Thursday, September 27, 2007

Candid Moments

I enjoyed a long weekend break from work to spend helping host a conference for 12-17 year old girls in our area. It was altogether precisely the sort of thing I would have loved at that age...and the encouragement to focus above all else on a relationship with the Lord & a commitment to please Him no matter what echoes one of the themes of my own walk with the Lord.

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My car battery died last Saturday. I was very tired when I discovered it and my body was so desperate for food that my mind had shut down. Consequently I unlocked my trunk to find my jumper cables & then couldn't find my key. Five or six tired, hungry people searched wildly for my key for five minutes before it was discovered sticking calmly out of the trunk lock.

Duh!

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One of the speakers who flew in from Texas for the weekend conference is an old friend of mine. Obviously, given the distance between us, we haven't spent a lot of time together. It was quite pleasant to spend Monday together.

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I was assigned to help with a jewelry class while at the conference last weekend. If you know me, you may start laughing now.

I was rescued from the class shortly after it began by a call for help in another area. I promise the person who called me away didn't know how much usefulness they were NOT depriving me of being in the jewelry class. Had they known it, perhaps I would have been called away earlier!

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I learned Friday evening that while I had been away for the conference, my family created an amusing spectacle for the neighbors.

"Katie," John informed me, "Dad and Mom spent the afternoon duct-taping their sheets."

"What?" I responded incredulously, "Are they planning to sleep in duct-taped sheets!?"

It turned out it wasn't the sheets. It was the feather comforter. The feather comforter, a gift for my parent's wedding, has lived the last decade only by reason of sentimental strength. We've learned to handle it with care when making the bed, since shaking of any kind emits choking clouds of feathers into the air.

At one time, Mom tried restitching the holes in the comforter, but found that she would have had to restitch nearly every seam to effectively close every hole. Besides, the fabric was too weak to hold a new seam.

John was happy to draw a rather amusing mental picture for me of this newest comforter-fixing venture.

Dad and Mom hauled the comforter outside to the front grass. They shook it vigorously, covering the front grass with fluffy white feathers. The shaking was an attempt to find the holes, which they then duct-taped together.

The electric-meter-reading-guy came just about this time. Imagine the sight he beheld. A white front lawn, and a duct-tape armed group clustered around a twenty-five year old king size comforter.

"Is there a spider in there?" he finally inquired.

I deduce he has spent time around females.

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A good friend & faithful reader of my ramblings here asked after my mop doll when we were visiting together last weekend. She did not, however, agree to give my poor abused doll a loving home.

Fortunately, the sincerity of her friendship has been proved in many other ways before. Therefore, I cannot doubt it now...

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Peter celebrated his 10th birthday this week. For the first time in 22 years, my parents don't have a single-digited child. Now isn't that sad?

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My room at this moment is a royal mess & I am emotionally divided between a distaste for tackling the requisite task and a growing guilt for continuing to put it off.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Bad to Worse

It was cold this morning.

I discovered that my car windows were fogged up when I was ready to go to work.

I did not have extra time, so I needed to defrost the windows quickly.

My heater is broken and my car does not properly defrost.

I rolled down my windows so I could see.

I accidentally opened one of the rear windows instead of the front one I had intended to open.

The rear window is broken and rolls only one direction.

Down.

I appeared in the office with insulated leather gloves and proceeded to wear them for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of work while typing, answering the phone, sorting paperwork, and preparing a mailing.

I was the subject of some amusement to my boss.

I did not achieve a feeling of amusement equal to that which I induced in others.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Love Me, Love My Dolly

Allow me to recommend that you keep a handkerchief handy. The tale you are about to begin is a very sad one. But it wasn't always sad. No, not always sad...

This story begins long ago on a cheerful day on which my dear Grandmother presented me with a doll made out of a mop head.

I never gave her a name, or if I did I have long forgotten it. Simple though she was, I thought her rather cute. I brought her home and fondly set her upon the top of my bed post where she lived mostly undisturbed for a very long time.

Undisturbed, indeed, until a few short months ago when I decided that she could be set to be better advantage if I gave her a summer resting place upon the top of the wood stove in my room. This was, I think, the first time my darling Brothers and sweet Sister deigned to notice her existence. Alas! She & I have both lived to rue that day!
My lovely brothers and sisters quickly concluded that my poor simple, innocent doll "looked silly" sitting down. Their words, hastily spoken, were even more hastily acted upon. When I was out of the room they "improved" her appearance by standing her up. The "improvement" was more than dubious since she has no legs to stand upon...

The weeks that followed were a trial to all concerned. I never entered my room without sitting my sweet doll back down comfortably and gracefully upon the stove top. I never left the room without a brother or, mayhap, a sister setting my poor doll awkwardly back up. I reentered my room always to set my sweet doll back down comfortably and.... I think you understand. Already, I know your tears are forming! Poor! Why, she was more than "poor"--she was altogether abused!

The worst was yet to be. No sooner had my cruel siblings realized I would not stand for such abuse, and that their every attempt upon my doll's comfort was thus foiled, then they resorted to stronger methods of making their spite known!



I arrived home one day and noticed to my surprise that my lovable doll was sitting comfortably and gracefully just as I'd left her. Pleasantly going to give her cheer, I discovered....



Now, yes, now! your tears may fall unchecked. I cannot always be on guard, and though my lovely doll now always sits most gracefully...it seems she'll never rest again. No matter how frequently I extract the sword from her face, her arms, her heart, or from underneath her, it reappears again. How can I protect her against such malevolence as this? And where now may we hope for comfort, my dolly & I?

Thursday, September 13, 2007

To Entreat

I've been thinking about "entreaty" because it is one of the definitions of supplication and supplication is what God commands me to do for "all men" in I Timothy 2:1.

I've been thinking about how much urgency and passion is implied by words like "entreaty" and "supplication"

My prayers for myself are sometimes urgent. Sometimes, too, for a friend they are urgent.

"All men" is another matter entirely. For those same "all men" for whom Christ lived and died, for the "all men" who are dying without Him daily, for "all men" whose time on earth is the only heaven they can expect....for these, "entreaty" is almost too weak a descriptor of the urgent prayers I should make and it is far too strong a representation of the prayers I actually do offer.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Note To Self

* Recommend you not commit a crime in the forseeable future. Even if your family doesn't turn in the very recognizable strands of hair you leave all over the house by way of DNA samples, your fingerprints are impressed all over 1000's of envelopes that sit today in insurance offices, doctor's offices, and patient's homes all over the United States.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Caveat Hosti-potis

There is an orange dart with a black head stuck to the window. It has been there for several hours now. I wonder how long it will stay there and whether it will be reclaimed from the window by its owner, stolen from the window by someone other than its owner, or quietly fall off through natural causes. The answer is more personally important than you might think. When the dart is removed from the window, the probability of an ensuing dart war is rather high. No one in sight during such a war may consider him or herself invulnerable.

So if you're planning to visit here anytime soon, I suggest you bring along a helmet, shield, and breastplate. Or at least a dartgun.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

To Everything, A Season

August at our house is the beginning of the end. Of the year, that is. In our family of seven, six birthdays fall between August and November. So does Thanksgiving. By the time we've stopped celebrating, it's a new year.

When Paul was a toddler he killed a spider by covering it with shaving cream. When the suffocating spider staggered out of sight, Paul went to report the incident to Mom. "Where's the spider now?" Mom wanted to know. "I don't know," Paul responded, "In hell, I guess?"

Tomorrow, he will be twenty-one.

When Abigail was a toddler she managed to open a two gallon jar of honey. She was enjoying the experience and all its advantages quite thoroughly until she found herself stuck to the floor.

She will be fourteen tomorrow.

I'd miss my toddler-siblings if I wasn't enjoying the grown up ones so very much!

Monday, September 03, 2007

Google & I

I occasionally get hits on this blog from Google searches. It it is rather amusing sometimes to see what people are looking for online, not to mention the unique word combinations that have actually landed individuals at Katie Speaks.

Curiously enough, my most regular Google-referred hit comes from this frivolous post I wrote over a year ago. Individuals in India seem to be especially keen on searching the web for information on my none-too-original title phrase. I finally became interested enough to run the Google search myself, learning thereby that my post comes up as number 50 out of 501,000 results for the phrase in question.

I've been learning more about the writing industry lately, and I was amused to discover that many professional writers are now expected to master what amounts to a new science called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO requires that a piece be carefully composed with enough words pertinent to a search engine crawl to actually generate readers for a website. Now if I actually knew both how that silly post managed to hit #50 for that search and why anyone would care, I might have something for my resume.