Category Archives: Stuff I Actually Think

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Stuff I Actually Think

I decided to do Twitter, to send myself, more than anyone else, encouraging messages about God’s faithfulness.

my new twitter
My first 4 tweets ever…started in November.

I never remember the terminology so I have been known to say something stupid like, “Oh, guess what I just ‘twittered’?”  And that is wrong.  I am not famous (or promoting anything) so there is no reason for anyone to follow my tweets, though good friends and family do so, of course, because they know I will like that.

But I enjoy it because I get to “hang out and listen” to people like Frank Viola, Rick Warren (who is admirable and just plain like-able, actually) and Max Lucado and a bunch of other tweeting-machines.  Some of these guys tweet so much, I wonder how they get anything else done.  I imagine an intern [insert thought-cloud here] following them around with a smart-phone, ready to tweet, at a moment’s notice, any amazing ponderance they have, every word that falls from their wise lips…

You KNOW how wordy I am

But it is also an exercise in brevity for me.  You cannot, under any circumstances, use more than 140 characters and so it forces me, as I meditate on the goodness of the Lord, to narrow it down to what I am really really really hearing/getting.  {NOTE:  If I were tweeting that and I really, truly believed there should be three “reallies” I’d have to shorten it to something like “reallyx3” so I could fit the rest of me message in.  :) }

the day the 7th grandson is being born
My 3 most recent tweets have a theme.  Two were written this very morning.  :)

It is just another way to use my words, however few, to record what I need to say,  what I need to hear, what I need to remember.  I tweet to myself to remind myself…

…whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Philippians 4.8 NKJV

Follow, if you want!  I will follow you back.   https://twitter.com/jeanierhoades1

The 12th Day of Christmas, aka EPIPHANY!

5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think

At the risk of being totally seasonally irrelevant, I shall yet be posting pictures and videos of Christmas.  I just will, so brace yourselves.

Though everyone rushes to do away with Christmas, today is really, the final day of Christian-tradition Christmas.  And each year I tell Dave he and I need to enjoy the observance longer by gifting each other one gift daily through Epiphany.

Because, you know how everything seems a blur and you have no superfluous time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to really reflect and prepare Him room and distribute joy to the world and hearken to hear the angel voices and all that?  Well, good grief then.  Let the 12 days of Christmas (beginning on Christmas day) be a time for it, people.

What is missed, I wonder, as we rush to set our goals, barrel into getting back to *our* lives, formulate strategies and resolutions and obliterate every symbol of the Christmas season as fast as we can?  Did we get all we could have from the season?  What if, as the song admonishes, we’d set aside time to receive the gifts of Christmas from our True Love?  Christmas Day is just the first day, ya know?

the 12 days of christmas

Today, January 6th, is a Christian Feast day (read: holiday/holy day) celebrating the manifestation/striking appearance of Jesus (God the Son) come to earth as a human being.  And the Magi showing up to worship Him.

We’ve all already moved on the Valentine’s Day and Easter on Pinterest, haven’t we? Tsk.

Somebody-please groom that dog!

The best medicine

9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

Having a head cold, booooooo.  But one good thing.  Watching old movies-for medicinal reasons.

TWO yesterday!  Two I love and have watched many times before.

1]  Mother is a Freshman, 1949, Loretta Young and Van Johnson

So 1940s east coast.  Trashy novels and sororities.  The colors, the sweetness of passionate (but not sordid) love.  The beauty of Loretta Young and the dashing debonair-ness of Van Johnson.  Yes, I like it.  Very old-fashioned and lovely.

mother is a freshman, loretta young

2]  And “You’ve Got Mail,” 1998, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks

Well, I mean there is the scene where Kathleen Kelly is home with a terrible head cold.  From my own experience, I can tell you she played the scene very well…except they should have reddened her nose up more.  Don’t ask me how I know.  Here she is with her cold~

 

There are a million quotes from this movie that I adore and have adopted as part my life’s philosophy.  That is because Nora Ephron directed it, she and her sister wrote it, adapting it from a French play and her sensibilities are just, with such sweetness and modernity, spot on.  But I thought this exchange especially poignant at the beginning of a brand new year with fresh new possibilities.  It may or may not have actually caused me to cry, while I laughed.

When our heroine decides she has to close down her children’s book store, being forced out, really, by  the “big, bad, book superstore,” she lets her colleagues know at lunch~

Birdie: So, deary, what have you decided to do?

Kathleen Kelly:  Close.  We’re going to close.

Christina [sad]: Close.

Birdie, brightly as she pours tea:  Closing the store is the brave thing to do.

Kathleen Kelly, feeling defeated, yet resigned:  Oh, you are such a liar.  But thank-you.

Birdie:  You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life.  Oh I know it doesn’t feel like that.  You feel like a big, fat failure now.  But you’re not.  You are marching into the unknown armed with [pause] nothing.  Have a sandwich.

I mean – if you are trying to figure out your life’s theme right now, have a sandwich, ya know?  March into the unknown and dare to imagine!  At least with nothing, you have a clean slate.  Happy New Year!!!  *smile*

Good medicine

Furthermore – did you know you can now watch free full-length movies on YouTube (like Doris Day and James Garner’s “The Thrill of it All,” a thoroughly 1965 little-bit-of-wardrobe heaven) and with an HDMI connection or an Apple TV, you can just stream it onto your high-def flat-screen?  Oh, the-best-medicine is just advancing all the time!  :)  Why have I not known this before?

 

Yes, if I must have a head cold and be waited on hand-and-foot, then I should get to watch silly, old movies that make me happy.

Aaaah-chooo!

It’s the Music

5 Songs I am Singing, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

By Marcie @ Dirty Laundry

Listen to the Music

To stay young

listen to the music of your youth:

it will tune you into yourself.

 

To stay young

listen to the music of today’s youth:

it will tune you into now.

 

To stay young

listen to the music of the centuries:

it will tune you into eternity.

 

To stay young

listen to the music.

I am listening and staying young, doggone it!

Averi & her IKEA doll

2 Mi Familia, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

ikea dolls

All the grand-girls got IKEA dolls from a certain Nonna (aka “Nonni,” as dubbed by a few of the grandbebes).

My first dolls were fabric, embroidered faces.  Good memories.  :)

I meant to get a picture f each of them holding their babies, but alas, forgot.  Did get a few of Averi, though, a couple of days later.

And may I say POO to Youtube for mis-identifying the original music and banning it from mobile playability???  I had to change to one of their ugh selections…YT is ticking me off. 

Helllllloooooooooooo?

6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

So, growing up in a TV-less home for almost 6 of my very formative years, I was often found, past dark when I had to come inside, poring over the 1940s pictorial encyclopedias some one had given my parents.  Don’t let the word pictorial make you see visions of amazing eye-candy style books.  No – there were thousands and thousands of words and some grainy, black and white drawings or photos at best.

But nonetheless, I found it all very interesting and was especially thrilled when my dad bought a giant 3-volume dictionary set which had basic languages included in an appendix – French, Spanish, Italian, among several other languages like German, Dutch and Swedish.  “Buongiorno, il mio amore,” I was rather fixated on Italian.


Ahoy would have made it all very different.

So, um, yea-I actually DO visit Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com fairly regularly.  Of course I do.  And I L-O-V-E the cool stuff you pick up there, like how we came to say “Hello” when some one calls us.

I just watched the episode of Downton Abbey where they got a phone in the house.  Delightful.  You may click on the yellow telephone above to find out all about it.

Telephone synonyms: call, buzz, contact, dial, get on the horn, give a jingle, give a ring, make a call, phone, pick-up, put a call through, touch base with

There you go – fun stuff to know!

Best New Year’s Movie of all Time

9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

When Harry Met Sally.

It is THE best, hands-down.  Funny, charming, silly, great wriing, perfectly cast (including their best friends) and Meg’s hair in the deli scene (yes, that scene) is my dream hair.

I wish I could have found one of my fav scenes, which is when they each call their respective best friends, who co-habit, and the four of them are involved in 2 separate but over-lapping conversations.  Genius writing and great timing.

But instead: the ending.  :)

 

From one year to the next

3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think

For auld lang syne = for times long past

Kinda why I bought the Rod Stewart Christmas album this season.  Ya know, for the good {old} times.  I tried to like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s 2012 Christmas collection, but it may be the worst Christmas album (and accompanying video) ever.

Here is Rod’s smooth version of Auld Lang Syne.  For the New Year!   :)

Now-I am pressed for time, so let me just say this:

We are leaving 2012 in a few short hours and will meander into 2013 (some more quickly than others) with a few circles of a clock’s hand.  Though I have tendencies towards setting grand resolutions and starting revolutions and always wish to eschew all I haven’t loved about the year just past, though you know me to leap headlong into whatever is next – really, today is Monday and tomorrow will be Tuesday.

And Tuesday will be as fresh as Wednesday will be and Thursday and every day we are given, so let’s not put too much pressure on it.  Let’s not expect everything awful to suddenly be better, but let’s do remember that the mercies of the LORD are new every. single. morning.  Every one of our mornings, fresh!

The start of a New Year is really available to us every single day of our ever-loving lives.  Is that not amazing?  :)

Lamentations 3.22-23  Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I found this print recently and “pinned it” because it really does give us perspective:

Pinned Image

In 2013, I will fall.  I will get back up.  I will make mistakes.  I will try to do better next time.  I will cry.  I will laugh.  I will feast.  And I will fast.  I will have times of sweet peace and security.  And I will have to trust God in vicious storms and not lean on my own understanding.  It will be good and it will sometimes be bad.  There will be high points and probably some devastation along the way.  I will scribble out things I had inked with great certainty and erase penciled-in plans when the wind blows a different direction.  I will rejoice and I will trust and I will sing and I will believe and sometimes I will also totally want to throw in the towel.

Many years of living tells my the preceding paragraph is a true and certain prophecy.  But those same years also give me the unapologetic and unmitigated confidence to declare: He will be faithful.  God’s faithfulness will not take a hit at all, ever.  And one year from today, I will be able to look back at 2013 and say with no reservation:  He remained faithful, as always.  Just like I can say about Him today – at the end of 2012.

I was reading from an 1893 school book today (I am weird like that) and came across Daniel Webster’s eulogy for John Adams called “In Favor of Independence.”  Though there had not been a recorded or written record of John Adams’ speech concerning the Declaration of Independence, Webster shares what he says was said during those crazy days for the revolutionaries.

It begins:

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.

And ends with:

Sir, before God, I believe the hour has come.  My judgement approves this measure and my whole heart is in it.  All that I have and all that I am and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I have begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration.  It is my living sentiment and by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment, – independence now, independence forever!

I have decided to adopt his impassioned and whole-hearted oration for my journey into 2013:

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to 2013.  By the blessing of God, great will be the faithfulness of the LORD.  This much, I already know to be true!

How about you?  What are your plans for the New Year?  Join me???  :)

Holy shambles!

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

Christmas lights are twinkling through bedroom windows as nightlights and I pray over cherub faces and tuck each child in with the requisite two stuffed animals and/or squishy toys.  We whisper our good-nights, the boys in one room, and 4 little girls next door.

grandkids at christmas

I give the regular if-you-wake-up-before-everyone-else-please-just-read-a-book-and-don’t-wake-your-cousins speech, though I know with 100% certainty that it will be ignored at 5:54 am sharp tomorrow.  Still, I go through it and ask one more time: Did you go pottie?  Brush your teeth?  I add more blankets so they won’t get cold.  They kick them off, “I’m hot, Nonna.”

Everyone is tucked.  I can’t help but pray over them again and again for God’s anointing on their little lives and for peace and joy and for good restful sleep and a smile in their hearts and for God to heal little sniffles and keep them safe from evil, who lurks near our babies – this, we know.  I pray and I pray and they let me.  They make their requests known and soon, if I don’t say amen, we will be up all night praying over every detail in their universes…

More hugs, more kisses, more one-last-drinks…whew.  We made it.

I walk into the hallway and through my house.  O.my.goodness.  There are globs of toothpaste in every sink, toothbrushes teetering on counter edges.  There are overcoats and outer-wear and underwear strewn about in bathrooms, entry, living room, family room, and yes, even in the kitchen.  Every couch pillow and cushion has been used otherwise and our floor is covered with blankets and baggies of cheese balls and water bottles with names written on them.  Are there any toys left in the playroom, I wonder?

12 29 12 with their reindeer prints

Is that a marshmallow gun target on our front door?  Why, yes, it is.  Why do you ask?

Evidence of a family feast-night and a disco dance and watching the Turtle Man- Christmas episode and a couple of Gilligan’s Island re-runs (to my great dismay) and my house is in utter, complete and total jumbled, snarly, tangled, topsy-turvy, chaos and clutter, with a side order of full-blown dishevelment.  Yep.  It is a mess.

And me?  I love it.  I am neck-deep in grandbebes and it is grand!


Still basking in the glow of the holy days of the holidays. Merriment continues…

Pork chops and applesauce

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

Did I really, actually whip up a feast of pork chops and applesauce for 6 little grandbebes?

I mean yes – there were LOTS of other dishes, too because we were eating off those giant school-cafeteria trays and you must fill every section.  But the main thing was porks chops and applesauce.

Why?

Because of The Brady Bunch, silly.  I want them to be exposed to the classics, for sure.  ;)  Porks chops and applesauce for dinner.  That’s swell!