It's Hump Day!

It’s Hump Day! I’ve never been able to figure out why Wednesday is called Hump Day. Some people say it’s because it’s the middle of the week. My friend Kathie-Lee, however, claims it’s called Hump Day for a different reason in her house. Kathie-Lee and her husband Heehaw like to journal. At least that’s how Kathie-Lee encouraged Heehaw to write down his thoughts. When I told Kathie-Lee I was suffering from some writer’s block, she graciously shared with me their entries from last Wednesday.

As part of Worship Wednesday, Heehaw decided he’d take pleasure in all the things that Christ blessed him with during the day instead of focusing on the negative things that happened to him. Kathie-Lee, decided to take pleasure in her job of Domestic Engineer and not focus on the negatives as well as to be patient throughout the day.

The Diary of Heehaw

6:00 a.m. Coffee! My favourite thing!
6:30 a.m. A shower with Kathie-Lee! My favourite thing!
7:00 a.m. No traffic delays! My favourite thing!
7:40 a.m. Nashville Kat on Country 105! My favourite thing!
12:00 p.m. Lunch! My favourite thing!
12:30 p.m. A nooner! My favourite thing!
3:00 p.m. Tim Horton’s Donuts! My favourite thing!
5:00 p.m. Hamburgers and Home Fries! My favourite thing!
7:30 p.m. Read Lil Heehaw a bedtime story! My favourite thing!
8:00p.m. Wow! Watched TV with Kathie-Lee! My favourite thing!
10:00 p.m. Read NASCAR Scene! My favourite thing!

The Diary of Kathie-Lee:

Morning: I woke up to the sound of the coffee maker. Heehaw forgot to tell me he had it set to start at six. That thing sounds like it’s going to go into orbit and I can’t sleep through it. I figured as long as I was awake, I might as well have a shower with Heehaw and save some water. I think he was hoping we’d do more in the shower than get soapy. I turned up the radio at 7 a.m.. I’m glad Country 105 has a traffic helicopter. It makes it easier to get Heehaw out the door when he knows how the traffic is going in suburbia. The Odd Squad is doing great today. Nashville Kat was given some wrong information from Jeff Foxworthy. There is a city that does have a library with not only his book, but also five different sound recordings of his. You might be redneck eh if your library is well stocked with Foxworthy and it’s all signed out with requests. Heehaw said he’d probably be home for lunch. Lil Heehaw will be thrilled his daddy is comin home for lunch.

Afternoon: Heehaw came home for lunch. He was real complimentary about how much housework I did, the lunch I made and how I looked. Lil Heehaw enjoyed watching a kiddy show while Heehaw and I went into the bedroom. I think I’ll make Heehaw’s favourite supper tonight.

Dangit. Heehaw phoned me all excited because there were still some donuts left on his afternoon break. He knows I’m trying to lose some weight. I told him his stock car racing newspaper had arrived. It sure doesn’t take much to get him excited. I gotta remember to take the hamburger out to thaw. Lil Heehaw is bugging for Burgers and Tater tots. I’ll make oven fries because they are healthier and get some greens in Heehaw with a salad.

Evening: Heehaw decided I could do tub time and he’d read to Lil Heehaw. I love how he’s enlightened enough to parent instead of putting it all on me. We had fun tonight watching The Rick Mercer Report and Little Mosque on The Prairie. That PVR sure is a handy thing, letting us watch shows we’ve already recorded while recording something else. Heehaw just said “Hey Kathie-Lee, got something to share with you if you’ve got a sec.” I might as well go see what he wants to tell me about.

I need to remember the more interest I show in the latest breaking news on Jayskis; the longer Heehaw will share it with me. Oh well, at least I’ll sleep well.

Proverbs 12:2 A good person obtains favour of the Lord; but a person of wicked intentions will be condemned by the Lord.

Best of Intentions

Today's blog was initially going to be about how to improve your financial situation. Having just spent over $200 on day camps for Kidlet, I feel like I am on weak ground. Ever notice that the Frugal Living type books always talk about the virtues of taking your children for day trips to a park in a different neighbourhod, or a long bus ride, or take advantage of free programs the library offers or instead of the swimming pool, turn the sprinkler on. The Living on the Cheap gurus talk about taking your children for picnics in the park, exchanging families for a day to give the kids a change of pace or have the siblings pretend they are all the same age. Notice all those are pluralized? It's like the writers and authours assume if you have one child, you must have tons of money and can just put them in camp the whole summer. I understand for larger families it's not as much the cost because they budget for it as trying to find camps that will make three different kids three different ages happy or in one case, triples with different interests. After a few changes in plans due to typos, plus some input from my son, for one week in the mornings in July he will be in a Swim/Craft/Games type daycamp and in August I'll have the experience of being without my son all day for a week while he indulges his love of science. I'll just spend the rest of the spring and all of summer penny pinching to defray the cost.

There are some ways to save money. I call it the nickel and dime principle. I find it's not the loonie or twoonies that tend to make me go gosh darnit, its things like spending $1.35 for a small fruit salad at Safeway because I was rushed and forgot to grab an apple from the basket. I have another friend who realized that if she brought four ounces of cooked meat to work, she could swing by McDonald's, order small fries and a side salad, put the meat from home in the salad and get her junk food fix while saving a few bucks. Another man realized that by Supersizing his weekly junk food indulgence, he was doing himself out of about $30.00 a year. He took that $30.00 and used it to make a donation to Samaritan's Purse at Christmas time. It's easy to industriously go through eight different flyers to get the best price on electronics or vehicle parts. It's hard to think about the ninety-nine cents here, sixty cents there that can add up over the month. If you don't believe me, try for the next month to at least analyze how frequently you spent the extra forty cents getting something big or the few extra dollars because you didn't bring a snack from home.

I have a special eating lifestyle that is in part due to food intolerance, in part due to the fact after I did it for about three months I realized even with the cost of mainly organic food and supplements; I was still saving about $25-30 a month depending on how well I followed Ann Louise Gittleman's Fat Flush Plan. I never realized how much money Fat Flushing was saving me until someone mentioned how much granola bars, animal shaped crackers and her special fancy coffees cost her every time she went out with the kids. Thanks to Fat Flush, I would bring my own snacks from homes, which were usually fresh fruit or vegetables plus cheese for Kidlet and water flavoured with homemade cranberry juice for myself. Under the category of like mother, like son, both my son and I get just as sugar buzzed off full strength fruit juice as we would off pop.

I think God blesses us with the wisdom to know what we can safely eat and what we can't. We need to respect other people's eating lifestyles. For some people, it could just be wanting to live more frugally, for others it could be food intolerances or even allergies. As well, all over the Bible are mentions of not over indulging. I don't think going to Wendy's or McDonalds will send you straight to Hell, although your doctor might give you Hell for eating places like that on a daily basis but I do believe that God would like us to think before we open our pocketbook or whip out our bank card to make a food purchase.

Proverbs 6:6-8 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies iin the summer and gathers her food in the harvest.

Thomas Trip

My feet ache because I spent five hours walking around Heritage Park. My lower back aches because of the backpack and my neck aches because of the big camera. There is a set of muscles in my right thigh that are telling me I could have done a better job perching on a fence post to get the perfect picture of a train. This morning forty-five minutes after I woke up, I found myself using math skills to calculate how to duplicate an engineer lantern. I'm not the only one who is feeling the morning after the day before. Big Lug's feet ache, hands ache, lower back aches and he even has a matched set of blisters on his hands.

For me, Thomas the Tank Engine is in Calgary. Kidlet and I had an excellent time with my best friend and her son. Big Lug, on the other hand, can hold his head high; puff out his chest and give a Tim Allen grunt for working together with one of his buddy's to build a new gate. I love Big Lug dearly but when it comes to home improvement, let's just say he's no Bob Villa. Thankfully he has the good sense to realize this and make friends with guys who are Bob Villa.

Sunday felt like a truly God blessed day, with good weather, everything going reasonably smoothly and time spent with fellow Christians. It's nice to sit underneath a tree in a public park and have a child say grace before eating lunch or to know that two men working together aren't going to get drunk off beer, just sugar buzzed off pop. Of course if it was a hot summer day, there would have been a few beer consumed but the men wouldn't have used the home renovations as an excuse to get drunk.

As for the health issues, Big Lug and I both know the best way to get rid of the aches is to carefully work the feet and back muscles as well as take it easy with our hands. We are also firm believers in the healing power of prayer, combined with the wisdom God blesses us with. It is thanks to His healing power and gift of wisdom that enabled us to have a day like yesterday. For many weeks I was sick. I had to humble myself, swallow my pride and ask God for help. The direction He guided me in was a difficult one for someone who believes in natural healing first and foremost. I am grateful to the doctors who have helped me on the road to health, along with God guiding me to people and things that will help what the doctors and nurses are doing for me. That's what makes yesterday so special. I was healthy enough to spend five hours with my son, in the outdoors, feeling God's power sustaining me on a physical, mental and emotional level.

Proverbs 15:3 The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

We are Stories

Last night during the teaching time at my church, I heard a wonderful concept from Pastor Terry. First he opened with a brief history of First Alliance Church and closed with a verse from 2 Corinthians 10 about how we should not boast of ourselves but of the Lord and a reminder that all we do is done through God. That serves as a reminder for me not to get too proud about my writing but to remember it is a God given talent.

I have heard from those who believe we evolved from primordial ooze, and those who quote scripture that clearly states man was created from dirt by God, and woman was created from Adam’s rib to ensure she knew her place was not above him, not below him but beside him as his Ezer Kenegdo. If you really look at those two ideas, they aren’t too different. Who is to say God didn’t take primordial ooze and over His days which definitely can’t be compared to our 24 hour days, evolve them to what we now know as human beings? On the other hand having watched enough stock car races, hockey games and football games, I can understand why some people believe we evolved from apes. Yes I will plead guilty; my mind did wander a bit during the teaching time. Thankfully when I realized it was drifting, I prayed to God to help me stay focus on what the service was.

Pastor Terry had begun to talk about how we need to realize we are each part of a story and we need to identify our story. There was no way after that my mind did any wandering. I love the concept that I should look at my story line as though it is a letter from Christ to the world. It makes me realize that my words, my actions, my very attitude are a testimony for better or worse to the Living God. It helped my self esteem to realize I was a letter written on a human heart of love and life in Christ Jesus. I know I will never achieve perfection but to realize the Author’s intention is that my story, your story, our story is Christ’s desire for me, you and us to be a masterpiece is inspirational during times when I feel unworthy or unsure of how to handle a situation.

I got the term Ezer Kenegdo from John and Stasi Eldredge’s book Captivating. It is a very beautiful, well written, empowering book that inspired me to rise above a less than stellar past and realize that no matter what the past is it is the present God cares about. During a Captivating retreat I had many moments when I felt it was not my hand writing, but my hand being guided by God. I recently had someone on a message board heckle me to quit writing about crap I didn’t know anything about and write about what I did know. After my heart quit hurting, God told me that person was right. Now when I write, I pray to God, and let Him control the storyline.

Proverbs 28:25 He that is of a proud heart stirs up strife: but he that puts his trust in the Lord shall be made wise.

Saturday Indulgences

Ahhhhhh, Saturday, time to indulge after a long week, whether you work inside or outside the home. What to do? If you are a reader, it would be fun to lie in bed, unplug the phone, and have a blissful hour to focus on your book, no distractions. Ever share that with someone only to have them sanctimoniously say "What a waste, you'd be better off going for a power walk like I do."

Next Friday night you take a look in the mirror and think how it might help get rid of that carb or beer belly. You grab whatever tune machine you have, get up early Saturday and do that power walk, returning feeling invigorated. You share with someone what you did, only to have them tell you what a silly way to spend a Saturday morning, why not stay up late Friday night with a movie and sleep in Saturday morning?

Next Friday you rent that movie, pop some popcorn, have some lemonade or beer, and are amazed you are going to bed at midnight. You fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow. Anyone who has a cat, dog or kid knows the outcome of Saturday morning. For that matter, because of all the lemonade or beer you drank the night before, your body might have other ideas about sleeping in.

I have found the best way to indulge in self-care on a Saturday is not to discuss my plans with other people but to prayerfully take it to the Lord and ask him for guidance. His plans for me tend to work out better than any plans from someone who does not know every cell of my body. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a yummy leisurely breakfast while reading Denise Jackson's "It's All About Him".

Proverbs 7:2 Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of your eye.

Extended Family Past and Present

As I read through the list of day camps available I found my mind going back in time to my extended family, specifically my Choo-Choo Grandma and Grandpa. My brother and I called them that because they lived in a railroad town way up north and Grandpa worked for the railroad. My parents would either drive us or when we became older, P.J. and I would take the Greyhound bus to their single wide trailer.

Those two weeks were paradise for a pair of city kids. No smog, little traffic, a single wide trailer with three housecats and about twenty cats that hung around outside. The land the trailer was on was large, with a path dubbed “Mushroom Trail” because it had plenty of fresh mushrooms growing along it. I can also remember P.J. working one side and me the other to pick fresh strawberries for Grandmaw. Grandpa always seemed to pronounce it “Grandmaw” or would address her as “Maw”.

In the trailer there was always the faint smell of yeast. In the back of the trailer Grandpa usually had a batch of homemade wine going. Grandpa had no qualms about letting us sample the latest batch. He said wine would help our blood. He’d also suggest we not bother our mother with the fact we were wine samplers. To his credit, he’d usually only let us have a sip or three, not a whole glass. The summer day camps we went to were okay but what I looked forward to each summer was those two weeks up north with my grandparents. These days Grandma is in an assisted care nursing home where she has some independence and Grandpa is up in Heaven, making communion wine. At least that’s what I’d like to think Grandpa is doing.

I have another extended family that is special to me. These people have helped me through marital difficulties, personal problems, people I’ve laughed with, cried with or for, prayed with, prayed for, and had general good times. What makes these people special is I’ve never met any of them. Anyone who says that online relationships aren’t real probably hasn’t tried hard enough. I especially find the stock car world isn’t hung up on online or offline, just talking about life as seen through the eyes of stock car fans and rednecks. I divide my time between two boards, one like a coffee shop where the fun is of a gentle sort and the advice isn’t too harsh. The other one advice threads can sometimes get sidetracked by the younger generation who don’t have the experience but feel they know it all. These people would laugh at the thought that I am not a real person with feelings. We are a merry band of adventurers, always caring, sometimes kidding, and sometimes working through misunderstandings but in the end, true friends. Besides twenty years ago pen pals were all the rage. Now it’s a new century and e-pals have replaced pen pals.

I received a reminder the other day about another type of extended family. As Christians, we need to remember that we are all part of God’s family and to treat all people with respect. As I was talking on the phone with my friend Kay, she told me of an experience she had at a nearby coffee shop. Kay had left early to file her income tax return at the post office. Since she arrived before the post office opened, she decided to indulge in some coffee, a scone and a chance to read the paper. After she sat down, she noticed a woman looking hungrily at her scone. The woman definitely had the appearance of homeless and as the conversation unfolded, Kay’s original thought was confirmed. Kay kindly talked with the woman as well as sharing her food. She also reassured the woman that although there was no earthly family who cared for her, there was a Heavenly Father who did care about her. Kay ended by praying for the woman for better times.

Proverbs 3:27 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. KJV

Food Thoughts

I have a confession to make. I am Canadian, the metric system has been around since I was in grade six but when it comes to cooking, I prefer to use the American measures. That's why when I share a recipe it will be in cups not mL. I do understand the metric system well enough to grocery shop but I'm just an old fashioned woman when it comes to my baking.

These are great to snack on while watching the CCMA award show, hockey playoffs or to wrap in paper towel lined tinfoil to take to a tailgate picnic:

Pizza Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour or 1 cup whole wheat, 1 cup all purpose
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup Mozzarella cheese
Half a package or 9 ounces assorted pizza meat circles, quartered (these usually come with ham, salami and pepperoni)

1/3 cup cooking or olive oil
3/4 cup pizza sauce

Pizza sauce to heat for dipping (optional)

Measure first four ingredients together in bowl. Stir. Add cheese and meat; stir until meat is well coated.

Add oil and pizza sauce. Stir or use your hands to form a ball of dough. Lift dough ball out of bowl, lightly flour bowl, put ball back in and knead gently 8-10 times, adding more flour if necessary. Divide ball into quarters, divide quarters into thirds, pat into circles about ¾-1 inch thick. Place on ungreased cookie sheet close together for moist sides or further apart for crisp sides.

Bake in 425 oven for about 20 minutes or until tops are browned. Once these are cooked, you can either top them with pizza sauce or put it in individual containers for dipping. If you are feeling ultra healthy, you can cut up some carrot and celery sticks as well as tomato wedges for vegetable side dishes.

Bigg Lug and Kidlet like their pizza biscuits plain, I like mine with pizza sauce. This is also a favourite when we are watching a NASCAR race in the afternoon and had a big Sunday brunch. For us the Sunday routine is usually a pre-race Sunday brunch because the race doesn’t start until noon and some sort of light lunch during the race.

I created the Pizza Biscuit recipe by combining two different biscuit recipes and a pizza recipe. I used to feel like I was wasting my brains by being so creative with cooking. Being a child of the 70’s, I felt sort of guilty taking pleasure in the womanly art of cooking. When I started not just reading but studying the book of Proverbs in the Bible, I noticed wisdom and knowledge tended to get referred to as feminine traits, not as masculine traits. I started to take delight in the culinary arts, even if it was just a simple biscuit recipe.

Proverbs 3:13, 15 Happy is the person that finds wisdom, and the person that gets understanding. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things you can desire are not to be compared to her.