One Part Inspiration...

I am sitting at the hairdressers waiting for an appointment. I tune into a conversation between the hairdresser and the client who is talking loud enough for me to hear what she is saying. She is talking about her problem with " Keyloids " forming whenever she gets a piercing. Apparently, she just can't get any piercing because every time she does, her body thinks that it needs to heal that area and sends up its defences and forms these bumps at the site of the piercing.....(at this point, I am thinking..."Gross me out lady. Why in the world, do you have a need to let your hairdresser know this stuff?") Then I tune into how the hairdresser is responding to her. I realize that there's a good chance, that she's not listening at all. I have always thought that hairdressers were miracle workers. Who else can talk and cut and color and blow dry and curl...without making your hair look lopsided? However, I think I clued into a technique! She was responding...

God says to me with kind of a smile, "Hey how would you like to be God awhile And steer the world?" "Okay" says I, "I'll give it a try. Where do I set? How much do I get? What time is lunch? When can I quit?" "Gimme back that wheel," says God, "I don't think you're quite ready yet." by Shel Silverstein

Last night, after I blogged about how nice it was to crawl under warm blankets, I had another sleepless night. Not because I was in Seattle either. I couldn't settle down and fall asleep. So I solved the problem by going and crawling into the bed in the basement. I fell right to sleep - only to be woken up about 20 minutes later by a banging sound (hollow...sounded like something in the flue). That freaked me out, so I went back upstairs and crawled into bed there. Fell asleep again...only to wake up 20 minutes later by the wind blowing my son's B/R door open and then shut. So I got up and propped it open and crawled back into bed. Only to wake up 5 minutes later by my son wrapped in his sheet saying that there was a bat in his room. So there we were in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to trap the bat in the room. A sawed off hockey stick and a thick sock blocked the way. My son went and slept downstairs. I still couldn't sleep, so I read. Then I got up an...

A while ago, I blogged about beds. Now I want to blog about blankets. MMMMM MMMMM MMMM MMM MMM! The other night, I was trying to get to sleep and just couldn't relax enough to make it happen. Whenever I can't sleep, I try out little routines to try and help. Sometimes I imagine myself at a really nice place where there's a lot of natural beauty...like the cottage, or the beaches in Australia. If that doesn't work, I begin to implement my other strategies....Alphabetical Bible verses, prayer, magic bags, reading, .... Anyways, this night, I went downstairs and checked my email...read blogs etc and then thought I might be tired enough to try again. Suddenly, I remembered that I had put a blanket in the dryer before I went to bed....so I went to the dryer and pulled it out and cuddled down underneath it in the bed and thought to myself....I am going to have to blog about how nice it is to be wrapped in a freshly washed, warm -from-the-dryer blanket....as I drifted off to s...

And now....Happy Father's Day to my husband ! In our house, we often echo what the kids said when they were little and he walked in the door after a day at work. "DADDY HO!" Somehow, when he arrived, all was right with their world. He is a father who shows up in his kids lives. He is a man who walks the talk - at home, and at work, and at play, he is a man of integrity. The children and I are truly blessed, having him in our lives.

More thoughts about Father's Day. I have known my father-in-law for over half my life. Isn't that bizarre? I cannot possibly be that old. When I first met him, he wasn't much older than I am now. He had come over to Australia to celebrate his son's graduation from Bible School. I remember being impressed with how friendly he was. As my kids get older, I realize a little more about what it is like to have a stranger come into your kid's life and you don't get the choice to figure out if you want them in your life; you only get the choice about how much to invest of yourself in the new relationship. I have been very fortunate to have in-laws who started off by accepting me because their son loved me. Over time, they forged a relationship with me on many other levels. I have always admired my F-I-L's optimism and good faith in people. He has had a lot of hard knocks and yet keeps going. There have been several occasions when we thought we wo...

I have been thinking about Father's Day. I feel so fortunate to have a Dad who loves me and who is interested in being part of my life. Some of my earliest memories are of going tobogganing with him and my sister. He would take us every Saturday morning that we wanted to go. The hill seemed huge. Then we would go to the market downtown and buy the fruits and veggies for the week. My Dad is a rolling stone. (Not a rock star) He has modelled goal setting and going after his goals. Most of his post-secondary education came after he had kids. I remember going down to his study and interrupting him as he worked on his assignments. He never once said "could you come back later, I am right in the middle of something." I think I inherited my sense of humor from my Dad. He doesn't worry if other people get his jokes, he enjoys the joke enough for them both. The other day in church, he got a bulletin and commented to my son "In my church, they print the bulletin right sid...

In my last post, I got carried away with my doll story. I didn't know just how much dolls factored into my history. I had so much to say, that I decided to make a different post about dolls so that my readers wouldn't think I didn't have any other interesting facts about myself to post on the "tagged" line. So here's some more facts (ma'am) about dolls I have loved. My sister and I used to try and play with Barbie dolls out in Ethiopia. You were a "cool" kid if you had a Barbie from the States. Even amongst missionary kids, there are the haves and the have- nots . We unfortunate souls, only had Barbie look-alike dolls, and every connoisseur of Barbies knew ours weren't the real deal. But we made the best of it. We even commandeered Mango seeds and put felt-marker -eyes on them to make them into replica Ken dolls. They were a very poor imitation, but with our imaginations, we thought they were a great substitute. O.k. That is totally not true...

I've been tagged! Fiona (who's blog I read regularly...part of my entertainment for the evening...) tagged me. Here are the rules… Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs the 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. Well this is where it breaks down. I am a blog-lurker...that is, I read other people's blog who are listed on blogger's blogs who know other people who blog and their blogging addresses. So I am changing up the rule a little. If you are lurking about my blog (since I have reached the #100 mark, I am sure that there are tons of you out there :) and you don't have a blog of your own , consider yourself tagged. You can answer the questions and email them to me and I will post them on this blog...if you don't already have your own...kind of like me blogga es su blogga . If you want to email the answers, and don't want them ...

I went to cheer on my daughter the other night. Two teachers combined their students for a piano and voice recital. As I was sitting there listening to 31 students present their work, I thought of a few things. Thus the label. [ I know you could do this for the parents who cheer on their sports stars too but...] This is For All the parents who decide to give music a shot and find a music teacher - mostly on the word of other parents. All the parents who pay the money every week to have their kid take music. All the parents who show up to take the kids to the lessons every week. All the parents who purchase the books, bring the books,and go back to find the books when their kids have "forgotten" theirs. All the parents who encourage, [nag] their kids about practicing. All the parents who make time to come to the recitals and applaud their kids loudly even though they have heard the song a million gazillion times All the parents who sit there at the recital and don't think...

Sometimes, lyrics of a song are just the thing to express what is on your mind. One of my friends sings these lyrics to her girls when their whining gets on her nerves. " You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes well you might find You get what you need." She has sung it so often, that they know the lyrics off by heart. When my children were young and were driving me crazy, I would sing " Children are a Blessing from the Lord " - sometimes at the top of my lungs. This generally occured when the little blessings were whining about something. It was a little bit of a reminder to myself to count them as blesssings and a little bit of a complaint about the way they were acting. Every major event of life has a song attached to it. Every good music therapist knows this and taps into it for the therapeutic aspect of it. One of the most surprising things is how songs help to...