Househunting From a Baby's Viewpoint

                          Really, Nana and PawPaw....you have NO idea what it's been like!

Househunting can take a toll on a family, especially in today's market where it is a buyer's market and often buyers are competing with each other for a house they like.  Our son and his family have been going through quite the ordeal in trying to find the right house.  We Skyped about it last night and little Luke, who is a big 7-month-old now, had some thoughts on the subject.

Oh, my....we have had SOME adventures looking for a home for our family.

Button it, Mom, it's my turn to talk here.  They want to know MY perspective on our house hunt.

I just can not believe all the places we've had to go see.

Holy Cow....some of these places I wouldn't put my rattle down in.  But other houses that I've really liked have had other people snap them right up from under us.

I've thought...."Man, are you pulling my leg?  We've lost another one to another buyer?" and yup, back we go, having to look at more houses."

Come ON, guys!  Gag me with a spoon, for cryin' out loud!

Who knew that this house-buying stuff would be such a knuckle-biting experience?

When I hear some of the offers those other people have made, I want to say to them, "Yeah, yeah...just talk to the hand, man."

Mommy and Daddy are getting frustrated and I'm pulling my hair out here.

It's been absolutely disgusting, I tell ya, just disgusting!

Oh, you thought this LAST house was going to be the one, did you?  Well, think again.

Go ahead, Mommy, tell them the latest development.....not that I'm complaining, mind you.

I KNOW, Nana and PawPaw...it's unbelievable, isn't it?  We could end up so close to Gammy and Grandpa.

Hey, wait a minute.  Who invited Grandpa in here?  This is MY story.  Everybody wants to add their two cents!

Whoa....who knew having a conversation was such hard work?  Of course, when you only know one word.....it takes a lot of effort to get your point across.

So anyway....we were back looking at houses ......What?  What did you say?  Oh, you think YOU can do better finding us a house, do you?  Well, then why don't you two come down here and help us?

Pssst, it's ok, Mommy.....I got this!  I know what I'm doing here!

See, I KNEW if I tricked them, maybe they'd fly down here and visit us.

Yeah....THAT'S what I'm talkin' about.  We need Nana and PawPaw to fly down here and be "closers" and get the job done.

Besides, with a smile like this, do you REALLY need an excuse to come down to see me?

Oh, My Goodness....Is That?

Maybe it's because most of my favorite shows are filmed in Vancouver.  Maybe certain actors/actresses just naturally gravitate toward certain types of shows.  Maybe Syfy, one of my favorite TV channels, just happens to move its actors from show to show like chess pieces on a board.  Or maybe it is just a coincidence but lately I've been noticing some very familiar faces popping up on new shows.

Case in point - I was watching a Canadian TV show from my Netflix Instant Queue called "Intelligence."  By golly, one of the main characters was played by Ian Tracey, who happened to play crazy Adam Worth on my SyFy show, "Sanctuary."

Speaking of "Sanctuary," another actor from that show, Christopher Heyerdahl, who played Magnus' love, John, showed up on another new show I like, "Hell on Wheels," as The Swede.

I have been watching the new show, "Grimm" and on their latest episode which centered around a woman who changed into a spider-like creature who sucked the juices out of her victims in order to stay youthful, I realized that the woman was none other than Amy Acker, who played Fred on my beloved vampire series "Angel."  (And we all know that Angel has been reincarnated as Booth in the popular TV series, "Bones.")

Speaking of vampires, one of my very favorite vampire series is Blood Ties, unfortunately cancelled but still available via reruns.  The other day, while I was watching an episode of "Intelligence", I sat up and looked closer and realized that one of the lowlifes on the show was Michael Ecklund, who played creepy Norman in several episodes of "Blood Ties."


But my latest discovery was this week when I was viewing the American version of "Being Human."  One of the main characters, a vampire, was interacting with a vampire that he had sired.  All of a sudden I sat up in my recliner, leaned forward, and said, "It's Henry!"  Yup, my favorite vampire from Blood Ties, Kyle Schmid, who played "Henry Fitzroy," is now on "Being Human" in a recurring role as a vampire and his name is, get this, "Henry."  Unfortunately, THIS Henry is not quite as honorable as MY Henry from the previous show but at least I can enjoy his company on TV once more.

Maybe it's like weather and fashion, .....if you wait long enough, they all come back again.  So, has anyone spotted Adrian Paul recently?

La Langue de L'amour

Ah, it's Valentine's Day. ......a day when love is in the air.  "Love" wasn't exactly in the air this morning when I was driving to an appointment but the "language of love" was playing on the air, courtesy of the Quebec music station broadcasting via my Sirius Satellite radio.  I was enjoying picking out the stray French phrases that I knew and listening to the lovely pronunciation of the words and that got me homesick for the days when the Commander and I were speaking French daily, when we lived in Morocco.

"I REALLY need to brush up on my language skills," I thought.

Ah, but THERE'S the rub.  What language should I brush up on?  Should it be French?  I love the sound of French, love to speak it aloud.  It makes me feel all sophisticated and sultry.  It makes me want to sling a scarf around my neck, light up a cigarette and find a little bistro with a small stage to sing on.

The Commander, when he's feeling romantic, usually speaks to me in French.

"Je t'aime," he'll whisper.

I usually counter with the language of my ancestors.  "Ich liebe dich!", I'll say.

Just not the same, is it?  No matter how I try to squelch it, I usually get the feeling that the other person ought to pop up, stand at attention, click their heels, and salute.  German is a language of action.  It demands a response and a snappy one, at that.  French, on the other hand,.....well, they don't call it the language of love for nothin'.

Should I concentrate on brushing up on my German?  It IS a strong part of my heritage, after all.  I'd hate for it to die off with my generation in our family.  I really would like to pass it on to my grandchildren, at least a few phrases and sayings.  There's also a good chance that I'll get to use it again if we get over to Germany and Switzerland to do more genealogical research or just to travel over there.  I love Germany, enjoyed living there while in the Army, and would really like to get back there.

There's a third option though.  I COULD resurrect my very rusty Spanish.  We plan to move to Texas so I know there would be plenty of opportunities to speak it.  It would be a much more practical language to work on then either German or French.

I know, I know....you might be wondering, why limit yourself to just one other language?  Ah, it seems the way my brain is wired that I can only concentrate on one other language at a time.  When I was fluent in German and then started studying French, I lost almost all of my ability to converse in German.  When I stopped back in Germany and started trying to speak in German, my French started bailing on me.  Spanish jumped ship long ago.  I don't know why this is but it seems I don't have a multi-circuited brain.  I'm pretty linear.

For tonight, though, I'm not going to worry about any of this.  I'm going to express my love non-verbally as I cook up one of the Commander's favorite meals and as we raise our glasses to toast 32 years of marriage, I'm going to give him the "look of love", which doesn't need translation in any language.

No Chillin' in This Guernsey!

I finished my Guernsey Sweater yesterday and just in time, too, I might add.  The weather has turned hostile here with the wind just howling outside.  If there was ever a time that I needed a sweater that would keep me warm, this was it.

I used a chunky-weight yarn to knit this up and it is quite the heavy sweater, just as I envisioned it.  Today I wore it to church and I can tell you that it stood the test of brutal winds.  Yay!

I was updating my project page for this sweater on Ravelry and found myself curious about Guernsey sweaters in general.  Well, I may be retired now from my library work but I still love a good research project so off I went to do a little digging.

Did you know that Guernsey sweaters were originally knit in the Channel Islands off of Great Britain for fishermen?  They spread in popularity to fishing communities in Yorkshire, Northumberlund, and Scotland.  I suspect these sweaters are a close kin to the Irish Fisherman's Sweater.

Many families had their own unique patterns and these patterns were often passed down from generation to generation. Tradition has it that these patterns were useful in identifying the bodies of fishermen lost at sea when they'd wash ashore.  Their sweaters would be used to identify them.  That kind of boggles my mind but I suspect certain patterns were known to come from certain communities or regions.  So....if a fisherman washed ashore near one town perhaps word would get to his home town and thus, eventually they'd figure out who it was.

The traditional Guernsey sweater is a tightly-knit sweater with a straight neck which has no particular front or back so you can reverse it and wear it either way.  The sleeves are designed in such a way that they allow freedom of motion.  That makes sense when you think about the physical activity that fishermen would be doing out on a boat.  The sides often have welt openings at the bottoms - again to allow maximum range of motion.

The garter stitch separating the patterned part of the sweater was thought to represent the waves of the sea breaking on the rocks or the beach.  The sleeves are often capped by a cabled pattern which is thought to represent sailors' ropes.

Other names for the Guernsey Sweater that you'll sometimes hear are the "Gansey" or the "Jersey."  Also, a traditional Guernsey Sweater would be knit in a blue or indigo color.  If you'd like to read some more about this practical, comfortable sweater, you might want to click on the links below.  All three have short but interesting histories of these lovely sweaters.

"A Knitted History - the Understated and Practical Traditional Guernsey Jumper"
"The History of the Guernsey Jumper"
"A Short History of the Hand-knitted Gansey"

Kanga, Roo, and Chatterbox, Too!

We had a fun Skype visit with Jason, Laura, Sweet Pea and Spud yesterday.  Sweet Pea had to show us her new Kanga and Roo.  She is enthralled with Winnie-the-Pooh and all the characters in the Enchanted Woods but especially fond of Kanga and little Roo.

On our end, the Commander had his OWN stuffed kangaroo that he had gotten when he was stationed with the Seabees way back when.  So we had fun having our kangaroo pop up on the monitor now and then.

In the meantime, little Spud wasn't letting us get many words in edgewise.  Spud has reached the babbling stage and boy, can that boy make some noise.  If pictures could talk, I think this is what he must have been saying:

"Huh, so what have we here?  Let me take a breath and assess the situation."

"Nana, Pawpaw, is that you?  Whoa.....what was that thing that popped up on the screen?  Hey, where'd it go?

"Daddy, let me go!  I want to play jumping jack on the keyboard."

"Aw, come on, Daddy!  I've got MOVES!  I've got places to go, things to grab."

"Hey, speaking of grabbing, I think if I REALLY stretch, I can grab this cord and give it a good pull."

"Gee, you guys have no sense of humor.  Just because Nana and PawPaw disappeared and the sound stopped, doesn't mean it was my fault.  Hey, Sis....can you stop sucking on that drink and help a brother out?"

"Whoa...is that a microphone?  I mean, seriously, can I play with that or at least use it as a teether?"

"Humph....these guys are no fun. Man, one of these days I'm going to start crawling and then I'm finding a tricycle and I'm out of here.....right out into the kitchen."


That's ok, Luke.  Next time you see Nana, we can race each other to the kitchen but I get first dibs on any desserts we find.  Until our next Skype visit......we love you!

Parenting a Missionary, Pt. 2

I got an email today from WordPress telling me that there was a comment on a blog posting I'd written several years ago.  Regular readers will know that I switched my blog over to Blogger back around 2010 so a lot has happened since then.  Anyway, the comment was from a mother of a young woman who was feeling called to be a missionary.  The mother was hurting at the thought of the potential separation that might lie ahead.  Thank goodness WordPress notified me so that I was able to respond to her but it got me to thinking that perhaps I should repost my initial advice up here on my "active" blog, which is monitored daily, and also give you a little update:

Five Things to Consider When Your Child Is Feeling Called to Be A Missionary:

1.  If your child has been called by God to be a missionary, your desires are secondary. I say this without bitterness.  God’s call on a person’s life is going to trump a parent’s wishes or hopes every time.  And if you stand in the way of that call, shame on you.  I have had to remind myself over and over since my children were born that they are not “mine.”  They were given to me by God for a season only…to nurture them until it was time to release them.

2.  Conditions can be quite fluid in a missionary’s life. There seem to me to be a lot of parallels to life in the military and life as a missionary.  With the military, there is a lot of “hurry up and wait.”  There is a lot of that in a missionary’s journey, too.  You don’t just feel the call to a foreign country and then head out.  You have to determine what organization you should join.  You have to raise support.  You must obtain visas.  Countries become “closed” and you are diverted to other countries.  Orders are changed and you get sent to different places.  You don’t buy homes because you never know how long you are going to be in one spot.  You might need to be sent off for additional training. You can’t always tell loved ones where you are nor communicate regularly with them.

3. Be prepared for a lot of surprises, twists, and turns as their missionary call is defined. Many parents (and the child being “called”) immediately think overseas when they think they are being called to the mission field.  But over time, as they pray and listen to what God is directing them to do, that missionary call could be to work with the homeless in Camden, NJ or with immigrants in San Antonio.  Or it could be a call to go to medical school and then head over to Paraguay to be a missionary doctor.  There are many forms that missionary call could take.  And a child’s missionary work can change over their lifetime.  God will use them when and where He sees fit.  You, as their parent, will become quite familiar with the word “adaptable.”

4.  You might feel angry. Shocker, I know.  Folks at church will probably be hugging you and congratulating you once they hear that your child feels called to the mission field.  Little do they realize that you might be experiencing a whirlpool of conflicting emotions, not the least of which is anger.  You’ve been throwing your whole life into keeping your child safe.  Now they want to go somewhere where they will be living in terribly unsanitary conditions, where people might want to harm them, in voluntary poverty, away from loved ones for long periods of time…….and you’re supposed to SMILE about this?  Are they nuts?  Take a deep breath.  What you are feeling is normal.  Acknowlege it and then you can work through it.  Personally, I worry more about those parents who are giddy with joy when their kids want to be missionaries.   Are they counting the cost?     Be prepared but then pray that God will keep you pleasantly surprised.

5.  Start developing a support network. When your child becomes a missionary, you will most likely not see them for long periods of time.   Seek out other parents of missionaries.    You can find them through your denomination or the missionary organizations.  Become familiar with the computer and long-distance communication tools like Skype and email.   Stay connected with your  friends and church family.  Let them know if you are having a tough time with loneliness.  Get that passport up-to-date and then make plans to do some traveling to places near enough to connect with your missionary child.  That means you need to take steps now to be healthy enough to travel, if at all possible.  And at the risk of sounding trite, remember that you can talk to God about what you are feeling every step of the way.  He’s along for the entire journey.

Bonus Advice:

6.  Take advantage of great resources like the National Network of Parents of Missionaries.  This group (also known as "NNPOM") has a website at http://www.pomnet.org/ and it is chock-full of good advice and resources for you.  They also have a Yahoo group for POMs (Parents of Missionaries) that I can tell you is wonderfully supportive.

Update on MY missionaries:

My son and his family are now back in the States.  At the risk of repeating myself for regular readers, my dear daughter-in-law became pregnant while they were serving overseas and, since she has high-risk pregnancies, they had to return to the States for her final trimester.  Before they had returned, they were beginning to feel that God was changing their call and once they returned, it became clearer to them that this was the case.  Our granddaughter was also experiencing physical problems brought on by the environment overseas, which was a cause for concern.  Now my son is attending seminary while still working as the North American Sending Offices Director for his missionary organization.  We have two wonderful grandchildren.  They live half-way across the country but that's a walk in the park compared to halfway around the world.  The Commander volunteers as a treasurer for Jason's organization and I like to joke and say that I'm the "Postmaster" for the group since I print off the postage and mail off the contribution statements around the country and also mail off books and cover letters to those interested in serving with the organization.  It's a small thing, for sure, but it helps me feel connected to my son's missionary work.  I wonder sometimes if it didn't take me finally  throwing up my hands and releasing my son and daughter and their precious family through my tears to God before He, in His graciousness and mercy, gently restored them back to me.

Sticking Power

If you're a man, you can probably skip today's blog post unless you want to score some serious brownie points with your lady.  If you're a woman, read on, Sister!  I don't know about you, but I have had a terrible time finding lipstick that would last more than an hour or so.  I CERTAINLY couldn't find anything that would last through a meal.  But all that has changed since I discovered "Super Stay 24 Color" by Maybelline.

Let me just say upfront that I have no affiliation with them nor do any of my family or relatives that I'm aware of.  I'm just a VERY happy customer.  I wouldn't even be writing about this product if it weren't for the prodding of a friend of mine.  You see, several weekends ago I was at a function and my friend came up to me and said, "What lipstick are you wearing?  It's really lovely."

I told her what it was and mentioned how I really liked the fact that this particular line of lipstick lasted a LONG time.  As I was giving her a glowing review of its virtues, she said, "You really need to blog about this because I'll bet not many people have heard of it and women are always looking for lipstick that will last."

This lipstick comes in quite a few shades.  It's in a little two-ended tube.  One end has an applicator stick that applies the color.  The trick is that you must then wait a minute or two for it to dry.  It really only takes several minutes....about as long as it takes me to let the dog out to do her business before I am ready to head out the door.  THEN you pop off the cover on the other end of the tube and twist up the "chapstick-like" substance that you apply to your lips.  This gives them a lovely gloss.

It's probably important to note that before you apply this final "gloss", your lips will most likely feel tacky or sticky or dry to you.  Not to panic!  This completely goes away as soon as you complete Step #2.  Then go ahead and head out to enjoy your day, secure in the knowledge that you will have lovely-looking lips with color that you aren't going to chew off or wipe off during dinner.  In fact, I've been using this lipstick for almost a year now and I still find myself startled at times when I glance in the mirror (no wisecracks, now) near the end of the day and notice that my lips still have a nice color to them.

When I'm ready to head to bed and taking my makeup off, I just wipe my lips with the makeup remover/skin cleanser wipe that I use on my face.  You could probably just get the same results with a wet washcloth or rub cold cream on them and wipe with a tissue.    Or heck, you could just go to bed looking like a siren.

I ran into my friend at church the other day.

"Did you get any of the lipstick," I asked.

"I sure did," she replied, "And so did my daughter.  We LOVE it.  We STILL can't believe how long it lasts."

Go forth and enjoy!

Au Secours!

I headed down the road for church this morning in my "Knitting Nanamobile" to the dulcet strains of French Canadian pop music.  I'd been listening to that Sirius station the other day and that's why it happened to come up when I turned the radio on.

"No problem," I thought.  "I'll just pick another of my preset tiers."

I hit the Preset button and pressed another of my channel presets.  Huh?  It was the Elvis station which was my No. 2 preset on the previous tier I'd been listening to.  Now I don't particularly LIKE Elvis music but I'd kind of run out of music that I really wanted to listen to when I was setting up all of my preset channels so this final tier were the "fourth string" of channels, so to speak.

Yikes!  I tried the Preset button again.  Normally it would then allow me to cycle through six different "tiers" of presets with six stations each.  Today, it wasn't going anywhere.  I was BUMMED!  It's not that I mind la musique francaise but I'd been listening to it most of yesterday and I was finished with it (fini avec elle).  A crooning Elvis was even worse.  My other choices?  "Hair Nation" - a station devoted to the big hair bands of the '80's.  Yeah, that didn't exactly float my boat either.  I also had some jazz channels that I'd set up on this tier but I can only take jazz in small doses.

When we got home from church and errands, I finagled the Commander into going out to the Nanamobile to see if he could retrieve my other music options.  He was out there for about seven or eight minutes before he headed back inside.

"Did you get it fixed?" I asked.

"It's fixed, but don't ask me how I did it," he replied.

That's my Commander!  A hunk of burning love!  Il est bon!

No Hurry!

My nephew and his wife are expecting their baby next month.  She (my niece) is at that stage in a pregnancy where you really are ready to have it just be over with.  That baby can't come soon enough.  I have to tell you, though, that I never reached that stage with my pregnancies (well, if you don't count the actual time during hard labor when you are REALLY ready for that child to appear).

You see, I was one of those rare ducks that loved being pregnant.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I was really happy to discover I was pregnant again when the home test showed positive on the day of my daughter's 1st birthday.

There was another reason that I was in no hurry to pop those babies out.  I had discovered after the first one, that babies are a lot more manageable in the womb than they are once they are actually born.  Maybe this was tempered somewhat by the fact that our daughter was a VERY crabby baby.

Yup, when our Jason (baby No. 2) came along, I was quite happy to stay in the hospital and relax as long as they'd let me.  I remember the doctor coming in and telling me, "If things continue so well, we should be able to release you today."

"Hey, no need to hurry on my account," I told him.  I knew what was waiting for me at home.

THIS little firecracker was back there no doubt dreaming up new ways to get into mischief.  Besides which, if her brother was anything like her, I knew I'd not be getting any sleep for the next few months.

Thankfully my mom was able to come out for a short visit to help me with both children plus I soon discovered that Baby No. 2 had a MUCH mellower temperament than Baby No. 1.  Thank Heavens!  Otherwise that doctor might have found me back on the hospital doorstep asking him if he could readmit me for, oh, I don't know.....maybe the next 18 years?

Belly Up, Times Two

Well, it had to happen sooner or later this winter but did it have to happen on one of the warmest days we've had so far?  I actually managed to slip on the ice in a parking lot on a day that got almost up to 60 degrees.  Yeah, I know.....how did I manage that?  I went to a store EARLY in the morning, that's how, when it was still cold out.  I was hurrying from the car to the store's entrance and saw a wet spot in the pavement but didn't think anything of it, since it wasn't standing water.  What I DIDN'T know was that it was black ice.  I walked right over it and next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with my feet up in the air.  Yup, I'd "come a cropper" so quickly that I didn't even have time to tense up.  I guess that's a good thing since it most likely precluded me from sustaining any injuries other than bruises to elbow, hip, and pride.  For once, those heavily padded "Van Rossum hips" came in handy.  I tell you, it's like wearing pillows strapped on both hips.  No wonder my mom, who has a similar physique, is 98-years old, and has taken numerous falls, has never broken a hip.

Got me to thinking, though, about how the term "come a cropper" came into use.  Seems that the top of a horse's rear is called a "croup" or "crupper", in slang.  Back in the day when many traveled by horseback, the expression, "come a cropper" sprang up to mean that you fell off your horse.  Nowadays, it just means you took a tumble.

We had something else that went belly-up from our household this week.  Would you believe that our big hi-def TV gave up the ghost last night?  We'd been enjoying some TV shows and then I headed up to get ready for bed.  When I called down to the family room to tell the Commander that the dog had been bathroomed, he said he was trying to get the TV to turn on.  I couldn't imagine why, since it seemed like he should be turning it off.

Apparently, he had gone to turn OFF the TV but before he could even press the button, he heard a "pop" and the TV turned off on it's own.  Oh, oh......that didn't sound good.  Now it wouldn't come on at all.  The only thing happening were four red lights blinking when he'd attempt to turn it on.  Wouldn't you know that it was 2 days over the 1-year warranty?  But never fear........for once, we had purchased an extended warranty (since our previous big-screen TV had died just past ITS warranty).

Today, we went out and purchased a slightly smaller TV, which we had planned to do anyway for our bedroom, and also set up a service call with the folks who take care of our maintenance plan.  If they can't fix it, we'll get a new TV as a replacement free of charge.  In the meantime, the Commander set up the new TV on a makeshift stand in front of our other one so that we can watch the Super Bowl on Sunday (can't miss those ads, now can we?)

I told the Commander that, with the luck we seem to have with these TVs, we should just plan to purchase new ones ever year, especially if the prices continue to come down the way they have been doing.  He just looked at me.  I could tell that I was skating on thin ice.