Shoo fly

There is currently a ..... fly chasing me around my house. I've somehow misplaced my fly swatter, thinking that all flies have gone to the fly resting place somewhere over the rainbow or wherever it is that flies go for the winter, maybe down south to the retirees and harass them as they sip their cocktails and eat oranges, but i certainly didn't expect him to show up in sub-zero temperatures - okay, my house's interior isn't sub-zero, contrary to some of my friend's opinions, but still, it's not ideal fly weather. He isn't even a "slow" fly like sometimes they are in the fall - he's a pretty nimble little stinker - i've tried to get him with the tea towel, my agenda, my tea cup, but alas, he's still got free range.. i know i wanted a pet to keep me company, but this is a little not quite what i had in mind... do they sell fly paper in December??

Tuesday morning, 9 a.m.

Yep, yet another post, i know, it's been a long time since i've posted so many times in a short while but somehow, this week, there's lots of food for thought and rambling. I'm sitting in my office with the curtains drawn back, the sun pouring in and warming up my feet perched on my desk and i'm drawn to watch the squirrels outside playing tag around the telephone pole in the front of my yard. There doesn't seem to be a clear winner but they look like they're having fun nonetheless... you'd think they'd be busy storing up nuts or such for the cold winter months, but maybe the weather's got them all fooled - it's sure got my garden fooled - it's nearly December and i'll admit that my planters outside still somehow look better than they did in June and my onions have been growing again, maybe getting a headstart for next year? Silly things...but brave. The last few days it hasn't really felt like winter yet. Oh, to be sure, there was some hail last week but that was transient and the balmy weather of the last day or so has been making me think we've skipped winter and gone directly to spring... but in my heart of hearts, i know that can't be the case.
Thought i'd just share a recent book i finished - by Joseph Boyden - Three Day Road. My mom had recommended it to me long time ago, but sometimes i have to come to these things on my own - and i really enjoyed it. It was a very interesting story, told in a round-about fashion about a Native man who becomes a sniper during the first World War. It follows his experiences in France while paralleled with his return to Canada after being wounded and severely addicted to morphine. The book kept me going right the way through and it was an eye-opener to me about aspects of history and culture that i don't seem to be exposed to much ( i know bad grammar - but somehow i can't fix it no matter how hard i try).
And on another random thought, as i was doing my dishes this morning, i was thinking how systematically (sorta) i like to do things. When drying my dishes, i have some days when i dry the whole lot and keep it all on the counter until i'm done, and other days, i have to put every single thing away directly after i dry it... Also, i need to dry utensils in a specific pattern - am i nuts? First paring knives, then regular knives, then big soup spoons, then little soup spoons and finally forks. Nice and orderly! Oh, boy, i sound like i'm heading for the edge of the cliff but that's the truth and i'll own up to it!
Well, no more adishional thoughts here... i should probably go hit the books again - i'm studying for a nursing certification exam and that involves a lot of reading and highlighting - sometimes i think i might go crazy and highlight myself... if you see an odd neon yellow glow in the east of Hamilton, you'll know i've gone off the deep end... heehee...
Have a lovely day - enjoy the wind!

A bit long i know, but very interesting..

I know this post might be a bit long and maybe a touch difficult to read, but i have been listening to the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis in the car and was struck deeply by this passage - also reinforced by a part of the sermon from Sunday evening about the need to be servants and to work on humility in our lives. Jesus, talking with his disciples, asking them what they had been arguing about on the road - them not wanting to own up to what they were really discussing - who was the greatest of them all? Talking about pride and the insidious nature thereof - creeping into our thoughts and lives and even our religion/faith - thinking we deserve something or by some twisted thoughts merit our salvation. I was put to wondering about the two extremes - being prideful and treating that as an "acceptable" sin versus being overly humble - to the point where we think ourselves almost martyrs for humility as described in Lewis' book. I think i get caught between both a lot - and it was a good combination reminder to guard against both of these things in my life, to follow ever the example of our Lord who is the servant King! Enjoy the reading, i sure am - it is opening my eyes again to many things about myself and to guard against the flaming darts of the evil one.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

The most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of "grace" for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation! This is very bad.

I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.

But there are other profitable ways of fixing his attention on the virtue of Humility. By this virtue, as by all the others, our Enemy wants to turn the man's attention away from self to Him, and to the man's neighbours. All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting-point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty.

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible. To anticipate the Enemy's strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the, fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love—a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.

Happy birthday dear nephew

November 17, 2010
Dear Peter
As i write this, dear Peter, you are safely tucked into your little bed snuggled under your new quilt that Oma lovingly stitched with pictures of things so fascinating to a newly minted three year old, things that can populate your dreams and fill your imagination up. I cherish the hugs i received from you tonight, hearing you say "I love you Oma" and hearing that you told God you loved him as well. You are such a wonderful nephew and i'm so proud to be your Aunt Dell.
From the first moment i heard your name told to me on the phone and i knew somehow it would fit you just right to watching your face tonight as the servers at Swiss Chalet sang you a cheery happy birthday, you trying to figure out just what was happening and how to react, i have loved you deeply. Your sense of curiosity and interest in the things going on around you is neat to watch, figuring out how things work, how to take things apart and try to put them back together again, loving the marble works page in the Eye Spy book, explaining to your poor city slicker aunt how a baler or a combine work and gently correcting me when i call an excavator a digger and the like are all things that are uniquely you. You have known your numbers and letters for so long already that i will think that you will be super smart in school and do your parents proud!
Sure, you love to get into mischief and trouble too, and we see tendencies in you that we would rather not see - jealousy, fighting with your brother, and an incredible penchant for getting into things that aren't so good for a 3 year old to be getting into (of note, microwaves and metal travel mugs don't make happy companions, deadbolts are to keep you in the house, brothers are not to be locked into bathrooms by themselves) and we work on guiding you to be a boy who is kind to others and shares - all things you will learn in time, i'm very sure!
It has been an eye-opener and such a joy being an aunt - that sense of love i feel in me when i see any of you three boys, being allowed to spoil and cuddle to my heart's content and feeling so blessed to be a part of your lives. I hope you have a wonderful year being 3 and remember that i love you to the moon and back.... and i'll love you forever, i'll like you for always!
Love
Aunt Dell

Here we are...

I know, it's been a super long time since i've put any family pics up here... haven't even gotten any wedding pics up here from Lauren's wedding, oh slacker that i am! So to atone just a wee little bit for past wrongs, here's a photo i dug out of my files that my dear sister sent to me a few weeks back. There's a couple of mysteries here - I'm not quite sure why Mike has no shoes on and i appear not to have any legs... interesting! I do believe it is somewhat photo-shopped (love how that's a verb now!) since it is super difficult to get a photo of ten people all looking the same way, with a half-decent expression on their faces at the same time, especially with three kids under three. But here's the end product and it's not bad...the little boys make it cute - i just have to put in a proud auntie note here - I LOVE all three of my dear nephews - should have heard Aaron on the phone yesterday - so super excited to "talk"!

Going back to the basics!

It's 11 pm... do you know where your children are??? Well, to be honest, no kids here... just me, sometimes a big kid at heart... but i love that line - though i'm not enough of a social/media savy person to know even where it comes from, sad eh? I'm sitting in front of my computer, with the furnace safely turned off for the evening and pondering the fact that i've just watched my last bit of cable tv for the foreseeable (?sp) future. I know, i know, a very minor and relatively unimportant fact in the face of the world events that occur around us, but an occurrence none the less. I've decided after some (read much) thought, that i fritter away far too much time on watching tv and should be using my time much more effectively, i.e. reading books i should read (maybe finish one or two of the twelve i have on the go at one time - okay, maybe seven right now, but that's the honest truth - seven books at once, enough to drive one crazy!), spending more time with friends and family, studying for my exams and maybe even finishing up the last few jobs left to do in the house upstairs. Yep, it's going to be a good thing, but i will say i will miss my Top Gear, BBC and home renovation shows which have kept me company for the last few years. The cable lady sounded a little astonished when i talked to her this morning and presented my request... but i do feel the better for it.
As i was driving along this afternoon, listening to the gravelly voice of the narrator of my audio book, the Screwtape Letters, a passage came up where it talks of the devil using things that cause us to waste time and to spend time on pointless activities (a very very rough paraphrase, my apologies to the literary purists out there who deign to read this poor blog). It was a little affirmation that i've done the right thing.
So come on over, i'll brew a cuppa tea or a Senseo, we'll pull out our books, and discuss the politics of the day or the latest sad sports news or some topics infinitely more exciting... i'm all ears!