Dining Room Progress

The dining room renovation progresses, but slowly. All the awful wallpaper is gone, the cracks and nail holes are filled, and part of the pre-wallpaper primer is up. It's white, so it improves the look of the room. Grandson Robbie is a great help with the wallpaper, cleaning the woodwork of old tobacco tint, and painting on the primer. I have hope that it will soon be presentable....by Thanksgiving......oh gosh! That's only 3 days away! Tomorrow we do some more scooping on my accumulated clutter. Wednesday I cook. Thursday is it!

I guess I'd better get with it and post something. What with my daily email letters and my Facebook stuff, I seem to empty my brain every day and there's nothing of significance to blog about. No one reads it anyway, but hey!
Thanksgiving is fast approaching and my dining room is still far from ready for dinner guests. Today I drove in to Peoria to the Sherwin Williams store to look for a border that would go with the 20 year old paper I have kept hoping to put on the walls. Well, my 20 year old wallpaper is out of date, even though there's hardly anything but a few dots on it. Funny how the arrangement of the dots can be so significant.
I found a bunch of borders that would be appropriate for this house, cabbage roses and such. One had colors that go well enough with the two papers I originally bought. (I'm installing a darker wallpaper on the bottom beneath the "chair rail.") I just don't know if I want to plunk down $30 each for 2 rolls of border. You can't bring home a sample of the border papers. I'm sorely tempted to just choose all new paper and forget about the cost. Of course, this 20year old paper is now "free," and free is hard to beat. Guess I'll have to get Robin in on the discussion. I want to try the books at Lowes first.
The bare plaster walls are so much prettier than that awful paper that was in the dining room. In one place where the putter-upper overlapped the sheets of paper by 4 inches, we could see that originally the paper was white with the red/white/blue/gray design. Over the years (and undoubtedly with smokers contributing their all) the paper took on a grayish tan overall color that was depressing and downright ugly.
There's a bunch of projects to be finished in the dining room before Nov. 26, not the least of which is to remove the carpet tack strips around the edges and to bring over the lovely hutch that brother-in-law gave us.
I have hope anyway.

Taste of Eureka 2009

Another Eureka event is over, and a fine event it was! We thought for awhile that there would be no Taste of Eureka this year, but the Eureka Business Association and Heidi B. got it rolling, and by all reports it was a great success.
For those of you who don't know what a "taste" is, it's like a grown-up trick-or-treat. You buy a card (ours are $5) and then you go from place to place (the 22 listed on the card) and get whatever they are handing out. This year it was chicken kabobs from Knapp Tile, an apple from the Flower Basket, a frozen juice dealie from Heartland Bank, special caramel/chocolate popcorn from Lee's Hallmark, pizza from Caseys, a pork sandwich (with chips and drink) from the A.C. Home, a brownie at Mangold's, and on and on. The lucky people were those who went to the Library first, because they got a bag there to carry all their loot in. One canny lady showed up with a handled basket! Now, that's someone who was prepared!
We at the Historical Society gave out our usual 3-oz Dixie cup of rootbeer. It doesn't sound like much, but people seem to be grateful for it. This year we served both A&W and Dollar General's Clover Valley. The A&W was the foamiest. It was a chore to get the cups filled without the foam spilling all over. Believe it or not, however, everyone liked the Clover Valley best. If we were Consumer's Reports, we'd check-rate the Dollar General root beer.
As in year's past, we handed out a little leaflet that told the history of root beer. You know that a Historical Society has to stress the background of everything.
It was a fun evening and the 163 people who got our "shot" of root beer seemed to be happy campers.

One Kind of Work

For over 2,000 years Christians have tried to do the work of the Lord. Usually that work involves organizing worship experiences, teaching the Bible, and caring for those in need, for example. Occasionally, however, the work of the church has been something a lot less pleasant.
One has only to think of the Crusades to begin to understand that what the Church considers “work” can be in the form of battle. And those who founded our country understood that work for Christ involved much hardship and change. We may be in for that kind of work again.

We have grown complaisant in our Christianity. For over 200 years Christians in our country have been free to worship God in peace. There have been occasional trials and tribulations, but for the most of us, being a Christian has meant going to church on Sunday (or not), saying our prayers, supporting charitable causes, studying the Bible, and generally acknowledging that we are followers of the Christ.

There are days of turmoil, change and conflict on the horizon. Other religious and political movements are growing rapidly, and they don’t adhere to the same rules as we are accustomed to. Their goal is to subdue the whole population of the world, and there is no room for Christianity in their plans. What we do about the situation is a conundrum, one that requires much thought and prayer.

It reminds me of the story of the peacock and the dove that was told to the class of Psychology 101 at Bradley University in 1956. Professor Smith was explaining to us freshmen that different cultures behave in different ways. He told about an experiment that was to pit two aggressors: a peacock and a dove (The dove being the symbol of “peace.”) In peacock culture, when one is getting the worst of a fight, all one has to do is to lay ones neck out on the ground, and the aggressor recognizes the signal as crying “uncle!” Doves don’t have the same rules of warfare. When the two birds tangled, the peacock finally had enough of it, and he laid his neck out on the ground. The dove pecked him to death.

We try to be peaceful people just as Christianity has taught us. There may come a day, however, when our work will be to stand up to those who would eliminate Christianity in our country and in the world. We need to do some work toward figuring out just what we will do and just when we’ve had enough….before we stick our necks out on the ground.

High Style

I’ve been told that it is no longer fashionable to wear pantyhose (or any nylons, for that matter). I hope it isn’t true. I see lots of young women with bare legs, but I still think they look like heck. It's a rare leg that is tanned to the correct degree. Also, my feet stick to shoes when there’s no sock between skin and shoe, and I can’t see how it could be any different for other women. Very uncomfortable.
I wear pantyhose every single day of the year. It started when I was teaching and felt I had to wear them. Then I retired and didn't like shoes without socks, and I HATE the look of old women with anklets on! I don't like knee-highs, because sooner or later (if you're wearing a skirt) the tops of them are going to show.
When I had to start wearing compression knee highs, I found out that a pair of panty hose over them worked just fine. Now I'm so used to wearing the things that they don't even make me feel hot. My temperature-adjusting features are all above my waist anymore.
I put on my hose first thing in the morning and don't take them off till bedtime. I guess I’m the one out of fashion: I "dress up" every day with make-up, earrings and hose. As soon as I leave my bedroom, I’m ready to do whatever comes up…except go swimming or sunbathing. The only concession I've made to style is that I now wear "walking shoes," instead of flats.
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It's a Sad Day!

Oh, what a sad day! This is a day we will remember forever! Gidget, the Taco Bell chihuahua, died! He was the most famous dog on the planet, and now he's gone. Life will never be the same. [I wonder if he had a doctor in attendance and drugs percolating through his system like another famous male recently-dead.]

Blessings

In youth, we know for certain that we are fully alive and a good life stretches out endlessly before us. In our middle age, we know that we are living the way we are supposed to live and most of us feel that we are on the righteous path. We work in and for the church; we give to the poor; we honor the old in our midst; we take good care of our children, and we’re generally certain that we’re doing the best we can. The senior years, however, bring a new certainty, the positive knowledge that until now, we didn’t really know anything.
It is when life has removed some of our capabilities from us that we fully appreciate the blessings they were. When we can no longer get around freely, we understand the richness of unaided, unpainful movement. When we can no longer see well, we “see” that sight is one of our richest blessings. When our hearing fails and we’re deprived of easy communication with others, we recognize that good hearing is a pearl beyond compare. When our friends (and sometimes our kin) die, we know the importance of life, friends and family.
It’s no fun growing old, and it’s difficult to grow old gracefully and without complaint. Visiting Marie and being unable to communicate with her because her hearing aid is lost brought a frustration to us, and we couldn’t help empathize with her. But what she said to us was, “I’ve had a good life!” As powerless as she was to talk with us, she still had a smile on her face and happy words on her lips. Now, that’s the wisdom and blessing of age!

Vacations

Age 5-21: Trip to visit someone I like.
Age 21-35: Trip to visit family that doesn't live close.
Age 35-65: Trip somewhere, anywhere
Age 65-70: Trip I'd rather not take.
Once in awhile I do get that urge to take to the road, remembering the good old days when it was thrilling to start on a vacation. A sudden happiness wells up in me and I'm really happy about driving somewhere.
But it's gotten so I would much prefer to stay home. My bed is comfortable (and doesn't cost $70 a night); the food is cheap and it's what I want to eat (not what the restaurant has to offer); I can water my flowers and bring in my own mail and papers, and most importantly, all my "stuff" is handy.
I hear others waxing poetic about the vacation they're about to take, and they just can't wait to get away. I may have felt that way one time, but now I have to MAKE myself want to go. I enjoy the trip while I'm on it, but if I didn't go, I'd be just as happy. The only really good thing about "getting away" is that the telephone doesn't ring all day with telemarketers.
Actually the trips I would like to take are all relatively short ones: to my daughters' homes, to visit my favorite cousin (100 miles), and to my brother-in-law's place in a nearby town.
You'll hear me rave about how much I like to "get away," but I lie.

Michael Jackson's Dead

I can't let Michael Jackson die (yesterday) without registering my opinion.
Talk about media hype! Talk about inane celebrity frenzy! Talk about ridiculous statements as to MJ's fame! I actually heard a Fox News reporter/announcer/whatever say that "this day will go down in history as one of the saddest ever!" And "Michael Jackson is the most famous man on this planet." And "Everyone will remember what they were doing when they learned that MJ was dead." (I'll bet Mr. Obama disagrees with the second of those quotes!)
Aw, c'mon! MJ was an entertainer, for cripes sake. He's no more famous or memorable than any of the other greats, and who can even recall them after a few years, let alone a generation? I remember where I was when I learned John F. Kennedy was dead, and my parents remembered where they were when they heard the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. But Michael Jackson is far from being important enough to merit such memories from the majority of people on this planet, let alone this country.
There have been oodles of famous, wonderful, important people who have died in my lifetime, but to say that MJ was the greatest is absurd.
People who think MJ's death is such a tragedy that they have to drop everything and go mourn need to "get a life!"