Lost and Found

YAY!!! ...or... as i typed the other day without realizing my fingers were on the wrong keys: TAT!!! (get it? the letter T is right next to the Y on the keyboard, and i was looking out the window as i tried typing YAY. when i looked back at the screen and saw TAT it made me laugh; so that's my new yippee word!) but that's not my subject; my subject today is JOY, JOY, JOY!

i found my JOY today. it was good 'n' lost yesterday, but i found it today. several reasons; one of course is that those creative writers of yore, with all their descriptions of spotty rain, scattered rain, intermittent showers, isolated t-storms, etc, etc, etc, FINALLY show me ONLY a SUN icon! TAT for THAT!!!!!!

plus the fact, that as i raced a storm last evening, trying to finish the mowing before yet another cloudburst (and of course lost to the rain again), but i kept an eye on the sky (and later shot a gazillion photos of its tumultuous beautiful mix of blacks, greys, lemons, roses and apricots). then i looked up and saw a very colorful and BEAUTIFUL RAINBOW!

well, all righty, GOD! I SURELY THANK YOU FOR THAT! AND FOR THE PROMISE THAT IT BRINGS! and YES, i'm SHOUTING CAPITAL LETTERS AT YOU cause i am THAT excited over rainbows--especially those which follow over a month of rain! JOY COMETH IN THE MORNING, the Bible tells me.

SURE ENOUGH, it DID!

Tech Tags: Lost+and+Found Joy Sunshine Stormy+Rainbows

Searching and Searching

Have you ever lost something--something that was very valuable to you--and couldn't find it no matter how hard you looked, and no matter how many places you looked? i personally think that is one of life's most frustrating experiences. i absolutely HATE it when i can't find something, and really NEED to find it!

And this morning, that is what i am experiencing. i have looked everywhere and have only one last place to look, in HOPES of it being there. (in fact, there's a saying that, Why is it that the thing you are looking for, is always in the LAST place you look?! of course, given any thought, that saying makes no sense because once you find it, you obviously stop looking---thereby making that the last place that you look!)

things seem to be going completely haywire for a few very special loved ones and i feel helpless in correcting their situations. serious big time stuff, that they are facing--granted, while not life-threatening, still serious in the daily face-off with life's happenings. and serious enough that as my concerns FOR them mount, i have lost my JOY today.

JOY is that "thing" that, yes!--it IS very valuable to me. but i can't find it anywhere this morning and that is very frustrating. there are situations and issues that i am rather helpless in remedying no matter how MUCH i want to just FIX everything for those i love and care about! i know right well that i am not alone in these feelings, and you may, if not now, then previously or yet in the future, also experience this loss of JOY over hurting for others.

the last place i'll look--which by now i SHOULD have learned to look there FIRST!!!--is my Bible.

okay, WOW....perhaps i HAVE looked there before when my JOY was "MIA," cause i just turned to the bookshelf behind me, picked up my little Bible, opened it up to find where it says: "the JOY of the Lord is my strength"--and believe it or not, IT OPENED TO THE EXACT PAGE IN NEHEMIAH (chapter 8, verse 10)!!! i kid you NOT! i repeat: WOW!!!!

beginning in verse 9 thru 12, Living Bible translation, "All the people began sobbing when they heard the commands of the law. Then Ezra the priest, and I as governor, and the Levites who were assisting me, said to them, 'Don't cry on such a day as this! For today is a sacred day before the Lord your God--it is a time to celebrate with a hearty meal, and to send presents to those in need, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. You must not be dejected and sad! And the Levites, too, quieted the people, telling them, 'That's right! Don't weep! For this is a day of holy joy, not of sadness.' So the people went away to eat a festive meal and to send presents; it was a time of great and joyful celebration because they could hear and understand God's words."

i KNEW i should've looked there first! Sometimes the only present i can offer is prayer for those who are hurting or facing challenges, decisions and huge hurdles.

Lost+Items Searching Life+Challenges Bible Joy Prayer

New Exercise Program

I just KNEW i shouldn't have done it! i KNEW when i DID it, it was asking for trouble...and sure enough! i no sooner opened all the windows and BAM! it's now raining again and i had to run around, and up and down, and RE-close them...AGAIN! that has been our exercise program for the past four weeks! go up the stairs and open all the windows. come down, sit for a minute, then JUMP up and RUN up the stairs and CLOSE them all again! we are now entering our FIFTH straight week of on again, off again rain, rain, rain, interspersed with clouds and dark skies, and yep: more rain.

i will hand it to the weather predictors however; they have become extremely creative in coming up with lots of terms lately: showers, downpours, thunderstorms, intermittent rain, occasional showers, isolated storms, spotty storms, etc, etc.....all equal to the same thing: RAIN, RAIN AND MORE RAIN! they do get an A+ for creative writing skills though.

seattle, on the other hand, which is where we FEEL like we live lately, has had record DRY weather! go figger! i tweeted this morning that perhaps our globe has had a "slip 'n' fall!" it's crazy, i tell you!

we got our hopes up this morning when this blinding--really, i kid you not; it hurt my eyes--brighter than bright light rolled into the living room as i drew open the blinds! i shielded my eyes from this strange and foreign sight and instinctively (almost) quickly closed the blinds again before it damaged my eyesight! ohhhh, but then i remembered: that bright light is called the sun! now i get it. oh, but wait! NO! i DON'T get it...it's gone again. well, at least it's only grey again. open the windows and let some air in. oh, WAIT! no, quick, RUN! SHUT THE WINDOWS! IT'S RAINING OUT!

between drops i put on my boots and run out to check my swamp...i mean, my vegetable garden. i used to joke a couple weeks ago that the puddles in my garden were larger than my zucchini leaves. but, seriously, i realize now, after all this time, and all this mud, and all these puddles, there is no WAY i will gather a great harvest! and THAT makes me sad.

if i project my little 128 square feet of soggy plants sitting in mud puddles, i can only IMAGINE what a REAL farmer is feeling, in the way of sadness right now. at least monetarily, my sadness won't bring me tremendous loss. for those who depend on farming as a living, they must be feeling something well beyond sadness about now...in this neck o' the woods anyway. so my heart goes out to them. and of course, one of the by-products too: mosquitos galore! i waded into the back yard a little while ago and was immediately attacked and came in with bites, whereas normally (i vaguely recall what normal is anyway), we never have a mosquito problem.

i'm convinced too, that the weather people are beginning to fear for their life. i notice now that they put up icons of the sun instead of "telling it like it REALLY is!" or, perhaps they are not trying to deceive us; they are just letting us know what that yellow ball in the sky looks like, in days of yore. to keep them honest tho, they splash maybe 3 strokes of rain across the yellow ball icon, and a cute little grey cloud blocking a corner of that thing called sun. but, HEY! FORECASTERS! LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW; it's RAINING!!!!!

if i search for any JOY in all this soggy-bottom mess, it is that my water bill will be far less than the typical summer water bill, since i have only watered my garden ONCE....WAY BACK when i first planted it about 6 weeks ago. on the other hand, the upstairs window is leaking, so what i save on water i may have to pay for in repair. o where o where is my JOY, glub, glub, blub, blu, bl.....

Exercise Rain Garden Weather Farming

By the Dawn's Early Light

The moral of the story, bottom-line, is: 4:30 beats 7:30 ANY day! now i don't usually begin with the bottom line, but upside-down is pretty much how my monday started today, so it does seem appropriate.

hubby's work hours were changed---that's just part of the incredible "power" bosses of the world actually have over our own little world. the change took a while to get used to, and quite possibly i only got used to it because it occurred, not in the middle of a cold, dark winter, when it's next to impossible to pull that quilt or comforter away from your face and take your feet from their warm cozy place and introduce them to the cold reality of morning. but the change occurred when the early morning is truly the best part of the day. not only is the sun not even up yet, it certainly is not at all hot, humid and sticky yet. the late spring and summer demonstrate (for the mere taking) their very best they have to offer, in the very early hours of the day. and so! we used to believe that the 4's on our clocks only pertained to the p.m. indicator, when it turns out they also have an a.m. appearance.

even tho hubby feels badly and doesn't like that his hours are affecting my hours, i personally have always felt that if a hubby gets up to leave for work, while the wifey stays inside the door to wave to him, it is the LEAST she can do, to show her appreciation, is to BE there to wave. (what's right for you is fine, but this is my blog and that's how i feel about it.) {:D

last week this time, i was already finished the week's laundry, and weekly grocery shopping. today i went back to sleep and admittedly was NOT at the door to wave hubby off! and it's thrown off my whole day's plans. i got out of bed at 7:44 and have been playing catch-up ever since! what an ungodly hour! i know; i'm being facetious, but any time that i do not get up before dawn, i am all the more convinced that i've started off on the wrong foot.

plus, the early to bed, early to rise, has an aside bonus! it makes me feel like a kid again. wait--WHAT?! what does THAT have to do with anything? well, when i was a kid, i remember being sent to bed while it was still daylight--in some cases, while the sun was not yet set. and, that's what we do now. if the alarm is set for 4, we are climbing "the golden staircase" by about 8:30. (granted, the cat and the birds haven't caught on to the whole idea yet, when we cover the bird cages and announce to the cat: bedtime for bozos. but they have always been good about not complaining.) so, when i climb into bed before sunset, invariably in my mind's eye, i'm 10 years old again and am climbing up the ladder into my upper bunk as i hear the city noises out my window. so it's never a bad thing when you do something and it makes you feel like a ten year old once again. there is great JOY in that feeling! (if you want, i'll give you a wake-up call tomorrow at about 4:30 a.m.)

Textures

I wonder how many people are "in love" with the zoom feature of their camera? i KNOW i'm not the only one! but i sure give mine a workout. i'm fascinated with textures and closeups. my previous blog attests to that, with the raindrops on petals....but it goes much further than that. in fact, i'm beginning to think that my eyeballs have a zoom lens, as a "built-in feature." for instance, yesterday i took a package of meat from the freezer to defrost for dinner and i was utterly and completely fascinated by the frost design on the plastic wrap. so yes! out came the camera and a few zoom shots later, i have a terrific couple of photos! No, no, no; that is not what this photo shows. that was just a teaser and i'll share that photo with you later. (which is a creative way of saying that i forget how to download just 1 or 2 photos.)

the photo i include above is one i took recently when i started to cook dinner one evening. i put water on to boil and added a little olive oil and immediately was struck with the beauty of lighting and bubble formations. i keep my camera always handy and hovered over my stove to get a few shots. typically when a woman says she slaves over a hot stove, it is not with a camera; but, then again, i've never really been a typical woman.

in fact, yesterday i tweeted about my ATYPICAL behavior, in that i spent all day shopping and didn't like that idea at all. it gave me pause to wonder if a handful of alpha male genes somehow got tossed into my mix! but then my son actually hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the only time i really like shopping is when i (a) find exactly what i went for; and (b) find it on sale. that pretty much sums it up. otherwise, it is a feeling of: "git-in-n-git out."

i never could understand when i'd hear women say that they love shopping, or love to shop til they drop. in fact, years ago i met a woman who suggested we go shopping together. well, it was the first and last time i ever agreed to such a torturous pastime. what the heck was i thinking?! to me, it is pretty much a waste of time, money and gas. i go when i need to go and get what i need to get and then i need to get home. and WHAT that has to do with zoom lens and textures, i have NO IDEA, but i threw it in any way! bottom line: i can hardly wait to share with you my photo of the frost! i wonder what (photos) tonight's dinner will bring? could this be what they call creative cooking?

Focus

There are some things you--rather, I---just can't get enough of! some of the things i just never seem to get enough of, in no particular order are: hugs, smiles from grandkids, hearing I love you, taking photos of dewdrops and raindrops, seeing rainbows, singing praise choruses, watching my garden grow, looking for the first hatchlings of tiny baby praying mantis from their egg case....and, well, i could go on and on.

this particular morning, and several other early mornings this week, seeing as how we've had pretty much a full week of rain, i can be spotted out in my front or back yard, hovering closely over my plants and flowers, camera in hand. there is just SOMETHING about seeing little drops on leaves and petals, reflecting the world back to me in microscopic proportions! perhaps that's it!

i never gave this a thought until just typing that sentence! just perhaps it is because it makes the world and its problems seem so tiny---in the larger scheme of things. we are so much bigger than our problems. and i can either focus on the problem, or i can focus on the expected outcome. i can focus on the raindrop in other words, or the leaf or petal, or the rose that it precariously rests on, and the beauty of the various highlights and its perfect roundness---the BIG picture, or i can choose to look for the tiny things (in life: the disruptions, the problems, the disturbances, the JOY interrupters, in other words).

i choose what to focus my camera on. i also need to choose what i focus my mind on. my JOY is full when i focus on the right things.... which reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Philippians 4:8. the Living Bible translation says it this way: "Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about."

Tech Tags: Focus Raindrop Photography Thinking

Garden Sprouts & Sun

garden time. beans seeds are sprouting. flowers on peppers and tomatoes. even the onions and potatoes are growing. while i'm anxious to see how well our garden grows this year, since we added for the first time, our very own home-grown-compost, IF it DOES produce abundantly, we will have enough food to feed an army. i don't preserve or can...or i should say, i never have canned. i have a friend who cans enough of her home-grown "garden pix" (as my grandson used to call them) to last them all winter. at this point, i'm not sure i am that into it, to learn it all and buy all the equipment. at this point, that just sounds like too much work. but! i sure do love seeing it all grow. and i sure do look forward to going out and picking my lunch.

this time of year, i spend less time in front of the computer (gee, could you tell, since i haven't blogged in so long?), and more time outdoors. but, speaking of outdoors, i took myself to the beach yesterday. the first trip down this year. because of my stupidity, it might be the last.

i am real, real good about telling others to put on suntan lotion. but since i was in a hurry to go yesterday, and had already wasted way too much time trying to find the lotion i just bought last season, i did without. my crazy skin type is such that i almost never burn; and if i do, it quickly just turns brown and no big deal. plus, it was actually cold on the beach when i arrived, so i didn't even take off my cover-ups until i had been there over an hour. when i did, i had goose-bumps, the air was that cool. but then, the last 2 hours i did lie on my towel, in the afternoon sun, bathing suit on, but no lotion.

by the time i got back home i was aware that the burn was beginning to show, and while i knew it was stupid of me NOT to lotion-up, i figured, o well, no big deal. welllllll, it was a big deal, because as the evening wore on i began to feel worse, and by late evening i hurt each time i moved and could not stop shivering. it even upset my stomach a bit. i felt really stupid for doing such a dumb-dumb-DUMB thing! then, just for good measure, on top of my stupidity, add in a huge dose of guilt. why? because---and YOU decide what is wrong with this picture:
hubby works long and hard all day; wifey lays on beach. hubby comes home from work and offers to take wifey out to eat. wifey, having gotten too much sun, apologetically declines (cause she could hardly move, let alone put clothes on her stupid burnt body). hubby lovingly offers to cook. wifey thanks him, while covering with 2 afghans to stop cold shivers. hubby makes nice meal. wifey can't even think about eating anything cause now her stomach's a bit upset from stupid sunburn hurting so much. hubby sends wifey to bed and even cleaned up all the dishes. wifey takes ibuprofen to help diminish pain and tho she's never heard of taking it for sunburn, is marvelously relieved that it DID help take away the pain. so wifey sleeps away the night and is (as always) very thankful to hubby for his kindness, generosity, understanding and helpfulness. hubby never even said, what the heck were you thinking, lying in the hot sun with no protection?! hubby is unbelievable. wifey is red and wears a mask of guilt and stupidity! never again, she says, having just returned from pharmacy with lots of suntan lotion and aloe gel to help cool her stupid red face and body!

many, many years ago, my mom always told me: you always learn the hard way! all these years later, turns out mom was right.....again!