A Good Loser

You have heard of being born with two left feet, well my husband was born with two left brains.  His creative/sentimental side is almost non-existent, but he is very analytical, great at math, logic and absolutes. I am certain that while he was sitting in class in high school, during a class discussion on A Tale of Two Cities or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or art appreciation, my man’s brain was somewhere far, far from the classroom.  He was more likely mentally calculating the average record low high temperatures for blue moons in January for odd years in the current century. Or he was figuring out how much faster he could accelerate on his bike, if he put a 22-tooth freewheel on the front, and a 7-tooth cog in the back, raised his seat post ¼ inch, and switched his Weirwolf tires for Panaracers.  He has no cultural literacy.  He would have no idea who Quasimodo is, or even Elizabeth Bennett.

 

In spite of his cultural illiteracy, my man is very smart.  He has a very high IQ. (It is too bad he knows what it is, lol!)  He is politically savvy and numerically analytical. He is tops at chess, budgeting, or map-reading. He is an expert Bible answer man. He creams everyone at Risk and sometimes even Scrabble, and he should be able to beat his own kids at a game of Set, but he can’t, and that is, finally, the point of this post: He just hates losing. 

If you don’t have Set, you need to get it.  It is the one game we have found which the kids win every time.  Set is a visual perception game in which, out of twelve cards turned face-up, players try to find three whose three attributes (shape, color, and pattern) are either all the same or all different.  The person who first sees a “set” yells out “SET!” and grabs the cards that make up that set.  The dealer quickly fills in the blanks that were left, and a new search is on.  The game ends when all of the cards have been dealt, and everyone agrees that there are no more sets on the table. The person with the most sets is the winner. Sound easy?  It’s not if you are an adult.  Our grown-up brains see what we are accustomed to seeing.  Kids’ brains see things as they are.

Last night the kids were playing with Dad. I kept hearing children’s voices hollering, “SET!!” and much children’s laughter, but my husband’s voice I did not hear at all. After an uproarious time of yelling, card grabbing, hysterical laughter, and cries of, “I won that round!” he quietly got up from the table, came to where I was sitting, and said, “They creamed me! This game isn’t even fun anymore.”  Will he play again?  I know he will, because he is a wonderful father.  He enjoys hearing his children laughing and exulting in their mastery over Dad, even if it is at his expense.  I am thankful for this man whose ego is not bigger than his love for his girls.

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You can play Set online right here.  Be sure to get some practice if you are planning to buy the game for your kids!

 

Romans 8:28

I was enviously reading about Jill Connelly’s little jackpot the other day, wishing I were her. Some people are just always in the right place at the right time. (It’s hard to be one of those people if you don’t go anywhere…) Well, today it finally happened to me! Praise the Lord. I took a friend to the Salvation Army and got a front-door parking spot, which normally is filled with furniture.  I had two of my girls with me and we were not going to get out, but then I spied a nice tote full of Legos on a table right in front of my face!  I jumped out and grabbed those Legos, then went back to get the girls so we could go inside and pay for them.  Two dollars later we went back outside.  In the Legos’ place were now two cases of K’Nex!  We have not played with K’Nex before, but I always thought they looked kind of neat. So we grabbed those and went back inside. Three dollars later we went back out. I was pretty pleased with myself (as if I had anything to do with getting that blessing for my kids). It's nowhere close to Jill's deal, but it's a start, huh? Romans 8:28!

 

I'm Still Working on It...

Do I know what I am doing?  Of course not.  Remember, blogging was going to be a learning process for me so that my brain didn't atrophy.  Last night, after a whole bunch of HTML trial and error (12 yo computer guru was in bed) I made great progress on my template.  And then, while I was uploading stuff on Photobucket, my modem quit transfering data!  You know what happened next -- the SAVE CHANGES button for my template would not work.  It was the Lord telling me to get to bed, that Saturday night is not the night to stay up late messing with blogging vanity. So rather than reconnect the antiquated dial-up and start over (and undoubtedly stay up till all hours of the night), I obeyed and went to bed.  Good news -- since we have no violin teacher currently, we are going to use the money we would be spending on lessons to get DSL!  Yippee!  This is supposedly so that my daughter can watch master lesson videos online and teach herself, but I know there will be lots of other advantages, not the least of which will be blogging improvements.

 

Tonight God has not told me I have to go to bed yet , so here I still am at 11:00 pm. The night is young! I have not been able to work out the sizing inconsistencies with my little cacti over on my sidebar. The images are all the same size, so I'm guessing is has to do with the code somehow... that is not something I am likely to figure out on my own.  Will have to wait til the guru is available.

ATTENTION!!!

If any of you have a good hands-on Bible curriculum or Sunday School curriculum for preschoolers/kindergarteners, or if you know anyone who might, PLEASE let me know.  Preferably something that does not take a whole lot of teacher prep. We have a class of three busy little creatures who need to be DOING something while they are listening, and our current material is not keeping their attention!

Anyone remember what the sermon was about Sunday morning? Or did you forget already?  We had a good message from Matthew 14, about Peter walking on the water. A point I liked is that the Bible says Jesus "stretched forth his hand and caught him".  I wondered how far away Peter was from the Lord when he cried out, "Lord, save me!", but really it doesn't matter.  If he was right next to Jesus, his arm only stretched a little bit, and if Peter was twenty-five yards away, Jesus stretched his arm out a lot.  But in either case, no matter how close or far away you are from the Lord, his arm will reach you. You are not too far away to be saved.  Praise the Lord!

 

Template Contortions

My template has needed an overhaul for some time... those dark colors were getting to me.  You can see I am not a real explorer with styles and all that -- I just like to do what is safe, and even then it scares me! (What if I mess it up and can't fix it?!)  I still have a few corrections to make, so bear with me.  I wonder what these new colors look like on your monitor... monitors seem to have their own personalities!  (And I hope it's legal to use this picture.  Credit at the bottom of my right sidebar.)

Just So You Know

After I did all that moaning about how incredibly hot it is here, my wonderful Lord sent an arctic front to the Mohave Valley   God is so good to me -- makes me feel just lousy about my grumbling! To think I could be (and AM!) so consumed with my flesh’s comfort! We have had three days in the 90’s, sooo pleasant!  Just about every time I get on this computer for the sake of blogging, I think A fool's voice is known by multitude of words, and, In the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin. I think you can find both of those verses in Ecclesiastes.  Anyway, I displayed my foolishness and my bad attitude by posting my complaints for the whole world to see!

For those of you who doubted my claim about the hot pillow, our bedroom is on the west side of the house, and our bed is against the outside wall.  These homes are barely insulated, and on a good July day we can get it up to 130 degrees on our veranda (well, yes, with the thermometer in the sun, but so is that wall!).  So yes, that makes my poor pillow very warm to the touch. That was not an exaggeration posted in the NOT-exaggeration category!

 

And, some of you will be happy to know that after I bragged about our scarcity of mosquitoes, I have not one, but TWO mosquito bites in my arch, and they are driving me crazy. (I won’t tell you all that the entire time we have lived here, we have never seen a rattlesnake or a black widow spider, because I am afraid what will happen!)

 

When I mention my warm state, I am really only speaking of my local area.  Arizona has a diverse climatology, and it isn’t all like this.  We used to be the hot spot in the nation regularly, until probably the tourism board of our town decided that distinction wasn’t drawing people to our area.  So they moved the official thermometer.  Now we are only second or third :o)

 

One last thing – no, I guess it really doesn’t get cold here as cold goes. We might be in the 50’s here on a “cold” winter day.  HOWEVER, those of us who are used to being slowly toasted like a marshmallow all summer long FEEL like it is freezing cold in the winter!!!  Our JCPenney store has all the same winter gear than yours does – coats, mittens, hats and scarves, even flannel sheets and electric blankets  And yes, we use them!  We can tell who our snow-birds are by the fact that in January they are dressed like it is June back home!

 

Okay.  I promise now, this is my last post about the weather.  I’m tired of hearing me talk about it too!  Ecclesiastes 5:3!

(Poster from www.allposters.com.)

Okay, I Only Slightly Exaggerated!

No, the water is not quite that cold, and it does warm up a bit as the summer passes. The river, on the other hand, IS that cold since we are close to the dam, and it stays that way!

Here are some NOT exaggerations:

*Stepping outside the house really does feel like you are standing in front of your open oven door.

*You open your car door, buckle your seat belt, and steer the car with an oven mitt or other some such protection.

*There is no such thing as cold tap water. Praise the Lord for automatic ice-makers! All laundry is hot or warm water wash.

*A cold shower burns until the water that is in the pipes that are between the street and the house is used up. For some reason (?) they are buried about 2" from the surface here, and exposed during high winds when the dirt blows away.

*You take a water bottle EVERYWHERE, and so do your kids.

*You pray not to have your car break down or get a flat.

*The inside temperature of your car may be over 180 degrees in less than 20 minutes.

*You park where there is shade (IF there is shade), not in the spot closest to the door!

*The morning sun is hotter than the late afternoon/evening sun.  It is more direct.  By late afternoon the entire landscape has warmed up, so there is more of an enveloping feel to the heat. It is even pleasant!  That morning sun feels like a laser burning into you.

*If your pillow is leaning agains the wall, it will be too hot to put your face on at night.

Having said all that, I will say I am very thankful that I never even SEE a mosquito (probably they can't survive here!), and that I rarely break a sweat, and that when I get out of the shower, I don't feel like I need another one before I can even get my clothes on :o)  ...Not until the monsoon kicks in, anyway...

For those of you who are confused, "Mohave" is spelled with an "h" on the east side of the Colorado River, and with a "j" (Mojave) in California.

Roasting

And I don't mean the kind you do in the oven. I posted pictures of us at the lake a few weeks ago, here. The last time we went was happy. Well, we went to the lake again today. But I was not excited about this excursion from the time my husband mentioned it last week. I did NOT want to go.  The idea of sitting in 110 degrees and no shade just really did not appeal to me, water or no.  Besides that, the area where we like to put our stuff down is a long hike from the car AND the bathroom. (I am shamed to admit it, but I told my three year old that if she had to go potty, to go in the lake!  ) My big old ugly SELF was really challenged today.  I went, but with the grumps, which means my meek and quiet spirit lost the battle. Again.  See, I told you I was selfish -- remember my post  about God giving me only girls? After writing that, I thought about the things that really make me mad (like my kids crossing me) and realized that the only reason I ever really get angry about anything is because I don't get my own way. How pathetic!  Well, now that I understand that, I am really working on it.  Until this afternoon I thought I was doing really well. I HAD to go along, because if I didn't, Emily would be heartbroken.  If I don't go, she doesn't get to go, either.  Daddy can't swim with the bigger girls in the deep water AND play with her in the shallow water at the same time. So if Emily goes, I go, and if I don't go, Emily doesn't go either. Not too fair to her if I stayed home.  So I grudgingly went along, refusing to smile or be happy even if something funny happened (one reason why I could identify with Ida B!)

Well, my sweet husband who loves me no matter what kind of snit I am in,  pulled me out of my frump. He was just kind to me, which made me feel terribly repentant. And when I got into the water with little Emily, her arms tight aroung my neck while I took her into "deep" water, I got a warm feeling all over .  I almost decided right there and then not to give up any opportunity to do that with her, because she is growing up so fast!  My baby!

So anyway, the point of this whole post was to help you to experience Lake Mohave in June. Here is what you do:

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

2. Put a bucket of ice water on the floor in front of your oven door.

3. Take off your shoes and stand in the bucket of ice water.

4. Now, bend over from the waist a bit, like you are going to check on your cookies, and open your oven door for about 15 seconds.

Feel that hot wind in your face?  Are your feet numb yet?  Next month you can do this again, only set your oven for 500.  It will be hotter then.

The Library Stack

R

 

Oh no! I missed a few!  This is our library stack.  I find books all over the house, all the time, and it drives me crazy, but I should count my blessings that my kids are readers, huh?  Even the "baby".  That is both a blessing and a curse.  With the ability to read comes the desire to know, and that was Eve's problem, wasn't it. We are blessed to have two libraries relatively close-by, and more blessed that they will cheerfully do inter-library loans for us. I do have to say I am dismayed at the ever-increasing number of books on the shelves that have to do with witchcraft and magic and that kind of stuff.  A lot of times I won't take the librarian's recommendations. Each cardholder has a 15-book limit, so... 4 people, times 15 books, times 2 libraries equals... 120 books!  Sometimes I have to put the overflow on my DH's card!  Whew. But it looks like this was a low week :o)  Do you ever have to take your books back in a laundry basket?!?