Random Ramblings #7

Thanks for stopping by today for a little visit. While we're waiting for Kevin to post Chapter 3, we'll just chat a bit about this and that.

First of all, thank you so much for your comments on DC's photography that I posted yesterday for Wordless Wednesday. He tells me he was sitting on a rock after eating lunch one day up on Storm Mountain. He spotted that tree perfectly situated in front of that cloud, whipped out his old fashioned 35 mm camera and got that amazing shot. As I told someone in a comment, he loves photography and seldom takes pictures of people. He can tell you every rock, every flower, where he was hiking when he found it and captured it for posterity. I have a future blog planned around some of his mountain pictures. I keep telling him he should try to market a calendar someday.

Please pray for him today. He's having a biopsy done - that plague of men who are getting to a more advanced age, which they don't like to really talk about. Please also pray for Kevin - he is plagued with chronic headaches. He had one yesterday, which is the reason he hasn't posted his next episode yet.

As everyone was posting pictures of their vintage valentines, and as some show us wonderful things from their grandparents, great-grandparents, and further back than that, I was thinking of why I don't have such things to share, or even to enjoy. Kevin once asked me what I collect, and I told him mostly dust. Which is probably another reason I don't collect things - because THEY collect dust - and I hate dusting!

But, back to the original thought - I was thinking of my lack of nostalgic "stuff" and pondering the reason. I don't know if my ancestors weren't nostalgic. I suspect that's part of it. One time I was lamenting the change in the little town where they all lived - it wasn't like coming back to Grandma and Grandpa's any more because it had turned into a "bedroom community" for people from the Twin Cities who wanted to escape city life, but wanted to still work in the big towns. He said, "That's progress. You gotta have progress." To me, it turned "Mayberry" into something totally foreign to me. He didn't mind. So I suspect he had the same feeling about keeping old "stuff." But the other factor is the number of times we moved. I collected lots of things when I was a kid - I had a great collection of fancy napkins - anybody remember the napkins that people used to have for fancy occasions? Oh, my, some of them were positively lacey. I had wedding napkins from all the occasions when aunts had to figure out a way to have my sister and me as part of their weddings. I wish I knew where that box of napkins went. I also collected miniature tea sets - tiny cups, saucers, and tea pots from every place we went on vacation. I have no idea what happened to that box either. Sad!! I suspect they were lost along with one of our many moves. I clearly remember the day Mom and Dad told all 5 of us that, now that we were grown and had places of our own, they would no longer move our "precious memories" boxes from parsonage to parsonage. I think many things were ruined in the crawl space of our first house.

Back to the present - remember the picture of all of those burgundy folders that I posted last week? Now they're all processed and ready for the next step - I have to figure grade point averages for each and every applicant. Some people went to a lot of colleges before they eventually graduated! I have to put all of those gpa's together into one. I always bring files home at this time of year and do it while American Idol or some such mindless thing is on in the background. When I started this job 14 years ago, I realized that when I put those file folders in the faculty's boxes to be evaluated for admission, it did not make them happy. I continually have to remind them that I am only the messenger! This is a program they created, not me. Unless they want me to just read the files and decide who I like the best (the ones who didn't bother me with thousands of phone calls and e-mails with questions they could have known the answer to if they had only read the very nice booklet I sent them, or the ones who didn't follow the directions in that very nice booklet, etc. etc.), they need to quit their bellyachin! I decided that "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" and began attaching a chocolate to each set of folders I gave them to read. They really like that, but then began to tell me which kind of candy they do and do not like! It doesn't matter how many letters you have following your name, you are still a little kid at heart at times.

I have been thinking of the pros and cons of my new schedule. Here are a couple of them:

Pro: The four hours I work in the morning go so fast.
Con: The four hours I work in the morning go so fast!

Pro: I only have Feisty with me three afternoons a week while Care Bear is in preschool.
Con: I only have Feisty with me three afternoons a week while Care Bear is in preschool. She really misses her buddy.

When I have a chance to just sit and watch and listen to those kids, it is such fun. Care Bear and Feisty have the greatest imaginations. Their conversations just make it so worthwhile. Feisty really lives up to her blog name. She has to have everything done a certain way, and mostly done by herself. But she has become such a little conversationalist, which is the best thing about being with her alone in the afternoons.

One of their favorite things to do is listen to music as we drive down the road. They have 3 CDs in my player in the minivan. They have certain requests and I have to know which number to punch in on each CD. Yesterday Care Bear really got into the spirit of Valentine's Day. She was passing out home made and store bought cards to everyone everywhere. She took some for her friends and teachers at church last night. On the way home they were all 3 singing with great gusto and one of the songs was "I'm gonna take God's promises and hide 'em in my heart." Now they've been singing and listening to this song since Bible school 3 years ago, but all of a sudden that part about hiding in her heart just hit Care Bear - she squealed with great joy, "Grandma, heart, heart, just like our valentine hearts - thank you, Jesus!" What a blessing to this old grandma's heart!

On another note entirely, I took them to the Dairy Queen for a treat after the library yesterday afternoon. I decided to really splurge with my money and my calories and got a totally decadent Blizzard - only the second in my life. Anakin looked straight at me and said, "Grandma, that doesn't fit on your diet, does it?" I almost choked on my brownie piece that was part of what made it so decadent. I don't recall ever discussing my diet with him! They don't miss anything.

Well, I must get to work doing that for which I am paid not nearly enough. We got another 2-3 inches of really fluffy, pretty snow and it's 5 degrees F this morning. DC washed my car of the inch deep mud when we got back from the mountain trip. I had a clean car for less than 24 hours. I have to remind myself what a wrote a couple of weeks ago - about how this moisture is going to create such a lovely green spring. But are we ever going to enjoy spring this year!

I'll talk to you later!