wonderFULL: 2013

December 31: The 6th Day of Christmas

CRAFT

Who are these men? Why are they here?

Do they mock me?

I am the only King in Judea!

A usurper they seek? They wish to worship him?

We'll see about that.

December 30: The 5th Day of Christmas

DISTURBANCE

Palace guests are not especially unusual.

An entourage, however, is something totally different.

So many men! So exotic!

Someone said they were from the East.

Someone said they were seeking a newborn King of the Jews.

There's gonna be trouble.

--from a Servant in Herod's household

December 29: The Fourth Day of Christmas

WONDER

From the time Gabriel came

Nothing was the same.

A babe, when i know not a man?

Truly the ways of Adonai

are wonderful, unknowable

. . . even strange.

December 28: The Third Day of Christmas

GOLD

We watch.

Kings we are not,

Though you may call us so.

Watching,

Reading the prophecies

Collected wisdom of the world.

We knew

The time was here,

The time for the Promised One to come.

Balaam told us first to look for a star ~

You doubt? Your science does not know all!

Dan'el showed us where and when to come.

To Jerusalem we journeyed.

A fit place for the King of the Jews.

December 27: The Second Day of Christmas

WORDS
--Luke the Researcher/Writer Weighs In

In Philippi

The demon-possessed slave girl prattled good news,

Ceaselessly, unknowingly.

Vacated, she had nothing to say.

Paul, hit by divinely-touched sparks,

blesses us with sermons for the ages.

The mother of our Lord ponders.

Not for her the quick, glib turn of phrase,

But she meditates deeply.

I knew I needed her words

to tell the carefully researched story

of the Lord.

Even after all these years,

she haltingly recounts the events.

She is a necessary witness.

December 26: The First Day of Christmas

The Shepherds Rejoice

Jubilance

Wake up, Bethlehem!

He's here!

Our promised Savior has arrived!

The LORD's angel told us

And it is so. Truly the LORD is doing a new thing.

He has sent our our Savior to

Not the palaces of Jerusalem,

But to a stable in Bethlehem.

Isaiah 43:18,19; Micah 5:2,5a

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: The Beginning of the 12 Days Poem

COMMENCEMENT (Prelude)

After Gabriel came

Adonai curled around me

And in me.

Nothing was the same.

i thought i had lived before ~

He brought me wild,

Abundant, full Life.

Now Joseph

Has brought fresh straw.

i lie back,

Cradling Adonai's Son

Curled against my breast -

Peace and calm reign.

We begin new life.

Christmas Shopping with Max

Like always, Christmas shopping turns out to be not as done as we thought.
However, i really thought Max was done with his.

Natalie, a college student with autism, gives a different take on the Sandy Hook tragedy and its reporting.
NatKat921- Official Blog: Autism in the News: Remebering Joey and Discussing Serious Subjects

Coming Soon: The Twelve Days of Christmas

Recently my writers' group had a lovely Christmas dinner together at Shepherd's Gate Inn. We were asked to bring a Christmas poem to share. One we'd writen ourselves.
It's been, well, almost since high school since i wrote a poem. If anything

Some photos from my weekend trip to Rising Sun, Indiana. Charming little town!

This is Max, ten years ago, enjoying his Thomas the Tank Engine trains in our upstairs playroom where my blog computer Duckpond now sits.

Breakthrough

MyGuy tells me that the Disney stock is SOLD, and

The Scripture shares two very different stories from the same time frame. What made the difference?

Written Wednesday
In updating this blog today, i realized it's been awhile since i added a daily life/ conversation with Max story.
Tonight we had dinner from Subway.

A few years ago i was hearing a lot about how midcareer adults, as new teachers, could save kids and American Education As A Whole from the mess that All Those Bad Teachers had gotten us into.
i know one of those. She would love to do something else, but

Thomas the Tank Engine, Harold the Helicopter on the roof, and nameless Hospital Truck outside the Hospital. Pastel sketch from Yugoslavia slide is background

Good Mail

Another step toward selling that Disney stock, though with a kink i hadn't expected.

i haven't attempted the drawing yet. Boom ~~helped me~~ digitally put two photos together to make this reference for a sketch. Scroll down to see the originals.

Important stuff, deep reading, escapist reading, clearing out things, trying to keep in touch with people. . . .

The 100+page, two volume scrapbook from our 9day trip to Hawaii is way too heavy to lug around, but people sometimes want to see it. Those who have, want to show off this technique.

i think i may have mentioned that numbers are not my thing.

Hallelujah! One more step down the road!

Yesterday was Max's Vocational Rehabilitation assessment. It could've been worse.

Somehow a bunch of cannibals got hired, on condition that they eat no coworkers. They agreed, but occasionally picked off junior executives.
This went on for months.
Then one of them ate a cleaning lady.
"Sorry, guys, you'll have to go. We can't have this."
Their chief was furious. "We had a great thing going here. We could've gone on eating a VP here & there for years & no one would've noticed!
"Why did you have to go and eat someone who was doing actual work?"

May your tricks all be treats today.

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: A Pumpkin

This short video was a joint effort.
Max selected, bought, and carved "Jack," with Boom's assistance. Boom provided the battery-powered candle. i shot several short movies with my Nikon Coolpix P80. Then Boom edited the best of them, such as they were, together. And MyGuy admired the results.
Enjoy.

The Multi-Semester Moby Dick Course

When i was in college, i was supposed to read Moby Dick as part of a novel class.

The prof gave us two weeks to read this huge book.

Really? Two weeks? Maybe

My book club calls it "doing a Valerie."
i skip around in the book. Sometimes

   Last Thursday, just as i was finishing my post about our VocRehab appointment, the phone rang.  The lady said she was from FSSA.

  At least i thought that's what she said.  But that couldn't be right,

Leggy

When i was a teen, we could often find these two lying together.

i found this photo the other day, looking for something different, and was struck by the strangeness of the length of my collie's legs.
Of course, it's a perfectly normal collie-leg length, but consider the six-inch leg current Puppers has, and you can see why i do a double take at the length of Collie's leg.

Voc Rehab Appointment

The day got off to a bad start.
i forgot

Busy

Thursday we meet with a Vocational Rehabilition counselor.
Max wants to work. He NEEDS to work. While i was putting paperwork together today, he went through six two liters of caffree diet pop and a week's supply of cheese sandwiches. (and bear in mind that he neither needs Mom's constant companionship, nor wants it.)
i am having a hard time figuring the paperwork out. "Did someone else help you with this?" Well, more like, i helped him, but yes, in two hours, over two sessions, i guided him to fill out the parts he could.
Then i tackled the hard part.
Some of it was just tracking stuff down in my mess that only appears organized: how much did he make at VSA? Names and addresses of his doctors? Some is more complicated: How do you identify the work he did at school? What grade did he complete, with 3rd grade skills but having put in 15 years? And when/how did he acquire his disability? i know he wasn't born with autism, nor is it from accident or illness.
Numbers and organization are not my strong points, but the whole thing really feels beyond me. And i kinda like to think i am a reasonably intelligent woman in full possession of my faculties yet.

Saturday Sisters: The Proverbs 31 Woman

i think everyone gets tired when reading about the Proverbs 31 Woman. She's everywhere, doing everything, and she does it perfectly.
But

That's what "the Skinny Artist" calls it, presumably in articles other than this one. And maybe it's not even original to him. The principle is "Link and you shall be linked, and it works really well, especially in a busy week.
Theophilus at Dover Beach shares from an article about the value of stay at home moms.
tparadox, taking a break from reviewing "older" movies, points central Indiana movie lovers to the Heartland Film Festival next week. It's not just for arty Hollywood types.
Some people call these links "rabbit holes," ant they can be endless time wasters, but on the other hand, they can lead you to info you need.

Choose wisely, and enjoy1

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: Hand Thing

This shows me in front of the thermographic camera screen in Bloomington's Wonderlab science museum. The indigo at my waist is the camera bag, & I am holding the camera in both hands.
Does this convey any useful information?
My right hand is continually cold & painful. The cold isn't a symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome, but wearing a glove alleviates the pain. The reason my right hand, the "problem" one, shows warmer is that I had just that second removed the glove. The room was sunny & on the warm side in early August. Neither hand was hurting.

Saturday Sisters: Sheep, Goats, Dorcas, and, oh yeah, Kindness

"God Gives Sharing"

i hadn't thought i would share the VBS story here, as it's got fictional liberties taken with it (while remaining , in a larger sense, true throughout), but there is so much here, both the real life story and the Bible story, that it needs to go here.
In 2004, i was asked to do one of the Lesson Rooms for our VBS. The way we did this was,

Not at the Same Time or Not at All

Totally frivolous today, but short. . . .

Having kids seems like a lovely way to grow your own friends. And i've heard that you never know true love until hou have grandkids. i joke that i tried to have my grandkids first, but i just couldn't pull it off.
(Hey, a coworker the same age was having her first grandchild at the same time i was expecting Boom....)
Just not possible.
And it seems i'm always wanting to use the restroom and a drivethrough at the same time, but just can't figure that one out either. So - yes, you'll be relieved to know - i always order inside.
Either is possible, but not together.
In-CO-possible.
Anyone else come up with stuff like that?

Recycling DropOff

MyGuy confessed that he was having trouble dropping off the old push mowers at the recycling place, since Saturday morning was the only time their hours interwove his availability.
i asked, That's their only hours?
He said, No, they're also open weekdays, but I'm kinda not available then.
Then i opened my big mouth and said

back when Puppers was a young thing

Saturday Sisters: "All Things"

We're told "All things work together for good." But that's not exactly what we see when we look around. Sometimes it's kinda ugly.
"All things work together for good for those who love God," well, sign me up, but does that really mean life will be perfect?

i found this quote

The Occasion for the Party

The thing about a party is, people think gifts.
Max has begun to discover that gifts

This was The Big Trailer. It was also

Earlier this month, i described one of our at home days, and mentioned the difficulty we'd been having figuring out what Max was wanting when he said repeatedly & insistently, "Graduation."

What's wrong with this?

We think of 1939 as the prelude to WWII. Germany overruning Europe, turning on its allies while under the influence of a madman leading a Holocaust.
But there was more to the year than that.

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