I’m feeling a bit melancholy in this holiday season and I am not sleeping well. Could y’all please pray for me?
Monthly Archives: November 2016
The Simple Woman’s Daybook: November 27, 2016
For Today… November 27, 2016
Looking out my window… grey and rainy. I love it.
I am thinking… about the accounting cycle review problem I’m working on. My Trial Balance numbers aren’t right and I’ll be pretty much starting over from scratch once this post is up.
**UPDATE** I GOT IT TO BALANCE!!!!!!
I am thankful… for a good time with family from Wednesday night to Saturday afternoon. My evil twin and his long-suffering wife were up and we had various people over for meals over Thursday and Friday. It was also fun to watch the Apple Cup with them and the UW completely trounced WSU. 🙂 I would have liked Michigan to have annihilated Ohio State but I guess it was an exciting game for those who watched it.
One of my favorite things… grey kittehs, especially the one sitting on my desk.
I am wearing… my indigo v-neck shirt and jeans. Church clothes were the v-neck with a black paisley skirt, my black cardigan, black tights, and my flats. My boots arrive from L.L. Bean tomorrow and I hope they fit!
I am creating… a two-column journal entry on scratch paper to try and work out my errors in the accounting cycle review problem.
I am listening to… the Advent playlist I created for this year.
I am hoping… I can get everything to balance for tomorrow.
I am learning… about employer taxes in my Practical Accounting class. Not too hard.
In my kitchen… leftovers or something.
In the school room… Daniel continues to do well in his program.
Post Script… this piece by Barbara Kingsolver is fabulous.
Shared Quote… “Stop, you all. I know where you all live and I’m not afraid to use you as a sermon illustration.” — a seminary classmate of mine in response to some good-natured teasing on her husband’s Facebook wall.
A moment from my day… The Annunciation/Magnificat portion of Holden Evening Prayer.
Hosted by The Simple Woman.
7 Quick Takes: Non-Traditional Thanksgiving
Everyone is talking about how thankful they are for food and family and stuff like that today. I’m thankful for all those things as well but I’m also thankful for some more… non-traditional things today. 😉
Priests who start impromptu Godspell singalongs after Thanksgiving Eve Eucharist. Worship was already done acapella (and done beautifully) because our organist had the night off and we were trying to find Thanksgiving hymns to sing. Someone suggested “Day By Day” out of the 1982 Hymnal and Rev. Helen said we should do it to the tune from Godspell. Okie dokie. Then we started singing parts of the finale and went on to “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”. It was awesome.
Evil twin brothers who restrain small children so that their moms can clean the black Sharpie pen off of their faces, arms, hands, necks, feet, and toes. Let’s just say that Daniel went for the Maori tribal look and leave it at that. 🙂 Rubbing alcohol prep wipes are what gets it off well. I think we went through 40 of them? He was also chill with Sean (my evil twin) restraining him while I worked on him. I’m sure the purplish color from the ink/alcohol mixture will leave my nail beds eventually…
Coffeeshops that are open on Thanksgiving for emergency latté runs. I had a migraine this morning, OK?
Soft grey chest kittehs. This is especially true of ones who prevent their humans from doing anything other than watching the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory.
Those who create Biden memes. Y’all make America a greater place to live.
Mythbusters marathons. Because science.
Accounting problems that balance. My homework is refusing to balance right now so I’m thankful for times when things have worked correctly.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
The Simple Woman’s Daybook: November 20, 2016
For Today… November 20, 2016
Looking out my window… dark. It was chilly today with some scattered showers and temperatures in the 40’s Fahrenheit. I am really hoping my boots arrive from L.L. Bean before the snow comes!
I am thinking… about some of the political news and how to deal with it appropriately.
I am thankful… for the chance to spend time with my brother and sister-in-law later this week when they come up for Thanksgiving. There will be football involved as the Apple Cup is happening on Friday and there are some inter-family rivalries between the UW and WSU. My cousin Sarah is the president of the WSU Marching Band and my parents are UW alums so Facebook should be really fun this week!
One of my favorite things… Daniel calmly curled up asleep. I’m enjoying the quiet time to blog before I go back to sleep.
I am wearing… my Online Debate Team shirt and black capri sweats. (In other words, my jammies.) Church clothes from this morning were the usual shirt from Old Navy (charcoal today) with my black slacks and cardigan from Kohl’s. When I got home, I switched out the slacks and cardigan for jeans and a light grey hoodie.
I am creating… Excel files for my Practical Accounting homework and Access forms for my online class. Whee!
I am watching… The Big Bang Theory re-runs.
I am hoping… the advising thing I have to attend tomorrow isn’t a brain-numbing waste of my time. I’m going because it’s a hoop I have to jump through in order to register for classes but I’m not happy about being forced to do it.
I am learning… about employer taxes.
In my kitchen… we chose to just get some pizza for Sunday dinner tonight with my aunt, my uncle, and my grandmother.
In the school room… Daniel’s speech is exploding.
Post Script… someone shared this 12-step program for responding to president-elect Trump.
Shared Quote… I wrote one of my college admissions essays on this fragment of an Enya song:
My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing
It finds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing
— “How Can I Keep From Singing”
A moment from my day… I love this Audrey Assad cover of “How Can I Keep From Singing”.
Hosted by The Simple Woman.
How to Deal With Trump’s Decisions
My friend Ann left me this comment:
Just read all your “this, this, and this” links, and it all makes me want to cry. I just feel so discouraged and horrified and frustrated and sickened by all of those stories. Feeling rather depressed and hopeless about the next 4+ years. As I watch news coming in about his appointments and White House staff, it just gets worse and worse. I kept hoping he would find intelligent, capable advisors to temper things a bit, but that clearly isn’t happening.
So much empathy, Ann! It is really depressing to see all these decisions being made and the fact that Trump has no clue (and possibly no desire to be clued in) about how they’re affecting people.
The good news: you’re not the only one who feels this way.
With regard to Bannon, there’s a planned postcard avalanche to denounce him. (Details are here.)
There’s also a planned Women’s March on Washington on January 21st that has local events all over the nation. To find them, search for “women’s march on washington – [insert your state]”.
THe biggest thing you can do is something I know you’re already doing with your girls. Teach them to be kind and to show respect to people who may be different from them. Teach them to say, “no, that is not appropriate” when they see someone making fun of another person because they’re different or when you see a story in the news like one of the ones I linked. If you start teaching them now to speak out against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all those other things, they’ll grow into young women who will stand up for those who need it. Trump and his advising choices are all bullies. Bullies hate when people stand up to them. If enough people stand up to them and say, “no, you are not doing this to my country”, they may eventually back down.
7 Quick Takes: Dead Exhausted Edition
Dead exhausted. My sleep debt now is substantial enough that I’m spending any spare time trying to catch up. Daniel is having sleep issues and that’s meaning that I’m up at weird hours during the night and it’s really messing with me. It’s bad enough that I skipped Mary’s Guild yesterday morning to nap and that’s usually the highlight of my week!
Political and faith links. Here are two wonderful pieces courtesy of my friend Laura of Coptic Dad and Mom. She didn’t write the first one but she did write the second one.
*facepalm* Just a head’s up from a conversation I had today with a classmate: clean water is a necessity, not a privilege afforded to the victors of a war. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has a right to object to the pipeline being routed through their land because of the risk to their water supply… just as the people in Bismarck had a right to object to it going near their reservoir. The rights of the white people in Bismarck do not supersede the rights of the Sioux.
Also, interrupt my conversation with a remark like that again and you *WILL* feel my wrath, you weapons-grade spoon!
Mad computer skillz. The program I use for assessments for my online class and my laptop do not get along so I usually go do assessments at school in the computer lab. Well… in the process of doing my 15-minute assessment, I froze three of the computers in the lab and my professor’s computer. We finally pieced a score together for me, but I.T. will have to update the Adobe Acrobat plugin on Chrome on every computer in the lab now because the failure of the Acrobat plugin trips up the program I use for my assessments. (Granted, the program is already pretty catty so it’s not like it takes much to piss it off and make it lock-up a computer.)
While we were waiting for tech support to try and fix things, I showed her the Excel spreadsheet form I had created last night which involved a bunch of things we learned in Excel this quarter. She was impressed.
Mad tenor skillz. The high schooler who sings tenor was on his own last night (not that he needs another person — dude can cantor and hold the men together) and wasn’t feeling good so I sang a little bit of tenor with him on one of our pieces. Apparently, he was pretty impressed that the lower part of my range is tenor quality. I’ll be switching to tenor for part of our anthem on Sunday to give him and his dad (the other tenor) some support on a note that requires helium for them to hit with any measurable volume.
Some music for this week. I heard this tonight and it’s resonating with me. Enjoy!
Cold weather. It’s supposed to get down to freezing temperatures tonight!!! I am so excited!!! I’m kind of hoping that the snow doesn’t fly until my boots arrive but I’m looking forward to my first winter in six years where I get to experience four distinct seasons.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
{five favourites}: Doing Your Christmas Shopping And Saving the World At the Same Time
Heifer International. I have loved Heifer International for years because they have affordable gifting solutions and the animals (or shares of an animal) you give help to pay for food, school fees, medicine for AIDS patients, and so much more. When the animals reproduce, the recipients pass on the offspring to someone else and “pass on the gift”. They have expanded in recent years and you can give gifts of plants for sustainable farming and stoves for villages. Their gift catalog is here.
Kiva loans. Kiva.Org is another wonderful site. They do microlending all around the world and you can buy $25 loans for someone which they can choose to loan out to the individual of their choice. When the individual pays the loan back, you can either have Kiva send you a check or you can re-loan out the funds. I just looked at my lender stats and I have $225 invested (loans that have been given as gifts) with those funds re-lent two and three times. My loans tend to be to women in the Middle East but the borrowers are from all over the world. Seriously, I’d be overjoyed to get these as Christmas presents because it is such a cool concept and organization.
Samaritan’s Purse. While I frequently dislike Franklin Graham and the crap he spouts about Muslims, GLBTQ people, and anyone he disagrees with, his organization does some amazing work. A family friend has gone abroad with them and provided respite for a missionary doctor and their gift catalog is wonderful if you’re into giving religious gifts. You can feed starving children, bless the weddings of military couples, provide clean water, and help out refugees.
International Rescue Committee. I saw a random link for Rescue Gifts on Facebook and bookmarked it immediately to share. I wish I had millions of dollars to spend because I would buy everything on the list. You can help refugees, give a mom a safe birth, provide teddy bears for kids…
Donors Choose. I have friends who have had things through their classroom funded through Donors Choose and it is an amazing program. You pick a classroom and donate whatever amount you want toward their project. They even have gift cards so that the recipient can pick the classroom they want to support. Stephen Colbert is one of their board members and he took the proceeds from auctioning off his anchor desk from “The Colbert Report” and used them to fund every classroom project in his home state of South Carolina. I think that’s a definite endorsement of this charity!
Go love up Bonnie, DeBalino, and the others.