Month: September 2007

Posted on

Doing a Little Happy Dance Over Here…

…because we’ve finally, after much agonizing, made a decision and ordered a dishwasher to replace our vintage model, which sadly, doesn’t really wash dishes anymore, despite its name. I carefully studied the research on current models, and then shopped around town, checking with clearance outlets, looking through last season’s models, and called every store I could locate to sift through their scratch/dent sales, etc. Unearthing no amazing bargains this way, I settled for finding the lowest price in town on our first choice, and got Lowes* to price-match that (saving us $93 in the bargain), and then waited until they ran a free installation special. Their special is good through this Sunday, the 16th, for anyone else in the market for a dishwasher. The installation rebate will save us both $150 and a couple hours of my sweet husband’s time. Looks like our new dishwasher will take a few weeks to get here, but I can wait. I’m so excited!!

*Sears and Lowes will not usually offer the best price on major appliances, but they each have price-matching guarantees which you can use to your advantage. The best customer service I received was from our local Lowes store, so I dearly wanted to give them our business if I could get the lowest price through them, which I did.

Posted on

What We’re Smelling…

Smoldering, day-old fish stick that was inadvertently left at the bottom of the oven last night while preparing a hasty meal for the kids before marching out the door to Wednesday night church classes. Which is now burning up (the fish stick, not the classes) b/c I turned the oven on this morning to bake some muffins. And let me tell you, it’s not a pleasant odor in the slightest! (again, the very despised, scorching fish stick, not the nice muffins).

Posted on

Sticky Start to the Day

While checking my blogs just now, and eating my morning peanut butter toast, I had a little mishap. I dropped my toast, and watched it flip around and around as if in slow motion, until it gracefully landed butter side down on my toes. While I hate to waste that precious peanut butter, you will probably be happy to hear that I refrained from licking my buttered toes.

Posted on

Burdens

How many of you have been admonished at the beginning of a worship service to set aside your worldly concerns and focus on the worship of God (or some close variant)? I’d like to propose that although there may be some truth to such an admonition, there is also a very real danger that may cause us to turn our hearts from God.

Yesterday, right before worship, I got a bit of bad news and felt like I wanted to vomit as we were driving to church. And it made me realize that to set aside such a concern (or, more realistically, to pretend to set it aside) as I entered worship would actually be contrary to faith. There is no godliness in refusing to rely on God, and it is not faith to hide the concerns of your heart from God.  Randomly open your Bible somewhere within the book of Psalms, close your eyes, and point, and you’ll have a proof-text for what I’m claiming.

Instead of setting aside our “worldly concerns”, I would suggest what matters is what we do with them. Do we continue to think we can solve our problems on our own, focusing on lifting ourselves up out of our problems while in the worship of God? Or do we come to worship offering God not only our songs, our tithes, but also our problems, our fears, our vanities? Faith gives God everything, not just the stuff we think we’ve prettied up.

Posted on

Iron Maiden

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and at some point the conversation managed to wind its way around such that my reference to the Battle of Passchendaele made sense. And the question came up as to how I knew about this grim killing field from World War I, and of course the answer was Iron Maiden…

At which point I found myself explaining something that is probably utterly mystifying to anyone who did not grow up listening to heavy metal but is enjoyed greatly by those of us who did: much of Iron Maiden’s repertoire is based on references to literature, history, film, television, and mythology. And it is often done quite respectfully. Even, one might say, tastefully.

To make the point here, I’ll highlight a few of the songs that I’ve enjoyed and then ask my faithful readers who might have listened to a little Maiden growing up to chime in with further references. Of course, that assumes I have any faithful readers left. So here goes.

The Trooper – Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and the Battle of Balaclava (part of the Crimean War)

Where Eagles Dare – book and movie of the same name

Flight of Icarus – Greek myth

To Tame a Land – “Dune” by Frank Herbert. Here’s a great detail from Wikipedia.

However, when Steve Harris requested permission from the author to name the song “Dune” and to use a spoken quotation as the track’s intro, his request was met with a stern reply from Frank Herbert’s agent: “No. Because Frank Herbert doesn’t like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden”. This statement was backed up with a legal threat, and eventually the song was renamed “To Tame a Land” and released in 1983.

Children of the Damned – film of the same name

The Prisoner & Back in the Village (2 songs, 1 topic) – British television show “The Prisoner”

Run to the Hills – Europeans coming to the Americas

Aces High – British RAF versus the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain

Rime of the Ancient Mariner – though 13 minutes in length, it is still an abridged version of the poem

Posted on

That’s the WRONG Sink, Baby!!

Tonight after a really delightful evening of supper and visiting with dear friends, we were rushing the children through their bedtime routine, and there was a bit of backlog in the boys’ bathroom. While Nicolas had his turn at the sink, little Josiah hollered and pointed to his toothbrush, impatient to step up on the bathroom stool and brush his teeth (his favorite bedtime task).

Jay, hoping to get Josiah started on the process, handed him his toothbrush with only a little water on it, and Josey contentedly began to brush. Somewhere in the next minute or so both the parents lost track of what was happening in the bathroom. Nicolas, having finished his hand-washing, and tooth-brushing, was now filling his sippy cup with water, and was still (in Josiah’s mind, I guess) hogging the sink. From the baby’s point of view, perhaps he might never get a turn with the sink and faucet if circumstances were left up to the big people.

But I have to hand it to Josiah. Instead of bellowing and throwing a tantrum about the situation (which would be par for the course for our 23 month-old), he decided to figure out an alternative. After all, there is more than source of water in a bathroom…am I right??

And that is how I found him: leaning over the potty, dipping his brush into the nice big pool of water as far as his little chubby arm would allow, vigorously getting a good few brush strokes in, and then enthusiastically shoving that toothbrush back into the nasty, hadn’t been washed in almost two weeks toilet. Ugh.

Please, dear Readers, shudder and gag along with me, if you will!!

Posted on

Early, Early Fall Break

Most schools don’t give holidays the second week back into fall. And Covenant didn’t intend to either, but power outages at the lower school yesterday and today have resulted in canceled classes for grades E-6. Which has facilitated some opportunities for us moms to help one another out. Yesterday morning I sent three of my four charges to a friend’s while i took Jonathan along to a Moms’ only organizational meeting for the start of Chapel School (Nicolas’ preschool co-op this year). Jonathan sat for ALMOST TWO HOURS on a couch and was an absolute angel while the mommies talked on and on and on. He had Cricket in Times Square to keep him company, as well as his Webkin, “Chow”, but still, it was a feat for my six year-old ball of energy, and I was proud of him for this display of self-control.

On my way home, I grabbed not only my three kids back, but two of my friend’s children, as well as another little girl whose Mommy had to work for part of the day. So I had seven children in my home from lunchtime on. And it was fun, if a little noisy at times!!

We have no huge plans for today, but I’m thinking it will be great to just hang out together. And now, the troops are asking for pancakes, so I must close, and oversee the mixing of ingredients and the splashing of batter. Here’s hoping you and yours have a wonderful day.