself. Finding an apple orchard on a hike and getting nearly shot by its owner starts a tentative friendship with John Harris, former leading citizen of Watervalley who has become an intelligent but bitter near-recluse. And every encounter with the beautiful Christine Chambers goes awry, leaving him with little hope of forming any kind of relationship, though he still likes to try.

The author has degrees in literature and nursing, and his knowledge of both show through in his writing. Luke’s aunt had taken him in when his parents were killed when he was twelve, and her love of literature passed on to him. At one point she had given him a book of poetry with a note that his medical knowledge would help people physically, but words had the power of “hope and joy and courage” and could help hearts. The title of the book, quoted in it at one point, is from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In a sense that could be the theme of the book. Luke looks down on the people of Watervalley at first, but finds a goodness and kindness in them he admires; he holds himself aloof and feels out of place, but eventually finds a home. Though I wouldn’t call this Christian fiction, Luke doesn’t have much of a place for faith in his life at first, but does come to (or returns to) the conviction that there is a caring Designer behind life.

It took me a while to warm up to the characters. The first couple of chapters involved a series of comic disasters, which are okay occasionally, but are not the type of stories I enjoy. But the book grew on me the further I read (or listened), and by the end I loved it. The only thing that mars it is a smattering of bad language.

I listened to the audiobook wonderfully read by Will Damron. There is more about Watervalley at WatervalleyBooks.com, particularly How It All Began.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Book Review: C. S. Lewis Letters to Children

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I rediscovered C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, on my bookshelf when I was trying to rearrange the books to make room for more. I had forgotten I even had it and had never read it, so I decided to save it for Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge this month.

The book was published after Lewis’s lifetime: my copy was published in 1985, about 20 years after Lewis’s death, but I am not sure if that is when it was first published. It’s a short book: 114 pages not counting the bibliographies at the back. The book opens with a forward by Doug Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, a brief introduction, and a short overview of Lewis’s childhood. The editors note that the letters are only representative samples: there were way too many to include all, and many of them answer the same questions.

What the editors don’t say is how they obtained the letters. He wrote most of them “in longhand with a dip-pen and ink” (p. 4), telling a correspondent in one of the letters, “You can drive a typewriter, which I could no more drive than a locomotive (I’d sooner drive the locomotive too)” (p. 77) (fascinating article on other reasons why he did not use a typewriter is here). Did he make carbon copies, or did some of the correspondents send their letters back to his estate? We’re not told, but we are told that “Originals or photocopies of the letters in this book are housed in either the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Illinois, or the Bodleian Library, Oxford” (. 7).

When reading the Narnia series, I have often marveled that a man with the education and brainpower Lewis had, and with so little real-life experience with children, could communicate so effectively with them. He’s neither condescending or cloying. In “On Writing to Children,” Lewis said, “The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.” That same perspective is reflected in his letters.

Many of the children’s letters ask about the Narnia series: questions about specific characters, when the next book would be out, why wasn’t he going to write more than seven, etc. Some of them carried on regular correspondence with him for years (as many as twenty years in one case), sending him pictures they made or bits of their own writing, which he critiqued honestly. Most are very short and to the point. One of the longest and most touching was to the mother of a boy who had written to him because the boy was afraid he loved Aslan more than Jesus.

Sometimes he shares just a glimpse of his home life and responsibilities: when the people he was caring for had problems, when his wife was ill, when he himself was ill. On a sad note, to his goddaughter, a few months after his wife died: “I couldn’t come to the wedding, my dear. I haven’t the pluck. Any wedding, for reasons you know, would turn me inside out now” (p. 94). And a funny one: “I’ve been having a…cyst lanced on the back of my neck: the most serious result is that I can never at present get my whole head & shoulders under water in my bath. (I like getting down like a Hippo with only my nostrils out)” (p. 37).

Assorted notes and quotes:

When one girl wanted to know Aslan’s “other name,” he didn’t tell her directly but gave her several clues.
When one girl questioned why the Pevensie children grow up in Narnia but are still children in our world: “I feel sure I am right to make them grow up in Narnia. Of course they will grow up in this world too. You’ll see. You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12: so I don’t feel it very odd that they grow up in Narnia while they are children in England” (p. 34).
He tells several that the books are not an allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress in which everything represents something. They’re a “supposing” of what it might be like if there was another world with people that needed saving and Jesus came in the form of a lion rather than a man. “Reepiceep and Nick-i-brick don’t, in that sense, represent anyone. But of course anyone who devotes his whole life to seeking Heaven will be like Reepicheep, and anyone who wants some worldly thing so badly that he is ready to use wicked means to get it will be likely to behave like Nick-i-brick” (p. 45).
A bit of humor: “I never saw a picture of a baby shower before. I had to put up my umbrella to look at it” (p. 47).
On what happened to Susan: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end–in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense'” (p. 67).
“A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc) can do the journey on their own!” (p. 72).
“American university teachers have told me that most of their freshmen come from schools where the standard was far too low and therefore think themselves far better than they really are. This means that they lose heart (and their tempers too) when told, as they have to be told, their real level” (p. 84).
“You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort. At present it only encourages you to write prose not so good as your ordinary prose and type it like verse. Sorry to be a pig!” (p. 87).
When asked which of his books he liked best: Till We Have Faces (though he felt it “attracted less attention than any book I ever wrote,” p. 107) and Perelandra (p. 95).
He often closed his notes by asking them to pray for him.

I loved this window into Lewis’s life and thinking.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Book Review: Gulliver’s Travels

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Barbara Harper

One of the categories for the Back to the Classics challenge was a banned or censored book. After perusing several banned book lists, I thought I’d have to skip this category, because what few books I found interesting on the lists were ones I had already read. Then I spied Gulliver’s Travels on a couple of lists. I had heard of it, of course, but had never read it, so I decided to give it a try.

The full original title in 1726 was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. I’m thankful it was eventually shortened. 🙂 It was written by Jonathan Swift, an Irish Anglican clergyman, politician, and writer best known for his scathing satire.

I knew about Gulliver’s waking up on an island and finding himself tied down by 6-inch people called the Lilliputians, but I hadn’t known of his other travels. The book opens with a very short account of his background, and then launches into his first voyage as a ship’s surgeon. The book is divided into four parts:

Part 1: Lilliput. Gulliver’s boat is shipwrecked and he appears to be the lone survivor. He washes up on an island and wakes up realizing that he can’t move. Swift’s writing is nice here in that he gradually makes us aware through Gulliver’s eyes of what has happened, with the realization that his every limb and even his hair is tied down, to noticing a little person making his way up his body to speak to him. Gulliver and the Lilliputians can’t understand each other, but they are able to make signs to one another, and they eventually take him to their king. Gulliver has a facility for languages, thankfully, and soon can communicate easily. Once he assures the king that he will be loyal to him and careful of his subjects, he’s given free reign to go about the land. In a war with the Lilliputian’s enemies in Blefuscu, Gulliver saves the day by single-handedly capturing their fleet. The Lilliputian king wants Gulliver to help him subdue all his enemies, but Gulliver will not be persuaded to enslave a free people. The king says he understands, but things are not quite the same between them afterward. Then when the queen’s house catches fire, and people are passing along these pitiful thimble-sized buckets of water to Gulliver to pour on the flames, he realizes he has a better way: he needs to urinate and voluminously does so on the queen’s house, putting out the fire, but seriously offending her. A friend at court alerts Gulliver that plans are being made to put out his eyes and starve him, so he escapes to Blefescu and eventually find an abandoned boat in his size and returns home.

Part 2: Brobdingnag. After a short while at home, Gulliver sets out on another voyage, wherein storms blow his ship off course, and they stop at an island to search for fresh water. Suddenly Gulliver notices that his boat is quickly making out for sea without him, and then notices there is a giant twelve times the size of an ordinary human wading out into the sea after the ship. Gulliver runs the other way and finds himself in a field, where one of the workers notices him and at first thinks he is a bug or animal. He is taken to a farmer and goes through the same method of first signing, then pointing to objects and asking their names, to eventually being able to communicate quite well. The farmer decides to charge to “show” Gulliver several times a day to people for a fee, exhausting him. Eventually he is given an audience with the queen, who buys him from the farmer. The queen treats him well but views him almost as a doll. He encounters problems with flies, rats, and even a monkey. When Gulliver complains of anything, he’s not taken seriously. The king discusses the politics and history of England with Gulliver but belittles them, saying, “I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” A search is made for a woman of Gulliver’s size for him to mate with, but he is thankful that none is found, for he would not want to produce a family just to be shown like circus animals. There seems to be no escape for him. But one day a servant takes him in a little box that the queen had made for him to the seashore, where a bird snatches up the box by the clasp on top. When the bird is attacked by other birds, it drops the box into the sea, where it floats until it is found by a ship of men Gulliver’s own size, and he is returned home.

Part 3: Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,and Glubbdubdrib. Gulliver’s wife does not want him to sail again, but his love of travel and desire to see the world sets him out once more. This time pirates attack his ship, and he maroons an another island. He notices something in the sky and realizes it is a floating island. He gets the attention of the people on it, and they lower a chair to bring him up. The people are his own size, but their “heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up.” They were all so absorbed in their own thoughts that they had to hire “flappers” to bop their ears when they needed to listen and their chins when they needed to answer. It took Gulliver a while to convince them he didn’t need that aid. The island was called Laputa, and the king lived there, ruling over the land of Balnibarbi below. The island moves by a magnetic lodestone, and one of the ways the king exerts pressure on his subjects is by centering the floating island above an area so that it receives neither sun nor rain until the people acquiesce. When Gulliver asks to visit the land below, he finds academies and labs full of ludicrous experiments, such as “an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food,” “a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation,” using spider webs instead of silkworms, a method of language reduced to nouns and using objects instead of words. Yet in practical matters, their clothes weren’t measured to fit, their buildings were were not built well, their fields were barren (and one man who worked his fields in the ‘ancient’ manner and had them lush and green was looked down upon.) He eventually finds a voyage back home.

Part 4: The Country of the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets sail once again, this time as the captain of a vessel. Several of his men die en route, so he hires men from islands he comes across on the way. But the new hires had been buccaneers and soon persuaded his men to mutiny against him and leave him on the first bit of land they came to. As Gulliver tries to find people on the island to trade with for supplies, he discovers some hideous creatures with long hair on their heads and chest and claw-like nails. They block his path, and he swings his sword to try to fend them off without cutting them. He races to a tree, but they climb up it and defecate on him. Suddenly they all run away, and Gulliver sees a horse on the path, looking at him with wonder. Another horse comes along, and they seem to be conversing. Soon he discovers that horses called Houyhnhnms are the ruling animals here. He is startled and horrified to discover that the creatures he first encountered, called Yahoos, are actually human. The Houyhnhnms think he is Yahoo as well, but agree that he has more reason than the others do. One takes him into his home. Gulliver admires the virtues and reasonableness of the Houyhnhnms so well that he is ashamed to be a lowly Yahoo. The Houyhnhnms are something like Vulcans: big on reason but short on emotion. When Gulliver is grieved at being expelled from the area because it’s not seemly for a Houyhnhnm to have a Yahoo in his home, and finds passage back to England, he can’t stand the sight and smell of other humans, associating them with Yahoos, even though they show great kindness, like the captain who finds and provides for him. He is repulsed by his wife and children, but buys a couple of horses and converses with them several hours a day.

Many points in this book would have been so recognized at the time that it was published anonymously and Swift’s publisher edited out some of the most offensive sections. In a later edition, Swift added a fictional letter as if from Gulliver to his cousin fussing about the alterations, saying. “I do hardly know mine own work.” Wikipedia, SparkNotes, Shmoop, and CliffsNotes all had good information about what the satire referred to, though they disagreed in a couple of particulars. Cliifsnotes was the most extensive, and their Philosophical and Political Background and Essay on Swift’s Satire and Gulliver as a Dramatis Persona were quite enlightening. Shmoop’s character list and analysis gave a fairly succinct explanation of who or what the different characters represented.

But Swift satirizes several things in this book that one can easily pick up on without knowing the references. Travel books, for one: he mentions several times that he is telling the “truth,” not like so many other travelogues that exaggerate and make up stories. He pokes fun at the fact that every government thinks it is the best form, at academia that is so wrapped up in the theoretical that it is impractical, at the bluster and self-importance of people like the Lilliputians, who could have been easily crushed if Gulliver had had a mind to, the arrogant exaltation of reason that lacks empathy and emotion, the tendency of “big government” to be so far removed from the needs of the “little people.” The silly rope dances that people who wanted to advance in the kingdom had to do easily makes fun of the hoops similar officials have to jump through that have little to do with skill. The conflicts between the Big Endians and Little Endians over the right way to break an egg and those who prefer high heels or low heels satirizes how ridiculous some conflicts between factions can be (as well as an heir to the crown who hobbles because he wears one big heel and one low heel to please both sides). And, finally, he satirizes man’s faults and foibles in general.

I can understand why the book has been censored, aside from the political views of its day. There’s quite a lot about bodily functions in addition to Gulliver’s urinating on the queen’s quarters to put out a fire. There are also some parts that would be considered risqué.

Excepting one particular section, I enjoyed the book and am glad to know some of these cultural references. I hadn’t realized that the term yahoo as “an uncultivated or boorish person” originated here.

I enjoyed the audiobook narrated by David Hyde Pierce, who did an excellent job. I especially liked how he pronounced Houyhnhnm and some of the Houyhnhnm words with a little whinny in his voice. I also reread some sections more closely in the Gutenberg version online.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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What’s been going on around here lately

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I have some thoughts for a couple of posts I haven’t had time to develop yet, and a couple of books just about ready for review. I thought about making some headway on one of those posts, but then decided to just have a chat. 🙂

One focus of our life right now is a row of trees in our back yard. 52 trees, to be exact, that caught something called “blight” and are in the process of dying. You can see them when they were healthy in a couple of photos I shared when we had spiffed up our patio a few years ago.

This is looking to the left from the patio.

This was the view from the right:

These photos were from a Memorial Day picnic, and Jim was defending us from bugs with his electric flyswatter. 🙂 As you can tell, we don’t have much of a back yard, which bothered me a bit when we first looked at the house. But, we decided in our stage of life that we didn’t really need a big back yard, and there was less to mow that way.

These are the trees now:

A few years ago we noted a few brown patches in the trees, wondered if it might be a problem, decided it was just a part of the trees shedding their old foliage. But we were wrong.

Now, of course, the problem is how to get them cut down. We’ve had guys coming by dropping off business cards offering to do it for months now. Jim called one of them, but in three weeks he has only cut down 15 trees – keeps asking us for money and then disappearing for days after we give him some. (Grrr!) So we’re trying to deal with that situation.

We’re planning on putting up a fence when all the trees are down. One unexpected bright side of removing the trees is that it’s creating much more room in the yard. We didn’t realize just how much space they took up. Plus when we get a fence up, it will still provide privacy, but it won’t be as tall as the trees, so we’ll get more sunlight and our plants back there should grow better.

So, though I’ll miss our lovely green bower back there, I think everything will work out well in the end. Once we can get someone to cut them down. 🙂

Oh, and that swing in the first photo, that I had just gotten as a Mother’s Day present just before that photo four years ago….now it looks like this:

I was SO disappointed that it didn’t hold up well in the weather. I had wanted to have it taken to the dump, but Jim said he thought he could refurbish it – make a wooden seat and back and treat for rust and paint it. I think that’s the best idea: I’ve looked at new ones, and just don’t like any as well as I liked this (except for high-end ones that were too many $$$).

You can see behind it a few of the trees that have been cut down. The guy is supposed to take care of the stumps, too, but I’m not holding my breath.

By the way, the rubber snake on the swing is to help keep birds from using the patio furniture for their restrooms. 🙂 We keep a few on the patio chairs. It seems to work except when they’ve gotten used to them, so it helps to rearrange them or add a new one every now and then. They’re only $1 at Wal-Mart, so not a bad investment.

In other news…Great-Grandma has been a little sick lately. She had a cough and was having trouble eating because she couldn’t coordinate breathing with swallowing. You don’t think about needing muscles to cough, but with her losing muscular ability over the years, she coughs but can’t really bring anything up. Now she’s pretty much only coughing when she’s lying flat, when we change her, but it sounds worse. She’s had a low grade fever off and on. The hospice nurse was out yesterday and has called in some cough medicine and an antibiotic, so hopefully she’ll be on the mend soon.

And, finally…my husband peruses various “deal of the day” types sites, and recently came across a little battery-powered vehicle for Timothy. We thought about giving it to him before his birthday, then for his birthday, then decided to wait on it. We just gave it to him last week. He was so excited – he loves anything on wheels and figured out how to use it right away. He calls it his “mower” because it’s shaped like Granddad’s riding lawn mower. I was trying to get him to look up and smile when I was taking this picture, but he was distracted by a neighbor on his riding mower. 🙂

Such fun! I wish I could upload a little video Jason made of his driving it the first time and giggling, but my WordPress account only allows YouTube or Vimeo videos unless I want to pay extra.

He keeps amazing us with words and activities we didn’t know he knew.

For his birthday, Jason asked Jesse to blow up some balloons and put them in the pack-and-play. He played in there for ages – and they’re still there, two weeks later, and he plays in them every time he comes over. I’m amazed they’re still holding air.

Well, I guess I’d better get back at the responsibilities of the day. Nice visiting with you!

A winner, some cards, and assorted odds and ends

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It seems like it has been ages since I’ve been here, though it has just been since Friday. It has been a busy few weeks, and though there are always things to be done, this is the first “free” week in a long time, with nothing on the calendar besides the everyday stuff. So it’s kind of a catch-up week for me.

First of all, yesterday I was supposed to draw a winner for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge Wrap-Up. I apologize for not getting that done until today: the winner is Melanie!

I thought I’d show you the most recent cards I have made, for my daughter-in-law and husband’s birthdays:

My son and daughter-in-law love coffee, so this design seemed fitting:

The cup design was on the Cricut Explore One. I did the writing on the computer, and the little squigglies were from a hole punch. The borders were from a package I’d had for a long time.

Incidentally, last time I wrote about cards and joked about expenses, but I noticed the price tag on this package of the black borders was $3.99, and I probably bought it when scrapbooking supplies were on sale half price at Hobby Lobby, making it about $2. I have used them for multiple projects and still have some left. So between sales and coupons, it’s really not terribly expensive.

This was my husband’s birthday card:

(Sorry about the shadow!) All of this was done with designs from the Cricut Explore except the blue border around the words, which I did with decorative scissors. I was tickled to find the argyle design since he wears that fairly often. At first I was thinking I’d have to glue all those little diamond shapes and dashes, then realized that after the machine cut them out, all I had to do was put the blue paper behind the cut-out design (duh!) Much easier! This is probably one of my favorites, along with Timothy’s monkey card from Valentine’s Day.

In other news….

It’s been a long time since I saw this at the pump. Gas was $1.49 a gallon and I had 50 cents per gallon off with my grocery store card. My husband tells me it’s not a good thing for the economy that gas prices are so low, but since I can’t do anything about that, I am just going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Is anyone else getting sick of primary and election news and talk? I watched the first few Republican debates and I think part of one of the Democratic ones, but I can hardly stand to listen to them any more. If they talked intelligently about issues without sniping at or interrupting or talking over each other, I’d watch them. I’ll be glad when it’s over in November.
A number of older people from our church have passed away recently, two of them just last Friday. It’s caused me to think about the need to pick up their baton and carry God’s truth faithfully in this generation.
Not much new in the great-grandma department. She still sleeps most of the time, eats ok most of the time, rarely speaks except to occasionally say “thank you” or “I love you,” but doesn’t act like she is in any pain though she’s arthritic and contracted, and has a pleasant expression most of the time. I think sometimes people get a little perturbed when they ask me how she is and I say she’s about the same, but I’m not trying to be evasive – that’s really about all I can say about how she’s doing. Not much change day by day.
It seems like I’ve mainly only talked about books here lately, besides the weekly Friday Fave Faves and occasionally sharing interesting links. I always feel a little bad about that, though I shouldn’t, because books are one of my favorite subjects, plus I want to record my thoughts and observations about them for my own future reference as well as for anyone else who might be interested. When it is really busy, I can write a book review when I can’t get my thoughts together for a different kind of post. I guess maybe because then I have the subject material to write about, and I just have to get it out and organized. With other subjects, it takes me a while to work out my thoughts. But I do have some of those kinds of posts percolating on the back burner, so hopefully I can get to them soon.

And in the cute grandson department:

Timothy is imitating anything he sees someone else do and trying to say what anyone else says. That’s handy, because it makes it easy to teach some things. But it’s scary at other times, like when he saw Granddad standing on a chair to reach something, and he climbed up on another chair. In this photo he was down from the chair, but trying to imitate what Granddad was doing.

He watches Star Trek with his parents, and now when he sees a selfie stick folded up, he uses it as a phaser and says “Pew, pew!” when he shoots it.
One day I was ordering Asian food for dinner online at the desktop computer when he came up to my desk. My laptop was on the corner, so he opened it by himself and turned it on by himself. I hadn’t known he could do either, but I figured he couldn’t hurt anything in the few minutes it would take me to finish. When I looked back at him, somehow he had changed the whole orientation of the screen sideways. I didn’t know that could be done! Thankfully one of my sons figured out how to fix it. Now I keep the laptop out of reach. 🙂
One day when my husband said, “Jump, Timothy!” Timothy crouched down and put his nose on the floor. We looked at each other in wonder, tried again, and he did the same thing. When Jason came in, my husband repeated the process. Jason said, “Timothy, that’s not jumping: this is jumping” and then jumped up and down several times. So the next time someone said, “Timothy, jump!” he had the arm action going but wasn’t getting off the ground. It was so cute to watch. Someday he’ll get it. We don’t know how in the world he associated jumping with putting his nose on the floor, but it was so funny.
I love when he reaches up and takes my hand and then starts walking, wanting me to walk with him.
He likes to climb into and out of things.
He’s our main entertainment. 🙂

I think that about catches us up on the happenings here. 🙂 Have a good week!

Just Chatting

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I don’t believe in only operating by mood — there are certain things I’d likely never be in the mood to do. But when I’m “in the mood” for cleaning/sorting/organizing, I generally flow with that if I can. I’m not inclined to pull everything out and clean/sort/organize in the springtime just because it’s spring and everyone else is doing it then (though there is nothing wrong with that). But sometimes I get an idea for reorganizing a section or see a space that needs particular attention, go for that, and one thing leads to another. So that’s what I’ve been doing this week. I started to organize a drawer in the frig, noticed some crud at the bottom, and ended up taking everything out and cleaning and straightening. My dish rack needed replacing – it was getting worn and discolored and leaving rusty stains. There was one here when we bought this house, and I stored it in the far back reaches of one of the kitchen cabinets. So I got out the one from the cabinet, cleaned it up, set it in place, transferred everything from the old one to it (mostly the stuff we use for great-grandma’s pureed food – that stuff pretty much stays there since we use it so often), and threw out the old one. Then the cabinet I got the dish rack from needed some reorganizing, then dusting (how does dust get in there when the door is only open occasionally??!! I guess it doesn’t shut tightly enough to keep it out). Then I dusted out several other cabinets, threw away a few things, set some things aside to give away, and organized the rest. I discovered an unused Lazy Susan turntable, and I had been wanting to get one for a corner cabinet that has a lot of dead space on either side of the opening. That led to going through all my spices and throwing out several old ones. One of them was so old that it still had a sticker on it from back in the days when stores used price stickers.

I don’t know how that came with us when we moved 7 years ago – I guess I didn’t look at the underside. 🙂 But I am sure it’s past its prime now.

I got a splinter for my trouble when dusting one of the cabinets. When trying to pull it out, it broke off, so it is still there – right on the tip of my index finger, so it kept getting bumped and hurting for a while. It doesn’t hurt any more. I am hoping it will work itself out at some point. It’s not too far from the surface but far enough that I don’t want to poke around it.

I keep a running to-do list on the notes section of my phone – so I can jot things down when I think of them (otherwise I can’t promise I’ll ever think of them again, or at least not when I want to). One of the items there was to gather all my vinyl records. We had gotten Jim’s mom one of those old-fashioned-looking combination record player, radio, and CD player when she was in assisted living, but she couldn’t really hear it. When she moved to a nursing home, we put the player in Jesse’s room. I had been looking for a small stand to hold my records (which have been on a shelf in Jim’s mom’s room), and found one a few months ago that would be perfect for the player to sit on. So when Jesse got a clock radio that would also charge his phone, I ~~confiscated~~ ~~claimed~~ asked for this player back. And just this week I finally got all my records in the stand.

I could probably give away the classical ones – there are probably plenty of avenues to listen to them online. But some of the others are irreplaceable, so I am glad to be set up to listen to them. Remember these guys? I think a few of their things might be on YouTube, but I’m glad to have their albums here.

Now, isn’t this the most exciting post you’ve ever read? 🙂

It is nice, though, to get some of these things done, and I’ve been in a puttering, getting things done mood more than a writing mood this week. Sometimes I feel a pressure or maybe even a burden, when writing about a certain topic, to finish it and publish it as soon as possible. Other things I’ll work on off and on til I think they’re ready. I keep a running list of ideas I’ve thought of blogging about but haven’t had time to work through yet, and looked through those this week, but haven’t felt inclined to pursue them just now. Thus the puttering instead of writing. 🙂

Today is a snow day – I think we’ve gotten 3-4 inches. At least that’s what it looks like on the patio table.

(The rubber snakes, by the way, are to keep the birds away from the patio furniture. 🙂 It works until they get too used to them – then we get different ones or rearrange them.) Snow days aren’t what they used to be when the kids were home, with sledding and snowmen and hot chocolate. Jim usually goes in to work, both because he is from Idaho and used to it, and because he’s a manager, and with clients all over the country and world, they can’t just shut down for a few inches of snow. So he’s usually gone for most of the day, and Great-Grandma’s caregiver usually either doesn’t come or leaves early. So there is not the sense of celebration that there used to be. Still, it’s pretty to watch coming down, and the landscape is nicer than barren winter January grey. But I hope it doesn’t stick around. 🙂 I am not comfortable driving in it, and with balance issues, I don’t usually go past the front porch til it’s mostly melted. Jason and Mittu hadn’t taken Timothy out in it yet because he’s acting like he might be getting a cold, but they said they’d video him if they do take him out. 🙂 Jim brought a snowball in to show his mom and acted like he was going to throw it to her. She just looked at him like, “What are you doing?” 🙂

Hope you’re having a good week, whether it’s a busy one or a quiet one – or, like mine, quiet but busy in a different way. 🙂

Odds and Ends

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Courtesy of imagerymajestic at freedigitalphotos.net

The low number of posts in my Feedly account must mean that a lot of people are in the same boat I am — too busy with Christmas or other activities to post much. 🙂 I thought I’d take a moment and share a hodgepodge of stray thoughts crossing my mind lately:

Have you seen or heard of the adult coloring craze? I have always found coloring to be highly relaxing. I haven’t done it in a while, but when we were first married, I had my own coloring book and crayons. 🙂 But the new books or pages for “adult coloring” now are very busy, intricate, and contain a multitude of small spaces, like the ones in here. I don’t know if I’d find that as relaxing – I used to like the big, open, simple spaces of kids’ coloring books.

I wish there was a rating system for books like there is for movies, along with parental guidance sites that will tell you exactly what the objectionable elements are. I hate being surprised by that kind of thing in an innocent-looking book.

It’s been fun Christmas shopping in the baby aisles again. 🙂 But I have been dismayed that so many toys make noise or have buttons to push for songs. I don’t mind some of that, but they don’t all have to have that. I’d rather have a toy that they can manipulate and do something with rather than something they push a button and watch (primarily – again, a few of the other kind can be a fun diversion). And I wonder about sensory overload. I like having music playing during some tasks, too, but there is value in enjoying silence sometimes. I get overwrought if there is not some quietness in the day.

Speaking of babies…:) I had been wondering how Timothy would do with the Christmas tree. We made sure to put all the soft and unbreakable ornaments down at his level. When he’s over, there might be one or two ornaments on the floor when he leaves, but he really hasn’t messed with them as much as I thought he would. His favorite seems to be one that has jingle bells dangling from it: he’ll take it down and shake it as he walks around. We joked that it comes in handy to keep track of where he is. 🙂

Arranging ornaments for a baby in the house wasn’t hard: figuring out what to do about other decorations took a bit more consideration, like placing the Nativity set up on the mantle rather than on a side table by the front entry like usual. Because of the rearranging, I had some blank spaces where I usually put decorations. I had bought years ago a decoration that looks like an antique car (having all boys, I thought they’d like it), but then never had place to put it. I’ve thought for years about getting rid of it since I wasn’t using it. But this year, I had a space for it – and Timothy loves it! He gets it down every time he’s here and rolls it around. I’m so glad I kept it. Surprisingly, the stuffed snowmen I thought he’d like, he hasn’t taken much notice of.

We had been keeping presents in the sewing room so far just so they aren’t a temptation for him. His parents are teaching him there are things he can’t touch, but I just didn’t want Christmas to be a source of stress and tension for him by having to constantly deal with not touching the presents all month. But now I am getting the room ready for my oldest son when he comes, so we brought all the presents out and put them under the tree. Jesse, who was helping me, remarked that now it looks like Christmas. 🙂 Hopefully the short time between now and Christmas won’t be too much of a stress factor in keeping Timothy from wanting to unwrap the presents. We did put the gifts bags with tissue paper behind everything else – I figured they’d be the greatest temptation for him. If all else fails, we can block the tree off with his Pack and Play. 🙂

Poor Jesse, being the last child at home, usually is Mom’s helper by default, usually without complaining. But the company he works for has been overwhelmingly busy the last few weeks with Christmas shoppers. He has been working tons of overtime, so I haven’t had the heart to ask him to do the usual or extra tasks if I can help it. But that does put extra work on me. I do count myself fortunate to still have a helper – I know I won’t always.

Speaking of work, both my younger sons work in Customer Service of an online company. As I listen to them talk, I’ve wished I could write an article like the ones Reader’s Digest has been running this year about things you might not know about certain professions. Though I know in the long run this likely won’t help them, here is my public service announcement on behalf of customer service employees everywhere:

The customer service person you are communicating with is not the cause of the problem. Please don’t yell at him or her.

Most companies will bend over backwards to help you if you have a problem with your order: there is no need to call names, bully, or abuse them to do so.

No, you cannot combine coupons. That’s the case in almost every online or brick and mortar store I have ever shopped in. Acting ugly towards the employees won’t increase your chances. Neither will asking multiple times or cries of unfairness. Stores like to give you good deals but do need to make money. (See Can frugality go too far?)

2-day shipping does not mean you’ll get your order 2 days from the time you order it. It takes time to find it, package and address it, etc., or, in my sons’ case, to make it for you. You’ll get it 2 days from the time they send it.

When you e-mail the company multiple times, you create more work and then clog the system. I am amazed at how many people e-mail things like, “When will my order be sent?”, some of them daily, or will e-mail multiple times over the same problem. Most online companies will send you shipping confirmation and tracking number once they do get it off to you. They want you to feel free to e-mail if you have a problem or question but sometimes it’s just a matter of waiting.

Order early for Christmas! 🙂 (Next year – it’s too late already for some companies to get items to you by Christmas).

Really, most of their customers are great: most orders get to people with no problems. There’s just a fraction who have problems, and of those a smaller fraction who are ugly about it. It’s easy to get frustrated, especially with the time factor involved this time of year. Of course, I know all of my regular readers are very nice and courteous people who would never be abusive to customer service people. 🙂

My to-do list is waiting for me, so I better get back to it. It’s been nice ticking things off it this week. I keep reminding myself that I don’t have get everything done for Christmas before my son comes, but I want to be as available to him as possible since he’s only here for a short time. And I keep reminding myself that he has seen the house at its worst, so it doesn’t have to be in mint condition. But I’d rather it not look its worst if possible. I haven’t done any Christmas baking yet – I am too tempted to nibble all day if I have home-baked things here. But I’ll plan to later this week when everyone is here.

Hope you’re able to get everything done on your lists and are enjoying the season!

I haven’t been able to do any deep-thinking posts in a while, but some of my previous Christmas posts are:

A Perfect Christmas.

Grieving at Christmas.

Packing Up Christmas.

Book Review: The Butterfly and the Violin

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Barbara Harper

In The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron, Sera James owns and manages an art gallery in Manhattan. For years she has been looking for a painting she saw as a child which held special meaning for her. She has finally found at least a copy of it, but hopes it will lead to finding the original. The owner, William Hanover, refuses to sell but wants to hire Sera because he also wants to find the original, but for very different reasons. They develop a relationship, but Sera is reluctant to open her heart again after having been left at the altar by her fiance two years ago. Unraveling the mystery of the painting at first brings them closer together but then suddenly brings a sharp division between them.

The painting portrays a young woman with piercing eyes, a shaved head, and a number tattooed on her wrist holding a violin. Cambron switches back and forth between the present day and Sera’s situation to the 1940s and the story of the woman in the painting, Adele von Braun, revealing more of Adele’s story in both narratives.

Adele’s father was a high-ranking official in the Third Reich, and she was a well-known violinist nicknamed “Austria’s sweetheart.” She loved a cellist named Vladimir, but her father would not sanction their relationship since Vladimir was only the son of a merchant. Adele kept seeing Vladimir in secret and eventually learned that he was part of a network that smuggled Jews out of the country to safety. Adele had hidden Jewish friends of her own that she secretly brought supplies to, but when she tried to help them escape, she was discovered, arrested, and sent to Auschwitz. There she became part of the prison orchestra, made to play every day as the prisoners were sent out to work, during executions, and occasionally at a Nazi social event. While she felt her spirit dying, her friend tried to help her see that there could be beauty and service to God even in such a place.

God is here. He sees. He knows what is happening in this place.

This, child, is our worship. To live and survive and play to God from the depths of our souls. This is the call that binds us. When we worship in the good times, it brings God joy. But worship in the midst of agony?…That is authentic adoration of our Creator.

One day we will be free. And we become free by living despite what they do to us. We live by working, and we work for God.

I had known that their were musicians among those in WWII prison camps who were made to play for the Nazis. And I knew that the Nazis had confiscated a lot of art during those years. But I hadn’t known that there were many paintings and other art by the prisoners themselves discovered after the camps were liberated – over 1,600 pieces in “partially destroyed warehouses and old barracks of Auschwitz,” according to the author’s note at the end. Those pieces still survive even now, though many of the artists are unknown. As one character muses in the story,

She told herself that to have something of worth in a world full of chaos was the very definition of beauty. It felt like a spiritual liberation that couldn’t be silenced. These prisoners, the ones who painted or wrote poetry or played in the orchestra – they refused to let that spirit die. And this, she decided, is why the heart creates.

God plants the talent and it grows, sustained by a spirit-given strength to endure, even in the midst of darkness. It thrives in the valleys of life and ignores the peaks. It blooms like a flower when cradled by the warmth of the sun. It remains in a hidden stairwell in a concentration camp. It grows, fed in secret, in the heart of every artist.

I enjoyed both Sera’s and Adele’s stories and the themes of God’s presence in suffering and the need to create. This is Cambron’s first novel, and it has deservedly won many awards. My overactive internal editor stumbled over just a few minor places where I felt the writing was a little awkward, but I’m not even going to go into them because overall this was a gripping, fascinating, heart-breaking, yet beautiful story.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

National Family Caregivers Month

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Anita at Blessed But Stressed is celebrating National Family Caregivers Month by inviting blog friends to guest post on the subject throughout November. I am honored to be a guest there today on the subject of Battling Resentment in Caregiving. I hope you will check out the series: I have found a lot of encouragement in the other posts so far.